It was a long, long, lonnnng first official TCA day yesterday, with CBS, Showtime, and the CW trotting out their newest and finest in front of the critics, followed by the epic Survivor anniversary party Bob mentioned the other day. I'll spill out some highlights later on. But I wanted to quickly start with CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler's very confident executive session.

Why was she so confident? Shows that are often winning their time periods helps. But she also seems to be in a "told ya so" mood about NBC and its Leno / Conan mess. In her opening remarks, for instance, she mentioned how good the freshman slate of shows was doing on every network... except NBC. During the Q&A, she said that the other networks "fared very well during this experimental phase for NBC."

We just got done with the NBC executive session, where primetime entertainment head Angela Bromstad and alternative programming (read: reality) chief Paul Telegdy took the reporters questions.

Of course, many of the questions had to do with The Jay Leno Show and Ben Silverman's departure. What the gathered reporters got out of the two executives was evasiveness, referrals to other executives, and a general sense that the two of them either don't know or don't want to provide answers about their own network.

When the question of Leno and CBS's Nina Tassler's assertion that NBC would declare victory no matter what numbers they got, Bromstad tried to pass us to the session for Leno's show later in the day. Telegdy did the same. But we wouldn't let them off the hook. An example exchange, for instance, went like this:

CBS programming chief Nina Tassler held court this morning in the CBS executive session. Her network is in an extremely strong position, so there wasn't much in the way of controversy to report, but here are some interesting tidbits from the session:

• Laurence Fishburne's character of Dr. Langston on CSI will assume a more take-charge position this year, he'll also be given a "wardrobe makeover" so he seems, as Tassler put it "more comfortable in his own clothes."
• Jorja Fox will be back for the first five episodes. And one of the main characters will get promoted. I won't spoil it for you, but you can probably figure out who it might be.
• A new Let's Make A Deal with Wayne Brady as host, will be taking the place of Guiding Light. Tassler wouldn't go so far as saying this is a trend towards the return of daytime network game shows, but she did say she wanted to get a new LMAD on the air for a while.
• No plans to bring back Flashpoint right now, though they can. More Canadian cross-production deals on the way, including The Bridge.
• On NBC's late-night / Leno strategies: "Whatever numbers they get, they'll declare victory anyway, so it doesn't matter."
• On the departure of Ben Silverman of NBC: "I'm really just a D-girl, so I wouldn't comment."

When I posted the news items that came out of Showtime's portion of the CBS tour, the one question I got was "When will Dexter be back?" Well, network president Robert Greenblatt mentioned that the third season would debut in September. No word beyond that. Didn't seem like news to me. But there you are, Dexter fans; that's all I've got on that.

The executive session was introduced by a semi-funny clip from one of the network's stars, Tracey Ullman. Really, it wasn't that good, so I won't talk much about it here. Greenblatt also showed clips of The United States of Tara and Nurse Jackie during his opening remarks. Other than that? Well, isn't that enough?