The marketing for this show has been relentless, and that's an understatement. It's easier to shake the SARS virus in a back alley chicken hut in downtown Hong Kong than it is to shake an ad for The Cougar.

One of my personal rules (number one is "thou who smelt it, dealt it") is the harder the advertising, the worse a show is bound to be. TV Land hasn't just aired a commercial for The Cougar every five seconds in between their few remaining watchable shows. They air it on other networks. They plaster ads all over the Internet. If the economy dips any lower, they'll probably start tattooing ads to people's foreheads.

Well, it looks like rejiggering the format of the Oscar telecast paid off; ratings for the 81st annual back-patting orgy were up 13% from last year's record-low ratings. Maybe it was the "faster-paced" ceremony, or maybe it was just that there were some intriguing storylines (Slumdog, Heath Ledger, what kind of nutty stuff would Mickey Rourke have said if he won... that kind of stuff). Or it could have been a matter of more people being at home to watch because, uh, they don't have the money to do anything else. But at least the ratings are back to being semi-respectable.

One interesting aspect to these ratings numbers, though, was brought up by Newsday's Neil Best: the total number of female viewers for the Super Bowl (38.3 million) surpassed the entire audience for the Oscars (36.3 million). So, despite the conventional wisdom, it looks like the "Super Bowl for women" is actually... the Super Bowl.

At the very least, the ratings will probably earn Hugh Jackman and producers Bill Condon and Laurence Mark a return engagement. Now if they can just get this thing under three hours, they're all set.

Did you see Paris Hilton on Larry King Live last night? Here's the transcript. Jeez, she really did nothing to help her cause, eh? She seems honestly, sincerely, and deeply clueless. And as a guy, I don't even find her hot or appealing. She has the personality of a wicker chair. I found all of her talk about wanting to help people and learning her lesson and "reading the Bible" completely unconvincing.

After the jump is a roundup of what the internet is saying today about her appearance.

Verne Gay over at Newsday is reporting that Dave Price, the weatherman/cohost on CBS' The Early Show, is going to replace Bob Barker as host of The Price Is Right. He says he heard the news from a trusted source and that it's "definite."

Price will stay with The Early Show while doing the game show every day. I know, you're thinking, but The Price Is Right is filmed in Los Angeles and The Early Show is in New York City. He'll pre-tape the game show on Fridays and do The Early Show live the other days.

No idea how I feel about this. I don't watch The Early Show that much and I've only seen Price a couple of times, so I don't really have an opinion of Price. Though I think this is probably the first time in history that the name of the game is also the name of the host, and that's kinda funky.

[via TV Tattle]

When NBC announced their new Thursday night schedule, a lot of people (including NBC) started to say that this was "Must-See TV" all over again. And not only does Newsday's Verne Gay agree, he thinks that the new schedule is better than the old one.

What do you think? There were many different "Must-See" Thursday night schedules on NBC over the years, so we could pick and choose. Some had Frasier, some had Wings, some had Mad About You. But let's make it an even 10 years ago. The 1996 "Must-See" Thursday night schedule was Friends at 8, The Single Guy at 8:30, Seinfeld at 9, Suddenly Susan at 9:30, and ER at 10. The schedule now is My Name Is Earl at 8, The Office at 8:30, Scrubs at 9, 30 Rock at 9:30, and ER at 10.