Molly Shannon is hooking up with 20th Century Fox TV in a rich deal to develop a sitcom for her to produce and star in, according to THR. Shannon was seen most recently in Fox's extremely short-lived Cracking Up, whose abbreviated existence was plagued by feuds between creator Mike White and Fox executives. White (who wrote the screenplay for School of Rock, but is whiffing big-time on TV—Pasadena, anyone?) was fond of throwing fits any time an executive so much as looked at him, and finally quit in a tizzy. Luckily, the ratings weren't good enough for it to matter much. In any event, better luck at Fox this time, Molly!

We hear a rumor that the esteemed William Morris Agency, in an effort to better focus their money-making power, has started quietly cutting low-earning clients (this is great) alphabetically. Says a tipster:

We at Defamer are committed to offering the head-hunting services that our readers so desperately crave. Earlier, we tried to hook up the kid of a fellow Internet entertainment writer with some extra summer cash. Now we offer something to our more highly-paid readership. From a helpful e-mailer:

Downsized Apprentice contest/document reproduction deal-closing wunderkind Nick Warnock has landed a gig selling luxury suites for the Oakland Raiders. Raiders CEO Amy Trask said about hiring the fourth-place finisher, "I called someone else in our office equally addicted to the show and told him, 'I want to hire this guy to sell suites...[W]hen we saw on his Web site that he had a football background (he played high school and college football), it seemed like a great idea."

LA Weekly "Deadline Hollywood" columnist Nikki Finke has a look at the negotiations between Fox and The Simpsons' voice actors. Hilariously, Fox execs at one point threatened to replace all of them.

Ah, Movie Summer... It's the time for blockbusters, huge budget overruns, and disappointing sequels. Our predictions for the official beginning of Hollywood's pandering season:

A spy tells us about Maria Shriver's recent interview with magician/white tiger snack Roy Horn, which took place at Siegfried and Roy's Las Vegas compound. (Spy: "How do you interview a quasi-vegetable? Luckily, Maria has lots of experience dealing with someone who doesn't speak in complete sentences.") Scott Sassa, former head of NBC West Coast programming, was caught dishing about the ridiculous security in place to protect leaks from getting out ahead of the interview's Fall airing to promote NBC's animated tiger show, Father of the Pride.

Drudge reports that 51.1 million viewers tuned in to the Friends finale, 33 percent less than Seinfeld's last episode. Earlier, Drudge reported that NBC executives were in a demented scramble to get the overnight Nielsen ratings, which delivered data from only 15 major media markets due to a massive computer crash.

The Smoking Gun has the mugshot of Real World Miami castmate Dan Renzi, who was arrested for exercising his right to stroke his penis in a Kansas City porno theater on Cinco de Mayo. [Ed. note—You'd think he'd be safe after flying all the way to Kansas City just to jerk off.] While we usually never pass up the opportunity to make the easy joke, Defamer will not make any facile Pee Wee Herman references, even though both men were arrested for stroking their penises in theaters showing pornography.

It's finally over. "The One Where They All Go On To Failed Spin-Offs And Disappointing Movie Careers While Waiting Quietly For The Ten Year Reunion Special" has aired, and America has its happy ending.

One hundred striking French show business workers took over a studio at cable channel Canal Plus today, interrupting live broadcasts to protest unemployment benefit cuts, according to Variety. Some carried signs threatening a strike at the Cannes Film Festival which starts next week.

Defamer always welcomes tips from its readers, and we fully protect the anonymity of our tipsters the way that we ferociously guard our own.

From the Department of Badly Timed Announcements: Today News Corp (parent of Fox) reported a quarterly profit increase of 69 percent, largely powered by strong DVD sales, according to Reuters.

Are you like the roughly one million, bright-eyed ingenues who arrive in the fine city of Los Angeles each day, and want to make it in Hollywood? If so, don't unpack those suitcases just yet! You can hop right back onto a plane and fly to New York to attend actress Illeana Douglas' Knowledge Now seminar on "How To Make It In Hollywood."

Are you tired of looking at old pictures of your governor's shockingly out-of-proportion genitalia, which would look more appropriate on an East German swimmer than an action star? We know that we are. We must have wasted an hour yesterday, holding some calipers up to the monitor to try and translate the on-screen representation of Governor Arnold's "raw deal" into real-life inches. (We're not exactly sure the calipers would help, but we wanted the people in the library's other Internet terminals to think we were up to something scientific.)

An attendee of last night's Willie Nelson and Friends concert at the Wiltern sends us a report from the show. We were shocked [Ed.note—Shocked!] to hear insinuations that some of the storied musicians might have been performing while under the influence of one or more illegal substances. And we're somewhat heartened to find out that the original Batman is still alive and a recreational stage-diver.

To make a futile attempt at quenching the world's thirst for Friends spoilers, here is yet another installment. A tipster just sent this one, supposedly straight from a PA on the set...so maybe he or she might have missed something while fetching an In N Out burger for David Arquette. It seems to corroborate some of the Popbitch tips.

Popbitch presents a couple of spoilers that our spy didn't have. Just because we don't want to potentially ruin the fun of the 50 million viewers who will tune in to make peace with the end of the one thing that's given Gen X'ers lives some meaning, they're listed after the jump. (The plot points we didn't already reveal are in bold.)

With tonight's hour-long finale of sitcom and Bonafide Cultural Phenomenon Friends, we fully expected the critics to work themselves into a lather explaining What Friends Meant. We were not disappointed.

While we're pointing out the failings of major news organizations (who almost certainly can't claim the excuse that they ended their Cinco de Mayo celebration face-down in a toilet bowl, the chin string on their sombrero the only thing preventing them from drowning), we offer this: