Today's discussion points aren't particularly fascinating; sorry

Slow news day:

Since the economy’s bad, a cable-TV trade magazine thoughtfully suggests things you should cut from your budget before you axe your cable: Food, clothing, gasoline – you know, inessentials. But not subscriptions to cable-TV trade magazines.

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Even though The CW ceased screening episodes of “Gossip Girl” online in an effort to force viewers to actually watch the show the old-fashioned way, it had the same old lousy ratings it usually has: 2.4 million viewers, just as many as it gets for “Reaper,” except “Reaper” doesn’t have an expensively ambitious marketing campaign behind it.

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That p!ssing match between Viacom and CBS we discussed yesterday is stepping up: Viacom hired a former Showtime executive to run the cable network it created to show its movies on instead of selling them to Showtime.

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Yet again, the definition of the word “celebrity” trends downward as NBC announces the participants in its upcoming reality show “Celebrity Circus:” Antonio Sabato, Jr., former soap star and professional underwear wearer; Blu Cantrell, who made a record earlier in this century; Christopher Knight, who has made a career out of having played Peter Brady once upon a time; Janet Evans, who played in the Olympics back during the first President Bush’s Administration; Jason “Wee Man” Acuna, a “Jackass,” and Rachel Hunter, a woman who poses for pictures in various states of undress.

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TeeVee people are so sneaky: They’re getting the word “f@ck” on TV without actually saying the word “f@ck.”

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“Criminal Minds”’ season finale proffers a real head-scratcher for the Feds, per the press release: “(P)eople who seem to have nothing in common are being killed at random.” Uh, doesn’t that happen, like, all the time?

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And it’s a good thing this “Scarlet” TV show is advertising like crazy on the Internets, because otherwise, I wouldn’t know it exists: No one has sent me anything about it. It’s about some chick with a red eye. Honest, even its website doesn’t tell you anything about it, except to inform you that it’s a “hit new TV series” (before it has even aired) and it will change the face of TV forever, which is not true because plenty of incomprehensible television has preceded it.