Winners (CBS), Losers (NBC), and Some Combination Thereof (people involved in the "Simpsons" duel)

Kudos to CBS, winners of this year's coveted prize for First Network to Release Its Fall-Season Pilots. "Project Gary," "Worst Week," "The Mentalist," "The Ex List" and trailers for "Eleventh Hour" and the midseason series "Harper's Island" arrived a week after the network unveiled them at the New York upfront. I'll start viewing them as soon as my shipment of Kaopectate arrives. (Oh, but I'm the kidder.)

By contrast, NBC announced its fall schedule a month ago, and still nothing. That's because NBC no longer believes in shooting pilots (although they did shoot a few), so they don't have anything to show critics yet.

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Speaking of NBC, check out this Valentine to the network from the New York Times:

"'Shark,' a drama that CBS is canceling, was seen by more people last week than any other NBC show but '(Law & Order:) SVU.'

"The network's prime-time average of 5.5 million viewers last week, was just more than half of first-place CBS' average."

And things aren't looking up for the network, either: "American Gladiators," which did fine this past winter as stopgap programming during the writers strike, was seen by a mere 4 million viewers on Monday, as was a two-hour bloc of the ultimate in timeslot-filling/time-killing programming, "Most Outrageus Moments," last night. (This is still sweeps month, right? Has NBC just curled into the fetal position and decide to sit this one out?)

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It may be the easiest job on the planet: Step into a studio and read a few lines every now and again for about 30 minutes to an hour. And, it pays well, too: About $360,000.00 per session. But those poor, beleaguered employees - Hollywood's migrant farm workers - believe they deserve $500,000 for that hour out of their life.

And so, production on "The Simpsons" has ground to a halt, until Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer work out a deal with Fox that pays them handsomely for their efforts. The show may lose two episodes from its run next season due to the walkout.

That's $3 million per episode, without even throwing in the writers, guest stars or any of the animation. Sunday's season finale was seen by six million viewers. So the vocal talent will be making about $1 for every 12 viewers the show has these days.

Of course, The "Simpsons" Six point out that given all the toys and DVDs and toys and T-shirts and toys and amusement-park rides and toys out there, the show can afford to pay them for their contributions that made Fox owner Rupert Murdoch even more obscenely wealthy than he was before. And they have a point. But if the Korean animation studio were to make the same point, Fox'd simply find another Korean animation studio to produce the show. And if the writers were to make that point, new writers would be brought in. (Heck, new writers are brought in all the time once every last drop of comedy is squeezed out of the old ones.) In 1998, when the vocal talent first went on strike, Fox considered auditioning "Simpsons" impersonators for the jobs.

But all is expected to be resolved, and peaceably, and maybe this week.