Dancing with the Stars pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy has been raving about his Season 7 partner, Misty May-Treanor, telling People and TV Guide that she has a "combination of the best qualities" of his previous partners, Laila Ali and Mel B. The new pair’s first two dances will be the Fox Trot and Mambo.

Karina Smirnoff talked with People about her DwtS 7 partner, Rocco DiSpirito: "I need him to let go of all inhibitions and just go for it."

DwtS 7 contestant Cloris Leachman told Showbiz Spy that she was rejected for two previous seasons of the show because casting directors thought she was too old.

The New York Post’s Page Six reports that veteran DwtS pros Cheryl Burke and Julianne Hough are jealous that Lacey Schwimmer was paired with Lance Bass and are giving the new pro the cold shoulder.

People reports that Tony Dovolani’s wife, Lina, gave birth to a boy and a girl early this morning. The twins are named Adrian and Ariana.

The Los Angeles Times covered last season’s Dancing with the Stars junior division winners Brandon & Brittany’s trip to Disneyland, part of their prize for winning the competition.

Reality Blurred’s Andy Dehnart posted his impressions of Survivor: Gabon contestants Matty and Kelly, neither of whom sound very nice.

Project Runway 6, the series’ first season on Lifetime, has been pushed back to January 2009.

Variety has an article about the trouble networks are having promoting new shows that still don’t have finished episodes ready to air.

MSNBC has replaced Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann as anchors of the cable network’s election coverage (including the upcoming debates) with bland talking head David Gregory because parent network NBC didn’t like being accused of having liberal leanings. But it’s okay if FOX News takes orders directly from the White House?

Fortunately, MSNBC is still enthusiastically promoting a new show helmed by unabashedly liberal pundit Rachel Maddow, whom I feel is the smartest, most reasonable person in television news. The Rachel Maddow Show debuts tonight at 9 p.m. ET.

This weekend’s big TV premiere is the series debut of True Blood on HBO on Sunday night. EW has a slide show of 39 HBO Series That Changed TV, including the classic kids’ show Fraggle Rock.

Twenty percent of families with Internet connections watch television shows online, although FOX wishes more of them would do so legally; the season premiere of Prison Break has been downloaded illegally more than one million times since Monday, even though the show is available for free on Hulu.

Stella Zotis, the designer most recently eliminated from Project Runway, talked to People about how competing on the show has changed her design interests. The bio at Stella’s online shop reveals that her middle name is Barbarella.

Anthony Edwards is set to reprise his role as Dr. Mark Greene on the final season of ER, despite the fact that the character is dead.

Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin will guest star on an upcoming episode of Gossip Girl, while GG‘s Blake Lively and Leighton Meester will appear in a November sweeps episode of 30 Rock. Lively and Meester will play classmates of Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon in a flashback sequence, and producers are trying to get Robyn Lively to play the grown up version of little sister Blake’s character.

Monica Seles, the first woman booted from Dancing with the Stars 6, is pulling for fellow athlete Misty May-Treanor to win DwtS 7.

DwtS 7‘s Kim Kardashian, meanwhile, says she would like to record an album "if it was something fun." Is it a bad sign that the season hasn’t even started and I’m already sick of Kim Kardashian?

Fans of All My Children need not worry that Erica Kane will be written out of the show during Dancing with the Star‘s fall season. Actress Susan Lucci will fly back to the East Coast to record AMC on the days that DwtS is off the air.

Last season’s DwtS runner up, Jason Taylor, makes his debut with his new team, the Washington Redskins, tonight on NBC in a game against the New York Giants.

DwtS 2 contestant Stacy Keibler spoke with the Boston Herald about landing a role on the ABC Family miniseries Samurai Girl, which premieres Friday night. The Herald also has an interview with the star of Samurai Girl, Real World: San Diego cast member Jamie Chung.

Ex-vampire David Boreanaz has been making the rounds promoting the new season of Bones, which kicked off last night on FOX. He chatted with The Futon Critic about filming in London, and answered 17 Pop-Culture Questions for EW.

During the Bones premiere, I was watching Project Runway. Bravo’s website posted a Q&A with the auf’d designer, as well as Tim Gunn’s latest blog post, in which he helpfully explains that the CFDA Fund (a charity mentioned during the episode) is the Council of Fashion Designers of America Fund.

The premiere of The CW’s 90210 was watched by nearly 5 million people.

Reality Blurred’s Andy Dehnart posted his impressions of Survivor: Gabon contestants Susie Smith and Bob Crowley.

Chicago Tribune TV writer Maureen Ryan was at the taping of Oprah’s Olympic special in Chicago’s Millenium Park yesterday. Ryan reports that Oprah asked the athletes " exactly the kinds of questions you’ve already heard if you watched any of NBC’s Olympic coverage." No need to tune into that show next week.

My review of the Hindi movie Rock On!! appears in the Naperville Sun today; if it’s playing in a theater near you, it’s worth checking out. The Sun also features my review of College, a movie that should be avoided at all costs.

College was part of a trio of terrible movies released last Friday, none of which were screened in advance for critics. Naperville Sun movie editor Josh Larsen wrote about the unprecedented horribleness of last weekend’s releases, and the warning those films should provide to anyone thinking of seeing Bangkok Dangerous when it hits theaters tomorrow. It wasn’t screened for critics either.

The CW’s heavily promoted spin-off, 90210, debuted last night to lackluster reviews. The premiere was delayed in the Chicago area until after my bedtime because of a baseball game. Did I miss anything?

While 90210 may have been a miss, The CW scored two ratings hits with the season premieres of Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill, even thought their combined audience numbers didn’t equal the 7.7 million people who watched the series debut of Raising the Bar on TNT on Monday night.

90210 and fellow remake Knight Rider may have started a disturbing trend: NBC is planning an ’80s version of The Wonder Years.

Knight Rider is one of five NBC shows whose premieres will be made available at Hulu one week before they air on television.

For a little historical perspective, Variety’s Brian Lowry looked back at the fall premieres of the 1993-94 TV season.

Variety also has an article about the changes Arabic TV stations make to their schedules during Ramadan. For example, MTV Arabia stops airing music videos, focusing more on "reality shows, celebrity news and pop culture documentaries." Based on that programming, MTV must be operating on a perpetual Ramadan schedule in the United States.

Dancing with the Stars 7 contestant Misty May-Treanor will play herself during a guest appearance on Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place.

May-Treanor is in Chicago today to film a special Olympic episode of Oprah, which will air on Monday, September 8. Nearly 200 American Olympians are scheduled to appear on the show, although being barely visible in the background while Oprah spends 45 minutes interviewing gymnast Shawn Johnson hardly qualifies an appearance.

In other Dancing with the Stars news, pro dancer Corky Ballas has a pair of short videos at his website, featuring his partner, Cloris Leachman, his son, Mark, and Mark’s partner, Kim Kardashian. At the website, Corky also proposes a nickname for his DwtS 7 partnership: Clorky. Um, no.

Fall premiere season kicked off in earnest last night, with a new episode of Deal or No Deal scoring for NBC. Prison Break‘s debut came in second, CBS took third with some sit-com reruns, and Gossip Girl beat ABC’s High School Musical: Get in the Picture to finish in fourth.

I spent most of the Gossip Girl premiere declaring which of Blair’s outfits I wanted (her swimsuit was my favorite), so it’s only appropriate that I link to People’s interview with GG costume designer, Eric Daman.

Hulu has a Fall Premiere Lineup page that lists the new episodes of shows that are available for viewing at the website.

Variety notes that, of the new shows debuting this fall, viewers are most aware of revamped versions of old shows, like Knight Rider and 90210. But that awareness doesn’t necessarily make viewers any more likely to actually watch the show.

The Watcher wonders if it’s time for networks to just admit that the best new series are all on cable.

CBS isn’t ready to admit defeat; the network is sponsoring the September 22 issue of People magazine in order to promote its fall fare.

Joining the CBS family this fall is Survivor: Gabon contestant GC, who was interviewed by Reality Blurred.

Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie announced that the second season of Flight of the Conchords on HBO will likely be their last. Perhaps the "Inner City Pressure" was too much for the comedy duo:

Barack Obama’s Thursday night acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention garnered over 38 Million viewers — and that’s not even counting C-SPAN and PBS. Wow. I guess maybe people do care more about politics than American Idol.

Project Runway mentor Tim Gunn has been offering his opinions on celebrity fashion to anyone who will listen. He told OK! Magazine that Jennifer Aniston’s recent looks have screamed "desperate character."

People has an interview with the latest auf’d PR designer, Keith, who’s stopped blaming his model and the judges for his failure, putting the blame instead on faulty sewing machines.

While 18-49 remains the most coveted demographic for advertisers, Nielsen finds that viewers over the age of 55 are the largest growing segment of the TV audience.

CBS is hoping to reach out to all TV viewers with a Fall Preview Show highlighting new shows on the network’s roster. The special will air on September 5 at 9 p.m. ET.

Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has landed a cameo on HBO’s Entourage, in addition to his recently announced gig hosting the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. I hope he spends as much time rehearsing for these shows as he did training for the Olympics, because he was pretty boring in interviews during the Beijing Games.

Grizzly Man Diaries debuts tonight on Animal Planet at 9 ET, featuring never-before-seen footage shot by Timothy Treadwell, a researcher killed by a bear several years ago. Treadwell’s gruesome death was the subject of the documentary film Grizzly Man, which is as fascinating as it is disturbing.

Kim Kardashian’s film Disaster Movie hits theaters today, hence she’s the only Dancing with the Stars 7 cast member getting any press. TV Guide interviewed Kim about the movie. She talked with Us Magazine about dancing with her boyfriend, NFLer Reggie Bush. And she told People that she hopes that training for DwtS will help tone her famous backside.

In other movie news, I reviewed the movie College for the Naperville Sun today. Tomorrow I’m going to see the new Hindi film Rock On!!, and I’ll link to that review next week.

If you’re planning on traveling by car this Labor Day weekend, TNT is paying for tolls in Atlanta, Orlando, Philadelphia, and Chicago as a way to promote its new show, Raising the Bar. I’m so used to speeding through tolls with my iPass that it took me a minute to get the joke.

Ox Notes will return on Tuesday. Have a great holiday weekend!

Oddsmakers have expanded beyond betting on which celebrity will win Dancing with the Stars 7 to include odds on which celebrity is most likely to be arrested for DUI, and which two celebs are most likely to get romantic backstage. A Lance Bass-Kim Kardashian hook up leads with 5/1 odds, despite the fact that Bass is openly gay.

Kim Kardashian spoke to Entertainment Tonight about her recent foot injury.

OK! Magazine reports that former DwtS flames Karina Smirnoff & Mario Lopez might be back together again.

After having met all of the Survivor: Gabon contestants in Africa, Reality Blurred’s Andy Dehnart ranked the contestants by whom he liked the best.

Survivor‘s biggest competition, new FOX game show Hole in the Wall, is moving its premiere up to September 7 in an effort to hook viewers before Survivor: Gabon debuts on the 25th.

EW has a slideshow of 15 Stars to Watch on television this fall.

Project Runway judge Michael Kors blogged about last night’s episode, as did the always insightful Tim Gunn. His blog is required-reading for PR fans who want to know just how different the show looks from the inside.

Tim Gunn has been offering his opinions on celebrity style to various news outlets. He told Us Magazine that Michelle Obama is the more fashionable potential future first lady, and he told OK! Magazine that Miley Cyrus’s look is "too tarty."

The Muppet Show may return to the airwaves, provided the next Muppet movie does well at the box office.

MSNBC’s hosts seem a little stressed by all of this convention coverage, especially Joe Scarborough, who engaged in an on-air insult contest with David Shuster that lasted for nearly five minutes.

The creator of CSI, Anthony Zuiker, plans to create three "digital novels," in which a series of written chapters are followed by a short Internet video that segues into the next series of chapters. At the conclusion of the novel, readers can join a virtual book club to discuss the material.

While I’m intrigued by the concept, I was disappointed to learn what Zuiker claims inspired the idea. He told Variety, "I personally don’t have the attention economy to read a 250-page crime novel from start to finish."

"Attention economy"? When did that replace the phrase "attention span"? How distressing that an adult can’t muster the attention to read 250 pages, while grade schoolers managed to make it through all 850+ pages of Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix.

This article from the Times Online explains how our digital culture is making us dumber and less able to concentrate. After rereading the article, I’m not so sure the "digital novel" is such a great idea.

Early Dancing with the Stars 7 betting odds have Toni Braxton as the favorite to win, followed by Lance Bass. I’m sticking with Misty May-Treanor or Maurice Greene, unless they’re as uncoordinated as former DwtS jocks Clyde Drexler and Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

People posted a behind-the-scenes video of Kim Kardashian & Mark Ballas in rehearsal. A DwtS insider told the Chicago Sun-Times that Kim was a "total diva" during the casting process, and even "wanted veto partner over her dance partner." She wound up with the reigning champ, so she can’t be upset about that.

CBS announced the cast of Survivor: Gabon, and the reporters who went to Africa to document the first days of filming are finally able to talk about what they saw.

EW posted video interviews with the cast members, and has a photo gallery featuring Survivor host Jeff Probst’s thoughts on each contestant.

EW also has a game where you can vote for the biggest Olympic stud.

ABC will air an hour-long special called Half Their Size: The People Magazine Weight Loss Challenge on September 30.

Variety notes that, while cable news networks have gotten a ratings boost from their coverage of the Democratic National Convention, the networks are also getting hammered for covering the convention not as it is, but as they would like it to be.

An article by Eric Boehlert of Media Matters slams the mainstream media for exaggerating tensions between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (and their respective supporters). Clinton’s speech last night proved just how wrong the MSM was.

Media Matters also called out MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell for criticizing the Democrats yesterday for not sending Senator Claire McCaskill out on stage to tear into John McCain and metaphorically "throw some red meat out to the crowd." McCaskill did just that the previous night, but MSNBC didn’t cover McCaskill’s speech.

From now on, I plan to follow The Boston Globe’s advice: "The best way to watch a political convention is on C-SPAN. That way Americans can make their own judgments unfiltered, without being told what to think by the nattering nabobs of TV commentary."

Now, who wants to get together for a meal at Guttenberg’s Steak House?

Pre-teen girls of America, brace yourselves. The musical guests performing on Dancing with the Stars 7‘s first Results Show are The Jonas Brothers and Jesse McCartney. Squeee!

The ET story linked to above also notes that the schedule for the first week of DwtS 7 is as follows: all 13 couples perform on September 22’s premiere episode. Couples dance again the following night, and the first pair is eliminated. One more couple is eliminated during the first official Results Show on Wednesday, September 24. Two performances and two eliminations in three days. Yikes!

ET also has video of the DwtS pros rehearsing their opening night routine.

OK! reports that Mark McGrath dropped out of DwtS so that he could focus on writing new music for his band, Sugar Ray.

TV Guide has an article that contends that Ted McGinley has been the harbinger of doom for virtually every series he’s been on. Will this be the season when Dancing with the Stars finally jumps the shark?

Speaking of jumping the shark, Metromix L.A. has updates on the cast of Saved by the Bell, including cast members from The College Years and The New Class.

E! asks the question, What Planet of Awesome Did Ed Westwick Come From? (For those who don’t know, Westwick plays scene-stealing cad Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl.)

CBS has delayed the premiere of Survivor: Gabon until September 25.

NBC has to wait and see if all of their promotions during the Olympics will translate into viewers for new series like Kath & Kim.

ABC ordered five new series on Monday, while Lifetime announced a new slate of original daytime programs.

TLC is set to premiere Real Simple. Real Life. on October 18. It’s a lifestyle makeover show for women, featuring a crew of experts, a la Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The show, which aims to help women get organized and save time, is a partnership between the network and Real Simple magazine.

The big day has finally arrived: the Dancing with the Stars 7 cast has been revealed! Kudos to the website Gossip Sauce for getting their leaked cast list 100% correct, including an update posted yesterday revealing that Mark McGrath had dropped out and been replaced by Rocco DiSpirito.

Since athletes have won the last four mirrorball trophies, Maurice Greene & Cheryl Burke and Misty May-Treanor & Maksim Chmerkovskiy seem the most likely duos to win. But I can’t help but root for Jeffrey Ross, whose material was only slightly less off-color than Cloris Leachman‘s at Comedy Central’s Roast of Bob Saget (neither clip is safe for work).

Even before the cast was officially announced, DwtS 7 had its first injury. Kim Kardashian cut her foot in her New York hotel room last night and had to be taken to the hospital. I can already imagine the uncomfortable silence during the first episode, after Samantha Harris adopts an overly familiar tone and asks Kim, "So, just what were you doing in that hotel room?"

DwtS head judge Len Goodman was featured in an interview with The Daily Mail, which is worth reading, if only for the photo of Len in his bathrobe and slippers.

On the topic of judges, American Idol has added songwriter Kara DioGuardi to its panel for next season.

Production house Juma Entertainment is looking to revive the celebrity sports competition show The Superstars.

In honor of tonight’s premiere of America’s Toughest Jobs on NBC, EW compiled a list of 25 Risk-Filled Reality TV Shows.

In other premiere news, FOX will simultaneously stream the premieres of Fringe and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles online, but only for college students.

TV Guide has partnered with The Paley Center For Media to host a special weeklong event previewing fall’s new shows.

Survivor: China‘s dimwitted lovebirds, Jamie and Erik, are engaged and looking for someone to pay for their wedding. Don’t count on it, you two. You ain’t exactly Rob and Amber.