Bad news for those who were hoping Charlotte Dawnson and her sassypants would snatch the Australia's Next Top Model hosting spirit stick from Jodhi Meares after her, er, underwhelming (i.e. nonexistent) performance in the role come grand finale time: Foxtel sez Meares isn't going anywhere.

Somewhere in the suburbs of Sydney, Charlotte Dawson is contacting Fiona Horne to see how she can make a Wiccan career spell out of a pile of Tigerlily samples and a can of kerosene.

The pay-TV channel's CEO Brian Walsh slammed reports claiming executives on the model contest were "furious" after Meares pulled out of the live decider over stage fright.

"Nothing could be further from the truth. I rang Jodhi on Friday and reiterated the fact she has our full support and apologised for the media circus it's become," Walsh told Confidential yesterday.

"We won't be discussing contracts (for next year) until next month, but I told her to go have a holiday and forget about it."

Blah blah, whatever, but what's most exciting is that at the very least, as the piece goes on to note, it looks as though big things are planned for Dawson anyway:

Walsh had good news for Dawson too, revealing the Foxtel femme had been "earmarked" to host a major new series for the network next year.

"I haven't talked to her about it yet but it has a big live component with a studio audience and I think she'd be great," Walsh said.

And, rumour (read: The Vogue Forums) has it that Dawson and Alex "Tiny Mouth" Girdwood will be muscling in on Demelza's Vogue shoot, which would be amazing and create hilarity for all.

So you see? All is well with the world.

This is the true story of twelve competitors, picked to live a house, compete in elimination challenges and have their lives taped, to find out what happens, when dogs stop being polite and start getting real. Yes, canines are the newest craze in reality television, and frankly, it's about time. Who wants to watch overly-tanned, underly-informed humans panting and smelling competitors asses, when you have the opportunity - no, privilege - to watch dogs do it? For a full 30 minutes! Allow CBS to present Greatest American Dog.

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Of course, that all depends on your definition of "star", but a totally gorgeous and currently employed Home & Away castmember (who, doubly excitingly, used to regularly appear in the Dolly magazines of the Defamer Australia team's youth) probably fits the bill: welcome aboard the good ship "I Thought This Might Revive My Career", Jodi Gordon!

Jodi joins other rumoured Dancing stars as, er, Tara Reid. And that's about it so far. So she really IS the star!

While Channel 7 would not officially confirm Gordon's reality TV spin yesterday, Confidential can reveal the Home and Away star has agreed to take part in the popular dance-off when it airs post-Olympics.

While her boyfriend, Seven heir Ryan Stokes, will be hoping Gordon leaves more than just her hat on during her ballroom blitz, the stunning brunette will no doubt be positioned as the eye candy offering of the eighth series.

Well, until Channel Seven themselves decide to "reveal" the official line-up for this year, we're sticking with illustrating this piece with the glorious visage of one Miss Tina Sparkle, aka Sonia Kruger, Dancing co-host and general goddess.

Napoleon Perdis, largely through his association with Australia's Next Top Model, has become one of those "industry" types you either love to hate or hate to love; I find myself in between, except when he is fabulously sparring on the AusNTM final three contestants to slag each other off while in the chair (most memorably clapping his hands and shouting "I LOVE IT!" after getting Alice to lay into Steph in Cycle 3), then I just love to love him.

Anyway, his Napoleon Perdis Cosmetics line has become big news in the States, so it seems he's taken advantage of his growing overlord celebrity status and whipped up an Apprentice-esque reality/doco show.

After an exhaustive search, Perdis has found a protege to run his business in the US - with every step filmed for a documentary reality series.

Get Your Face On has followed the extravagant and entrepreneurial life of the former Parramatta powder prince.

The series will introduce the Aussie dynamo, who waves his magic brush over 59 stand-alone stores and 800 outlets across the country, to US audiences.

Provided it involves making wannabe models up to look like Amsterdam hookers and then having them pose in the front window of your flagship store, I for one am excited to see what Napoleon and his bronzer brush bring to the world of reality television.

Remember Graeme Isaako from So You Think You Can Dance Australia? The slightly earnest young insect who liked to have a cry after dancing for his life, looked like he thought partner Kate was a bit of alright, and surprised everyone by announcing, upon being booted, that what he really wanted to do was sing?

Well, some forward-thinking Herald Sun scribe got in touch with Isaako and asked him if he was going to play reality TV two-up.

"My goal, even before the show, was to do recording and stuff and I think now is the perfect opportunity," he said.

"But I'm not going to go for Idol. How embarrassing. Everyone would just look at me and go: 'Reality-TV whore'."

Yes. To paraphrase that old knight guarding the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, he chose... wisely.

At this point in time there's almost no point reminding you what a shit year Channel Nine has had so far - between the bonings, cancellings, court orders, legal disputes, anonymous scandal rags and Eddie McGuire, it's as close to an annus horribilis as one gets without involving the royals.

Well, things just keep getting better - not one but two of their new flagship shows are being booted out of their time-slots, no doubt in order to give them a dignified death out of the glare of prime time.

My Kid's A Star has been all but dumped, with the remaining episodes to be shown at midday on Saturday, instead of at 8pm on Wednesdays.

Meanwhile new drama Canal Road has been shifted back an hour from 9.30pm on Wednesday to make way for Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen.

Canal Road premiered on April 16, drawing 1.09 million viewers, but that fell last week to 811,000.

My Kid's A Star, featuring young performers and their stage parents, has failed to rate since premiering with just 878,000 viewers earlier this month.

The network on Monday said remaining episodes had been shifted, with the final to air on Saturday May 17.

"The last three episodes will screen Saturdays at midday from this week," a Nine spokeswoman told AAP.

So, for those of you who are keeping score, that's two 'local content' comedies and dramas, and one big-ticket reality/talent show down the gurgler, and we're not even halfway through the year.

At this rate, all Nine has left in the Aus-made basket is more "observational reality" programming (i.e. where they gaffa tape pens into the hands of critically ill in-patients so they can sign their release forms before having a leg removed, etc), Fire 000 and Search And Rescue.

Remember when The Learning Channel was proudly cheesy? Back when they featured all those low-budget Baby Stories and Wedding Stories and any kind of Story that would set housewives' hearts aflutter? Well, it looks like those TLC-loving housewives are in store for something a bit more glamorous. According to the NY Daily News, diamond-drenched new mother of twins Jennifer Lopez is gearing up to invite us into her and vampire-like husband Marc Anthony's home to "deliver a slice of [Lopez's] life that audiences have never seen before, as she takes on her career and launches a new fragrance while trying to juggle her new responsibilities as a first-time mom." While we couldn't be more excited to watch Lopez cook enchiladas that Anthony will eventually purge, we're noticing a trend. Namely, that previously straight-laced networks like TLC and Lifetime have taken notice of Bravo's success and, thus, are beginning to follow their bold footsteps by greenlighting programs that strongly appeal to the gay and lesbian community.

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Interesting little bit of "industry" drama happening in the UK at the moment: Paul Watson, who is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and producer who, it's generally accepted, invented the reality television format with his documentaries The Family - and one we'll all remember - Sylvania Waters, won a special BAFTA on the weekend for Outstanding Contribution to Television.

In his acceptance speech, he took a moment to open up a pretty amazing spray on the topic of reality TV (particularly gutsy considering he has made reality television, more or less, even if his efforts were a little higher up the viewing food-chain than Laddette To Lady or Wife Swap), calling it "sneering" and branding Simon Cowell a "bully".

Here are some highlights from his op-ed piece in the Mail explaining his harsh words:

With fly-on-the-wall series like The Family (about the working class Wilkins who lived in Reading) and Sylvania Waters (about a raucous family who lived in a suburb of Sydney), I tried to show life as it was lived, warts and all.

My accounts were socio-political, unlike today's shows, which are just circuses.

With my shows, I can even make some claim to have invented the idea of "reality TV", but I no longer recognise what goes under that name.

Where I hoped then to inform, today, trashy, modern reality TV seeks merely to titillate, shock and gain notoriety by brutalising and denigrating its subjects. That is the extent of its intellectual vigour.

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Remember Eden Gaha? The host of Vidiot? The occasional musical theatre performer and sometime Home & Away pin-up from the '90s?

He's been in the States for some time now, and has had considerable success as a producer of reality television, working with Mark Burnett and others, and is currently producing a second series of Celebrity Apprentice.

All standard industry, back-slapping the successful expat stuff, but we did find his comments regarding local versions of US reality franchises quite telling (in light of So You Think You Can Dance Australia ending up a pale imitation of the OG version):

Locally made reality television shows have been met with mixed success in Australia, with audiences tending to favour reality programs produced in the US.

While Gaha agrees shows such as So You Think You Can Dance have been successfully adapted for Australian audiences, he says the American character tends to lend itself more easily to some reality formats.

"Some of the shows and some of the formats mean more in the United States so they mean more to American contestants and they play out better on TV, so that's possibly why those shows have done better with American casts."

We're inclined to agree. Naturally there are loads of dancers in Australia, and lots of working ones, too, but there's something about the American dream, not to mention opportunities like dance revues in Las Vegas and LA, that makes SYTYCD - the proper version - so compelling.

American Series Two winner Benji ended up in an Xtina video, ferchrissakes! With the Australian version it's all a bit, "So what? Even if I win I'll still have to wait tables/teach toddlers jazz ballet/be on the Dole."

Just as the Britney Spears Comeback Tour was picking up fuel with that promising role on HIMYM and a temporary absence from the tabloids, it appears that Spears may be regressing. The National Enquirer is reporting that Britney and her recently reunited manager Larry Rudolph are shopping around a reality show that would look, talk and walk far different from Chaotic: no K. Fed, two babies to feed, and no one to drug her and prompt intelligent conversation:

"She believes a reality show is a no-brainer. She can be herself and not have to study lines...Several production companies are interested in a Britney reality show and are willing to pay her millions."

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