Warner Bros. Online, one of the first studio sites to produce original entertainment on the Internet, is being shut down, the studio confirmed Wednesday. Today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Times indicated that the unit had become a shadow of its former self, when, in the late 1990s, it created the Entertaindom site, which offered original short-form entertainment that featured some top-name stars, a celebrity talk show called God and the Devil Show, and cartoons featuring the Looney Tunes characters. The operation, however, gradually wound down after AOL acquired Time Warner in 2001, cutting Entertaindom's budget and prompting the departure of key executives Jeff Weiner and Jim Moloshok, who wound up at Yahoo! The unit subsequently became a promotional unit for Warner Bros. movies.

Mel Gibson's appearance in Oklahoma Monday to attend a sneak screening of his movie Apocalypto has prompted new questions about the sincerity of his promise to mend fences with the Jewish community, ABC News reported Wednesday. Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles told ABC News entertainment producer Buck Wolf, "He said he'd reach out to the Jewish community, and he simply hasn't done that yet." Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, added: "It's amazing that he waited for weeks after that incident to make a public appearance, and when he did, it wasn't to make good on his apology, but rather to sell his film." Foxman took note of Gibson's remarks Monday condemning the war in Iraq, comparing them with his drunken comments when he was arrested that "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Said Foxman: "If Jews are responsible for all the world's wars, then by that logic, they are responsible for the war in Iraq. ... Gibson has to put matters like that to rest. Until he does, it just hangs over him."

The producer of a film about Star Trek fans who have learned to speak Klingon and who come together in annual conventions to converse in their second language has come to their defense. In an interview with the sci-fi publication Fortean Times, Alexandre Phillipe, who shot his film Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water at a 2003 qep'a' (conference), rebutted those who accuse the Klingon speakers of wasting their time. "Are sports fans wasting their talents watching football on TV? I don't think so," he said. "If it's meaningful to them to learn Klingon -- because they have a good time, because it's a great intellectual exercise, or because that's how they want to make friends -- who are we to say they're wasting their time?" Besides, Phillipe observed, "The Klingon language is indeed a fascinating cultural and linguistic phenomenon. It's the first constructed language based on popular culture that has thrived to the point of being spoken in 55 countries around the world. So to me the question isn't: 'why spend any time learning Klingon when there are so many other languages around?' but 'why not learn Klingon?'"

When DreamWorks cofounder Jeffrey Katzenberg informed Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet that his partner David Geffen wanted to buy the newspaper, Baquet reportedly responded, "How's he going to feel the first time we review a movie or music produced by a friend of his?" The conversation is reported in the current edition of L.A. Weekly by columnist Nikki Finke, who cited an unnamed insider, who also told her that Geffen is "very serious" and "pretty confident" about purchasing the newspaper from Tribune Corporation.

Director Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, King Kong) is teaming up with Microsoft's Bungie Studios to create what is presumed to be the next version of its Halo video game. However, details of the project, disclosed at an industry event in Barcelona, were sketchy. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoted Microsoft exec Jeff Bell as describing the project as "interactive entertainment" and adding, "It is not the movie. It is not [the video game] 'Halo 3.' ... It is all new content that is going to be developed by Peter Jackson as co-writer, co-producer, along with the team at Bungie, to continue to expand upon the 'Halo' franchise and intellectual property."

Edward Albert, who had a meteoric career as a film star in the 1970s after he starred with Goldie Hawn in Butterflies Are Free, died Friday of lung cancer in Malibu, CA at age 55, it was disclosed Wednesday. He also starred in 40 Carats, The Ice Runner, and Guarding Tess. His father, Green Acres star Eddie Albert, died last year at age 99.

CBS's new drama Jericho continued to draw solid ratings Wednesday night despite having to vie with the ABC hit Dancing With the Stars. Dancing scored a 10.5 rating and a 17 share in the 8:00 p.m. hour, while Jericho posted a 7.4/12 for CBS. Criminal Minds put CBS ahead at 9:00 p.m with a 10.7/17, well ahead of a Lost clip show on ABC, which scored a 6.1/9. CBS remained in the lead at 10:00 p.m. with CSI: NY, which drew a 10.4/17. Barbara Walter's interview with Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin's widow Terri, registered a strong 8.8/15 for ABC's 20/20. But NBC's new Kidnapped was still unable to capture an audience, remaining in third place with a 4.4/7.

Responding to complaints that commercials on TV kids shows is contributing to a spreading epidemic of childhood obesity, the FCC has agreed to set up a task force to look into the issue and offer recommendations. "Small children can't weed out the marketing messages from their favorite shows," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Wednesday at a Washington DC news conference. "Especially when the marketing campaigns feature favorite TV characters like SpongeBob or Scooby-Doo." Also participating in the news conference was Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, who maintained that the aim was not to formulate additional regulations governing advertisements aimed at children. "I think if we want to start an adversarial relationship at the very outset, that would be the way to do it. We want these [food] companies to participate," Brownback told Broadcasting & Cable magazine. However, he indicated that none of the companies had yet shown a willingness to do so. He said that the were still trying to determine "whether this was a process they could join. We urge their participation and would love to have them." The Associated Press reported that the task force already includes Sesame Workshop, the Walt Disney Co., and the conservative Parents Television Council.

News footage shot for the PBS series Frontline in Afghanistan in which soldiers use four-letter expletives have been cut in two upcoming episodes, the New York Observer reported Wednesday. "It's a really sorry state of affairs if we're Disney-fying combat," writer-producer Martin Smith told the weekly. His words were echoed by Frontline's executive producer Louis Wiley Jr., who remarked, "What I fear, really, is that we're on the verge of making some of our best material less forceful, less powerful. ... You get into a situation where we're all going to be looking not to what is the best choice editorially for what we publish, but what is this government agency going to do to us? They get us to do the censorship ourselves. They use a huge cudgel. They threaten everyone with these draconian fines, and they don't have to do anything. It accomplishes the same end."

Fox News on Tuesday demanded that YouTube.com remove a video of Bill Clinton's combative interview with Chris Wallace last Sunday, then allowed the website to restore the video the following day. The Boston Phoenix, which noted that other Fox News clips, which showed the network's commentators in dominant command, had not been ordered removed, asked a Fox spokesperson to explain. The response: "Our Internet division used poor judgment in asking this to be taken down. We're thrilled the Wallace-Clinton clip has received so many hits on YouTube." Meanwhile Fox News chief Roger Ailes called Clinton's response to Wallace a "wild overreaction" to the reporter's question and "an assault on all journalists." Ailes told the Associated Press: "If you can't sit there and answer a question from a professional, mild-mannered, respectful reporter like Chris Wallace, then the hatred for journalists is showing. ... I've never had an interview like that, certainly not with a former president of the United States. ... No one could have been more shocked than I was."

Univision Communications shareholders on Wednesday narrowly approved the sale of the company to a private equity group headed by media mogul Haim Saban for $12.3 billion. Voting against the sale were Mexico City-based Televisa and Venezuela-based Venevision, two primary content providers for Univision who had previously attempted to buy the Spanish-language American network. The "yes" vote won by a 3 percent margin.

Bill Maher finally got to make the remarks on religion that he claims he was barred from making on the CBS Evening News as part of its "Free Speech" segment two weeks ago. He made them Wednesday night on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News telecast. Maher prefaced his remarks by saying, "Look, I think they should drop the segment, because it was billboarded as free speech. ... But it's a little disappointing when they say we're going to have free speech and then every night it's the most agreed upon speech you could ever imagine. Last night they had someone who took the stand and said it was good to have football back in New Orleans." O'Reilly then responded, "That's the way they run the network news operations." Taking O'Reilly up on his invitation to speak about religion, Maher described it as "a mass psychosis" and argued that the U.S. cannot succeed in Iraq "because there are two religious sects who are basically at each other's throats." Maher went on to say that he disagreed with Rosie O'Donnell's equating Christian fundamentalists with fanatical Muslims because "nobody takes [preachers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson] ... that seriously here. In Saudi Arabia, they speak out against homosexuals and then chop off their heads."

Members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) have voted overwhelmingly to extend their contracts with the ad industry for two years. The new contract includes ads on the Internet as well as traditional media. SAG President Alan Rosenberg said Wednesday, "The agreement clearly establishes jurisdiction over commercials appearing on all new media platforms, calls for a crucial joint study that will allow us to analyze the rapidly changing industry."