Last week, anonymous sources and "network insiders" assured "Page Six" that My Own Worst Enemy and Lipstick Jungle — the two shows that NBC reportedly axed from its schedule recently — were all the fault of Universal Media Studio president Katherine Pope and certainly not the work of impeccably eyebrowed network wunderkind Ben Silverman. We thought the quotes ("They call her the black widow. Every program she touches turns to death") sounded a little Silvermanian, and apparently the entire TV industry agreed! The Daily Beast's Kim Masters reports that "the industry's collective assumption was that the item came, directly or not, from Pope’s boss, Ben Silverman, head of NBC." ("Page Six? What is Katharine Pope doing on Page Six?" says a top executive at a rival network, who is clearly ABC's Steve McPherson. "It's obvious where it came from.") Most hilarious of all, as Masters points out, is that Pope has frequently been mentioned as a possible replacement for Silverman should his oft-rumored firing ever come to pass.

Also, totally apropos of nothing, we wonder who authored the second comment on this post.

Can the NBC chief hang onto his job? [Daily Beast]