But for many, the real highlight of last night’s episode was the trash-talking cameo by Nightly News anchor Brian Williams (also known as “the funny one” amongst the NBC News talent lineup), taunting fictional CNBC host Avery Jessup, played by Elizabeth Banks. The cameo is a recurring role for Williams, whose comedic acting chops might lead to a second career if the news anchor “thing” doesn’t work out.

Before the speculation as to what this means gets out of hand, it’s worth bringing up one key data point: both of Chernin’s top deputies, Katherine Pope and Dylan Clark, are former NBC/Uni execs.

As Gawker’s Richard Rushfield put it, Chernin’s advisory role puts two major questions in Hollywood on a collision course: “Who’s going to take over NBC/Universal and what’s going to happen to ex-Fox chief Peter Chernin?” Media Decoder speculates:

News of Mr. Chernin’s involvement is likely to put more pressure on Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, who is fighting fires on several fronts. In addition to the question marks surrounding his future at the company in the event of a change in ownership, he has also faced recent management upheaval at Universal Studios, a primetime lineup mired in fourth place and questions about the success or failure of the recent experiment of placing Jay Leno in primetime.

But the involvement of Pope and Clark complicates theories that this is merely a Cheneyite setup for Chernin to take the helm after advising the process. Pope is the former head of NBC Studios; Deadline’s Nikki Finke frequently holds her up as a scapegoat unfairly sacrificed by Zucker. Clark, considered by many to be the former heir apparent at Universal, joined forces with Chernin in June.

Industry experts agree that Peter Chernin has the best possible development deal for Fox. Before the conspiracy theories about his consultancy for Comcast spin out of control, pundits should consider the simplest: he’s a knowledgeable old hand with some of the people most knowledgeable about NBC/Uni reporting to him directly.

Diller is currently funding Tina Brown‘s Daily Beast venture — to the tune of $18 million. The Beast, while clocking good traffic, is not yet making any money (side note: Brown spoke again of her plans for advertising at last weekend’s BlogHer). He’s also the benefactor of the College Humor gang, they of viral web videos and MTV ascendance — and just announced that he’s backing CH co-founder Ricky Van Veen in the creation of an offshoot production company. But wait, there’s more!

Yesterday news broke that NBCU bad boy chairman Ben Silverman was leaving the company for a new venture with Barry Diller’s IAC. Today, the New York Post is reporting that the venture will be funded by $100 million of Diller’s money.

Only Ben Silverman could parlay a two-year hitless streak as NBC’s chief programmer into a new gig that gives him total control and $100 million in development money. That’s the amount of cash that Barry Diller’s IAC plans to use to seed Silverman’s unnamed new venture, according to two sources with knowledge of the funding plans….Silverman’s new company is a redux of Reveille, the studio he founded and sold to Elisabeth Murdoch’s Shine Group for $120 million, netting Diller, an early Reveille investor, a handsome profit in the process.

And that $100 million could possibly double if Silverman is able to convince those gambling Wall St. types to jump on board. Which means Silverman has a lot of cash on had to do with what he pleases, and Diller is apparently hell-bent on increasing his dominance online, risky though it may be.

So just how deep do Barry Diller’s pockets go? And if they go deeper than this perhaps he should considering sparing a dime or two to the New York Times! And how long can he sustain the high profile ventures — making a profit online is not an easy or quick thing. Or maybe he simply anticipates that we will all be footing part of the bill for him in the not too distant future; just last month he told a conference that pay walls for content were inevitable.

But otherwise, there’s a whole wide web out there for him — just don’t try to get him to pay for Twitter.

Act 1
Ben Silverman and everyone else lied to Finke. EVERYONE. Also, she was asleep this morning when the news broke.

Act 2
“Here’s The Email This Putz Sent Around.” Actually, it is totally a putzy email: “Its go time brother!!!!!!! Let’s rock it out!!!!!”

Act 3
Finke discusses who got screwed the most from the subsequent shuffling. Finke says it was Marc Graboff.

Act 4
The backstory!

First mea culpa. I was fast asleep when the announcement that Ben Silverman, the gift that kept on giving to me for all his NBCU screw-ups, was finally letting boss Jeff Zucker off the hook for a hiring decision that will go down in the annals of television entertainment as one of the worst….I knew back on June 24th that Ben was engaged in a desperate search for another job or financial backing to leave NBC so he could make it look like he’d jumped before he was pushed. I also knew Ben was telling Hollywood between July 21-23 that he’d be leaving NBCU “in 2 or 3 weeks”….tt wasn’t until late Friday that Barry Diller’s name was whispered to me as Silverman’s savior. And each and every time I contacted NBCU, executives there lied to me. Jeff Zucker lied to me. Ben Silverman lied to me. They had their PR lie to me. (NBCU’s claim now is that the deal came together “quicker than expected” and “only this past weekend”, and then Silverman, IAC, and NBCU “scrambled to get this together” before the market opened today.)

Read about all the shady dealings here.

Part 5
Tying up loose ends:

Isn’t it amusing how Jeff Zucker couldn’t find one positive specific to say about Ben Silverman in the official NBCU news release this morning beyond “Ben brought us tremendous new thinking in this changing media age.” Because Silverman leaves behind a record of abject failure.

This is where the story left off as of this posting. As to what Finke will be blogging about for the foreseeable future? Let’s just say, Silverman may be leaving NBCU but one suspects he won’t be out of Finke’s site for a while to come.