The syndicated gossip show Entertainment Tonight paid $200,000 for an amateur videotape of the late Heath Ledger talking about his former drug use but shelved the tape "under pressure from film insiders," the New York Daily News reported today (Thursday). The newspaper posted frames from the tape, bearing the "E.T." logo, on its website. According to the report, the tape was taken by an unknown cameraman following the SAG Awards ceremonies on Jan. 29, 2006 at a party at the Chateau Marmont hotel in West Hollywood, where an unidentified man is seen snorting cocaine from a coffee table in front of Ledger. "I shouldn't be here at all," Ledger remarks on the tape. "I used to smoke five joints a day for 20 years." (He was 26 at the time the video was shot.) The Daily News said that the tape was originally obtained by Australian TV network Channel 9, which aired it tonight (Thursday) and posted it on its website. The Channel 9 reporter said that another syndicated U.S. show, The Insider, had also planned to broadcast the video but pulled it at the last moment. U.S. gossip commentator Sam Rubin, appearing in the Channel 9 report, maintained that the public relations agency that represented Ledger had threatened to refuse to provide other celebrity clients for the two shows in the future if they went ahead with plans to air the video.

Online ticket sellers are reporting that many of the 684 theaters featuring 3-D screenings of Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert 3D this weekend have already sold out. The concert movie is due to premiere at midnight tonight and is due to be shown for one week only. The Dallas Morning News said that a check of ticket availability in the Dallas-Fort Worth area showed that tickets could be had only in "less desirable show times." Some theaters, it said, were selling them at $15 apiece. The Los Angeles Times reported tickets going for $20 apiece in its part of the world. Reuters said that Fandango.com and MovieTickets.com, the two principal online ticket sellers, were estimating that tickets to the concert movie were accounting for more than three-quarters of their sales. Fandango said that more than 1,000 screenings had been sold out as of Wednesday. Taking note of the number of tickets being sold for morning and afternoon performances on Friday, the Toronto Star commented that it looks as if "many fans are planning to get up early in the morning and play hooky from school to see their hero on the big screen."

Hollywood got off to a roaring start in January with the domestic box office reporting ticket sales up 18 percent over January 2007. According to media-measurement firm Rentrak, total sales for the month came in at $773.4 million vs. $657.9 million a year ago. The box office also reported higher earnings than in 2006 ($703 million) and 2005 ($648 million). Particularly auspicious was the fact that three films crossed the $200-million mark in January, including 20th Century Fox's Alvin and the Chipmunks, Warner Bros.' I Am Legend, and Disney's National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Perhaps just as surprising, the Fox Searchlight movie Juno crossed the $100-million mark, an achievement that few independent films can boast about.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences mailed out final ballots for next month's Oscar awards on Wednesday. They were sent to 5,829 voting members who must return them to the accounting firm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers by 5:00 p.m. on February 19, where they will be tallied. An elite group within the firm then prepares the envelopes containing the names of the winners, which will be revealed on Feb. 24 at the 80th Annual Academy Awards telecast.

The soundtrack to Juno has risen to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart, making it the first time in memory that a soundtrack from a specialty film has ever reached the magazine's top spot. It was released by the quirky Rhino label, which has never had a No. 1 hit before. The last movie soundtrack to top the chart was from last year's Paramount/DreamWorks film, Dreamgirls. Billboard noted that the last soundtrack from an Oscar nominee to hit No. 1 was 1998's Titanic.

Jack Mathews, currently the film critic of the New York Daily News, sent an email message to friends and colleagues Wednesday announcing that he would be leaving the newspaper following the Academy Awards next month and moving to the Oregon coast -- "there to allow the view and the ocean air to clear my thoughts for the kind of creative writing I had in mind when I left graduate school at UCLA four decades ago." He wrote that he plans to write a "long-gestating novel about the college co-ed considered by many to have been the Zodiac's first victim (it was a murder I covered as a cub reporter)."

Gil Cates, the producer of this year's 80th Annual Academy Awards telecast, has appealed to the Writers Guild of America not to picket the ceremonies. In an interview with the Associated Press, Cates said that the Oscars will take place, strike or no strike, but that he has prepared a "contingency" production that he "would prefer not to do" just in case, featuring "history and packages of film and concepts." He was not more specific. "This show, in my view, is really above politics," he told A.P. "It is wrong to treat the show as anything other than a gift from all the people who work in this business, really, to the exceptional talent and the community and the country." Besides, he noted, the writers have already agreed not to picket next month's Grammy or Image awards. "It's hard for me to believe that they would picket a show that really honors their own." Although the writers have not responded directly to Cates's comments, they have previously noted that the Oscars telecast traditionally draws the second-largest audience of the year, producing tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue, and is also a promotional vehicle for movies from the studios that the writers are striking.

Next week's Super Bowl could become the highest-rated Super Bowl in history, beating the 1982 Super Bowl between San Francisco and Cincinnati, which scored a 49.1 rating, according to some analysts. Viewers, they point out, will be looking to see whether the New England Patriots will be able to end the season with a perfect record -- thereby becoming the first undefeated team since the 1972 Dolphins. At the same time, the Patriots are being matched up against the New York Giants, a team representing by far the largest market in the United States. If the game attracts the kind of audience that analysts expect, the nearly $3 million advertisers are paying for each 30-second spot could prove to be a bargain, Brad Adgate of Horizon Media told the Associated Press. "Outside of American Idol," he said, "there's no real top-rated show that advertisers can bank on right now. Even the Oscars are in a state of flux, and that's always been called the Super Bowl for women."

In what was being widely viewed as a positive indication that the Writers Guild of America may be moving towards an agreement with studios and networks, the WGA on Wednesday called off a planned meeting with CBS investors and Wall Street analysts to lay out their complaints against the network. The meeting had been seen as an effort on the part of the WGA to encourage shareholders to bring pressure on CBS management to reach a settlement. In reporting the WGA's decision to cancel the meeting, Daily Variety described it as "an olive branch to the congloms."

Ratings for Fox's The Moment of Truth fell to a 10.4 rating and a 6 share Wednesday night, down from last week's 12.9/19, but they nevertheless represented the second-highest numbers of the night, behind lead-in American Idol, which scored another impressive 14.4/22. The results for Truth are also likely to keep it in Nielsen's top ten when results for the week are announced.

Two new surveys released Wednesday provided conflicting conclusions about consumer awareness of the switch to digital television slated for February 17, 2009, Broadcasting & Cable reported. One, by the National Association of Broadcasters, concluded that 79 percent of the public is now aware of the planned transition. The other, by Consumer Reports, noted that of the households that will lose over-the-air transmission on the cutoff date, 24 percent believed they weren't affected and another 25 percent said that they didn't know whether they would be affected or not. "The good news is that surveys from Consumers Union and the broadcast industry show that more Americans are becoming aware of the DTV transition," Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein told B&C. "The bad news is that there is still a lot of confusion that could turn into widespread panic if the government doesn't take a more proactive role."

It looks as if cable network RFD's decision to simulcast Don Imus's radio show will help it expand into markets that have heretofore been closed to it. Patrick Gottsch, the founder and president of the channel, has told the New York Times that he has signed carriage agreements with Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator, that could bring RFD to such cities as Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, Seattle, Denver and Nashville. The Times said that Gottsch is also seeking a similar agreement with Time Warner Cable, which could put his show back on the air in such markets as New York City and Los Angeles.