Mary Louise Parker, the star of "Weeds," did a smoking business for its season 3 premiere on Showtime on Monday. It drew a record number of viewers and helped to boost the debut of the cable network's new David Duchovny series "Californication." Duchovny, best know for his role on "The X-Files," is playing a miserable Hollywood writer who has lost his way. "Weeds" pulled in 824,000 viewers at 10 p.m. EDT, according to Nielsen Media Research. That's 43% higher than the Season 2 premiere in November (626,000) and the best telecast yet for the suburban drugs …

Fans who sign up for DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket package will get to see a roundup of games on the Web. It's all part of the company's new SuperFan offering. Starting this September, DIRECTV subscribers will get to see up to 14 live NFL games each week -- but the catch is they can see the games on their PC or whichever laptop they use. The twist -- the streaming option will not be available to the general Web audience; instead, it's part of an exclusive rights arrangement between the satellite provider and the league.

Cablevision has made America's pre-teen and teen girls very happy. It offered a preview of the movie "High School Musical 2" in its entirety to subscribers to Disney's on-demand service, who typically pay $4.95 a month as a promotion at least partly intended to build buzz for the film. In addition to Cablevision, which makes Disney Channel on Demand available to its digital cable service's 2.5 million subscribers, most in the New York City area, Verizon has been offering the "High School Musical 2" premiere as an on-demand option in the 550,000 homes nationally with access to its …

ESPN may be far better known, but Versus, a Stamford, Conn.-based sports channel once called the Outdoor Life Network, is carving out its niche. Around for more than a decade, it was known mostly for hunting and fishing programs, along with marginal sports properties, like the Boston Marathon and Professional Bull Riding. But more recently, the Comcast-owned channel has put together a more interesting mix of programming. It is now the long-term cable home of the NHL and has added Mountain West college football. It also aired the America's Cup yacht races this year, will run the rugby …

TiVo's Stop/Watch service reports that the top 10 commercials for the June ratings period all aired in one show: The season finale of "House," which ran May 29 on Fox. The show also pulled the top-10 time-shifted spots and was the top-rated program in both live- and time-shifted viewing. The top-10 time-shifted commercials were the same as the list of top-10 commercials and include advertisers like Wendy's, Bank of America, AT&T Wireless and Diet Coke. The proportion of time-shifted viewing to total viewing was also high for the top-10 programs, with "House's" time-shifted rating of 12.4% about 70% …

The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show will be back in prime time this winter, but on the later side of the daypart as CBS hopes to ease worries about too many kiddies seeing all that sexy lingerie. The Tiffany Network will air the show on Dec. 4 at 10 p.m., while Heidi Klum, Adriana Lima, Karolina Kurkova and Selita Ebanks will be among the talent on display. The program returns after being temporarily replaced by the Angels Across America tour in 2004 in the wake of the infamous Janet Jackson nipple incident. Missing, however, will be Giselle …

Uncle Sam is doing a lousy job of giving small and minority-owned firms their share of advertising and public relations contracts, according to a new study by the Government Accountability Office study. The GAO examined contracts from 2001 through 2005 and found that the government devoted an average of just 5% of $4.3 billion in ad-related expenditures to small or minority businesses, with compliance varying greatly among government agencies. For instance, the Department of Defense used minority firms for advertising only 1.8% of the time -- and paid them 84% less than non-minority firms, while the Treasury …

Hershey Co. is a new "official supplier" to the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team as it gets ready for next summer's Beijing Games. As part of the pact, Hershey products will carry the U.S. Olympic Team mark through next year and a national promotional and ad campaign led by the Hershey's Kisses brand will support the effort. "The Hershey Co. is a tremendous addition to the prominent list of USOC official team suppliers," says Norman Bellingham, head of the USOC. "This partnership signifies two of the strongest brands in America joining forces [and] will certainly benefit the 2008 …

When ABC rolls out it new "Cavemen" sitcom, don't expect to see many insurance advertisers -- maybe not even the one that inspired the series. Based on characters from Geico's popular ad campaign, the show has little appeal to the company's competitors, which together spent about $1.4 billion on media last year. Aflac is one of those keeping away, preferring shows that "better reach" its target audience, while New York Life's media buyer refuses to put the company's ads in the program. "Why would you want to put your ad in somebody else's ad?" asks Gene DeWitt of DeWitt Media …

A pair of new studies sheds some light on just how profound the coming changes in the newspaper industry might be. One British survey from Nielsen/NetRatings notes that the online editions of two large "quality" newspapers -- the Guardian and the Times of London -- have more American than British readers while The Independent has twice as many here as in Britain. Some of this may be the snob factor, but with those kinds of numbers, there is something else going on. British papers farther down the road toward what looks like the future of newspaper journalism, one …