We bring this up to, well, to dance a bit on the grave of former ESPN head dog Mark Shapiro. Last year, with much fanfare — and a famously delirious media conference call featuring Josh Elliot, Thea Andrews and Stephen A. Smith — Shapiro launched three shows: "ESPN Hollywood," "Quite Frankly With Stephen A. Smith" and "Classic Now." With last week's announcement that all original programming would be booted from ESPN Classic, all vestiges of the Shapiro regime are officially deleted from the Bristol hard drive. Which is a shame, because we really thought "Teammates" had long-term growth potential.

Shapiro, who now plays Bugs Bunny for Daniel Snyder at "Six Flags," was not well-liked by his co-workers, and it's hard to imagine anyone who doesn't enjoy life with John Skipper and Norby! considerably more. Amazing, though: He had such a touch for programming.

Yet "Cold Pizza," somehow, still soldiers on.

ESPN Hollywood Bites The Dust [Deadspin]

The sad part about this: Eva Longoria is going to have to find an entirely new "Mexican bike cop" to hang out with. And we'll never get to hear the real scoop of what really went down on the set of "Glory Road." We wish Mario Lopez the best of luck in his next career, whatever his first one was.

And man ... the information we're gonna lose on Matt Leinart's friendship with Nick Lachey. We can't go on. Can you?

ESPN Hollywood's Daily Dish [Download.com]

(By the way, we also hear that "Teammates" has been cancelled too. We can't catch a freaking BREAK today.)

(UPDATE: ESPN has now officially announced the cancellation. The full release is after the jump.)

"ESPN Hollywood," ESPN2's daily news and entertainment show, will cease production effective Thursday, Jan. 26. The LA-based half-hour show, hosted by Thea Andrews and Mario Lopez, debuted August 15, 2005.

"We were pleased with ESPN Hollywood's ability to capture the cross currents of sports and entertainment but our research and the ratings clearly suggest that a daily show may have been too much," said John Skipper, ESPN executive vice president, content.

The company will devote production resources as necessary to provide continuing content and reports to many of the network's existing shows including Cold Pizza and SportsCenter.

Starting Monday, Jan. 30, a 30-minute Best of Mike and Mike daily show will debut in the 6-6:30 p.m. ET time slot on ESPN2. Also on that day, Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith will move from 6:30 p.m. to its new late-night time period of 11 p.m.

Whether this is true or not, we leave that for you to decide. We will say, however, that if you're an All-Star, two-time-champion French point guard, and your girlfriend was fooling around with an ESPN Original Entertainment employee ... sheesh, we'd probably just retire right there. It would be like Mia Hamm having a fling with Skip Bayless. OK, let's stop now.

It's worth noting, by the way:

Eva Longoria's famous curse to the San Antonio police department, that she was being harassed by a "Mexican bike cop," is double amusing, considering, you know, Mario Lopez once played a Mexican bike cop.

EITM Online (halfway down, under January 9. And again, watch out for the Barton picture)

Hello:

We are interested in seeing if we might be able to show the photo of Ichiro Suzuki's cameo appearance on the Japanese program "Tamara" in the news portion today of our program ESPN Hollywood. We would be producing a short news item basically commenting on the story and we would like to be able to also include the photo. I would be happy to credit your website or whoever you would like in exchange for our use.
ESPN Hollywood is a news and information program airing five days a week on ESPN2. This segment would air in North America with one time with one repeat within twenty-four hours only.

As mentioned we would like to include this in today's program and would therefore need to get permission by 11:30 am pacific time.

Hell, we might even watch. That Mario Lopez, the kid, we don't know what it is, but he's GOT IT!

ESPN Hollywood Archive [Deadspin]

Yo, check it: This is what we call the "real" dope. Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf — they're married, ya'll — got themselves a sitter the other night and — sit down for this, yo — had some eats atop a restaurant and then went to GAMBLE! Your minds blown yet? Is reality MELTING AROUND YOU?

Better strap in, holmes: Ya'lls cerebellum is about to be seriously fried to the point that mental retardation is an inevitable consequence: Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped some dope wisdom on Al and Madden on "Monday Night Football," and Phil Mickelson — dude's got some titties, yo! — chilled with Scarface bitch Ray Romano in the stands. They ate peanuts and hot dogs! Can you handle this? Have we shifted your perspective to the point that you can only drool and play with shiny objects? WILL YOUR LOVED ONES EVEN RECOGNIZE YOU ANYMORE?

...
...
...

Hey, ESPN Hollywood is streaming online now. Cool.

ESPN Hollywood Streaming Video [ESPN]

MISSES

• "Quite Frankly With Stephen A. Smith". Whatever your thoughts on Stephen A. — though we suspect we know which direction most of you lean — this whole enterprise has been an unmitigated disaster. Launched with unprecedented fanfare (they were running ads for this on Salon), the show is a ratings black hole, Smith clearly struggles with sports that aren't the NBA and the show's awkward transitions are proof he desperately needs a Greg Anthony-type to play off. Scariest part about this: He has a four-year contract for the show, an albatross if there ever were one.
• Everything PTI Hath Wrought. Once the formula was established by Kornheiser and Wilbon, Shapiro and company proceeded to run it into the ground, turning every bit of "original programming" into something from VH-1's "Best Week Ever." The worst is "Around the Horn," which encourages former journalists to make idiots out of themselves. More on this in a bit.
• "ESPN Hollywood" and "Teammates." The former is the television equivalent of Page 3, and it's pretty clear how that has turned out. "Teammates" more often looks like it belongs on Logo than on ESPN.
• All The Futzing With "Baseball Tonight." Once, "Baseball Tonight" was the end-all-be-all for baseball fans, a place where Peter Gammons, Jayson Stark and Harold Reynolds broke down the games' details with wit and precision. Now John Kruk and Larry Bowa compare wads of chewing tobacco.
• Skip Bayless. We suspect even Skip is confused by Shapiro's dogged loyalty.
• The General Degrading Of The Profession Of Sports Journalism. Writers whose work readers and fans had admired for years were put on television and instructed to act like chimps. Credits were given for confrontation and volume of one's voice rather than reporting skills or even grasp of the issues. To stay on the air and earn their nice TV paychecks, longtime sportswriters were forced to keep upping the ante just to make sure the golden goose stayed alive. The logical outcome of this was realized yesterday on "Cold Pizza" — another Shapiro misstep — when Woody Paige ate dogfood live on the air.

(Later: The close of our series, a look at the future without Shapiro.)

They hit all the highlights, from Shaq's "Shaq Fu: The Return" — with, sadly, no mention of the Fu-Schnickens — Bronson Arroyo's new album of cover songs (it's good to know people are still into "Plush") and Oscar de la Hoya singing a bunch of stuff in Spanish. We are looking forward to the next batch of records, including the eagerly awaited David Eckstein's "N****a Please" and the R. Kelly/Michelle Wie duet, "Shake Me Slow And Smooth (Like a Butter Putter)."

Athlete/Musicians Drop The Ball [MTV]

. The Yankees are mad at an ad that apparently insinuates the show's cameras accompanied shortstop Derek Jeter's night on the town with a female companion.

Of course, they didn't and Yankees spokesman Rick Cerone called the effort "low-rent tabloid." ESPN said it was merely promoting a show on eligible bachelors.

Cerone told the Journal-News of White Plains, N.Y., "I've already had guys tell me, "Don't ask me to do anything for them.'"

However, we do hear that host Mario Lopez has been known to follow Jeter's rejected flames around, raising his eyebrows rapidly, saying, "You know, I was on 'Saved By The Bell.' I was!"

More Bad TV [St. Petersberg Times] (fourth item down)

1. Former quarterback Gary Hogeboom will be on the new Survivor this year.
2. Tennis star Maria Sharapova had a bobble-head coming out about her.

What do these stories have in common? They're both more than two weeks old. This show's gonna be incredible.

The Mario Lopez Network [Official Site]

Former "Cold Pizza" host Thea Andrews is co-hosting the upcoming "ESPN Hollywood," and she chatted with the readers of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram about it. Money quote:

Athletes are very excited about the show. Their publicists are VERY excited about the show. They're already calling, pitching us ideas.

Yep: You're gonna be getting tons of stories about all of Ron Artest's rap stars. Boy, we can't wait.

Chat Room: Thea Andrews [Ft. Worth Star-Telegram]