A television executive says the couple who crashed President Obama's first state dinner is offering to talk to broadcast networks about it for a fee of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said yesterday that representatives for Michaele and Tareq Salahi contacted networks to urge them to "get their bids in" for an interview. The executive says the Virginia couple is looking for a payment in the mid-six-figures range.

The couple's success in getting into the state dinner Tuesday without an invitation embarrassed the White House and Secret Service. The woman is a reality TV hopeful trying to get on Bravo's "The Real Housewives of D.C."

CBS NEWS PRODUCER BIRNBAUM DIES

CBS News producer Bernard Birnbaum, who helped shape the public's view of issues ranging from poverty to the Watergate scandal while working with Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt, has died, the network said.

Birnbaum, 89, died Thanksgiving Day at a hospital in Stony Brook, N.Y., after having a heart attack while visiting relatives nearby, CBS News said yesterday.

Birnbaum's CBS career won him seven Emmy Awards and took him to places ranging from Vietnam to the small-town America seen in "On the Road With Charles Kuralt."

TWEETS GET OSCAR-WINNING CON IN TROUBLE

"Pulp Fiction" co-screenwriter Roger Avary has been removed from a prison work furlough program and locked up in Ventura, Calif., authorities say.

Avary was sentenced in September to a year in jail and five years of probation for causing a drunken-driving car crash that killed a passenger and injured Avary's wife. News reports say he has been serving his time in a work furlough program.

But on Friday, a county sheriff's spokesman said the 44-year-old Avary is now locked up in the county jail.

The Los Angeles Times and the Ventura County Star reported that he was removed from the furlough program and jailed after allegedly Twittering about his experiences since being sentenced.

Avary and Quentin Tarantino share the 1995 Academy Award for writing "Pulp Fiction."

TAIWAN BESTS CHINA AT FILM AWARDS

Taiwanese social drama "No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti" won Chinese cinema's top honor yesterday — a rare victory for an industry overshadowed by big-budget blockbusters from rival mainland China.

The Taiwanese black-and-white film about a working-class single father who struggles to keep custody of his daughter clinched best picture and best director at the Chinese-language equivalent of the Oscars. Leon Dai's "No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti" also won best original screenplay and outstanding Taiwanese film of the year at the 46th Golden Horse Awards.

While the annual event is held in Taiwan, it is Chinese film's most representative award, drawing jurors from Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China.