If you smell sulfur in the air on Monday, don’t fret. It’s just TMZ fluttering through the airwaves.

The site that broke the Mel Gibson arrest and the Michael Richards comedy-club bigotry will stick its heavy fist into the crowded hole of celebutainment television shows, debuting, of course, on Fox.

Harvey Levin, managing editor of TMZ.com will exec produce the nightly half=hour shows and host. Because he’s just that pretty.

Levin told the Associated Press:

“It doesn’t feel like the other shows … We’re not sucking up (to stars). We’re not doing junkets. We’re not doing red carpets,” Levin said.

To which his competition answered: Ha!

Bring it on, said TMZ’s rivals, including sibling Telepictures entry Extra, returning for its 14th season Monday.

“The way I look at it, we’re in the limo with the stars. They’re chasing the limo,” said Lisa Gregorisch-Dempsey, Extra senior executive producer (and Levin’s former colleague on Celebrity Justice). “It’s a completely different point of view.”

It’s official! Of all the bottom-feeding, celeb-stalking, downfall-of-our-civilization-causing Web sites, TMZ.com is the bottom-feedingest, celeb-stalkingest, downfall-of-our-civilization-causingest!

Congratulations, TMZ.

Business Week’s Jon Fine posits that Britney Spears has neutered that supposed pitbull of celebrity journalism, TMZ.com.

To prove his point, Fine lists a few recent TMZ posts about the pop princess. Close your eyes and have your cubicle mate read you this sentece out loud: “Looks like rehab did more than good for Britney Spears’ soul — she also dropped a surprising ten pounds during her stay in Promises, and got herself not just buff, but buffed with spa treatments.”

Did you imagine yourself in the dentist’s waiting room, reading People? Guess again.

Anna Nicole Smith coverage has gone from the ridiculous to the just plain gross, with TMZ.com showing photos of the dead woman’s refrigerator.

While Entertainment Tonight pays Howard K. Stern a reported $1 million for his “story,” E! Online and others have their head in the sands of the Bahamas, following Stern’s battle over 5-month-old ATM, er, girl Dannielynn.

Thank goodness for the steady, staid voice of establishment print media, which would never stoop to put this scoop on A1.

Oops.

Caryn James in the NYT takes the media to task for gawking at Anna Nicole Smith — both in life and in death. Then she goes on to basically blame Anna Nicole for being too tantalizing not to watch: “Her sense of how to court attention was simply to show up, pose and practically say, ‘Come get me, use me.’”

Tim Rutten’s mea culpa in the LAT is a little better. In it, he explains how newspaper editors use the number of “hits” a story gets on their Web sites when determining story placement for the next day’s paper.

But he loses us at the end when he suggests journalists should use this case to reconsider this popularity contest approach, saying, “It’s a good moment for American newspapers to take a reflective breath to consider just how they want to play this numbers game — or, more important, whether they want to play it at all. If that were to occur, then Anna Nicole Smith would not have died in vain.”

Good point, Rutten. We’re sure Anna Nicole would have gone whistling to her grave, had she known her demise would restore journalistic integrity.

Ken Baker, Us Weekly’s West Coast exec editor, yesterday was named Editorial Director of Usmagazine.com, which makes perfect sense to us. This was the guy, after all, who told us that the secret to the mag’s success was boobs, clothes and celebrity sex. What better platform for all those things than the Internet?

But does the world really need a Wenner-brand version of E! Online, TMZ.com, Defamer, etc.?

Ever the salesman, Baker assures FBLA that his site will be different.

“Us Weekly has thrived by giving readers a TV-in-a-magazine experience,” Baker told us. “I want to give the Usmagazine.com audience the same fun experience of celebrity.”

Read more

Some stuff we covered (maybe too much) and some stuff just got blown off our desks on these windswept days. Here’s a roundup of newsy detritus.

Reading is dangerous: LA Observed notes that an Oregon handyman was suspended without pay for sharing the OC Weekly’s “Ask A Mexican” column with a colleague.

Lindsay Lohan feeling better: As always, TMZ.com has the socialite/actress/thingy’s best interest at heart.

Slate reads the paper, doesn’t much care for it: In a naughty/haughty op-ed, Jack Shafer plays media Moses, advising the Tribune Co. to let its people go — specifically the LAT newsroom’s many, many shining stars.