While CBS will be getting a robust and sprawling Web media operation in its $1.8 billion acquisition of CNET Networks, in my mind there are two chief reasons for the deal:

- News.com

- TV.com

It just about begins and ends there. Both those sites — or, more properly, their browser addresses — make synergistic sense under CBS’ umbrella. Everything else — the long-established audiences, the physical Silicon Valley hub — is incidental, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see chunks of CNET eventually get jettisoned by the new corporate parent.

CNET has occupied that valuable news.com URL real estate for more than a decade. I always thought it was peculiar that such a fundamental brand/concept should take you to a narrow slice of news, instead of a more-general news portal; but that’s CNET’s reward for cornering that domain so early. Having news.com resolve to CBS News would confer an almost default status to the network for online news consumption, simply by virtue of the easily-input Web address.

Meanwhile, the TV.com domain came under CNET’s control more recently. Just nurturing its existing community-building formula will pay off for the short term; further out, it could be used to cement CBS’ position in televised media even further.

Yes, I’m characterizing this deal as essentially another dollars-for-domains transaction. Unlike other instances, though, this one actually makes sense. There’s no other way to establish the kind of mindshare that two dead-simple dot-com addresses bring. Having these two roads lead to CBS online properties will count big, with overall brand-building and online revenue generation via ads and other channels.

Sue Simmons is a bona fide institution in New York City local news media, second only to her co-anchor Chuck Scarborough. Personally, I can’t remember when they weren’t occupying Channel 4; they were a firm part of my childhood channel-surfing.

Which is what makes her live-TV “What the fuck are you doing??” flub today all the more shocking (in a fun way!):

The shit hit the fan, of course, prompting an obligatory apology from Sue. Order is restored at the local NBC flagship affiliate.

There are two ways of looking at Cablevision’s $650 million purchase of Newsday from Tribune Co.:

1. Underlying the apparent mismatch between a dominant cable provider and an entrenched but struggling newspaper is a potentially lucrative synergy:

But even if the prospective deal has an element of vanity to it, Cablevision could make the following argument. It has roughly three million cable subscribers in Long Island, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, while Newsday has about 300,000 subscribers. Cablevision’s customer relationships could help it sell more subscriptions, while overlapping ad sales forces at the two companies could result in cost savings. And Cablevision owns a 24-hour local news channel in Long Island, which could use the news gathering capacity of Newsday — and in theory cut costs.

This makes the acquisition of Newsday the equivalent of securing an established and dedicated advertising channel for Cablevision. Nassau County is prime demographic territory, so any additional inroads a media company can make and present to ad clients is extremely valuable.

2. In order to extract the maximum value out of its unwanted asset, Tribune owner Sam Zell orchestrated an elaborate competition among Newsday’s suitors:

The trick was for Zell to turn this into a bidding war. That was difficult at first. The three interested parties acted as if they had the upper hand. Cablevision did some tire kicking, but the Dolans didn’t make an offer. [New York Daily News owner Mort] Zuckerman reportedly made a lowball bid.

Zell turned up the heat by entering into negotiations with News Corp. to accept $580 million for a majority stake in Newsday. [Rupert] Murdoch clearly felt he had the inside track. He began courting Long Island’s political leaders whose support he would surely need to get the deal approved by the FCC in Washington. That’s because News Corp. already owns the [New York] Post and two New York City television stations.

It now appears Zell was using News Corp.’s offer to establish a floor for the bidding. Zuckerman soon matched News Corp.’s offer. Then Cablevision did what non-strategic bidders often do in such situations. It offered to pay a higher price than either newspaper publisher.

And viola, Newsday becomes a hot property. Where it goes from here under the Dolans’ stewardship remains to be seen.

From one of my most fave-o-reet episodes of “The Simpsons”, I present “Skinner & the Superintendent”, or (as I prefer) “Steamed Hams”:

And for good measure, the key exchange:

Superintendent Chalmers: I thought we were having steamed clams.
Seymour Skinner: Oh, no, I said steamed hams. That’s what I call hamburgers.
Superintendent Chalmers: You call hamburgers steamed hams?
Seymour Skinner: Yes, it’s a regional dialect.
Superintendent Chalmers: Uh-huh. What region?
Seymour Skinner: Uhh… Upstate New York.
Superintendent Chalmers: Really? Well, I’m from Utica, and I’ve never heard anyone use the phrase ’steamed hams.’
Seymour Skinner: Oh, not in Utica. No, it’s an Albany expression.
Superintendent Chalmers: I see.
[Chalmers bites into a steamed ham.]
Superintendent Chalmers: You know, these hamburgers are quite similar to the ones they have at Krusty Burger.
Seymour Skinner: Oh ho ho, no. Patented Skinner burgers. Old family recipe.
Superintendent Chalmers: For steamed hams…
Seymour Skinner: Yes…
Superintendent Chalmers: Yes, and you call them steamed hams despite the fact that they are obviously grilled.

One last tidbit: Along with the obvious allusions to Pulp Fiction throughout, this episode also owes its title — “22 Short Films About Springfield” — to Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. The title and structure of which, in turn, was inspired by the 32 pieces that comprise Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

It’s official: Isabella Rossellini has gone crazy.

Or “buggy”, which would be more in line with the theme behind her “Green Porno” series of insect-sex (”insext”?) short films for Sundance Channel. I mean, it’s one thing to produce nature documentaries on the same reproductive topic — that give it a veneer of scientificness. But to (sorta) dress up as a spider, a dragonfly, etc. and act out the wild wiggling? Cute, but way out there, man.

Although, maybe she’s on the crest of a trend. Perhaps Jerry Seinfeld cracked open the door with Bee Movie, with everyone else just now catching on.

This should be interesting: I just got a guaranteed ticket to see today’s taping of “Late Show with David Letterman”, airing tonight!

How? The weirdest sequence of events: I was walking up Broadway, killing time while getting within the vicinity of a couple of afternoon appointments. At around 50th Street, it occurred to me that I was getting close to the Ed Sullivan Theater, which reminded me of my seldom-invoked intentions of attending a Letterman taping. I dismissed today’s possibility right away, simply because I didn’t think there’d be any tickets available as late as this afternoon.

Then, I walk by a girl who’s hawking “Late Show” tickets. She’s pissed because the two guys she was already talking to were “assholes”, in her words; so she turns to me. She confirms she’s with Worldwide Pants, the show’s production arm. After some preliminaries, she hands me a confirmation form letter with my name on it. According to that slip of paper (photo of which I’ll add later, after I get home — having some issues trying to email it to myself right now), I’m guaranteed a seat in chilly Ed Sullivan! (No joke, they really do tell you ahead of time to bring a sweater; I happen to be wearing a light jacket, so I’m set.)

I have to trek back down there in about half an hour to confirm, then head back there again for the 4:30-5:30 taping. They’re not kidding about this thing eating up your whole day. Fortunately, I was able to move around my meetings for this afternoon, or else I’d have to chuck this adventure. As it is, I’m currently cooling my heels in a damned *$ on 60th.

So, hopefully, I’ll finally get to see Dave live and in person, doing his thing. According to the TV schedule, guests tonight will be Ashton Kutcher, magician Mac King (because this is, after all, Magician Week on the “Late Show”), and musical legend Steve Winwood. Not the lineup I would have picked, but it’ll do.

UPDATE: Here’s the photo proof — first the confirmation letter:

And the resultant ticket:
Well worth the sacrifice of an afternoon. I won’t bother with a show recap; you can find that here. But here’s some general impressions:

- I actually didn’t find the famously deep-frozen theater to be all that cold. I wouldn’t want to sit there in just shorts and tshirt, but in a shirt and dress pants, I was fine.

- The theater stage is surprisingly compact — looks a lot bigger on TV.

- Even though everything was live and only a few yards away, I couldn’t shake how it still looked like a televised presentation — even though I was watching with my unaided eye. I guess it was the lighting doing its job, because somehow, I didn’t get the feeling that I was really there in the same room with Dave, Paul et al.

- “Johnny Twain” may be a lame filler segment. But he can belt out “Hooked On A Feeling” with muy, muy gusto! (I’m guessing that performance won’t be making the telecast.)

- Steve Winwood rocks.

Another example of the incestuous ideamill that makes up Hollywood:

- “The Return of Jezebel James” was a recent sitcom on FOX about a straitlaced professional woman (Parker Posey) who wants a baby, but can’t conceive on her own. So she enlists a surrogate mother (Lauren Ambrose), who happens to be a scatter-shot, roughneck polar opposite. Odd-couple wackiness ensues!

- Baby Mama is a current major motion picture release about a straitlaced professional woman (Tina Fey) who wants a baby, but can’t conceive on her own. So she enlists a surrogate mother (Amy Poehler), who happens to be a scatter-shot, roughneck polar opposite. Odd-couple wackiness ensues!

Yep, same difference. The only serious divergence I can see is that the sitcom’s characters were sisters, while the movie’s characters were brought-together strangers. Otherwise, this was cross-pollination.

The end results: “Jezebel James” was a flop, lasting only three episodes on TV, while Baby Mama debuted at No. 1 at last week’s box office (although a relatively weak one, banking only $17.4 million).

There may be something behind the principal actors’ displacement into different media: Posey and Ambrose are accomplished indie-movie stars, while Fey and Poehler are best known from “Saturday Night Live”. The SNL connection likely had a lot to do with the movie’s success, as the duo there was basically carrying over their “Weekend Update” chemistry to a big-screen milieu.

Sezmi is an upstart pay-TV service that’s pitching itself as something close to a one-stop video-entertainment hub for the household:

Sezmi’s system takes some explaining. At its heart is a TV set-top box that receives video content in three different ways. Two are available through other means: digital over-the-air local broadcasts, the kind that are available to anyone with a digital TV and a rabbit-ear antenna; and Internet downloads through the home’s broadband connection.

The third delivery method would be unique to Sezmi. It plans to have local TV stations use vacant portions of their airwaves to transmit basic cable channels like Nickelodeon and Discovery. Given the limited spectrum available, the stations won’t be able to transmit a full lineup, and only some of it will be in high definition. Sezmi plans to mitigate that by having stations send out the most-watched shows and have the set-top boxes save them on their hard drives, making them available for viewing on demand.

Some noise is being made about this three-pronged delivery system being overly complex. My sense is that it doesn’t matter how complicated it is, as long as it works. Consumers aren’t going to care how it all comes together; all that’ll count is that it pipes in the content that people want, and at a competitive price.

The company is on the right track in branding itself as “TV 2.0″, as that conveys an expansion of standard cable or satellite. It should take that messaging one step further with a simple value proposition that goes something like: “Local, cable, and VOD — plus YouTube. All on one screen. Sezmi.”

In a sense, Sezmi would be a TV provider that’s media-agnostic. You wouldn’t have to switch from one screen (television) to another (computer monitor) to consume all manner of video content — you’d access it all from your remote control. That’s crucial in achieving the long-anticipated melding of television and Web:

In general, Sezmi’s attitude toward Web content is to integrate it seamlessly into the overall universe. Individual repositories or “zones” of Web video, such as YouTube, can create their own XML Sezmi page. In a demonstration of the technology, a local news page was organized in a basic layout of weather, news, traffic, and featured stories, with a video box in the lower right-hand corner and additional data to the top right.

Of course, the tricky part will be getting the infrastructure and carriage in place. Sezmi is building limited content agreements and presenting itself as an ideal partner for regional ISPs and telecom providers, but it’s got to have a presentable channel/content lineup to offer up. And even then, it won’t be easy:

The company faces a lot of competition. Apple TV is going to be more attractive now that it can get movies on the same day as they go on sale as DVDs. Vudu also has a lot of movies on demand available. Tivo’s Series 3 box can appeal to high-definition video junkies. AT&T is rolling out its DSL-based IPTV service nationwide, promising interactivity and movies on demand. And Digeo will have its Moxi boxes out later this year as well. It’s a crowded market and Sezmi will need big partners or a big advertising budget to overcome all the noise.

In the face of this, Sezmi has all the signs of being a short-lived attempt at next-stage television. It could be fun to watch anyway, especially as elements of its approach influence the rest of the industry.

So today at around 1PM, I flipped the TV channel to ESPN, fully expecting to see the first round of this year’s NFL Draft in full swing. I haven’t been particularly interested in the lead-up, but I wanted to get a token fix of Mel Kiper et al.

But, shocker of shockers — no draft coverage. Because there was no draft, because unlike years past, the league and the networks decided to slightly streamline football’s most overhyped offseason event:

- The draft will start at [3PM Eastern] Saturday, three hours later than had been the case, but only Rounds 1 and 2 will be held that day. The third round has been moved to Sunday.

- Teams will be allowed 10 minutes to make a selection in the first round instead of 15, and the time between second-round picks will be seven minutes instead of 10.

- Sunday’s portion of the draft will start an hour earlier [10AM Eastern] and teams will have five minutes between picks in Rounds 3-7.

The later start time Saturday is beneficial for ESPN and the NFL Network because viewership grows throughout the day. But the reduction in time between picks is going to be interesting.

The quicker pace between selections has greater impact than just television coverage and ad sales, of course. Teams do jockey for trades during that between-selection time, even if it is for slot-swaps to move up in a round. Potentially, that means a reduction in horsetrading, even if it is only for trivial fourth-round positioning.

Still, as much as I ignored the draft for the past couple of years, I do feel a void. It was a reliable background noise if I chose to tune in. Today’s mid-afternoon start didn’t work for me at all; as a result, I’ve peeked in for maybe five total minutes of coverage. I doubt I’ll catch much more tomorrow.

Professional puckheads won’t have to go begging for National Hockey League broadcasts next season, as NBC has extended its broadcast agreement with the league through the 2008-09 season.

“There have been positive signs for the league, both on and off the ice,” Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics, said in a statement. “Ratings were up this year; the Winter Classic in Buffalo was a huge success; advertising sales were healthy; and the product on the ice has never been better, led by young, marketable stars such as Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. We believe this is a sport that will continue to grow.”

Ratings for the regular-season Sunday games on NBC were up 11 percent from last year.

We’ve heard all this before — a one-year bump is nice, but doesn’t guarantee any long-term commitment. The key component is that NBC is getting the content for free — no rights means the NHL is simply getting some much-need exposure, and the network has no risk in either broadcasting or else bumping the random game.

Still, having a prime broadcast presence is still a status symbol that any claimant to major-league sports must have. It might not mean as much five years from now, but for now, it’s a requisite that the NHL is glad to have.

I’m on vacation in Florida, and thus won’t be near the action during Pope Benedict’s papal visit to NYC.

But, if I choose to immerse myself in the experience, I can via WatchThePope.com, which itself is an outgrowth of Brooklyn’s own The Prayer Channel. This combined online/offline presence boasts an advertising and marketing message of “pray-by-pray coverage”.

Alas, the spirit does not move me. Maybe I’ll catch the sure-to-come “big Popein’” retrospective when I get back to town.

Rabid fanboys can splice together the raddest scenes from the raddest movies evahh and get that self-satisfying feeling.

But what do those labors come to? Nothing. Because supercutting reached its peak back in 2001. That’s when artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy did a massive deconstruction of the entire series run of “Starsky and Hutch”, and cobbled together the resulting elements into the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s installation piece, “Every Shot, Every Episode”:

Lodged in the subconscious of an entire generation, the McCoys’ banal source material is subjected to the nonlinear, nonnarrative logic of the computer database, grouped typologically by structural technique (every zoom in, every special effect), stock character (alcoholic, bookie), or action (car chase, drug use). Both novel and traditional, “Every Shot, Every Episode” is a witty and thorough critique of media imagery, a portable reference guide for those raised and reared by television, and an updated version of a tradition as old as photography itself.

I mean, really. Why try to improve upon this perfection with a rapid-fire compilation of Scarface “fucks”? It’s like dissecting gossamer, I tell you.

Like everyone else, I had always thought that Jack Handey — of “Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey” fame — was nothing more than another “Saturday Night Live” character. Moreover, I’m not sure I ever distinguished between Phil Hartman’s opening intro and the following voiceover, so I guess I assumed that the whole skit was a Hartman comedy piece.

Turns out that he’s all too real, despite himself:

Handey, 59, lives in Santa Fe, N.M., with his wife, Marta, who is also his editor. But that is a much too specific existence for many to accept. For years, some fans assumed he was only a character, a disembodied voice that soothingly read “Deep Thoughts” in the guise of the implausibly named “Jack Handey.”

Handey, though, hasn’t exactly discouraged this perception. In one of his “Martians” pieces — “How I Want to Be Remembered” — he eulogizes himself: “Jack was an expert in so many fields, it’s hard to say what he was best at: the arts, the sciences, or the businesses.”

“SNL” is generally reluctant to use a writer’s name, preferring to keep the focus on the performers. Handey, though, eventually won the honor, thanks to the strength of his work on penning such sketches as “Unfrozen Cave Man Lawyer.”

“The irony is that people think Jack Handey is a made-up name,” says Handey. “You can’t win is the lesson.”

I think all of comedy teaches you that lesson, actually.

Pondering: If some TV exec dreamed up a new reality series centered around a strip club, would the resultant marketing come up with the term “Realititty Television”?

It seems like a natural — even if the featured titties wouldn’t be.

Think such a concept would never fly, either with the TV industry or the nudie club business? I beg to differ. On the television side, this hardly scrapes the bottom of the reality barrel, and the surefire ratings from featuring nekkid women (even with the naughty bits pixelated out), aided by the built-in controversy it would attract, would dismiss any objections. As for the “gentlemen’s clubs”, the increasingly corporate nature of the business means they’d welcome the exposure (no pun intended — mostly).

Apologies to all my Canadian friends as I roll the “Back in Old Canada” song/skit from “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ episode experiment “The Final Sacrifice”:

Tom Servo’s tearful “pardonne-moi” refrains at the very end never fail to elicit a chuckle from me.

In loving memory of that Canadian non par excellence, Zap Rowsdower.

When Michael Eisner touted synergy across all Disney-owned media properties, I doubt he ever had anything like this in mind: The one and only Snoop Dogg will be guest-starring on “One Life to Live”, and will be remixing the soap opera’s theme song to boot.

Can’t wait to snap that track up off iTunes…

It’s a pretty blatant marriage of commercial convenience, so I don’t know why Disney’s PR wonks felt the need to manufacture some deeper connection:

“I’ve been a fan of ‘One Life to Live’ since I was a baby,” said Snoop, who’s set to perform “Sensual Seduction” and “Life of Da Party.”

“My momma always had it on the tube in tha crib growing up. The opportunity to change up the theme song and give it some of my flavor will make the show the Life of The Party.”

Tha Doggfather, a soap devotee? Riiiiiight. Not even when high.

Yep, the folks at Sci Fi Network have gone to town in promoting the upcoming fourth season of their most popular show, the reimagined “Battlestar Galactica”. I’ve seen this ad around New York, and the obvious homage to da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” (along with the hot blonde in the skimpy red dress) makes it eye-catching.

So why, when I look upon it, do I not feel any particular awe, but rather am inspired to tack on the Austin Powers-inspired caption, “She’s a man, baby!!”?

Probably because I’m not a fan of “Battlestar”. I mock what I don’t understand, I guess.

But others are down with the science, including all the “Da Vinci Code” style visual teasers this ad contains for plot revelations. An excellent way to buzz up a show beyond its hardcore fanbase.

Incidentally, using “The Last Supper” as a motif is a rampant sci-fi geek practice.

UPDATE: I don’t know if this is the case with all versions, but I just saw this ad on a busstop shelter, and it had the following tagline, strategically placed between the accusatory finger-pointer and blondie:

The Final Revelation

I’m sure that’s further whetting scientifictive appetites.

Here’s a cute local sports media maneuver: To coincide with this week’s rebranding of the Fox Sports New York (FSNY) to MSG Plus, the channel’s Islanders pre- and post-game host Deb Kaufman is taking the opportunity to rechristen her own on-air handle.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do; there just never seemed to be a good time to do it,” she said. “Since the network was changing its name…”

Well, why not? Starting with tonight’s Islanders-Lightning game, Deb Kaufman will be Deb Placey, her name in her non-work life for the 13 years since she married Ed Placey, a senior coordinating producer for ESPN college football…

She does not plan a formal announcement but figures [Isles announcers] Howie Rose and Billy Jaffe will take care of spreading the news.

Actually, she did make the announcement on the air, during the pregame show. I’m sure many Islanders fans hearts were broken upon hearing that Deb is already hitched; I suppose they could start drooling over competing NHL television MILF Christine Simpson on Versus.

It’s worth noting that MSG Network has not caught up on this development, as it still lists her as Deb Kaufman on her bio page. Rebranding is always a tough row to hoe.

It seems like only yesterday that “Quarterlife” was going to be the long-awaited breakout Web television hit. It had MySpace behind it, with a healthy chunk of its millions of users as a built-in audience.

Flash forward: On the strength of its online performance, “Q-life” gets picked up by NBC, making an improbable comeback to the broadcast medium that originally rejected it.

And then, it tanks hard with only 3.1 million viewers, the worst network debut in 20 years, earning it cancellation and a demotion to Bravo.

What does this portend for the Web-development model for future mass-market media vehicles? The lack of even one solid success in this Web-TV crossover indicates that what works online is simply not transferable to the boob tube, despite content being content. It could be that movers and shakers on both sides are beating a dead horse in trying to find synergy this way.

One of the added benefits of watching NHL games via Yahoo! Sports webcasts is that I sometimes get peeks at Canadian TV commercials. Always fun to see the pitches made north of the border.

Like this one for McDonald’s in Canada, featuring miniature goaltending hotshot JC Petit:

The mighty-mite netminder’s trash-talking is, of course, the best part. “Nice try, No-goal-ov!” is a keeper.

I say Petit be recruited as hockey’s new game ambassador. He beats out Peter Puck any day.

When it comes to nonprofit broadcasting media, the audio-only action is trumping the televised fare these days. As funding-challenged PBS slowly devolves into a resemblance of other cookie-cutter television channels, NPR gains popularity by accentuating its distinctiveness within a radio wasteland.

The wide spectrum of dedicated channels that cable television provides is cited as having stolen PBS’ thunder:

If you’re the sort of traditional PBS viewer who likes extended news broadcasts, say, or cooking shows, old movies and shows about animals gnawing each other on the veld, cable now offers channels devoted just to your interest. Cable is a little like the Internet in that respect: it siphons off the die-hards. Public television, meanwhile, more and more resembles everything else on TV. Since corporate sponsors were allowed to extend their “credit” announcements to 30 seconds, commercials in all but name have been a regular feature on public television, and that’s not to mention pledge programs, the fund-raising equivalent of water-boarding.

Which makes me wonder: Are we going to be lamenting similar woes for public radio in a few years, when the endless expanse of satellite radio has become commonplace enough to siphon listeners away from NPR? The same dynamics are in place as with what developed in television over the past couple of decades.

I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that I’ve largely abandoned both mediums at this point. Not that I never look/listen to TV and radio, but I don’t rely on much original content from either.