The feud between Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has morphed from a sometimes amusing spat between cable news hosts to a clash of corporate titans.

As Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post notes, O'Reilly has attacked General Electric Co. (NWS: GE) Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt for being "responsible" for the deaths of soldiers in Iraq because the MSNBC parent does a tiny amount of business with Iran which, apparently, is coming to an end. O'Reilly even sent a crew from "The O'Reilly Factor" to GE's annual meeting in Erie, Penn., to buttonhole Immelt and GE shareholders about the issue. One fund manager even called Immelt a "Benedict Arnold CEO" on the Fox program.

On his show, Olbermann often awards O'Reilly the title of "Worst Person in the World," a bit of shtick that's getting tiresome. Everything that O'Reilly says and does irritates Olbermann. Then again, so does Britney Spears.

But that's not the whole story. Fox News chief Roger Ailes warned NBC Universal head Jeff Zucker that "if Olbermann didn't stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O'Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well," according to the Washington Post. This underscores the arguments of liberals and progressives that Fox and The Post are the winged monkeys of their corporate masters at News Corp. (NYSE: NWS). Fox, of course, denies Ailes threatened NBC.

The back and forth between the two media conglomerates shows that nerves are starting to get frayed and that life -- sigh -- is a lot like high school.

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), a media conglomerate that competes with Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Disney (NYSE: DIS), Viacom (NYSE: VIA), CBS (NYSE: CBS) and Sony (NYSE: SNE), reported third-quarter earnings Wednesday, and they were pretty interesting, to say the least.

I mean, revenues increased 16% to about $8.8 billion, but earnings per share went up like crazy, coming in at $0.91 per diluted share versus $0.27 per diluted share a year ago -- that's more than three times as much as the comparable period's results! As you can imagine, there's a little catch. The stellar appreciation is due to a gain in a transaction with Liberty Media. According to a piece at CNBC, News Corp. earned $0.30 per share after adjustments, which was a penny shy of Wall Street's expectations.

So, News Corp. kind of had a so-so quarter. I think the top-line growth was pretty good even if bottom-line performance wasn't as nice as that special gain made it seem on the surface. Plus, News Corp. is working with some cool assets. Cable programming continues to score thanks to the strength of Fox News Channel, an important platform for the conglomerate which contains valuable brand name pundits such as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. News Corp. leverages the channel to drive growth in its other cable properties; in fact, Fox Business Channel is trying to make a name for itself and it definitely benefits from synergy with Fox News.

Overall, the cable programming segment delivered a 17% increase in operating income while Fox News saw its operating profit go up by 11%. The television segment increased its profits by over 50%, and the Fox network just about doubled its bottom-line base. Other parts of News Corp. didn't do as well, such as filmed entertainment -- this segment's profit took a dive to the tune of 36%. However, don't blame one of my favorite shows, Family Guy -- DVD sales of this hot property was a positive driver.

Those are the highlights that stuck out at me. As for the stock, I don't see a compelling reason to buy at the moment. News Corp. should do well over time, but it wasn't like these were blowout numbers or anything. I'll wait and see how the company is doing when it reports its fiscal-year stats.

Disclosure: I own shares in Disney; positions can change at any time.