Of all the market changes and losses that Wall Street has witnessed during the United States' decade of errors and descent, perhaps no loss has been as costly for investors, or as lamented, than the passing of Louis Rukeyser.

For those younger investors/readers who may not have heard of him, Rukeyser, who passed away two years ago, was the host of the Public Broadcasting System's "Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser."

At its core, the show, which ran with Rukeyser as host from 1970 to 2005 and was broadcast on Friday nights after the market closed, was the first weekly television series to summarize the week's often-dizzying financial and economic news in plain-spoken terms that the typical investor could understand. Simply, Louis Rukeyser defined broadcast financial news coverage and analysis, and was the face of Wall Street for a generation.

And the key to the show's success and usefulness, along with a no-nonsense format, was Rukeyser. A journalist by training, Rukeyser combined expert-level knowledge of the stock market and economics with the temperament and values of a family doctor, to create a calming, trustworthy source that viewers tuned in to religiously. The show became one of the most popular programs on PBS, at one point airing on more than 300 stations and attracting over 4.1 million viewing households.

CBS (NYSE: CBS) -- major competitor of Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC, News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC -- issued a lackluster earnings report for Q2 on Thursday. The market sent the stock down 3% at the end of the trading day. The outlook and the continued softness in the economy seems to be giving Wall Street pause in terms of CBS' prospects. Also, the top-line growth was nothing to write home about.

Revenues increased a scant 1% to $3.4 billion. Adjusted earnings per share on a diluted basis, which exclude a benefit from an asset sale, were $0.53 versus $0.57 in the year-ago period. Here are a couple more bad stats. Operating income on an adjusted basis took a dive of 13%. Free cash flow was almost 19% worse this quarter compared to last year's Q2. Not very cool, huh? According to this AP article, CBS beat by a penny, but is that really so impressive given the full context of things? No.

Still, I don't think shareholders should revolt just yet. The free cash flow on the six-month timeframe went up 6%, and even with the decrease experienced in Q2, the cash flow was enough to cover the dividend, which is a major attractant of the stock. Income investors who like the media sector definitely have to keep CBS on their list of potential buys, considering the company's 6%+ yield.

CBS believes that the advertising slowdown will inhibit growth for the rest of the year. So don't expect any fireworks in upcoming quarters. I like that management will be getting rid of fifty radio stations and intends to use the proceeds to buy back stock. That's shareholder friendly, of course. What probably won't be shareholder friendly is the stock itself. I'm not sure it's going to do much of anything while the economy suffers through its current malaise. But you do get that dividend. If investors are patient, then they should see some capital appreciation down the line.

Disclosure: I own Disney and GE; positions can change at any time.

According to this article at The Wall Street Journal, the major networks are trying to get as much of their advertising inventory sold ahead of the fall season. And who is doing the best? Would you believe that General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC network is doing pretty good in terms of its ad sales? I know that might be difficult to comprehend, considering the network's ratings erosion. Believe it or not, though, NBC has achieved a record when it comes to upfront ad sales. It apparently is the first network ever to move just about the sum total of its ad inventory during the springtime.

NBC has generated approximately $1.9 billion in upfront revenues. I think this is impressive, especially given the competition of Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC, CBS (NYSE: CBS), News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox, and The CW, which is a partnership between Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) and CBS. However, there is an interesting detail in the article that goes beyond the headline and does explain NBC's success to a certain degree. The dynamics of the upfront have been affected by a reduction in inventory that will be available once the season gets started. Because of this, these ads, the so-called scatter market, are more expensive. So, ad buyers have a natural incentive to take out as much upfront inventory as possible.

News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox network recently settled a snag with the talent behind The Simpsons. According to The Hollywood Reporter, fresh deals were struck that will keep the show on for a 20th season. That's pretty darn long to be on television, and it's a testament to the iconic quality that the animated series possesses.

Negotiations reportedly went on for months. In fact, next season will only see 20 episodes instead of 22 (they better still do a Halloween episode!). Some of the talent will be receiving $400,000 per show, representing a 33% raise (the cast actually wanted more than that). The Reporter article did not say who was getting what. I have to ask the following question: considering how long the show has been on, and considering that media companies are trying to discourage rampant increases in above-the-line costs (at least, that's what they should be doing, as far as I'm concerned), should News Corp. execs have demanded that Fox just end the negotiations and refuse to give in to a 33% raise?

I've got to be honest, a big part of me says "yes." However, there is incentive to keep The Simpsons on the air. Last summer, a movie version of the long-running show made a successful leap to the silver screen. The film grossed over $180 million at domestic theaters, and its worldwide total stands at more than $525 million, according to Boxofficemojo.

There's a great article over at The New York Times. It's about all the changes happening at the broadcast networks concerning the traditional upfront model -- the practice of presenting to advertisers around the month of May a new portfolio of programming to be commenced in the fall season and the subsequent booking of ad dollars for said programming. That's how the process has worked -- CBS (NYSE: CBS), General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC, Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC, News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox, and Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) and Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) CW show their wares now so that they can sell commercial inventory well ahead of the season premieres.

Well, according to the article, you can thank -- or blame -- the writer's strike for the dismantling of this quaint mechanism. I chose to thank the strike, because I think change is good in this case. You see, the broadcasters want to move to a 52-week season -- i.e., they want to debut new shows on a year-round basis instead of all at once, thus neutralizing the need for big upfront promotions. Actually, I should point out that there were probably other factors that helped this decision along -- most of them centering around costs and expenses. The expensive pilot-development process just isn't where it's at anymore. In fact, I wrote about this new paradigm back in April when NBC's co-chairman Ben Silverman was embracing it -- he's actually going for a 65-week season!

This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and check out other Battle of the Brands posts.

The heads of CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC along with their corporate masters at Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) and General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) must be giggling with delight at the prospect of the Democratic presidential race continuing past the hotly contested race in Pennsylvania.

After all, controversy means more viewers, which of course means more advertising dollars. They probably wish that the Democrats would beat each other up in 30-second TV spots every year, but alas Americans elect a president every four years, which is probably a good thing for everybody. Still, the cable networks are going to ride this gravy train for as long as they can.

Like anything else in cable news, picking a winner in this battle of the brands depends on how you look at it. Fox, the home of Bill O'Reilly and Shepherd Smith, attracted 1.89 million viewers during Monday's prime time, the most of any network, according to Nielsen data cited by TVNewser. CNN attracted 1.03 million on its main network and 572,000 on its Headline News channel, while MSNBC was watched by 676,000.

Before conservatives start declaring Fox the top cable network yet again, remember that statistic does not represent the whole picture. Cable news advertisers are most interested in viewers aged 25 to 54 who are most likely to be interested in buying mutual funds and other products that they are shilling. That's where things get interesting.

News Corp.'s (NWS) FOX broadcasts American Idol -- which gets 24 million viewers a show -- but is the judging fair and balanced? The New York Times suggests maybe not so much. That's because a major slip-up by judge Paula Abdul this week revealed that the judges watch rehearsals two hours before the live performances and their comments -- which may influence the public vote on the contestants -- are not spontaneous reactions to the live performances.

This week performers sang two songs but the judges were supposed to withhold their remarks until after the second performance. On Tuesday, Abdul watched one of the contestants, Jason Castro, give one live performance but when asked to offer a comment on it by Ryan Seacrest, she gave her thoughts on two performances -- the second of which she had seen in the rehearsal. When Abdul started talking about that second performance, I thought that she had a few too many before the show.

However, the explanation in the Times makes it clear that she was flustered because Seacrest had initially said that the judges would not comment until the performers had completed both of their songs. However, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe changed things up at the last minute, demanding that Seacrest get the judges to give a quick assessment of the performances after their first song.

CNBC star Maria Bartiromo and I share a birthday, and I love a good scandal, so I follow her religiously. Maria is fun because she's both gorgeous and cute, smart and sexy. And then there's the strange case of Todd Thomson (the Citigroup exec who fell so in love with Maria that he flagrantly violated ethics, and common sense, just to spend time with her). She's also fun because her nickname is "Money Honey," and what's more: she's applied for a trademark for the phrase! Delicious.

Well, she might have to move fast to use the phrase before she loses the IP to a new generation of money honeys (money honeyettes?). News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)'s Fox Business News has a bevy of beauties dishing up the news on the stock market and the economy: Liz Claman, Dagen McDowell, Jenna Lee, Alexis Glick. Ben Stein wants to know, where did they all come from? His analysis, that finance is both boring and inscrutable, and that men would rather get this boring, inscrutable and (largely) completely irrelevant news from beautiful women, is certainly sensible.



But there's an undercurrent in his story that has me troubled, and though I think that he's right in many aspects of his analysis (it's certainly true that more men watch financial news than women), I'm peeved that he never wonders whether the financial world has just been extremely sexist and is only just now starting to let loose. I also find it odd that he doesn't wonder if there were financially savvy women being excluded from business journalism until now. (His "where did they all come from" question makes it seem as if they sprung from the head of Lou Dobbs like Athena.)

Whither Money Honeys? Here's my thought:

4Kids Entertainment (NYSE: KDE) is an interesting company that attempts to cash in on fads for the younger set; it supplies programming for almost 200 affiliated stations of News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox network on Saturday mornings. It also struck a deal to program the Saturday-morning kids block for The CW -- which is a joint venture between Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) and CBS (NYSE: CBS) -- beginning this fall. The company attempts to generate buzz for its properties so that it may sell a lot of merchandise tied to them.

Earlier in the week, 4Kids reported earnings for the fourth quarter. I didn't like the numbers (all the data here represent continuing operations). Revenues for the fourth quarter declined 10%, and the company lost $1.26 per diluted share versus a loss of $0.19 per diluted share in the year-ago quarter. For the full year, revenues dove over 22%, and the loss came in at $1.77 per diluted share; for comparison, the loss in the previous year was $0.13 per diluted share. Yeah, I didn't like the numbers, and I'd like to meet the person who did.

The problem with 4Kids is that, well, kids are fickle, and it's difficult to consistently make money from such a capricious audience. Yu-Gi-Oh! and Chaotic trading cards can be hot one minute, and then not so hot the next minute after that. It's all a crapshoot, and I suppose 4Kids will probably again hit upon a fad as significant as Pokemon in the future, but as to when that will happen, who knows. I do enjoy checking in on the company's latest mix of brands -- it currently promotes such diverse intellectual properties as Viva Pinata and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But, I don't like the losses or the random nature of this particular business. If I want to gain exposure to licensing and intellectual properties for kids, I would perhaps look at a Mattel (NYSE: MAT) or a Hasbro (NYSE: HAS), as I perceive them to be safer bets. 4Kids is fighting the good fight in terms of building brands, but I won't go near its stock since there are better alternatives out there.

Disclosure: I don't own any of the companies mentioned here.

Do you remember the old Fox show Beverly Hills, 90210, the one that featured Shannen Doherty and Luke Perry? The CW, a joint venture between CBS (NYSE: CBS) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), certainly hopes you do. According to The Hollywood Reporter, an updated spinoff version is in the works by CBS Paramount Network TV.

The late, great TV producer Aaron Spelling gave us the original show back at the beginning of the 90s, and it was one of the programs that really defined and made News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)'s Fox network famous. I do remember the hype and excitement that surrounded the series and its stars; I also remember the controversies with Doherty, and the nepotism with the hiring of Spelling's daughter, Tori. All in all, it was an interesting project. If The CW can capture the magic of this old idea, then it will prove that mining library product is an efficient way of bringing in the ratings.

It'll be cool to see how a new set of 90210 brats utilize modern digital devices like YouTube, eBay, text messaging, etc. And it will be interesting to see how this new version fares; I'm sure there are plenty of blogs deriding this notion. But, like I said, this is all about making proper use of intellectual assets. CBS is the owner of Spelling Television's assets, and it would do well to mine whatever it can to compete against Disney (NYSE: DIS)'s ABC, General Electric (NYSE: GE)'s NBC, and Fox.

Disclosure: Steven Mallas owns Disney and GE; positions can change at any time.

I read an interesting article at The Hollywood Reporter about General Electric (NYSE: GE)`s NBC network and its experiment with a series that originated from the web called "quarterlife." I didn't see the show, but it apparently didn't work out for NBC -- it received absolutely terrible ratings, and one of the show's creators, Marshall Herskovitz, was quoted as saying that "it never should have been a network show."

I dearly hope that NBC, as well as Disney (NYSE: DIS)'s ABC, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)'s Fox, and CBS (NYSE: CBS) don't take this setback too seriously. We're in a new media world, one that's changing rapidly, and with the introduction of new forms of interactive communication comes an evolution in not only the way that ideas are distributed but in the way in which they form and are presented. Herskovitz was disappointed that the show wasn't put on cable, believing it was "too specific" for such an audience -- I haven't seen "quarterlife" as I've said, but I know what he means by that. Still, I believe it is incumbent for networks to think like cable nets and try to emulate their creative edge. This "quarterlife" may have indeed been full of quirks that made it an odd choice for NBC, but so what? As NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman indicated, this test didn't cost the network a ton of money and it was "so worth the try."

Yes, "quarterlife" failed on a network -- so what? NBC should continue to look to the web for concepts that it might not get anywhere else. It can be a cheaper way for finding and developing off-the-map ideas, as well as new talent with the potential to hit it big. In the era of MySpace and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)'s YouTube, the networks need to be flexible enough to adopt new methods for generating content; cyberspace is full of cool stuff -- don't be afraid to port things over, guys, you just might hit upon something...

Disclosure: Steven Mallas owns shares in Disney and General Electric.

So, I was checking out headlines on The Hollywood Reporter's website when I came across an article that discussed CBS (NYSE: CBS) CEO Leslie Moonves and his comments regarding pilots and the TV development process in general; these comments were made during CBS' earnings call. Moonves believes that developing a network series is more expensive than it needs to be, and he was quoted in the piece as describing the generation of multimillion dollar pilots as "vastly overrated." He said that the writers' strike actually saved CBS about $70 million. And, he seems to question the correlation between expensive sums thrown into the development of a series and the odds of success.

All I can say is -- thank you! Finally, the religion is starting to spread (I hope). It's not popular to state this, but I just don't think media companies such as Disney (NYSE: DIS), News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) need to bid up the compensation of talent to be effective at assembling a valuable library of entertainment product. Let's face it -- we've always known that big salaries for stars and/or an expensive development process never guaranteed a good return on invested capital on an entertainment project -- there are just too many variables, too many vagaries involved in the acceptance or rejection of a project by the public at large. I truly hope that CBS, Fox, ABC, General Electric (NYSE: GE)'s NBC, and the CW start to cut development costs as aggressively as possible following the lessons learned from the writers' strike.

I'm not holding my breath, however. I know that whatever lessons have been learned will be forgotten soon enough. Shareholders in media companies need to pressure their CEOs into reducing costs spent on the creation of entertainment. Execs like Moonves should have had the guts to call pilots overrated a long time ago; I don't think a writers' strike was necessary to bring this issue to the forefront. Please, don't forget your current sentiment -- a lot of shareholders are counting on you.

Disclosure: I own shares in Disney and General Electric.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, CBS (NYSE: CBS) has greenlit a reality program that should turn out to be pretty funny. The show is titled Splitsville, and its premise centers on divorcing couples vying for assets via sundry competitions.

You know, just when you think they've covered every conceivable angle for a reality show, they come up with one that makes you say, "I should have thought of that!" Of course -- find divorcing people who really hate each other and then see how far they are willing to go to fight for the stuff generated during their union. I have no idea what the format the show is, but I can tell you that I dearly hope the producers utilize a few tricks from Fear Factor. Imagine allowing a dozen large tarantulas to crawl over your body so you can take the family toaster!

Those scamps at Vote for the Worst continue to wreak havoc on Fox's "American Idol." This season the snarky Web site is encouraging its fans to support the dreadful Danny Noriega, a contestant who makes the hapless Sanjaya Malakar from last season seem talented.

That groaning sound you heard last night was the late Elvis Presley voicing his disapproval of Noriega's dreadful performance of "Jailhouse Rock" on yesterday's telecast. Even stranger was the fact that Noriega picked the song, which debuted in 1957, for 60's night. Vote for the Worst urges its readers to "vote as much as you can for the fierce and fabulous Danny Noriega. Simon [Cowell] obviously hated him the most, which is why we love him the most."

Noriega, like Malakar, erodes fans' confidence in Idol, which should alarm Fox's parent News Corp (NYSE: NWS). There are some other weird developments that will tax viewers' patience even further. Idol contestant Carly Smithson was signed to MCA records when judge Randy Jackson worked there. Allowing contestants to participate who have had record deals dilutes the spirit of the contest.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and American Idol -- it's got a ring to it, doesn't it? According to The Hollywood Reporter, Apple's iTunes has passed the audition and become the official online supplier of content from the show. Fans will now be able to purchase music performances and videos for 99 cents and $1.99, respectively.

Such a pairing seems eminently logical. Combining the phenomenon of American Idol, currently making waves yet again on News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox network, with the musical juggernaut of iTunes will be mutually beneficial for both parties. Idol is, without a doubt, a show that attracts the iPod generation -- the youthful demographic that walks around with earbuds blocking out the world with music popularized by MTV, as well as the program itself. As for iTunes, the partnership validates once again the incredible dominance of the brand and its effect on the distribution of music. The potential for marketing synergy here is obvious.