CBS (NYSE: CBS), which competes with Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC, News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox, and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC, is scheduled to report earnings for the third quarter on Thursday. This is going to be an important one for the broadcaster. Why, you ask? Well, have you checked out the company's stock lately? It's priced in single digits! As of Tuesday's close, CBS was pegged at $8.83 per share. It actually rose over 13% on that day (along with the rest of the euphoric market), so who knows, maybe it'll crack the $10 level at some point.

According to Earnings.com, Wall Street expects $0.40 per share. That's an $0.08 drop compared to the previous year's quarter. Or, we can express it as a 16.7% decrease. What investors will be looking at very carefully is the quality of the cash flow. At this point, CBS is all about the dividend. I alluded to this back in August when I talked about the broadcaster's second-quarter report. If the cash is still coming, then things might be okay. Because at a yield of over 12%, a potential investor has to be careful when considering CBS' shares.

Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) must want to own a piece of everything. First, it made a bid for Circuit City (NYSE: CC) and now it is trying to get a piece of the new pay TV channel being launched by Viacom (NYSE: VIA).

Viacom says it will start a TV network with movies and other video content with contributions from MGM and Lions Gate (NYSE: LGF). The channel will compete with HBO and Showtime.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "As part of a deal being discussed, Blockbuster would get digital rights to the new channel's programming in return for an investment in the partnership."

How that makes sense is a mystery. The Viacom channel can sell DVDs though a number of outlets. Streaming content over the internet does not require help from Blockbuster. How does a company with rental stores and a DVD-by-Internet operation help a pay TV channel which will be distributed by satellite and cable?

Blockbuster has problems of its own. For starters, it just needs to stay in business. Its stock trades at $2.98, near a 52-week low, and down from more than $20 less than five years ago. Putting capital into new ventures or nutty M&A transactions is a waste of shareholder money.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 Letter.

Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Paramount studio, MGM, and Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF) want their own pay TV channel. That means Viacom will cut ties with Showtime, owned by CBS (NYSE: CBS). MGM and Lionsgate will also break with the CBS property. The deal is more interesting since Sumner Redstone is chairman of both CBS and Viacom.

According to The New York Times, "The deal raises the question of how Showtime will fill the feature film portion of its programming slate. Showtime pays more than $100 million a year to the studios to show their movies."

The new channel could end up ruining Showtime, hurting the CBS financials, and setting up new competition for HBO, but it is a sign of the times. Studios are seeing more and more premium video going to the internet. Some of that content is pirated. It is a cinch the new channel will be a better economic deal for the studios involved. They need the money.

The $100 million budget film used to be unusual. Now it seems to be the norm. Studios which cannot bring in more revenue though new distribution deals may see their P&L's falter, so they are aggressively changing their revenue models, even if it means cutting the throats of old friends.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

I'm definitely looking forward to the "Dexter" finale this weekend. The Showtime Networks series is about a serial killer -- who uses his killing talents to snuff other serial killers.

Yes, it's not a typical show. So, maybe that's why the producers are going to do something creative; that is, they have partnered with Meebo to develop a Web 2.0 experience.

So, Dexter fans can chat -- with AIM, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), MSN and so on -- with executive producers and the talent after the finale.

I had a chance to interview Chase Norlin, who is the CEO of Pixsy (a video search engine), who says:

"This makes perfect sense for Meebo to be in the private label business with instant messaging as the primary application, and certainly seems to be a complement to Showtime Networks' goals. No doubt, video integration into instant messaging applications stands to be a significant trend. Although, in the case of Meebo, I think they will eventually have to offer broader functionality in their private label product in order to win more distribution partners."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) and PepsiCo Inc. (NYSE: PEP), which are betting that people's thirst for bottled water will continue to grow, would probably prefer that the public ignore an experiment that Penn and Teller did on their Showtime series a few years ago.

Using hidden cameras, the magicians videotaped unsuspecting people at a restaurant who were being served glasses of what they thought were expensive bottled water by a steward. What they didn't know was that their beverage came from a hose. The program is called "Penn and Teller [explicative deleted]," which is exactly how I feel about the bottled water business.

The hype around popular brands, including Vitaminwater, whose corporate parent Glaceau Coke recently agreed to buy for $4.2 billion, fizzes upon closer inspection.

While there are people with bad water and unsafe water, most Americans have perfectly fine water coming out of their taps. In fact, as FastCompany points out, the two leading brands, Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani, are purified municipal water. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other experts have repeatedly pointed out that bottled water isn't as strictly regulated as tap water. An NRDC study actually found that 33% of the waters it tested "violated an enforceable state standard or exceeded microbiological-purity guidelines, or both, in at least one sample."

"There are very few differences between the health benefits of bottled and tap water except in isolated circumstances," said Greg Kail, a spokesman for the American Water Works Association, a trade group representing operators of water systems, in an interview. "In North America, we all enjoy some of the safest drinking water in the world."

Apple finished the day up 13 cents and 0.18% to sit nicely at $72.63. The big excitement today was the live blogging here of the Showtime event Apple held.

Announced for immediate sale were updated, thinner iPod Nanos with brushed aluminum cases and color options. Also introduced was a smaller iPod Shuffle. As many expected Apple also announced an update to iTunes. iTunes 7 now features movies. $9.99 for general catalog, and $12.99-$14.99 for new releases on the same day the DVD is released. Movies now feature a higher resolution rate that is more comparable to TV resolutions.

The last announcement was of a entertainment device called iTV that brings all of this together. It's a slim box that lets you play all your iTunes media through your TV.