Sanjaya Malakar and Howard Stern are smack dab in the middle of a high-stakes battle for America's attention.

According to The New York Times [registration required], the battle pits Sirius Satellite Radio, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI), as led by Howard Stern, and VoteForTheWorst.com -- along with Stern's silent partners: all the other networks -- against American Idol's corporate sponsors, News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox Network and Idol-rights owner, CKX Inc. (NASDAQ: CKXE).

Stern's stated goal is to destroy Idol's popularity by encouraging people to vote for Malakar, whose unique hair styles and ability to bring 12-year-old girls to tears have contributed to his survival on the show despite weak vocal skills. If Malakar wins, acerbic judge, Simon Cowell, has threatened to quit the show. If Cowell did quit, Stern could indeed damage Idol's popularity -- people love to hate Cowell.

What is going on here? Your guess is as good as mine. But I think the Malakar furor is great for American Idol -- his Mohawk helped persuade General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) Today Show to lead with a Malakar story last Wednesday. Stern is trying to boost his own ratings by tapping into Idol's popularity and today's great coverage by the New York Times won't hurt Stern either.

I think News Corp. will be the winner in this skirmish, CKX and Sirius will not benefit significantly, and the losers will continue to be the other networks who try to compete with the Idol juggernaut.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns shares of General Electric and has no financial interest in the other stocks mentioned in this post.

Today, the Wall Street Journal is pointing out that General Electric Company's (NYSE:GE) NBC plans to extend the Today show to four hours from its already three-hour along format. The reason for this is that NBC is desperate to make a profit.

"The thinking is that Today is already a known and popular quantity so it has a better chance of breaking through," says Shari Anne Brill, director of programming for media-buying firm Carat USA. However, she adds: "It really depends on the content and hosts."

This serves to demonstrate how desperate GE and its subdivision NBC are to make NBC a going concern. They're going to make their main strongly rated show last half the entire day! Despite some early buzz about some good shows, NBC is still struggling to beat out the other networks. While every other division of GE shows signs of profits, either now or in the recent past, NBC is still the albatross around GE's neck. One wonders how much longer this will last.

Hopefully something happens before the Today show starts running all day long.