Since its start in 1979, ESPN has grown at a rapid clip -- turning into the most powerful brand in sports media. With close to 100 million subscribers, the company has a variety of channels (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews, ESPNU, ESPN Classic, and so on), a magazine, stores, a radio channel, restaurants, books, and websites. If considered a standalone company -- it is now 80% owned by Disney (NYSE: DIS) -- it would probably have a valuation above $20 billion.

Despite all the success, the ESPN story has had little coverage, unlike many of the other great companies of the past generation such as Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

"The operations of many energy partnerships have nothing to do with the price of crude and natural gas; they only need to have demand to move and process crude oil and natural gas rather than to pump it out of the ground," explains Neil George.

In his specialized advisory services, The Partnership, he looks at Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (NYSE: KMP) and Kinder Morgan Management (NYSE: KMR).

"Midstream partnerships--those that operate pipelines or storage and processing facilities segments as well as those that invest in these segments--are among the most stable distribution payers.

"And, more importantly right now, they're among the most stable investments in what's become a treacherous stock market.

These middlemen, in between the producers and the consumers, are perhaps the best hedge for your portfolio as they continue to generate hefty cash flows for investors.

"Whether the broad energy market is up or down, these partnerships continue to be all-around successes. Kinder Morgan Energy Partners and Kinder Morgan Management, are Foundation holdings in our portfolio.

"The market is pricing publicly-traded partnerships as if they're headed for bankruptcy," says Neil George who sees high yield and value in select issues. Here's two ideas from The Partnership Letter -- a global infrastructure play and a real estate investment trust.

"There are some darn good partnerships out there that are indeed worth the near-term risk, even amid the probability of lower stock prices.

"Partnerships are characterized by high cash generation and the maximization of depreciation and other tax deductions. They then pay out as much cash as possible to unitholders. And with prices so low, we get to buy into assets that in many cases are worth a lot more in terms of liquidation value.

Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) will be able to make up any shortfall that occurs if there is a major change to its nearly six-year-old Internet access selling partnership with AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T)

AT&T now wants to only give Yahoo a cut of the revenue from the services the Internet portal sells such as music instead of giving a percentage of sales from the broadband business, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Yahoo gets about $200 million to $250 million in revenue from the partnership a small fraction of the $5 billion to $5.5 billion analysts expect the Internet company to earn this year, the paper says, adding that the fees from AT&T were very profitable for Yahoo.

If this happens, it would of course be a setback though hardly a disaster, I don't think its partnership with AT&T, which expires next year, will totally end. The two companies still need each other though not in the ways that the deal was originally structured. There remain plenty of reasons to like Yahoo otherwise.

Yahoo will get a bump from Project Panama. Advertisers don't like putting all of their eggs in one basket in search even if that basket is Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG). Let's not forget that more and more advertising is coming online and that the Yahoo portal is still hugely popular though YouTube and niche sites continue to pose a serious threat.

Interestingly, the paper said that AT&T has raised the possibility of a merger with Yahoo and that Yahoo rebuffed the idea. I wouldn't be surprised if that idea is raised again in the current discussions about the partnership.

It seems only yesterday when Microsoft's position atop the lucrative desktop software market was so unassailable that the FTC had to bust them for monopolistic behavior. Oh wait: it was yesterday. That's why news of Dell and Google agreeing to install Google software on Dell PCs met with a round of gasps heard from Wall Street to Fleet Street.

It's been 10 years since Microsoft first began making deals to pre-install its software on home computers, and the bet was a good one, prompting Microsoft to a seemingly insurmountable lead in the desktop software market. But now Google software will sit in Microsoft's place.

The impact on Microsoft could be stunning. While sales from the "Client" division only make up about 29% of Microsoft's sales as of the most recent quarter's results, those sales represent 63% of the company's operating income. Were the client sales to be impacted only by 10% as a result of this Dell/Google deal, or about 3% of the overall revenue, 7% or more of the operating income would be erased: a serious threat indeed. Fortunes are made or lost on high-single-digit drops in operating income.