But what do Oprah’s plans mean for the TV business? Not that much, argues JP Morgan (JPM) analyst Michael Meltz. Short version of his note published this morning: It’s not bad for OWN, the cable network Oprah co-owns with Discovery (DISCA). But it’s also not terrible for CBS (CBS) and Disney’s (DIS) ABC, the two broadcasters currently in the “Oprah” business.

That’s because while the move makes for unpleasant “optics”–bizspeak for “looks bad”–for broadcast, it turns out that Oprah didn’t make that much money for the business. (But plenty for herself, obviously.)

Medium-sized version of Meltz’s argument:

• The show made $50 million a year for CBS, which syndicated the program. CBS would rather have that money than not, but losing it will amount to a “rounding error” in 2012.
• The show was a big ratings hit for local TV stations, but they paid a lot for it–upward of $200,000 a week in big markets. That made it a loss-leader for most broadcasters, Meltz says.
• And yes, the show provided a big lead-in audience to local TV news broadcasts, particularly in top ABC markets. But given that it’s not going to end up on a rival broadcast channel, “it is conceivable that station audience/ad share won’t change much for the day-part.”

Okay. Back to the crying and teeth-gnashing.

Dish has rung up the tab while fighting one of the many patent suits Tivo has brought against cable and satellite providers, accusing them of ripping off its DVR technology. Tivo has won an initial series of rulings against Dish, forcing the company to hand over a slug of cash, but more could be coming, the satellite company noted today. What would that mean? In Securities and Exchange Commission legalese:

Depending on the amount of any additional damage or sanction award or any monetary settlement, we may be required to raise additional capital at a time and in circumstances in which we would normally not raise capital. Therefore, any capital we raise may be on terms that are unfavorable to us, which might adversely affect our financial position and results of operations and might also impair our ability to raise capital on acceptable terms in the future to fund our own operations and initiatives. We believe the cost of such capital and its terms and conditions may be substantially less attractive than our previous financings.

Gulp. On the other hand, as Barclays Capital’s Vijay Jayant notes this morning, if Dish were really worried about a coming legal bill, the company probably wouldn’t want to hand its shareholders a $900 million dividend. Let’s see how investors react today.

The deal will be structured as a joint venture, and Scripps (SNI) will kick $181 million into the new partnership; it will then issue another $878 million in debt.

Scripps itself frequently pops up as an acquisition candidate, and that chatter has only gotten louder as a new wave of consolidation appears to be in motion, prompted by Comcast’s (CMCSA) pursuit of GE’s (GE) NBC Universal.

Scripps, which had planned on announcing quarterly results this morning, is pushing back its earnings call till tomorrow morning.

Here’s the full press release:

CINCINNATI–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Scripps Networks Interactive Inc, owner and operator of the Food Network and HGTV lifestyle television networks, will enter into a joint venture with Cox Communications Inc. by which it will acquire a controlling interest in the Travel Channel.

The two companies today signed a definitive agreement that, upon completion, will result in Scripps Networks Interactive owning 65 percent of the Travel Channel and Cox Communications retaining a 35 percent minority stake in the network.

The Travel Channel transaction is expected to be completed by or before January 2010.

“Combining the Travel Channel with Food Network and HGTV will make our fast-growing, young company the undisputed global leader in lifestyle programming,” said Kenneth W. Lowe, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Scripps Networks Interactive. “This collection of popular lifestyle networks will be in great demand worldwide and promises to create substantial long-term value for all of our stakeholders.”

Launched in 1987, Travel Channel has grown to become one of America’s best known cable television networks and today reaches about 95 million U.S. television households. The television network–the cornerstone of Travel Channel Media–supports a growing range of cross-platform initiatives including Internet, mobile and social media applications.

“Adding the Travel Channel, and its related enterprises, provides us with a unique opportunity to meaningfully expand our portfolio into a lifestyle category that’s highly desirable to media consumers, advertisers and programming distributors,” Lowe said. “Our vision for Travel follows the same script that’s made Food Network and HGTV two ofthe most powerful brands in all of television. By lending our unparalleled expertise in developing successful lifestyle media businesses, we have every confidence that we can build on Travel’s strong brand identity and leverage the successes achieved to date by the top-notch team at Travel Channel and our new partners at Cox Communications.”

As proposed, the transaction is structured as a leveraged joint venture between Scripps Networks Interactive and Cox Communications.

Cox will contribute the Travel Channel, valued at $975 million, and Scripps Networks Interactive will contribute $181 million in cash to a newly created partnership. The partnership, in turn, will take on $878 million in third-party debt that will be guaranteed by Scripps and indemnified by Cox, with the proceeds to be distributed to Cox.

The transaction will result in the partnership having about $696 million in net debt.

“This solid partnership that we’re establishing today allows us to maintain an interest in Travel Channel while at the same time giving the network an opportunity to leverage the resources and expertise of a successful programmer like Scripps Networks Interactive,” said Cox Communications President Patrick Esser. “Scripps has an outstanding reputation as a company, an employer and a programmer. Over the past 15 years, Scripps Networks Interactive has built a portfolio of leading lifestyle programming brands, and we think this complementary expertise will be a boon to Travel Channel’s future growth.”

Scripps Networks Interactive will control the joint venture and the network will be run as part of the company’s growing portfolio of popular lifestyle media brands.

“The incredibly complementary nature of our lifestyle media businesses presents an abundance of opportunity to provide services for Travel Channel that will result in increased advertising and affiliate revenues and substantial cost synergies,” Lowe said. “We have extensive experience working with partners to build value over the long term. Among cable companies, Cox has an outstanding reputation for its vision and investment for the long-term success of its businesses. We look forward to partnering with them in this venture.”

Scripps Networks Interactive was advised on the transaction by Barclays Capital Inc. and Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.

Viacom (VIA) says Q3 ad sales dropped four percent in the U.S., which is two points better than Q2. Companywide, revenue dropped three percent to $3.3 billion, which is what Wall Street expected, but the company slashed enough costs to produce an earnings surprise: After adjusting for one-time charges, Viacom posted earnings of 69 cents a share, well above the 57-cent consensus.

The company’s overall results do a nice job of illustrating why media companies and investors are so enamored of cable TV these days: Even though ads are slumping, the company was able to wring more out of cable system providers (and their subscribers), which more or less kept overall cable revenue flat.

Viacom’s movie business is much less meaningful than its TV operations, but in this case, it underperformed enough to drag the rest of the business down. Viacom blames a six percent drop on crummy DVD sales, which it says suffered compared with strong results a year ago.

But every studio in Hollywood is grappling with crummy DVD sales: The only real question is whether that’s a function of the economy or something larger.

I’ll  listen in on the call (8:30 am ET) and report back if there’s anything else worth noting.

UPDATE: CEO Philippe Dauman mentions the new “Sponge Bob Tickler” for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone app, which I believe means that at least one Viacom employee has won a private bet. Waiting to hear more about Q4 guidance.

The core question: Are Dauman and other Viacom execs mildly optimistic about recovery because of an easy comparison with a year ago or because ads are really coming back? A little of both, Dauman says: “Right now the tone is feeling better, but we have to be cautious.”

That’s the pitch Apple has been making to TV networks in recent weeks. The company is trying to round up support for a monthly subscription service that would deliver TV programs via its multimedia software, multiple sources tell me.

Apple (AAPL) isn’t tying the proposed service to a specific piece of hardware, like its underwhelming Apple TV box or its long-rumored tablet/slate device. Instead, the company is presenting the offer as an extension of its iTunes software and store, which already has 100 million customers.

A so-called “over the top” service could theoretically rival the ones most consumers already  buy from cable TV operators–if Apple is able to get enough buy-in from broadcast and cable TV programmers.

That’s a big if: Apple has told industry executives it wants to launch the service early next year, but I have yet to hear of a single programmer that has made a firm commitment to the company, which has tasked iTunes boss Eddy Cue with promoting the idea.

Industry executives believe that if anyone jumps first, it will be Disney (DIS), since CEO Bob Iger has shown a willingness to experiment with Apple and iTunes in the past: In 2005, Disney was the first player to sell its programming on iTunes, via a-la-carte downloads. And Apple CEO Steve Jobs is Disney’s largest single shareholder, a result of Disney’s 2006 acquisition of Jobs’s Pixar animation studio. Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Network executives I’ve talked to are intrigued by the idea–they are eager to find new revenue streams–but are also wary, for several reasons.

Cable networks, for instance, don’t want to threaten existing relationships and subscription fees from cable providers like Comcast (CMCSA). And programmers are also worried about the effect a subscription service would have on advertising revenue: Even if the service didn’t distribute TV programs until after their initial air date, that could cut into ratings, which now measure viewership over the course of several days.

But the move to deliver TV and movies over the Web is already well under way. Netflix (NFLX), for instance, already bundles free streaming movie and television along with its disc-by-mail subscription service. iTunes and Amazon (AMZN) rent movies on a one-off basis, and Google’s (GOOG) YouTube is trying out the same thing. Meanwhile, Hulu, the joint venture between GE’s (GE) NBC, News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, and ABC, is figuring out how to launch a paid service that may include rentals, paid downloads or subscriptions.

So Apple’s proposed subscription service, which the company has floated in the past, is no longer a huge stretch. Says one executive briefed on the company’s plans: “I think they might get it right this time.”

(Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the owner of Travel Channel as Discovery.)

Rupert Murdoch and company are mulling a sale of the “action sports” cable channel, prompted by inbound requests, industry sources tell me. No comment from News Corp., which also owns this Web site.

If News Corp. (NWS) does part with the channel, it won’t be a whopper of a deal: Fuel TV, which features skate- and surf-themed programming like “The Adventures of Danny and the Dingo” (I know. Me either.) boasts just 30 million subscribers–about half of what cable networks need to get taken seriously by operators and advertisers.

Just as telling, perhaps: I’ve queried three different Wall Street analysts to get a ballpark price for the network, and none had a clue–and only one had even heard of Fuel.

So here, for everyone’s edification, is some Fuel TV programming: Danny and the Dingo’s (who are snowboarding stars, apparently) most recent high jinks.

The numbers, via parent company GE’s (GE) release this morning: NBCU posted a $732 million operating profit, up 13 percent year over year, on revenue of $4 billion, which is down 20 percent. Important footnote: As GE explained during its earnings call, if you adjust NBCU’s performance for one-time gains, operating profit would actually be down nine percent.

Still, even that result is an improvement over previous quarters. So perhaps those numbers will cheer Comcast investors, who have been beating up the cable company ever since news of its talks to buy NBCU surfaced last month.

GE usually spends very little time discussing NBCU’s performance during its earnings calls, since investors are much more concerned with the rest of the company’s performance, and in particular, its troubled finance arm. But perhaps the pending Comcast (CMCSA) deal will change that this time around.

Some notes from the earnings call: GE CEO Jeff Immelt has joined the “recession is over” crowd, but only mentioned NBCU briefly during his opening statement. He says scatter pricing–ads that marketers buy during the TV season, as opposed to the spring “upfronts”–is “better.”

GE booked a $283 million one-time gain from the sale of some of its stake in the A&E cable channel. And it took charges on write-downs related to its stake in NDTV, its Indian TV investment, as well as the Weather Channel, which it bought alongside some private equity groups for $3.5 billion last year. But the company still ends up $89 million ahead in the one-time events column–the equivalent of a penny per share of earnings.

And as the company explains in the table below, if you take out the one-time gains, NBCU’s quarterly profit increase turns into a loss. This is a reverse of previous quarters, when the company told investors to ignore one-time losses that made horrible earnings look even worse.

More color on the scatter market: CFO Keith Sherin says Q4 pricing is up “double digits” for primetime TV spots, and more than 20 percent for cable TV.

Asked a vague question about the proposed NBCU deal, Immelt gave a vague answer, noting that while “NBCU is a great franchise that’s consistently delivered income growth and cash…we always evaluate our portfolio.” He then suggested that GE doesn’t need to sell NBCU, which is the right thing to say. “We just want to be ready for several scenarios….We don’t have a specific pronouncement, or a specific need for cash.”

Here’s GE’s broad-stroke description of NBCU’s quarter (click to enlarge):

As it is, now that investors and analysts have heard the more plausible deal–instead of buying NBCU for $35 billion, the cable giant kicks in up to $6 billion in cash, plus its cable networks, and gets 51 percent of NBCU–they’ve decided they hate that one, too.

Here’s the story in the graphic form (click chart to enlarge):

The Comcast-NBCU story broke after the market closed on Wednesday, in case that wasn’t clear. As I’m typing this, Comcast (CMCSA) is trading around $15.6 a share, down some seven percent since the talks became public.

Pull back a bit and you see that things could be much worse: As recently as March, Comcast was down below $12, and there wasn’t any multibillion dollar deal weighing down the shares then.

If anything, investors are much more forgiving to Comcast here than the professional chattering class of writers and analysts, who hate the deal. The conventional wisdom: Comcast’s dream of marrying cable programming with its cable service is misguided because media conglomerates like Time Warner (TWX) and News Corp (NWS) have already tried it and concluded that it didn’t work. If the Roberts family spends money on anything, they argue, it ought to be on shareholders, either via dividends or by buying back shares.

Here’s a sampling of today’s sentiments:

Pali Capital’s Rich Greenfield:

Comcast is trying to become a massive player in content…a move that investors should be frightened about, regardless of the initial “math” surrounding the transaction.

Barclays Capital Vijay Jayant:

Press reports of this potential transaction give credence to investor concerns that management has empire-building aspirations in general or that they may not believe enough in their own distribution business over the long term and therefore need to diversify their portfolio holdings…fundamentally, we believe that Comcast shareholders would be better served if the company were to invest in its own shares.

So if this is a trial balloon, you wouldn’t say it has been shot down completely. But it’s certainly sagging.

The deal was hammered out by reps at a Tuesday meeting, Waxman reports, citing “two individuals informed about the meeting.” The $35 billion price tag happens to be the value that a recent JP Morgan report assigned to the company.

Comcast (CMCSA), in a statement, says the story is untrue: “While we do not normally comment on M&A rumors, the report that Comcast has a deal to purchase NBC Universal is inaccurate.” NBC Universal has no comment.

Clintonian parsers will note that Comcast’s denial has potential wiggle room: It isn’t denying, for instance, that the two companies had or are having talks. On the other hand, this is exactly the situation where corporate PR protocol calls for the “we don’t comment on market rumor and speculation” line. That way, you have the option of updating your statement if the story does turn out to be true. And for what it’s worth, I can’t recall the last time I saw a big, publicly traded company respond to an M&A story with this specificity.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times’s Joe Flint now says that Comcast is “kicking the tires” at NBCU, according to ”people familiar with the situation.” His report is much more hedged than Waxman’s.

All that said, this is a tie-up that has a first-blush logic to it: Comcast is flush with cash and could presumably take on more debt if it wanted to, and the company has shown an interest in branching out into content before. In 2004, it made a run at Disney (DIS). And the drumbeat for GE (GE) to dump its 80 percent stake in NBCU has been more or less constant, even while the industrial conglomerate insisted it had no interest in selling.

Those drumbeats get louder every year around this time, by the way. That’s because Vivendi, which owns the remaining 20 percent stake in NBCU, has a put option that kicks in every November and that could theoretically force GE into buying out the stake or spinning the whole thing out to the public.

More theoretical ammunition for a deal: Comcast is one of the few potential buyers that could swallow up all of NBCU. While there might be lots of people interested in NBCU’s cable properties (USA, Bravo, SciFi, etc.), there aren’t many who also want the company’s flailing broadcast property.

And while Universal’s film library is potentially attractive to some buyers, many of them–like Time Warner (TWX), for instance–have no interest in the film studio because they already have one.

If you want to play out the theoretical implications for digital, things could get very interesting. NBC is one of the founding partners at Hulu, the free Web TV portal that’s caused consternation for Comcast and other cable providers, which worry that the site is undermining the value of the TV programming they spend big money on. And Comcast and Time Warner have been trying out a “TV Everywhere” strategy that is, in part, a reaction to Hulu’s initial success. But let’s let the dust settle for a minute before we head in that direction.

We’re seeing lots of that as the last bubble shakes out (see: MySpace and iLike, Facebook and FriendFeed). But that strategy also raises plenty of eyebrows from other buyers, who figure that they’re happy to let a struggling company fold, then pick up the talent piece by piece.

Did that just happen with Joost and Time Warner Cable (TWC)? Looks like it.

The cable provider has snapped up former Joost CTO Jason Gaedtke. The company tells Cable Digital News that Gaedtke will report to Mike Hayashi, the multiple system operator’s executive vice president of advanced engineering.

The assumption is that Gaedtke will be helping the company build out its own version of “TV Everywhere,” the Web-video-for-subscribers scheme that everyone from Comcast (CMCSA) to AT&T (T) is trying out.

Not an earth-shattering hire, but I’m noting it here because prior to Joost’s decision to all-but-pull-the-plug, the start-up was trying to peddle itself to buyers like…Time Warner Cable.

The theory: The Web video company hadn’t been able to generate much business, but it had a lot of smart people who could help, say, a cable company build out its own Web video strategy.

So, given that the Web video industry is in the midst of a long-awaited contraction, is Gaedtke’s hire the kind of thing that could undermine other potential deals? We’ll see.

What is it? A TV (and movie) portal that looks more or less like every other TV (and movie) portal on the Web: Hulu, TV.com, Sling.com, Fancast, etc.

The only reason for AT&T (T) to launch its own portal now would be as a placeholder until it launches its own “TV Everywhere” play, where subscribers to its  “U-Verse” TV service would get Web access to cable shows. That’s the same strategy that Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (TWC), Verizon (VZ) and everyone else in the pay TV business is trying.

But while AT&T will likely be doing the same, this site isn’t for that. At least, not according to the note AT&T sent to NewTeeVee, which makes it sound like the company is creating…another free Web TV portal:

We have started a soft launch of a new site called AT&T Entertainment. This site will feature free online content available to any consumer. We’re finalizing a few final elements, and we’ll share more details on our official launch soon.

Allrighty, then. As AT&T says, it’s a soft launch, so maybe when it’s ready for primetime, things will make more sense. But for now it’s a head-scratcher.

One thing that distinguishes AT&T’s site from, say, Hulu: Hulu lets you embed clips from the site on your blog, while AT&T’s site, which relies on Hulu for much of its content, doesn’t. So here’s an awesome, upsetting clip you can see on AT&T’s site, but can only embed by heading to Hulu. Makes sense, right?

We’ll get more details during a conference call later this morning, but if you want to kill time until then, you can play amateur M&A guy and draw up your own list of big media companies that will be buying or selling in the next year or so. The theory: Prices are way down, but seem to have settled. And there are plenty of potential buyers–particularly telco/cable guys–throwing off enough cash to finance some big-ticket items.

If the court’s decision holds up, it could well start another round of dealmaking similar to the one we saw at the beginning of this decade in which the industry consolidated to about half a dozen major players.

Reuters:

“The commission has failed to demonstrate that allowing a cable operator to serve more than 30 percent of all cable subscribers would threaten to reduce either competition or diversity in programming,” the court said.

The judges pointed to rising competition among video providers, including satellite companies like DirecTV Group Inc, as well as telephone companies like AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, which have been rolling out their own subscription television services.

“Cable operators, therefore, no longer have the bottleneck power over programming that concerned the Congress in 1992.” the court said. The FCC’s cable ownership limit has been the focus of court challenges for years.

As Reuters points out, new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski can try to appeal the decision or try to write a new one. But if the cap stays off, we’re likely to see another round of combinations, or attempted combinations, at the very least.

Lots of handicappers have already been expecting big cable operators like Comcast (CMCSA) to make a run at programming assets, as it did with Disney (DIS) years ago. But what if the company deploy its assets to bulk up with more subscribers instead? Investors in Cablevision (CVC), the smallish, New York-based cable system that is a perpetual supposed takeover target that never gets taken over, like the idea: CVC shares are climbing modestly in a flat market.

You can find Mistry at Charlie’s Cafe, where’s she’s back to work running Google’s (GOOG) much celebrated cafeteria. Earlier this year, though, she was a contestant on Bravo’s “Top Chef,” which kicked off its sixth season this week on the cable network, owned by GE’s (GE) NBC Universal.

No idea how Mistry did, and reality show contestants generally sign ultrapunitive contracts that prevent them from spilling the beans about the results of the show. And her Twitter account has yielded zilch so far. But doesn’t hurt to ask.

I checked in with a rep from Bon Appetit Management Co., which operates the cafe for Google, and got confirmation that Mistry is back on the job and “recovering” from the taping.

Oh. And if you do see her, be careful about bringing up oysters clams. She had a bad experience with them on Wednesday’s show, as you can sort of see from his promo clip (I’d show you the whole thing, but NBC hasn’t put up the clips on its sites or on Hulu, presumably because it doesn’t want to upset cable providers. But that’s another story…).

Discovery joins other big names like CBS (CBS) and Time Warner’s (TWX) HBO and Turner, in Comcast’s (CMCSA) “On Demand Online,” which launched last month in a few thousand homes. The program is designed to convince Comcast subscribers to stay on as subscribers, since only subscribers will get Web access to the programming. It’s an answer to Hulu’s offering, which makes shows from News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, GE’s (GE) NBC and soon, Disney’s (DIS) ABC available to anyone with Internet access.

It’s a variation of the “TV Everywhere” program Time Warner has been touting, and similar to ones that other cable providers, like Time Warner Cable (TWC), and telcos like Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) are pursuing.

Like most of the other networks that have linked up with Comcast for the On Demand test, Discovery isn’t handing over its top-tier stuff. You can’t see “Deadliest Catch,” the network’s show about grumpy Alaskan fishermen, for instance.

Meanwhile, some of the stuff you can get will be “windowed”–the industry’s term for holding shows back from viewers to maximize TV eyeballs. Episodes of something called “Verminators,” for instance, won’t be available until a week after they air on TV. But! Comcast subscribers will be able to watch episodes of “Man Vs. Wild” and “Swords,” which will be available the day after they air.

And any full-length programming that Discovery puts on the Web is a change for the cable network, which has held off from doing so precisely because it didn’t want to upset Comcast, which pays it a hefty fee for its programming.

Related note: I hate the “On Demand Online” tag Comcast uses to describe this strategy. And the Comcast people hate it when I call this “Web TV you’ll pay to see.” Their point is that you’re not paying any additional fees in order to get this stuff on the Web; my point is that only paying Comcast subs can see this stuff, as opposed to Hulu’s free-for-all (for now) offering.

So, can anyone suggest a different name? Give me a good one and I’ll use it.

Meanwhile, here’s a “Man Vs. Wild” clip featuring a pesky porcupine: