If the low ratings at Oprah Winfrey’s OWN weren’t evidence enough of viewer disinterest in programming that inspires, then perhaps the massive ratings growth at Investigation Discovery, a network whose shows are almost exclusively populated by murderers and stalkers, can provide convincing.

Investigation Discovery, the crime-themed cable channel that launched in January 2008, is not just getting better ratings than OWN, it is also doing better than the Discovery Channel itself. Over the last two weeks, ID averaged 275,000 total viewers, or 8,000 more than the 267,000 viewers that Discovery averaged, according to Nielsen. OWN, which launched in January 2011, only averaged 180,000 total daily viewers during the fourth quarter.

Given those ratings, who needs to spend millions on shows like “Planet Earth” when you can just air cheesy non-fiction crime programming like “I (Almost) Got Away With It” and “Who The (Bleep) Did I Marry. Those kind of shows have the fingerprints of ID president Henry Schleiff all over them. After all, Schleiff built Court TV into a cable network powerhouse on the back of similar programming.

According to a report from investment bank Barclays, the momentum behind ID could give parent company Discovery Communications “substantial leverage” when it negotiates new distribution agreements with cable and satellite operators next year. Currently, analysts estimate that ID only earns 8 cent per subscriber in carriage fees while Discovery commands 36 cents per subscriber.

As the flagship network, however, the fact that Discovery Channel is losing steam could spell trouble for its parent company, which is not only seeing poor results from OWN, but also was forced to recently rebrand the struggling environmental focused network “Planet Green” as “Destination America.”

Sony, in a bout of bad timing, is hosting an event on March 7 in San Francisco for tech reporters at the same time as Apple’s reported iPad 3 unveiling and the Japanese conglomerate wants to make sure it won’t get ditched.

Sony, which some people consider to be the “Apple of the ’80s”, sent out a helpful e-mail on Tuesday informing invited members of the press of the scheduling conflict without mentioning the world’s most valuable tech company. 

The email said:

Another press event invitation went out today which conflicts with the Sony roundtable on March 7. Please confirm if you are still available to join the Sony event.    

The Sony event is a breakfast with Sony Electronics president and chief operating officer Phil Molyneux. He helped spearhead Sony’s tablet launch last year, the “S” and the “P”, which are among the many tablets chasing the iPad.

Sony isn’t the first Japanese company to get overshadowed by an iPad launch. Last year, the iPad 2 was revealed at the same time Nintendo President Satoru Iwata was speaking across the street at the Game Developers Conference.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX5jNnDMfxA[/youtube] Some executives quote philosophers like Plato or legendary coaches such as Vince Lombardi. But not Charlie Ergen; that’s far too high-brow for him. The Dish Network chairman seems to get his theories on management from television and movie comedies.

Just a few quarters after he described Dish’s wireless situation as a “Seinfeld Strategy” (it may not seem clear now but it’ll make sense in the end), the Dish chairman gave a shout out to the Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels 1994 classic comedy “Dumb and Dumber” on Thursday. When asked by an analyst whether Dish would receive government approval to use its wireless assets, Ergen said:

“I’m hoping. You know that Dumb and Dumber line? I think there is a chance.”

The scene he is referring to is posted above.

Ergen, who has played poker and blackjack professionally, also made some analogies to wagering on Thursday. When asked about the odds of the FCC approving the company’s application for wireless spectrum he said:

“I would go broke betting on Washington. I’m about 0-for-100 in Washington.”

But here’s something for Ergen can count on: the Farrelly Brothers are planning a “Dumb and Dumber” sequel that will reunite Carrey and Daniels in their roles as Lloyd and Harry.

Curt Schilling, the former pitcher and two-time World Series champ is more nervous about his new video game than he ever was about baseball.

He told a New York crowd at an event put on by Electronic Arts on Tuesday that he slept like a baby before World Series games in 2007 — but didn’t catch a wink on Monday night ahead of the release of his company’s first video game.

Schilling’s personal fortune is on the line with “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning,” a fantasy-action game that hit stores Tuesday. Schilling told Reuters last July he had invested between $30 million to $35 million of his own money into the 400-person company he founded that made the game.

“‘This is opening day of career 2.0,” he told the crowd . And it’s an opening day that’s seven years in the making–Schilling founded the company called 38 Studios (after his jersey number) in 2006.

Schilling has been a video fanboy for years. Peter Moore, EA’s chief operating officer said he first spoke with him in 2005. Schilling called Moore, who then worked at Microsoft, to see if he could get his hands on an advance copy of the Xbox 360.

Moore, who said he turned down phone calls from Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson that same day, took Schilling’s because he was a big Red Sox fan.

“We spoke one hour about massive multiplayer games. I tried to talk him out of it,” Moore said, of Schilling’s idea to bankroll a video game.

Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, isn’t pleased with reports that Zynga is ripping off games from small developers so he is doing something about it–wielding his pen to write passionate manifestos to employees invoking Silicon Valley greats like Apple.

After a game developer accused Zynga of copying a game called “Tiny Tower”,  Pincus sent a 60-line memo to employees to make sure his flock knows Zynga has done nothing wrong, (the memo was leaked to the blog VentureBeat and later obtained by Reuters).

“Google didn’t create the first search engine. Apple didn’t create the first mp3 player or tablet. And, Facebook didn’t create the first social network. But these companies have evolved products and categories in revolutionary ways.”

And just like tech heavyweights did not reinvent the wheel, neither does Zynga need to with its simple but addicting games. 

“We don’t need to be first to market. We need to be the best in market … Zynga Poker, FarmVille, CityVille and Words with Friends, none of these games were the first to market in their category but we made them the most fun and social,” he said.

Pincus also shows reverence to video game history involving games where players build towers-”it’s important to note that this category has existed since 1994 with games like Sim Tower.”

His arguments are perfectly valid. It is just amusing that he is getting so worked up about claims his company is stealing ideas from a game called ”Tiny Tower,” and then later defending the authenticity of  Zynga’s new Bingo game to VentureBeat.

Helen Gurley Brown, the 89-year-old former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine and author of “Sex and the Single Girl” is donating $30 million to Columbia University and Stanford to fund a media and technology institute.

Columbia will pocket $18 million while Stanford’s Engineering School will net $12 million. Columbia will use $6 million to build a “highly visible signature space” at the journalism school’s building in New York. This marks a record donation for the journalism school.  

Apple board-member Bill Campbell will advise the new center along with Hearst Corp CEO Frank A. Bennack, Jr. The donation is in honor of Gurley Brown’s late husband David, the famous producer of classic movies such as ”Jaws” and attended both schools. Gurley Brown, who was dubbed “the original Carrie Bradshaw” by the New York Times. edited Cosmo for more than three decades.

(Helen Gurley Brown and David Brown, photo courtesy of  Marketwire)

Investors were salivating on Friday at the prospect of Zynga breaking into online gambling. The company said it is in “active conversations with potential partners” to try and figure out the market, which sent its shares up 7 percent.

Last month, the U.S. Justice Department declared that only online betting on sports is unlawful, setting the stage for some U.S. states to legalize online gambling.

Melissa Riahei, general counsel at the online gaming company, U.S. Digital gaming, said Zynga would not be able to enter the $35 billion online casino market on its own. If Internet gaming is legalized, Zynga would have to partner with an operator that could get a license for Internet gambling, like a casino, and have to figure out which states it can work in.

Still, “the opportunity is huge. Zynga has a very good chance of being a big player in this market because of the player base it can bring”, she said.

Zynga has 30 million monthly players of its poker game and it could also could jump into gambling on the go–on a smartphone or tablet.

Paul Bettner, who leads the Zynga studio behind top mobile games like “Words with Friends”  said he is monitoring the new industry closely but nothing has been decided yet.

“I can’t speak to whether there will be ‘A Gamble with Friends’ game in the future. I think some of those mechanics are interesting and could be very fun in mobile games. I am very intrigued by that,” Bettner said.

Dish Network went kangaroo-crazy at this year’s CES. Not only did a mascot in a kangaroo suit greet attendees at its press conference, but CEO Joe Clayton took to the stage cradling a wallaby, which resembles a small kangaroo.

Whilst Clayton cuddled the marsupial, someone whispered in the audience: “Does PETA know about this?”

The kangaroo schtick promotes the company’s new set-top box, the Hopper, and its smaller counterpart, the Joey. Together, the devices will let Dish customers record six shows at once that can then be watched in four rooms.

Clayton told me after the show he spent his Sunday at a photo shoot at a farm outside of Las Vegas, posing with kangaroos. He said it was hard to keep the animal still and he had to be careful not to step in kangaroo dung.

Meanwhile, Dish hired trainers and photographers to snap photos of attendees with a live kangaroo and wallaby on Monday. The lines proved longer for the wallaby — the kangaroo was jumpy and looked like he’d rather be anywhere than the Venetian at lunchtime during CES.

Check out this video of the kangaroo “model” to see what we mean by “jumpy”:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIOHMxc-arM&context=C32fbafbADOEgsToPDskJdrpG4Ie3mRl83NxUrokrf[/youtube]

Howard Stern is going to be a judge on the NBC show “America’s Got Talent,” this summer and Wall Street is already betting this is going to benefit the shock  jock’s satellite radio home, SiriusXM Radio.

Stern, who will replace the less potty mouthed Piers Morgan, will raise the profile of his radio show and drive new subscribers, at least one analyst said on Thursday.

“We see this as a positive for Sirius, holding potential for free on air-promotion, positive for awareness and sub growth, depending on how the TV show fares,” said Lazard analyst Barton Crockett in a research note.

His new gig won’t effect his current job, where he is locked down until 2015. What’s more, the show is even moving its production to New York from Los Angeles, so the east coaster Stern can have an easy commute.

Stern inked a five-year deal Sirius XM last December that nets him about $80 million a year, according to analysts.  He brought an estimated 1.2 million subscribers to Sirius when he joined the fledgling satellite radio company in 2006.

There is no word yet on whether Stern will tone down his colorful vocabulary for network TV.

Howard TV, which is a televised version of his radio show, is available on demand from cable providers, including Comcast, the parent company of NBC.

On the same day that James Murdoch was fighting for his career at a parliamentary hearing on Thursday in London, Sony’s CEO Sir Howard Stringer was making fun of the whole situation an ocean away.

At a fancy breakfast hosted by News Corp’s Wall Street Journal in New York (where Sirius XM’s CEO Mel Karmazin was in the house), Stringer was the guest of honor.  WSJ editor Robert Thomson kicked off the Q&A session introducing Stringer, who later took the opportunity to show off one of Sony’s new products, a pair of binoculars that can be used to record video or pictures in 3D. That’s when Stringer seized the moment to turn the breakfast into an impromptu roast about News Corp’s woes.  Wielding the binoculars, he said:

“These are 3D binoculars. I venture it got good reviews. The Wall Street Journal will equip all their reporters with this. And if you think hacking the Royal Family is fun with phones, this is the ideal device. If you stay at the Hotel InterContinental Hyde Park, you can actually gaze into Buckingham Palace with these. I am telling this to (Thomson), wherever you are. Did you leave already? This is for you. This is for you. Video recording or stills.”

When I caught Stringer on the sidelines after the event, he admitted his stand-up routine “was a bit dangerous.”