Ah the media, we love a ruckus. We really do. And when the two pugilists are characters as colorful and savvy as Dish Network’s founder Charlie Ergen (left) and Siriux XM Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin (right) we do really get excited.

If you remember, Ergen was widely reported last month to have made a back door bid to take a stake in Sirius XM by quietly buying up some of the satellite radio company’s outstanding debt.  Analysts and experts came up with all kind of theories as to Ergen’s ambitions including taking complete control of Sirius on the cheap, combining various satellite assets, and kicking Mel out.

At the time Ergen ’s official channels at Dish and EchoStar declined to comment on the matter. So today’s Dish earning call was the first time we heard from the man himself on the matter. Well, it turns out the press was right on most things connected with the Sirius bid, according to Ergen. Except for one thing: he does not have bad blood with Sirius CEO Karmazin.

Here’s Ergen from the conference call:

I would take this opportunity to say one thing that clearly was not true is there wasn’t, at least I can speak for my end, there’s no annimosity toward Mel, Parsons [former XM chair] or anything like that.

I don’t know where they got that. Certainly not from our side.

Really?

Maybe the stories of an old feud were overplayed, but there might have something other than pure cold financial logic that influenced Mel’s final decision on this deal. Liberty Media beat Ergen in the bid for a stake in the beleaguered satellite radio business by offering to pay off Sirius’ due loans. In an interview with Reuters shortly after winning the Sirius bid last month, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei implied there may have been some… ahem, personality issues in its favor.

“There clearly is less enthusiasm for Charlie from some members of Sirius XM,” said Maffei.

We wonder which members those were?

So after two weeks of following all the twists and turns of Sirius XM’s attempts to avoid bankruptcy, CEO Mel Karmazin decided on John Malone, founder of Liberty Media, to come in as Sirius XM’s white knight with a $530 million loan . The loan will cover the satellite radio provider’s looming debt and help it avoid bankruptcy. As part of the deal Liberty will eventually take a 40 percent stake in Sirius’ equity.

But does this mean the big money deals that Karmazin signed with the likes of Howard Stern, Oprah Winfrey and Major League Baseball will get re-worked at a more favorable rate for the company now that there’s a new major stakeholder?

No, says Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei in an interview with Reuters.

You can look and say some of these content deals were cut at a time when there were two guys (Sirius and XM) bidding against each other in a relative frenzy. Having said that, a lot of these content relationships like Howard Stern are very valuable to this company, have been important in building the company, and are likely to be important in sustaining it.

But Stern isn’t quite out of the woods.

I’ll rely on Mel and his team to think about how those content relationships look going forward and make the right decisions,” said Mafffei. “All those content (deals) have some term and they’ll get renegotiated or reset at that time for the value that they’re then creating.

With Sirius generating net operating losses which hit $217 million in the third quarter, it would make sense that Liberty might suggest that Karmazin looks at trimming one of its biggest outgoing cashflows: talent costs. But Mafffei seems not to agree.

I don’t think you look and say the way to build profitable business is to hammer the content deal here…as deals rooll-off you can appropriately look at those that are which are adding value and those that are not.

Sirius XM shareholders have seen a lot of dark days — face it, we’re talking about a stock that dropped to 15 cents a share. But today isn’t one of them. At least so far.

Indeed, shares of the satellite radio company jumped 100 percent after Liberty Media Corp agreed to lend it $530 million, allowing Sirius XM and its leader, Mel Karmazin, to sidestep a debt crisis.

The deal comes after a breathless week during which Sirius XM came under threat from EchoStar Corp and its top man Charles Ergen, a longtime rival of Karmazin, and looked very close to bankruptcy.

Now, Liberty Media Corp and yet another media mogul, John Malone, have come to the rescue. Here’s the deal, according to Reuters:

Under the agreement, Liberty would first provide a $280 million senior secured loan to Sirius XM, of which $250 million would be funded on Tuesday to help the satellite radio company repay $171.6 million in convertible notes maturing today.

Then Liberty would provide another $150 million loan to XM Satellite Radio, Sirius XM’s wholly owned subsidiary, and also purchase up to $100 million of XM’s credit facilities.

Once the loans are completed, Sirius XM would issue Liberty 12.5 million shares of preferred stock convertible into 40 percent of common stock.

While the markets are sorting through what all this means, you may want to check out a piece that ran in the Wall Street Journal this morning. It takes an interesting look at how Karmazin got himself into this crazy spot in the first place…

Last summer, after the long-awaited merger of Sirius with rival XM was finally completed, Mr. Karmazin needed to refinance more than $1 billion in debt that the combined company needed to pay off in 2009. But the 65-year-old chairman decided to hold off. The refinancing terms available, he said during an interview in early September, were “ugly” and he was under “no pressure” to get it done immediately.

But the looming deadline provided an opportunity for Charles Ergen….

As of this morning, it looks like he may have wiggled out of Ergen’s grasp. The question is, how does this play out long term?

Keep an eye on:

• Facebooks chief executive is trying to reassure users they they control their information, not the website (NY Times)
• Agency fees are the latest casualty in Anheuser-Busch InBev’s quest to trim $1.5 billion in costs out of the world’s largest brewer (AdAge.com)

(Photo: Reuters)

When media moguls duke it out, what’s their battleground? Newspapers, evidently.

For the past week, EchoStar boss Charlie Ergen and Sirius XM radio’s CEO Mel Karmazin have been doing battle on the pages of two venerable dailies, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The Journal had a head start on the story, reporting how Ergen had started buying up Sirius debt in an attempt to force the satellite radio company into a deal. Then, it revealed how Ergen had actually made an offer to buy Sirius, which Karmazin rejected.

While the rest of the media was digesting all this, out came the Times with a story that said Sirius was preparing for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, which could come within days. It had even hired bankruptcy experts, the Times wrote. The Journal quickly swatted that idea down, saying:

“The hiring of bankruptcy and restructuring advisers, while not surprising given the company’s financial predicament, doesn’t mean a filing is imminent.”

It refined that idea in a story Wednesday night, taking a direct swipe at the Times’ reporting:

“This week, Sirius representatives responded to Mr. Ergen’s move by spreading word that the company was preparing to file for bankruptcy and had hired bankruptcy and restructuring advisers. Company officials also privately told investors that Sirius has entered a “zone of insolvency” and that a bankruptcy filing would be preferable to cutting a deal with Mr. Ergen, according to people who participated in the discussions.”

The New York Post has since gotten into the game, and all three papers reported on Wednesday the appearance of a “white knight” in the form of Liberty Media’s John Malone, who controls DirecTV.

With these papers probably taking turns to report the latest developments on this story, we’re all in danger of getting whiplash.

Keep an eye on:

• The Federal Communications Commission approved the spin-off of Time Warner Cable from Time Warner Inc. That can only be good news for Jeff Bewkes, who can now focus all his attention on selling off AOL. (Reuters)
• The merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster has raised political hackles, but the groups are out to defend. (Financial Times)
• The media’s love affair with Twitter, or at least writing about it, continues, with yet another takeout on the microblogging site. (The New York Times)

(P.S. A subscription may be required to access The Wall Street Journal stories.)

(Photo: Reuters)

Wall Street sell-side analysts seemed to be unsurprised by AT&T’s decision to pick DirecTV as its video marketing partner for its version of the ‘triple play’ package, in regions where it hasn’t built out its U-verse digital service.

The final decision had seemed obvious to analysts after DISH said earlier this month that AT&T would extend its five-year relationship by just one month to Jan 31.

But what does it mean for the independent DISH and its maverick founder/CEO Charlie Ergen (pictured), with the No. 2 U.S. satellite TV provider already struggling with customer losses in a tough economy?

Here’s what a few analysts say:

Craig Moffett, Sanford Bernstein.

The announcement is a clear negative for Dish Network, and a major win for DirecTV. As a result, we now expect Dish Network to post a sizable (400,000) subscriber loss for full year 2009. We had previously expected approximately flat net growth. For DirecTV, we now expect a gain of 800Kwhere previously we had expected approximately half that.

Ingrid Chung, Goldman Sachs:

While the loss of the AT&T contract should have a positive impact on 2009 free cash flow for DISH (due to subscriber acquisition costs), DISH will be somewhat strapped to do any investing in its own business for the next several months. DISH has $1 billion in debt maturities coming due Oct 1 and has no revolver in place. While DISH can pay down this debt (and $500 million for the AT&T convert) through cash and investments - $1.8 billion at 6/30/08 - DISH will have limited capital to invest in its mobile video initiative or build out its direct sales channel.

But one analyst sees an investment opportunity despite DISH’s troubles.

Todd Mitchell, Kaufman Bros

The net impact of this deal will be to negatively impact DISH’s gross adds while putting greater pressure on churn. However, given DISH’s rather dismal operating performance recently we have already handicapped it pretty heavily. DISH’s performance should improve regardless of AT&T.

(Photo: Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• WPP, the world’s second largest advertising group, has extended its 1.2 billion-pound    ($2.2 billion) offer for market-research company TNS again, TNS said it continued to recommend shareholders reject the bid (Reuters)
• Goldman Sachs cuts European media companies to reflect greater debt concerns and worsening macro economic outlook, especially in the UK and Spain. (Reuters)
• U.S. newspaper publisher McClatchy Co said it amended a credit agreement with its lenders helping it to avoid defaulting on its debt. (Reuters)

Jerry Seinfeld, a huge marketing budget, and well-respected agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky would seem a recipe for success. Unfortunately for Microsoft, which kicked off a $300 million advertising campaign last night, the first commercial debuted to lukewarm reviews.

Microsoft is hoping to improve the image of its Windows Vista operating system and take some of the sting out of those popular “Mac vs. PC” advertisements run by Apple. It hired Seinfeld to help, and the first commercial featured the comedian and Bill Gates at a shoe store.

The problem, it seems, is that many people just didn’t get the commercial.  Here’s a sampling.

“I don’t get it. And seeing how the punchline was, ummm, Bill Gates adjusting his shorts, I don’t think I want to get it.” — ZDNet

“Seinfeld and Gates are like The Odd Couple, but awkwardly odd. I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot more of these Jerry and Bill segments. Let’s hope their chemistry improves.” — VentureBeat

“When we first heard that Microsoft was prepping an ad campaign starring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld I was cautiously optimistic. Gates has a good sense of humor about himself, and Jerry might not be your cup of tea but he can be pretty funny now and again. The first ad has hit TV screens across the nation and… I don’t think I even have words for it.” — MacUser

“Anyone know what this is supposed to do except raise awareness of, well, Jerry?” — Geardiary

Keep an eye on:

• Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, unknown to most Americans a week ago, nearly matched Barack Obama’s record TV audience with her feisty speech accepting the Republican nomination for vice president, topping 37 million U.S. viewers (Reuters)
• Nearly one in five US households watches TV programming online, double the number in 2006, a new survey from research organizations TNS and the Conference Board shows (NY Post)
• A federal judge in Texas delayed ruling until as late as November on whether EchoStar Corp owes TiVo Inc  more damages for infringing on its “Time Warp” digital video recorder technology (Reuters)
• ESPN is merging video game graphics with real-life sports anchors (NY Times)

(Photo: Reuters)

A couple of years ago, if you had suggested TiVo and DirecTV would ever kiss and make up — after DirecTV dumped TiVo in favor of DVRs by NDS (then a cousin in the News Corp Family) — you might have said it was as likely as “90210″ coming back to TV.

Well one day after the new “90210” premiered on the WB network, TiVo and DirecTV said they are working on a new HD TV set-top box. The agreement puts TiVo in a position to turn a bigger portion of DirecTV’s 16+ million customers into TiVo subscribers, in a deal that TiVo says will reap more in fees than previous agreements.

Reuters spoke to TiVo CEO Tom Rogers about the deal.

Reuters: This is kind of like getting back together with your first love.
Rogers: I’ve been saying for a long time that with DirecTV’s ownership by Liberty Media, it created a new atmosphere and a new environment. I think the management of DirecTV has always been supportive of TiVo and believes that we can put together a very exciting offering.

Reuters: DirecTV is still going to offer generic DVRs to its subs?
Rogers: We are comfortable with that. We recognize that generic DVRs will continue to exist. The biggest contributors to confusion between what is Tivo and what is “DVR” has been mass distributors themselves and obviously the more deals we do the more people have interest to make sure that there is a DVR offering and then something very different that is TiVo.

Reuters: DirecTV TiVo users don’t pay fees to TiVo directly. Is this deal lucrative for you?
Rogers: It was very a successful arrangement for us. There is a lot of financial upside.

Reuters: You are still in court with EchoStar, the other satellite provider. Do you see a time when you will make a similar deal with them?
Rogers: We kind of have a three-pronged strategy: Our go it alone route, our join ‘em route, which is what you could say this is, and our fight ‘em route, which is what EchoStar is. We are getting to the end of the enforcement stage in our fight with EchoStar. Tomorrow we are back in front of the judge for a hearing (related to an injunction and damages).

Reuters: Is TiVo close to the point when that kind of fighting is over?
Rogers: Three years ago I think the view of TiVo is that it had been totally commoditized, that other DVRs were out there and that TiVo, other than a brand name, didn’t have a meaningful distinction. Over the past year we have regained that mantle of innovation, of pioneer. We continue to lead the way on features and giving people a sense of controlling their own destiny on television consumption. We have a lot of work to do but I think we have made enormous progress.

Reuters: But your subscriber gains have still been flat lately. When is there an upturn?
Rogers: When Comcast begins to kick into full gear, and as the DirecTV product becomes available — we have been dialing back our marketing expense on the standalone front…we think all that will kick in to meaningful subscriber growth.

(Photo: Reuters)