With media titans GE and Vivendi still negotiating a deal to bring cable operator Comcast into a mega-media joint venture, a management move at DirecTV is giving dealwatchers a fresh programming alternative.

Yinka Adegoke and Sinead Carew report the appointment of PepsiCo veteran Michael White (pictured below), who has no experience in pay TV, as DirecTV CEO is being read as a sign the company’s parent, Liberty Media, just wants a baby-sitter until its sells the operation in the next couple of years.

Telecom leaders Verizon and AT&T approached Liberty earlier this year, they report. Both have cross-marketing deals with DirecTV and would leapfrog the rest of the market with the addition of DirecTV’s subscriber base. But fears of insurmountable regulatory resistance put those talks on ice.

Liberty Media shareholders are set to vote this morning on a plan to split DirecTV from Liberty Entertainment — a move that Wall Street believes could pave the way for a telephone company to put in a bid for DirecTV, leading to a similar bid for smaller rival Dish Network.

If Comcast gets its content pipeline connected to NBC Universal, the pressure on the telcos to boost subscribers could get them to test the regulatory waters again.

Sprint Nextel’s stock soared 11 percent before the market opened on a British newspaper report that T Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom had appointed Deutsche Bank to advise on a possible run at Sprint, valuing the U.S. cellular carrier at $11 billion.

Sprint certainly is a logical target for any company looking to boost its position in the very busy U.S. mobile market. It announced a large goodwill write-off in February 2008

And Deutsche Telekom is on the make. It signed a deal with France Telecom to combine the companies’ British mobile phone businesses — T-Mobile UK and Orange — last week.

A Sprint deal would make T-Mobile the top U.S. mobile company, but it would cost a bundle … and that’s just the up-front funding. Combining Sprint’s CDMA and T Mobile’s GSM technologies would take technological wizardry no less daunting than the magic the German carrier might have to employ in Washington to ensure a deal clears antitrust and other regulatory hurdles.

So while the hype could last through the day, any near-term excitement about a mega mobile merger could well be tempered by the time your next phone bill arrives.

Pity the guys who dreamt up two of Wall Street’s coolest tickers — DNA and BUD — both of which look set to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Genentech grabbed the three letters synonymous with biotechnology by being in on the ground floor of the gene revolution. Anheuser-Busch was lucky enough to have a beer brand known everywhere by one syllable. Now both look doomed.

Genentech faces a $43.7 billion bid from Roche for the 44 percent of the Californian biotech group that it doesn’t already own. Genentech is expected to succomb, albeit after a possibly sweetened offer. Anheuser has already agreed to a $52 billion takeover by InBev.

Their demise may take some of the fun out of stock trading – but investors shouldn’t despair. The thoughtful punter still has other options.

For example:

- BID for auctioneer Sotheby’s

- HOG for Harley-Davidson

- TAP for brewer Molson Coors

- JAVA for Sun Microsystems

- CAR for Avis Budget

- PZZA for pizza company Papa John’s

- BLUD for blood test group Immucor

- LUV for Southwest Airlines (after its Love Field airport in Dallas)

- LVB for Steinway Musical Instruments (after Ludwig van Beethoven)

- LIZ for Liz Claiborne

- PUB for Britain’s Punch Taverns

- WOOF for pet healthcare provider VCA Antech…does that take the biscuit?

And not forgetting the grandaddy of them all:

- T for AT&T (it stands for telephone, of course).

Genentech, meanwhile, will at least keep one thing when it becomes part of a Roche — an ultra-cool address at 1 DNA Way, South San Francisco.

(Photos: Reuters)