CBS Fight With Dish Spills Over to CNET

The Consumer Electronics Association cut its ties with CNET on Thursday, two weeks after CNET’s parent company, the CBS Corporation, prohibited the Web site’s editors from giving an award to an innovative product it deemed illegal.

The association retroactively gave the award to the product in question, the Hopper, a digital video recorder sold by Dish Network that allows users to automatically skip all the ads on prime-time network television shows. The newest version of the product uses technology from a company called Sling that lets customers wirelessly watch recorded shows away from home.

“The CNET editorial team identified the Hopper Sling as the most innovative product of the show, and we couldn’t agree more,” said Karen Chupka, a senior vice president at the association, in a statement. So the Hopper will share the Best of Show award with the product that CNET begrudgingly picked as a backup, the Razer Edge gaming tablet.

The association’s announcement was a stern rebke to CNET, a longtime partner of the association’s annual conference, the International Consumer Electronics Show. The official name is International CES. CNET will no longer host the Best of CES Awards, Ms. Chupka said; the association is seeking a new partner for it.

Mark Larkin, the general manager of CNET, did not comment directly on the association’s decision, but he said in a statement: “As the No. 1 tech news and reviews site in the world, CNET is committed to delivering in-depth coverage of consumer electronics. We look forward to covering CES and the latest developments from the show as we have for well over a decade.”

The spat over the Hopper was, among other things, a proxy fight between CBS and Dish, which are battling in court over the legality of the Hopper. Dish says the product is perfectly acceptable and addresses what consumers want; CBS says it violates copyright. The case is pending, as are several other network owners’ cases against Dish. Last week CBS revised its lawsuit to accuse Dish of covering up its plans for the Hopper during carriage negotiations between the two companies.

When CBS executives learned that the CNET staff had voted to give the Hopper the Best in Show award, they vetoed the editorial decision, fearing it would undermine the company’s lawsuit. CNET staff members tried and failed to resist, and later conducted a revote that resulted in the Razer Edge’s being named the winner. The outrage at CNET spilled into public view a few days later, and one senior writer resigned in protest.

CBS sought to portray its interference with the awards as a one-time-only incident. In a recent statement the company said: “CNET is not going to give an award or any other validation to aproduct which CBS is challenging as illegal, other networks believe to be illegal and one court has already found to violate the copyright act in its application. Beyond that, CNET will cover every other product and service on the planet.”

But the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents manufacturers of products like the Hopper, has backed Dish in the argument. It filed a brief in support of Dish with the court last week, and its president, Gary Shapiro, pounded CBS in a column in USA Today this week.

“CBS, once called the Tiffany network, will never be viewed again as pristine,” he wrote. “The ethical media rule is that corporate business interests should never interfere in journalism â€" or at least not so blatantly, publicly and harmfully. It made me wonder if ’60 Minutes’ had ever suffered the same treatment.” He asserted that the company’s interference also hur! t CNET be! cause “users and partners like us” have “lost confidence in its independence.”

CBS says that’s not true.

Dish, for its part, used the association’s announcement on Thursday to take another shot at CBS. The Dish chief executive Joseph Clayton said he appreciated the re-awarding of the Hopper but regretted that it “has come in the face of CBS’s undermining of CNET’s editorial independence.”

He added, “We look forward to continuing our longstanding relationship with CNET’s editorial staff and hope they are able return to their long tradition of unbiased evaluation and commentary of the industry’s products and services.”

Lena Dunham to Create New Comedy Show

With a series that she stars in, produces, writes and occasionally directs, and a book she is contracted to deliver, Lena Dunham clearly does not have enough to do.

Now she has a new deal with HBO, the network that for her series “Girls,” to create yet another comedy show. Ms. Dunham is teaming with Jenni Konner, an executive producer on “Girls,” to write the pilot for a show about the life and work of a personal shopper in New York.

HBO has not officially announced the show but the network confirmed Ms. Dunham’s participation Thursday. The show will be based on a memoir by Betty Halbreich, “All Dressed Up and Everywhere to Go,” that told of her career working as a shopper for the Bergdorf Goodman department store, buying merchandise for the rich and famous of Manhattan. HBO had previously purchased the rights to the book.

News of the new series was first reported on the Web site Deadline Hollywood.

Christie Gets His Chance for Revenge on Letterman

Chris Christie has been a favorite target for David Letterman over the past few years, and on Monday night he will get his chance to strike back.

The New Jersey governor, whose plus-size figure has been the subject of a seemingly endless string of jokes from Mr. Letterman on his CBS show, will make his first appearance on “Late Night” next Monday.

Mr. Letterman has frequently offered his favorite targets the opportunity to come back at him face to face, including Oprah Winfrey (who took him up on it) and Sarah Palin (who didn’t.)

Most recently during last year’s presidential campaign, Mr. Letterman went to great lengths to try to induce Mitt Romney, whom he had satirized with relish, to be a guest before the election. Mr. Romney declined.

Mr. Christie has already appeared with other late-night hosts, like Jon Stewart, and has said in the past that he accepts the fact that comedians will make fun of his weight - as long as they are genuinely funny doing it.

Christie Gets His Chance for Revenge on Letterman

Chris Christie has been a favorite target for David Letterman over the past few years, and on Monday night he will get his chance to strike back.

The New Jersey governor, whose plus-size figure has been the subject of a seemingly endless string of jokes from Mr. Letterman on his CBS show, will make his first appearance on “Late Night” next Monday.

Mr. Letterman has frequently offered his favorite targets the opportunity to come back at him face to face, including Oprah Winfrey (who took him up on it) and Sarah Palin (who didn’t.)

Most recently during last year’s presidential campaign, Mr. Letterman went to great lengths to try to induce Mitt Romney, whom he had satirized with relish, to be a guest before the election. Mr. Romney declined.

Mr. Christie has already appeared with other late-night hosts, like Jon Stewart, and has said in the past that he accepts the fact that comedians will make fun of his weight - as long as they are genuinely funny doing it.

Ratings Shortfall at Nickelodeon Hurts Viacom Revenue

Hampered by ratings shortfalls at Nickelodeon and an unfavorable film release schedule, Viacom on Thursday reported a 16 percent decrease in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2012, a somewhat steeper drop than analysts anticipated.

But the company’s profits came in slightly ahead of expectations, and the chief executive, Philippe Dauman, pleased Wall Street with positive news about progress at Nickelodeon and Viacom’s other cable networks.

Mr. Dauman said the company was making an “unprecedented investment in content” that was paying off for Nickelodeon. The dramatic ratings declines that began to be visible in late 2011 are moderating, and new shows are premiering. Mr. Dauman said the ratings momentum “confirms our view that our significant and sustained investment in fresh, original content is working, and will continue to drive future ratings growth and revenue improvement.”

Viacom reported revenue in the fourth quarter of 2012, its fiscal first quarter, of $3.3 billion, don from $3.95 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Analysts had forecast $3.48 billion in revenue.

Profits rose to $470 million, or 92 cents a share, compared with $212 million, or 38 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago. But the year-ago quarter was hurt by a settlement with the original shareholders of Harmonix Music Systems, the makers of the “Rock Band” video game series. After adjustments, Viacom earned 91 cents a share in the quarter, a penny higher than analysts had predicted, from $1.06 in the same quarter a year ago.

The damage done by Nickelodeon’s ratings drop was evident in the total revenues for Viacom’s cable networks, by far the biggest part of its business. Revenue dipped 2 percent at the networks overall, largely because advertising revenue decreased 6 percent, even as affiliate fees paid by cable and satellite distributors grew.

Mr. Dauman said on a conference call with analysts that the “lingering effects of the r! atings softness” at Nickelodeon masked growth elsewhere at the cable networks. Excluding its children’s channels, Viacom’s networks group “returned to positive ad growth in the quarter,” he said.

David Bank, a media analyst for RBC Capital Markets, said Nickelodeon’s ratings for the past few months are showing recovery after a rocky 2012. “All they need to do is continue to deliver the audience they are already delivering â€" without growth â€" and the year-over-year comparisons virtually assure growth,” he said.

Nickelodeon will pitch a slate of new animated and live-action series to advertisers at a presentation in late February. One of the areas of focus is preschool programming â€" the idea being that very young viewers will stick with Nickelodeon throughout their childhood.

Mr. Dauman said Viacom has found that its viewers of all ages want more new shows, and they want more episodes of those shows on “faster cycles,” so it has sped up the development and productionprocesses at Nickelodeon and elsewhere.

Mr. Dauman spent some time on Thursday’s earnings call praising MTV, another one of its flagship networks, which he said had started to answer the question “What comes after ‘Jersey Shore’” That infamous reality show had its series finale earlier this winter.

“‘Jersey Shore’ was a game-changing hit,” he said, “but it also precipitated an overemphasis on one night,” which was Thursday. MTV is trying to spread its new shows â€" “Catfish,” “Washington Heights,” “Buckwild” â€" across the weekly schedule.

Viacom’s film studio, Paramount, saw revenues drop 37 percent in the quarter, to $975 million. The company attributed this to the fact that it had fewer releases this time around.