Now that Lance Armstrong has retired, what will Discovery Channel do to make sure it gets the most out of the $10 million in marketing the media company spends per year for the Discovery Channel Cycling Team? The good news is that the team has already cashed in - now having two different Discovery Channel cyclists winning the two different Grand Tour races - the Giro d'Italia (Paolo Salvodelli) and the Tour de France (Lance Armstrong). Few major bicycling sponsors can make that claim.

ESPN has a new primetime show with the always talkative and -- quite frankly -- opinionated Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist Stephen A. Smith. It could be a sports marketer's dream. The name of the show, "Quite Frankly," is what Smith says when he is about to inject plenty of brash sass into specific sports issues - most specifically about the NBA, his specialty.

Current, the Al Gore-backed cable news channel, had some altruistic views on the world of news: Let everyone offer their point of view, unfiltered and unedited. But the real world doesn't work that way - not in journalism. Though the Internet provides bloggers with status, they are one factor in news coverage. TV networks need to have - even if only a smidgen -- balance.