A key question facing General Electric is to hold or sell NBC Universal. The media unit is out of place in the massive conglomerate, which provides just under 9% of revenue in 2007. (NBC's revenue growth slowed to 0.1% in the first half of 2008.) Tight credit and a lack of buyers mean the unlikely marriage will continue. One rare buyer might be Time Warner, but "arguably Time Warner's bulk already causes headaches." The only big wild card is Vivendi, which owns 20% of NBCU. If Vivendi decides to use its option to sell, GE might …

NBC is teaming with Dish Network to allow viewers to watch a multiple-screen showing of Olympics coverage. Dish's "iTV mosaic" will simultaneously display six Olympics channels--CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, USA Network and two Olympic highlight channels. In addition, viewers will be able to view athlete profiles, read Olympics news, view highlights of each day's events and track each country's medal counts via iTV. "NBC Universal and Dish are setting the pace for the entire industry with interactive television," says Dalen Harrison, chief of Ensequence, which contributed to the new format. "Innovative programmers realize that interactive television delivers both engagement and the …

TheWB.com will launch on August 27, offering classic series that aired on the now-defunct WB TV network, along with a new Web series. Johnson & Johnson signed up as the site's charter sponsor. As part of the rollout, TheWB.com will feature an original application on Facebook. Comcast will also offer more than 1,000 TV episodes from the Warner Bros. library on the Comcast video-on-demand service. There are rumors that WB is starting the Web site as a trial balloon. If successful in drawing its targeted 18-34 female audience in significant numbers, the company might start a WB cable TV network.

Sun-Times Media Group reported a narrower second-quarter operating loss compared with a year ago--and suggested it might de-register its nearly valueless stock and go private. CEO Cyrus Freidheim floated the going-private idea in a letter to shareholders released with its quarterly financial release. Sun-Times is still exploring alternatives including the sale of the flagship Chicago Sun-Times and some of the other 90 papers it publishes in the Chicago area. Freidheim held out little hope that a sale might be coming any time soon.

There appears to be way too much smoke for the major mainstream media to continue ignoring the allegations about an out-of-wedlock child that John Edwards may have fathered. The silence is making the newspaper industry look out of touch, just as it is trying to assert its relevance, say critics. "With everyone from Drudge to Leno to Wonkette riffing on a tale that began trickling out at Christmas, the mainstream press look foolish by remaining silent," writes media critic Alan Mutter. "Now that the charges are festering on the Web, on talk radio and around the watercooler, mainstream journalists owe …