ESPN debuted  "Kenny Mayne's Wide World of Sports," an online video series in which the former "Sports Center" anchor checks out offbeat sports events.  So far those events will occur in six countries on five continents -- from an elephant polo tourney in Thailand to footvolley on the beach in Rio.

Netflix and the CW Network signed a four-year agreement allowing Netflix to stream scripted series through the 2014-2015 season. The deal, which includes teen dramas like "Gossip Girl" and "One Tree Hill," features this season as well as 700 hours of programming from past ones.

HP and Conde Nast are partnering to test a subscription program that will deliver content from some of the publisher’s most popular magazines -- including Glamour, Self, Golf Digest and Wired -- to HP’s Web-connected individual printers at a specific time each month. No word yet on what this will cost subscribers. Sounds weird, huh? Justin Yu thinks so, too, in a piece headlined “HP's solution to the death of print media: Buy more ink.” “This is the content solution that will save the print industry?” he writes. “Check your calendars; it's not April.”

Fifteen of the top 20 cable networks, including ESPN (down 15%), TNT (down 11%) and Lifetime (down 15%), saw significant declines in ratings in the third quarter. Meanwhile, niche networks posted impressive gains. including Style (up 68% and HLN (ahead 48%). Here's the money quote: “Smaller networks are picking off audience from the top nets,” said David Scardino, entertainment analyst at ad agency RPA.

Meredith, publisher of major consumer mags like Better Homes & Gardens, has agreed to purchase Every Day With Rachael Ray from Readers' Digest Association. Terms were not disclosed. This is the third food media deal Meredith has made this year. It bought Eating Well magazine in June, the same time it also launched a site called Recipe.com.

Who may just be "the most likable partisan person on TV," a point "right and left actually agree on"? That's Rachel Maddow, according to this interview with MSNBC's "primetime superstar" that dissects her appeal as the host of the network's top-rated show. Maddow's numbers helped MSNBC move into the no. 2 cable news spot away from CNN, which it has beat for eight consecutive quarters.  While writer Marisa Guthrie also calls Maddow a "poster girl for civilized give-and-take in an increasingly unpleasant and contentious political climate," a sidebar spotlights jabs she's taken at folks including Bill Clinton, whom she called …

Will Bravo's "Top Chef"  get its own magazine, similar to such celeb-show pubs as Food Network?  Food & Wine magazine, long a sponsor of the program, is testing the idea with a 24-page advertorial, Top Chef Magazine, that will run with F&W's January issue. "If it’s successful, Food & Wine will consider running the section quarterly or turning it into its own issue," writes Lucia Moses. We're big fans of the show -- and magazine junkies -- so, yeah, we'd probably buy a copy.

"The time is coming when judgments about television shows based on initial ratings may be a foolish policy," writes Bill Carter, noting the importance of DVRs on ratings. In fact, delayed viewing results spelled extra goothto "a 3.5 rating, which is inching close to hit territory," writes Carter. "The delayed results are based on playback of shows within a week after they have been broadcast" -- though these numbers "may not get the attention [they] deserve" because "it still takes so long for the Nielsen company to deliver the information."

The National Basketball Association has canceled the first two weeks of its season as part of its ongoing dispute with the players union -- which bodes ill for for the bottom line of everybody concerned, from the league to the networks usually broadcasting those games. In fact,  "TNT, ESPN and ABC collectively shell out about $930 million to broadcast NBA games, while earning some $1.25 billion ad revenue — and that doesn't even include regional sports-cable channels," writes Douglas J. Rowe.

You've probably heard by now that Netflix is canning its plans to launch a new, completely separate DVD-by-mail division called Qwikster, and will continue with a combined streaming and DVD service, both available through the Netflix Web site. But have you heard that the company is still considering at least one aspect that would have been new for Qwikster -- providing video game rentals? That's what Netflix Vice President of Corporate Communications Steve Swasey told CNET -- though there's no timetable yet for the decision. Meanwhile, the media is analyzing the Qwikster murder in the context of the …