You may wonder if ESPN2's "Cold Pizza" ran a little too cold yesterday.The early morning sports-themed talk show apparently had some technical difficulties on Tuesday morning--and popped off the cable airwaves--for a longer than expected period of time. Apparently, the show just stayed off the air, at least in some markets.

For the big picture of the video-on-demand business, Rainbow Media Holdings is thinking small-time entertainment. Rainbow wants to create a business by releasing independent and small art-house films in theaters on the same day that they premiere on VOD services.

Comcast and Fox Broadcasting are moving closer, agreeing to let Fox's new successful prime-time drama "Prison Break" play a bit in the VOD space. Comcast hopes that networks like Fox will move forward once they realize the real promise of VOD. But networks are not there yet. There are real money and other business issues to tackle. For networks, that means not biting the hands that feed them, including that of their affiliates.

It's just what we need right now--a good old-fashioned cable programmer-satellite distributor fight over sports programming. EchoStar has thrown off the Comcast-owned Outdoor Life Network channel from its Dish Network because of OLN's NHL package of games.

There's good news for broadcast TV music shows with so-so ratings: they can help boost music sales."Rock Star: INXS"--the much-maligned summer show from Mark Burnett Productions--seems to have worked for the Australian band INXS. The band's new single debuted in 33rd place in the Billboard Pop Chart last week.

Buy some digital TV equipment and save the world? Maybe. In a weird association, Senator John McCain is demanding that U.S. TV consumers buy digital TV sets and equipment in order to underwrite a better communication system that will prevent disasters like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11.

Broadcast networks have some choices to make money in this new media age. One is to maximize programming assets by offering more ways to extend their brands to alternative media--as Walt Disney-ABC did last week for Steve Jobs and Apple Computer by providing programming for Apple's new video-enabled iPod. Another might be to abandon certain programming dayparts.

Newspapers are acting more like television networks when it comes to selling media to movie studios. A couple of weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times did the unusual, perhaps as a sign that when in Rome, it needs to be more Roman: it gave a free full-page ad worth about $50,000 to the Weinstein Company, the new film company from Bob and Harvey Weinstein. The ad touted the company's 17 titles in production.

Media companies should be able to fend off a slight downturn in the advertising market--but not the Tribune Co. The prominent TV station and newspaper group got hit big time having to tell analysts that for the three months ended in September its stations' revenues dropped while operating cash flow plunged 21 percent to $106.6 million.

In this new age of video content, the financial model for distribution windows of TV shows has been, well, thrown out the window. In the old days--the 1990s--cable and syndication would vie for popular TV shows some four years after their initial network launches. Now those two TV distribution windows seem oh-so-analog.