*How'd you like to be in a business in which your competition uses your space to steal your customers? That's one of the crazy elements in the cable-satellite TV media wars. Most visible these days is Verizon, which is plugging the heck out of its FIOS service on TV channels piped into homes via cable or satellite. You'll also see cable commercials aired on satellite-delivered channels and vice versa. Imagine how this would work elsewhere. How about a Poughkeepsie Journal ad in the Freeman. "Buy our newspaper, it's better than this one." Maybe a ShopRite sign in Hannaford's. "Our meat prices beat this store's."

*Adam Sandler sang a Neil Young song (for real) on Letterman the other night. I don't care much for Sandler's TV and movie work, although there seems to be a market for it. But I'm begging you, Adam, stop butchering the work of rock legends.

*Imus has been out sick the last couple of days. For a guy who supposedly lives a healthy lifestyle now that his drinking and drugging days are behind him, he always seem to be ill. Anyway, Bernard McGuirk has done just fine in Imus' absence.

*Why does anyone with a contrary view want to be a guest on the programs hosted by Bill O'Reilly or Chris Matthews? It's just a license to be clobbered. Matthews disagreed with a former Bush administration official last night. No surprise. But he barely let the guy get in a word to offer his point of view. Matthews asks a question and then asks it again three different ways even when his guest is in the same pew. When he's not, the repetitive questions are more in the form of harrangues. Of course, O'Reilly is no different from the other side of the political spectrum. His recent shouting match with Barney Frank no doubt pleased the base, but was an embarrassment. Again, why subject yourself to the ridicule when you know coming in that's what you're going to absorb?