The marketplace reaction to the fourth feevee was predictable: Who needs it?

"On its merits," says Rob Stengel, cable consultant and a principal of the Boston-based Continental Consulting Group, "I don't think you'll be able to find any distributors jumping up and down with eagerness to get their hands on another pay TV network."

Cable ops and satellite distributors "are crapping all over the idea in public," says a Viacom spokesman, "but privately, the early discussions are promising."

Oh, really? OK, then! Seeing as we apparently take everything publicists say at face value around here, we also pick up on what they don't say: specifically, as Variety's John Dempsey also notes today, the joint 'Mount/Lionsgate/MGM press release from last weekend bore no mention of a single cable company who had agreed to broadcast the channel. But seeing as that's the biggest public crap they could have taken so far — well, that, and not having jumped when Viacom said so — we figure the next round of battles can only go better for the dinged-up Dauman. We wish him luck!

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Showtme-Viacom Split Feeds Drama [Variety]

In the end, the studios just wanted more for their films' pay-cable rights than Showtime was willing to pay. This much was somewhat old news; Viacom and Paramount haven't quite seen eye-to-eye with CBS boss Les Moonves and Showtime chief Matt Blank for some time. The vertical integration implied by their output deals — Showtime had rights to Paramount releases through the end of 2007 — was less a function of convenience than an increasingly forced pairing, especially as Showtime's original programming (Weeds, Dexter, The Tudors) took off over the last few years. Showtime's output deals with MGM and Lionsgate — booked through the end of this year — were just as fragile in the Redstone and Viacom CEO Phillipe Dauman's volatile corporate culture.

Nikki Finke was first on the scene when news broke on Sunday:

Moonves wanted to drastically cut the price for Paramount pics, arguing that "the pay channel world isn't what it used to be" and the value of movies on pay TV has decreased while the importance of hot new scripted original series have increased. I'm told that, as the bargaining dragged on, the Paramount/Viacom camp, once optimistic that it would all work out, lost patience with Moonves' "hard line" and resented being lowballed. Now it looks like Les over-negotiated because Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate have found refuge thanks to Viacom. This new premium TV channel by Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate is that old Hollywood maxim at work: Don't get mad. Get even.

Well, yeah. One observer told Finke that Moonves is "royally screwed" — for starters, there are no studios left on the market for output deals. A defiant Blank, however, is standing tall this morning in Variety:

"We're not willing to sell our network down the river for product that's not as valuable as it used to be," he said. "We wish them well. ...

"We've been having unbelievable success with our original programming," Blank said. "Can you name one movie Showtime has aired in the last three years? But people sure do know The Tudors and Californication and Dexter and Weeds."

Take that spin for what you will, but we're of a mind with David Poland: Apart from drunken Sunday-afternoon pissing contests, what's really in this for the 'Mount? Showtime keeps the studio's library for a while still, leaving MGM and Lionsgate's libraries (along with upcoming, inconsistent Paramount product ranging from Iron Man to The Love Guru) the primary source of programming. (DreamWorks films are aligned separately with HBO.) As such, reports The New York Times, original programming may be in the cards when the new channel launches in late 2009. But why pay hundreds of millions to enter that fray when HBO and Showtime have spent years establishing the institutional upper hand?

Sometimes there is no explanation for this kind of stuff besides entertaining Emperor Redstone — and us. We could watch Brad Grey cannibalize Les Moonves all day. Nevertheless, somebody out there knows something the rest of us don't; maybe an original program is jumping ship? Moonves lost a poker bet with MGM chief Harry Sloan over the weekend? Your guesses are as good as ours.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Studios team on VOD venture [Variety]

The singer's bodyguards had asked some of the fotogs who camp outside her Beverly Hills home if they knew the whereabouts of Lynne Spears.

When the shutterbugs said the elder Spears was holed up nearly an hour away at a TV studio in Valencia, the singer grabbed her two kids - Sean Preston, 21 months, and Jayden James, 9 months - and hit the road in her Mercedes.

With security men in a pair of SUVs flanking her, Spears arrived at set of the kiddie show "Zoey 101," on which little sister Jamie Lynn Spears co-stars. [...]

Spears - wearing a tank top and denim shorts - then handed Lynne, 52, a picture frame and set of papers, including a lawyer's letter warning her to stay away from her grandkids if she's on any medication that might cause her to be impaired...

There may be a connection between this heartwrenching moment of mother-daughter strife and yet another inscrutable message posted to the singer's website earlier this week: "Mother to Grandmother, and my my, you're grand." Whatever the implications of that mysterious phrase (a condemnation? A new entry in her album-naming contest? A sneak preview of her multi-generational maternity wear line?), we can only hope that the once tight-knit family will soon resolve their differences, even if it requires Jamie Lynn barricading the two steel magnolias inside her Zoey 101 trailer to hash things out through some old fashioned bottle-hurling and tears.

• BRITNEY SPEARS MA [NY Post]
• [BritneySpears.com]