In your wet Wednesday media column: Peter Chernin assembling a secret empire, John Carney gets a new job, pay TV is far from dying, Jon Meacham meets Steven Rattner, and Vanity Fair joins the electronic age.

Sweet merciful Space Jesus, save us. A communications satellite is adrift in space and might cross another satellite's orbit, disrupting all US cable TV broadcasts. Someone get Star Wars up and running or something! This menace must be stopped. [AP]

In your soggy Tuesday media column: debating the Hot List, photographers are in trouble, Martha Stewart's voracious appetite is coming to peer into your household, and alt-weeklies are back in style.

The lady/gay reality network has added a fifth evening of original programming to its brightly-hued lineup, we're guessing Sunday night. New shows will include Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and some actual scripted fare, including a comedy about male escorts.

Cablevision's long-suffering subscribers will not be watching the Academy Awards at home tonight.

Another day, another piece of news about broadcast television's slow, painful death rattle. It's no longer just primetime that's hemorrhaging: the big old networks are fighting battles in daytime, in news, and royally fucking up their once-sturdy late night empires.

Hey, this frankly amazing Onion video almost kinda came true! Glenn Beck suffered an appendicitis attack on-air today.

Fox News again beat its competitors for primetime cable ratings. There's no accounting for taste.

Mad Men, the famous and brilliant television show about how it was weird and bad but also secretly really fucking awesome when dudes smoked and drank at work while treating women like shit (and everyone dressed better but there were no black people), was incessantly hyped by every wing of the East Coast Liberal Media Elite for weeks before its new season started, and the premiere drew 2.8 million viewers.

We noticed something queer about Mad Men this week. Well, actually, it was on last week's episode — and it has us scratching our heads over AMC's gay-related anxiety levels.

Studio B With Shepar Smith's new HD weather graphics? They do not really seem completely finished, maybe. But still, Fox is 200% more high-def than all the other cable news networks! Plus!

Neil Cavuto has been at Sacramento's TEA PARTY protest for hours, and he thinks maybe the protesters were "playing to the media"!

It's not just cable pundit "teabagging" jokes (attached) we have to deal with today: it's freedom fighters versus socialist/fascist big government ROBOTS! HAPPY TEA PARTY TAX DAY!

Porn porn porn. Cable companies are hoping to "quietly" sell enough pay-per-view porn to make, you know, a profit. Ad Age wrote a whole story about it just so it could use this quote:

Christmas came early! Someone sent us a scandalous, original blind item just now. And, of course, we'd like to share it with you. After the jump read a tale of gossip and infidelity.

Lovable MSNBC blowhard Keith Olbermann was reportedly not thrilled about attending the Republican National Convention. Last week, Page Six claimed Keith wanted "a more secure location" before attending the proceedings, because, they giggled, he's afraid someone will assassinate him. Ha ha ha what a baby! When the RNC started, Keith was in New York still, covering Gustav, their main story all day Monday. That made sense. But Gustav passed and today it was made official: Keith won't be making it to St. Paul for any RNC coverage. Which, lucky him. Because we think what was meant by "a more secure location" was actually "a fucking indoor studio like Fox and CNN got." Because Denver coverage was marred not just by infighting and bitchery but also by idiot 9/11 truthers drowning out the hosts with bullhorns. Uninterrupted! For like an hour straight! It was embarrassing (and also hilarious). Honestly we would not put up with that shit again if we had Keith's authority at the station. Anyway. Keith Olbermann: coward! [The Cable Game]

Cable news is a hyper-competitive environment full of huge egos fighting with each other for every scrap of a ratings point. And at this time of year, with all the shouting heads descending upon the political convention like a gang of ferrets into a small sack, conflict is inevitable. Plus it's hot, and there's not too much real news anyhow, so everyone is grumpy. After the jump, an illustrated guide to the most vicious feuds in the cable world. Pick your side, demonize your enemies, and play along:

Hah. So CNN rearranged its national bureaus, leaving fewer reporters in their main bureaus and shipping staffers off to smaller cities to, ostensibly, provide more coverage of more cities at a lower cost. Many former Chicago reporters now find themselves reporting full-time from terrible places like Columbus and Minneapolis. So, according to Fox News, that means CNN HATES CHICAGO. They took out a totally fair and balanced full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune about this! News Corp properties are always so IN YOUR FACE about their competitors, right? How far are we from the Wall Street Journal hiring someone to climb the Times building and unfurl a banner that says, like, "Pinch Sulzberger's a Pussy"? [TVNewser]

It's time for the Democratic National Convention in lovely, boring Denver! Are you psyched? Journalists are! Because they're going to be drunk for a week, thousands of miles from home! Just two of the many venues in which hardworking journalists will be getting their drink on the over the next few days are the bars taken over by the cable news networks. Fox's hip FOX Experience and the down-home CNN Grill. Which one looks more like the worst possible place you could ever get drunk? Let's see!