You think NBC is making a good return on its investment for these Olympics? You don't even know what a good return is. NBC had to bid for these Olympic rights in an auction, and they ended up paying more than $1.5 billion for the most recent summer and winter games. But how much did CCTV, the national broadcast network in China, pay for the money-minting opportunity to carry the games in its home country? (Hint: there's nobody for them to bid against):

Time Warner yesterday announced some weak quarterly financials, with earnings off 26 percent. But there was a big bright spot, the media conglomerate's cable networks like HBO and CNN, where profits were up 18 percent, led by advertising gains. There's a similar situation at NBC Universal, where ratings gains at Bravo (Runway, Top Chef), MSNBC (Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews) and even the USA Network have formed a thick silver lining around the storm cloud that is the flagship broadcast network. The business-side gains add a financial dimension to the cable industry's creative golden age, described by the Times' David Carr in June and obvious to anyone with a smartly programmed DVR or Netflix queue. Cable is the swaggering golden child of television, and it's only going to get more confident, because the advertising model that's fueling all its fun happens to be perfect for a recession.

TV is dying, right? We read about it online. Kids these days spend all their time on YouTube, and television is left to geriatrics watching Depends ads, right? But no! One word, friends: Cable. Just today, news came out that the executives at Discovery Communications, home of the Discovery Channel, are some of the highest paid in all of the media—their CEO took home $20 million, right up there with the Viacoms and Time Warners of the world. How did little old cable get so rich? Good timing, good programming, and a little bit of luck. Learn and marvel!

Longtime readers of Defamer no doubt recall the days when our corporate campus was limited to a fifty-acre plot on the Eastside. True, we had all the razor scooters and air hockey we ever dreamed of, but, unfortunately, we were also solely reliant on the unstable intertube-accessing services of Time Warner Cable. This led to frequent outages, requiring the entire editorial department to wander, laptops in hand, from Silver Lake coffee house to coffee house in a desperate search for a working connection—where we'd inevitably be greeted with hastily posted signs of this nature. Why rehash the wounds of the past, you ask? Well, read on:

Discovery is launching a new cable network called "Planet Green" that will offer round-the-clock "green" programming. The standard assumption is that his network signals a further mainstreaming of environmentalism, and therefore will somehow be good for the environment. This assumption is incorrect. Rather, it signals that environmentalism—a brand of activism that actually means something—has been transformed into "green," a vague lifestyle term that means nothing. What revolutionary do-good messengers will Planet Green bring to the public? General Motors, Tommy Lee, and "earth-conscious celebrities":

Optimum Online commercials: they are now their own genre. A specific category at the Grammy Awards, a spot in the Olympic Games, and a bust on Mount Rushmore are reserved specifically for the psychedelic, grating ads that this strange company produces. The original "Reggaeton-Jet Ski-Lifeguard" spot was an over-the-top classic after only 17,000 exposures per person in the Tristate area; the follow up spot, all shiny, kinetic, and Hype Williams-esque, expanded the motif. Now there's a new one in circulation, and it shifts the setting to suburbia, with a sort of knockoff Gwen Stefani character whirling through a household with backup dancers, and the odd appearance of an old lady who is also a race car driver. Philosophers, break out your thinking caps. The full ad is after the jump.

Fox News's 3 a.m. time-slot filler Greg Gutfeld has an interview with TVNewser coming up that is sure to be chock-full of quotable lines. Like Gutfeld calling his show Red Eye "the most subversive, surreal piece of programming ever to be on TV." You, sir, have apparently never caught Unbeatable Banzuke. Greg will also take on HuffPo, Gawker, the magazine industry, and "politically correct media." We're sure he has very SHOCKING and CONTROVERSIAL opinions on all of those things. Cutest part of the interview excerpt posted so far is when Greg says Fox pushed him from the semi-reasonable 2 a.m. slot to the desolate 3 a.m. slot because the network needed "more political coverage." We're all big fans of Fox News's award-winning 2 a.m. election updates! [TVNewser]

Aaron Brown was the serious, soft-spoken voice of CNN. Americans all remember his calm, powerful, and moving presence on CNN covering the attacks on the World Trade Center, as they happened, all day long. His first day at CNN! Then a couple years later CNN ditched him and gave his time-slot to Anderson Cooper, who is much prettier. But he's back! On, uh, PBS, where he'll look comparatively "young" and "cool." Anyway, Brown weighed in, for some reason, on the battle between Fox hothead Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. "Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly 'are both larger-than-life figures,' he says, but Olbermann is 'smarter, funnier, better read and eminently more talented.'" Well. Is someone angling for David Gregory's spot once Gregory takes over for Chris Matthews? He's got all the time in the world, NBC. He'll wait out this rumored move that may never happen. [TVNewser]

Remember that IO Digital Cable/ Optimum Online reggaeton ad on the beach that is the most ubiquitous thing on television in the tristate area? Ha, you don't just remember it, you secretly love it! Or perhaps it makes you want to murder people. Either way, when I saw this old Spanish remix of the ad running on Telemundo last weekend, I knew I had to find it and bring it to you, the viewer. This is not just the same as the ad on the beach, but with Spanish lyrics; this is a totally different ad, done in a Hype Williams-style shiny black and white palette, with dancing girls, an even more banging beat, and that reggaeton guy dressed up like Busta Rhymes, riding in a tiny car! It's truly a must-see. If you don't see much Spanish TV, you'll want to bookmark this one to watch over and over and over and over. Full video after the jump.

How is Fox News supposed to bring the REAL news to the American mainstream when they are busy fighting off a bug infestation of the newsroom? If only we were making a metaphorical joke about the network's tendency to employ cockroaches. We're not! A liberal media outlet, the New York Times, reports that Fox News discovered an infestation of the dreaded, disgusting BEDBUGS a few weeks ago "when an employee 'caught a bug and showed it to us.'" YUCK. But Fox News employees get even nastier than that: One of them brought the bugs in!

Marketwatch media person (and frequent target of Gawker ridicule) Jon Friedman actually wrote a thought that is sorta original and correct and interesting! According to him, MSNBC's ratings may suck, but they "stand out in one underappreciated category: embarrassing, mealy-mouthed apologies." He refers to David Shuster's suspension for his remarks about Chelsea Clinton (ably dissected down to the very last gruesome detail by Rachel Sklar here), which, along with Chris Matthews' half-hearted and partially reversed apology for being insane about Hillary, has MSNBC holding the early lead in the "apologizing to the Clintons" race. Of course, in the overall apology race, Fox did force anchor John Gibson to apologize for laughing it up at the death of Heath Ledger. But he didn't really mean it so that doesn't count. [Marketwatch]

We tried to leave this one alone, but its influence has now grown to the point that it must be mentioned. We're referring, of course, to that reggaeton-themed commercial for IO Digital Cable, which is maddeningly effective at making you remember a phone number you will never call. What do mermaids, life preservers, jet skis, and latin beats have to do with cable? Eight seven seven three nine three, four, four, four, EIGHT! That's the answer. This is both the best and worst ad in the world [AV Club]. Gluttons for punishment, please watch the ad below again and again until you can recite it from memory like the rest of the population of New York. We apologize.

Remember way back in the olden times when we had to be in front of an actual television at very specific times to see all our dumb shows? That sucked. Now we TiVo it or watch it on DVD or the web or whatever. And now, thanks to the magic power of market competition, even the horrible cable companies who feel entitled to a notable percentage of our monthly income are putting our shows on the internet for free. Well, free beyond the blood money you're already paying.

Remember when TiVo ran ads where TV viewers defenestrated network executives? CEO Tom Rogers doesn't, either. Vultures have circled over the hardware maker ever since cable companies realized they, too, could make digital video recorders. Rogers has taken the hint. With an extreme business makeover, he's now selling Tivo as a media company built around selling ads, not skipping them. Now TiVo is offering networks a sweet deal: Give TiVo money in exchage for second-by-second ratings and a nifty gimmick that plants an advertiser's banner ad onto the screen of anyone fast forwarding through commercials.

Has cable's golden age ended? Cable-TV subscriptions were long seen as recession-proof. But as their price continues to soar, at last, consumers are voting with their pocketbooks. Comcast shares dropped 12.3 percent Wednesday after the company lowered earnings and growth forecasts. Added competition from Verizon, satellite providers and other cable companies took most of the blame as the triple-play price war continues, driving down average revenue per customer across the industry. On top of that, capital spending is up as Comcast rolls out more HD channels and video-on-demand. We would suggest that Comcast stockholders pray for strong growth, but after the cable giant blocked the Bible, it might not be the best idea.