Cnbc Cable Television Network

New York Times Co. and business news channel CNBC will share video and stories from each other's websites in an alliance that could bolster them against an expected assault by News Corp. Under the deal, New York Times stories will be posted on CNBC's website and the Times will use CNBC video for its site. Neither company will pay the other for its news.

Even when it's play money, some people can't help themselves. They cheat. CNBC may have to confront this reality, one of the risks faced by companies that sponsor games for customers and, more to the point, for people the companies hope will become customers. It happened to McDonald's several years ago with various promotional prize contests, and to Taco Bell in the late 1980s in its "Wheels, Reels and Meals" sweepstakes.

It was Roger Ailes who came up with the slogan "First in Business News" for CNBC when he was running the channel. Now, he's determined to knock it into second place. Ailes is a key architect of News Corp.'s new Fox Business Network. The channel, which is scheduled to launch Oct. 15, helped drive media mogul Rupert Murdoch's pursuit of Dow Jones & Co. News Corp. won its $5-billion bid for the company, which owns the Wall Street Journal, this week.

Michael Eisner, the former Walt Disney Co. chief executive who was never at a loss for words -- including some that came back to bite him -- is headed for prime time as a talk-show host. "Conversations With Michael Eisner" will run on CNBC every other month, the cable business news channel announced Tuesday, and will draw its guests from business, politics and entertainment. The show marks Eisner's return to television nearly two decades after hosting "The Magical World of Disney."

For Michael Eisner, it's a small audience after all. Once one of the most feared executives in Hollywood, Eisner's new job as biweekly TV talk show host isn't giving Sean Hannity or Larry King much to worry about. Eisner, who ran Walt Disney Co. from 1984 to 2005, tanked with the 6 p.m. Tuesday premiere of "Conversations With Michael Eisner," his new show for financial-news cable channel CNBC.

Both times it aired in October, the CNBC documentary "The Age of Wal-Mart" attracted larger audiences than any other business program on the network that week. That's not particularly noteworthy until you consider that they were reruns. More than a rerun: The Peabody Award-winning film is two years old and CNBC has shown it 44 times.

Jon Stewart didn't take kindly to CNBC pundit Jim Cramer dismissing his Comedy Central program as a mere "variety show." "You make me sound like I'm some kind of buffoon, just flapping my arms with crazy buttons and wacky sound effects," the host of "The Daily Show" said Tuesday night. He then cut to a clip of Cramer on his CNBC show "Mad Money," punching buttons that make wacky sound effects. Ouch.

The "weeklong feud of the century" reached its climax Thursday night as Jon Stewart welcomed freshly minted nemesis Jim Cramer to "The Daily Show." Cramer, who hosts the CNBC show "Mad Money," had figured heavily in a "Daily Show" piece highlighting that network's poor track record on the financial apocalypse, an attack originally inspired by reporter Rick Santelli's diatribe against over-leveraged homeowners.

The verdict from critics Friday was quick and unsparing: Comedian Jon Stewart trounced CNBC pundit Jim Cramer in their televised encounter Thursday night. Forgoing his typically caustic humor, a serious and at times angry Stewart eviscerated Cramer for jocularly discussing how to manipulate the stock market and slammed CNBC as an ineffective watchdog of Wall Street.

CNBC is canceling comic Dennis Miller's low-rated political talk show after less than 16 months, replacing it with a business show rerun. The last episode airs tonight. Miller's prime-time program, featuring a mixture of comedy, interviews and political opinion, was seen by an average of 168,000 viewers since its January 2004 launch, according to Nielsen Media Research. That number has dipped to 114,000 this year with the presidential election campaign over.