Home Shopping Network

Merger Could Challenge Home Shopping: QVC Network, a fast-growing telemarketing company, offered to buy rival cable company CVN Cos. in a move that would create a powerhouse that could challenge Home Shopping Network's dominant position in the industry, analysts said. West Chester, Pa.-based QVC Network said it started talks to acquire CVN for $21 a share, valuing the Minneapolis-based company at $367.5 million. The combined companies would boast sales of nearly $800 million and compete with Home Shopping Network by marketing higher-priced products from such companies as Campeau Corp.

--Target Corp.'s eagerly anticipated collaboration with Jason Wu is rolling out this Sunday in stores and online. Best known for dressing First Lady Michelle Obama for the inaugural ball, Wu is but the latest designer to pair up with the cheap-chic chain to give the masses a taste of upscale design at budget prices. Last year, Target's collaboration with Italian design house Missoni inspired large crowds and enough online shoppers to crash the retailer's website. The 53-piece Jason Wu for Target collection features apparel, shoes and accessories that reflect the young designer's penchant for polished, ladylike looks.

Two years after selling her original namesake company, Taryn Rose is back in full force. The orthopedist/shoe designer, who made her name crafting fashion-forward designs that are as comfortable as they are pretty, has debuted a luxury line that is available at Neiman Marcus, with new designs rolling out this fall. A less expensive division is featured on the Home Shopping Network. And with new partners the Schottenstein Group, Rose will have a midrange line available at stores including Bloomingdales, Nordstrom and Macy's next year.

Two years after selling her original namesake company, Taryn Rose is back in full force. The orthopedist/shoe designer, who made her name crafting fashion-forward designs that are as comfortable as they are pretty, has debuted a luxury line that is available at Neiman Marcus, with new designs rolling out this fall. A less expensive division is featured on the Home Shopping Network. And with new partners the Schottenstein Group, Rose will have a midrange line available at stores including Bloomingdales, Nordstrom and Macy's next year.

Home Shopping Network will pay a $1.1-million fine to the government for airing advertisements with unsubstantiated claims for skin-care, weight-loss and PMS/menopause products. A spokeswoman for St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Home Shopping Network had no comment on the fine. The Federal Trade Commission said that Home Shopping Network had violated a 1996 order requiring the company to stop making claims without "competent and reliable scientific evidence."

Home Shopping Network Inc. and its chairman, Roy Speer, have been sued by a shareholder alleging that Speer has improperly paid his own son at least $7.8 million in company funds. The suit, filed in federal court in Tampa, said the television retailer has been paying Richard Speer of Western Hemisphere Sales Inc., even though the computer-services agreement between the two companies expired in mid-1988.

The Clearwater, Fla., company, geared to the shop-at-home set, said it entered into an agreement to buy WKJL, a UHF station in the Baltimore-Washington area, for an undisclosed price, subject to Federal Communications Commission approval. Home Shopping Network also said it signed letters of intent in two "major markets" to acquire UHF stations. It said further details would be disclosed when definitive agreements are signed.

Liberty Media Corp. said Friday that it had acquired a controlling interest in Home Shopping Network Inc. and proposed a stock-swap merger with the cable television concern. Liberty Media, a spinoff of the nation's largest cable TV operator, Tele-Communications Inc., offered $58 million in cash and 4 million shares of Class A common stock in exchange for 20 million Class B common shares of Home Shopping Network.

In response to a year-old damage claim from Home Shopping Network, GTE Florida Inc. filed a countersuit Tuesday charging the cable shopping service and its two principal shareholders with business libel and slander. The counterclaim filed in Pinellas Circuit Court answers a $1.5-billion civil suit that HSN brought against the telephone company in September, 1987. Nando DiFilippo, HSN's executive vice president and general counsel, said the GTE counterclaim was without merit.

New buyers have found their McDream house thanks to "Grey's Anatomy" star Patrick Dempsey . The actor, whose looks earned him the nickname Dr. McDreamy on the ABC show, has sold his Bel-Air home for $2,571,500. The New England-style two-story, with four bedrooms and 4 1/2 bathrooms in 3,841 square feet, has a formal dining room and a kitchen that opens to the family room. The gated house sits behind hedges on less than an acre with a swimming pool, brick patio, flat lawn and matching treehouse.

In the world of fashion and style, the calendar flip to a new year is something akin to getting the key to a brand-new, bare-to-the-walls walk-in closet right next to the one we just finished filling up. What goes into the new space depends a lot (but not entirely) on what came before. In 2010, that means more traction for the familiar -- Forever 21, home shopping networks, Americana -- while adding some foreign influences (the ascent of Brazil) into the trend mix as well. But the biggest shift in the fashion and style realm might very well be in process rather than product; now that we can have anything we want when we want it, perhaps we'll give more thought to how it gets from point A to point B. What follows is a little crystal-ball gazing from the Image staff.

Update: Fashion designer Randolph Duke has sold his award-winning Hollywood Hills house for $5.3 million, the Multiple Listing Service shows. The modern home, designed by XTen Architecture, won the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles chapter award for residential design in 2007. Set on a promontory, the gated 4,800-square-foot house has 10-foot-high glass panels that open to 6,500 square feet of outdoor terraces, decks and gardens. There is a silver-leaf tiled swimming pool, a reflecting pond and downtown-to-ocean views from the three-bedroom, 3 1/2 -bathroom trilevel.

A pair of high-tech companies is launching the first free, ad-supported, in-flight wireless network, clearing the way for passengers to shop for Paula Abdul's Reach for the Stars Bracelet from the Home Shopping Network or an automatic pet feeder from SkyMall while soaring at 30,000 feet. To be fair, the free wireless network, dubbed SkyTown Center, also will let travelers watch live television, play games and check out information about their destination city. But the real goal of the service -- offered under a partnership between the airborne Wi-Fi provider Row 44 and the online media company JiWire -- is to squeeze a few more dollars from big-spending business travelers.

Not so very long ago, when media moguls stalked the Earth in all their arrogant glory, Barry Diller was among the biggest of the big. He occupied that top echelon of giants known by their first names, like Sumner (Redstone), Rupert (Murdoch), and Cher. But Diller had something they lacked -- a reputation for intellectual depth. He seemed to understand better than his fellow moguls the havoc that digital technology would wreak on their Hollywood sandboxes. Despite his roots in conventional media -- he has at times been chief of Paramount Pictures, head of prime-time TV at ABC, chairman of Fox, and CEO of Vivendi Universal -- he saw that once customers could get their entertainment from the Internet and interact with the TV set, a whole new world of opportunities, and risks, would open up. But as the typically tepid results turned in recently by his IAC/InterActiveCorp demonstrate, he still hasn't figured out how to squeeze riches for shareholders from his vision.

HSN, formerly known as Home Shopping Network, has agreed to pay the U.S. an $875,000 civil penalty after the government accused the company of failing to promptly issue warnings about pressure cookers that were blamed for burning people in at least 37 incidents. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said the payment was part of a settlement reached with HSN and its partner companies over defects in Welbilt electronic pressure cookers sold between September 2001 and November 2002.

Move over, MTV. Here comes QVC. That's right music fans. In between the blond women selling jewelry and the dermatologists shilling skin-care products, television retail channels are booking live musical acts -- and not off-brands, either. Think LeAnn Rimes, Barry Manilow and the Goo Goo Dolls. Manilow is preparing for his second QVC gig this fall to promote his new CD, "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies."

About 8,700 frying pans sold through Home Shopping Network are being recalled because they can "explode or separate" while in use, U.S. safety regulators and cookware maker Innova Inc. said. Two people have been burned, and there have been eight reports of property damage, Davenport, Iowa-based Innova reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.