Spike Tv Television Network

The Oscars present Hollywood as it wishes to be -- refined, glamorous and high-minded -- but on Saturday night at the Greek Theatre, the Spike TV Scream 2008 Awards showed the movie industry as it truly is in 2008: obsessed with superheroes, overflowing with fake blood and relentless in its pursuit to sell popcorn to teenagers.

WHERE have the guys gone? It's a question that has had television executives scratching their heads in recent years as young male viewers -- always elusive -- have become even scarcer, lured away by Xboxes, iPods and an array of other tech gadgets and online entertainment, some of which they probably don't want their mothers to know about. Now Spike TV is hoping to bring some of them back by cultivating a more manly image -- call it the cable network for the anti-metrosexual.

World Wrestling Entertainment is looking for a new television home. Cable's Spike TV, which has shown pro wrestling regularly on Monday and Saturday nights, said it has stopped negotiating with the WWE for an extension of a contract that ends in September. "WWE Raw" and "WWE Raw Zone" are regularly among the most popular programs on cable television, but a network executive speaking on condition of anonymity said wrestling was never as popular with advertisers as it was with audiences.

Radio host Howard Stern is making a new foray into television, appearing this time as a teenage cartoon character. The male-oriented cable channel Spike TV said Wednesday it has ordered 13 episodes of an animated series tentatively titled "Howard Stern: The High School Years," aimed for the summer of 2005.

The National Network, TNN, a cable channel devoted to programming for men, is spiking its name and will be renamed Spike TV. Albie Hecht, president of the network, announced the change Tuesday, along with plans for a new slate of male-oriented programming that he says will solidly reflect the network's new direction. "Spike TV captures the attributes and essence of what we want the first network for men to be," Hecht said. "It's unapologetically male; it's active.

Filmmaker Spike Lee has sued Viacom Inc. over its decision to rename its TNN cable-television network Spike TV to attract more male viewers. Lee said in a lawsuit filed in New York that he was "extremely upset" over the name Viacom chose to rechristen the network. He said he has no connection with it. Lee said in court papers that it is obvious that "Spike TV referred to Spike Lee." Viacom announced the name change April 15 in an attempt to build on an audience that's already about 65% male.

James Brown may wail the anthem, and the 50%-plus of the population that doesn't carry the Y chromosome may agree: "It's a man's world." But according to the president of the "first" network for guys, the male sex has been underrepresented on television. Never mind the testosterone-driven programming on TBS and such sports networks as ESPN, Outdoor Life and the Golf Network. And let's not even get into all of those war documentaries that pop up on the History Channel, Discovery and A&E.