Tv Guide Channel Television Network

In a surprise move, Lionsgate Entertainment Corp. agreed Monday to buy TV Guide Network and TVGuide.com for $255 million, torpedoing a deal announced just over two weeks ago with media entrepreneur Allen Shapiro and a private equity unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co. The purchase from Macrovision Solutions Corp. is expected to significantly expand Lionsgate's cable holdings and reach, giving the Santa Monica studio one of the most widely distributed cable networks in the United States.

TV Guide Channel announced Wednesday that it had booted Joan and Melissa Rivers from their Hollywood red carpet coverage and replaced the catty duo with actress and television host Lisa Rinna. The Riverses launched the TV Guide Channel's Red Carpet programming in 2005 when the cable outlet signed the mother-daughter team to an estimated $6-million deal over a three-year period. The pair's contract was up for renewal, but TV Guide Channel executives decided to head in a new direction.

Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., under pressure from activist shareholder Carl Icahn to slash costs, has sold a 49% stake in TV Guide Network and TVGuide.com for $123 million. The all-cash deal helps offset the $250 million Lions Gate paid for the cable channel and website. The buyer, One Equity Partners, is the same group that Lions Gate outmaneuvered this year in acquiring the assets with a surprise rival offer.

The deal is signed, the plans are set and so today Joan and Melissa Rivers -- the mother-daughter duo who almost double-handedly defined gossipy red carpet coverage of the major awards shows -- will confirm they have departed E!, their home of nine years, and are moving to the TV Guide Channel. Wait. Hold on. The what?

Joan and Melissa Rivers are all dressed up with nowhere to go. The mother-daughter duo, queens of the red carpet, apparently will be no-shows this fall at what has been one of their highest-rated performances: the Emmy Awards. The Rivers team shifted alliances this summer, leaving E! Entertainment Television for a lucrative contract with the TV Guide Channel, which raided its rival to propel its ratings. But E! has exclusive cable TV rights to broadcast live from the red carpet before the Sept.