TVSquad

You think Oprah Winfrey is already the most powerful person on television? You have no idea.

Winfrey and Discovery Communications announced a deal today that will have the Discovery Health Channel given to Oprah and switched to The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN - really!). In return, Discovery gets Oprah's web site. I'm not really sure what getting to run Oprah's web site means for Discovery, but it will be part of the network.

A little bit of late news for you: Jim Breuer is the new host of Web Junk 20. He actually premiered on Friday, but I'm a little slow this week. Web Junk 20 is a weekly countdown-type show on VH1 that airs all the biggest viral videos of the week. You may remember Jim Breuer as 'Goat Boy' for four years on Saturday Night Live. He also has a hilarious comedy special that occasionally airs on Comedy Central, and he's currently hosting the second most popular radio show on Sirius (behind Howard Stern) called Jim Breuer Unleashed.

Best Week Ever has a clip of Breuer here. While it's great to see Breuer again, I don't like the show's format where the host interrupts video clips to make remarks that aren't all that funny.

I love it when stars get into petty fights. They're just like us!

Seems that Entourage star Jeremy Piven doesn't like Jack Black that much. Black beat out Piven for the role of the record store employee in the John Cusack flick High Fidelity, and thinks that Piven still holds a grudge. Black told Howard Stern that he was talking to a director at a movie premiere recently, and right in the middle of the conversation, Piven stepped in between them with his back to Black and started to talk to the director. Of course, Piven's rep insists there's no problem between the two.

This is interesting, because Piven is very good friends with Cusack, and appears in most of his movies in some role. So I wonder why (or if) Piven wasn't chosen for the role in High Fidelity.

[via Pop Candy]

If you listen to Howard Stern's Sirius radio show -- or was a fan of his terrestrial radio show -- and you have digital cable, you may have been skittish to pay the $9.99-13.99 per month that it costs to have access to the show's on-demand TV channel, Howard TV. The folks at on-demand provider in DEMAND know this, which is why they're offering "free" access to the channel on the weekend of November 3-5. Well, actually, it's a "penny preview" weekend, the nominal charge implemented to keep minors from accessing the channel (good luck with that, cable providers!).

For that penny, though, you'll be able to see Howard's new and raunchy Sirius shows -- think Sybian, lots of swearing, and the genitals of show flunkies Richard Christie and Sal Governale -- along with classic bits from the terrestrial show that may or may not have made it to the air when E! had the show's TV rights. To introduce the weekend, the in DEMAND folks have been putting out provocative ads, with taglines like the one in the picture above, and fuzzy pictures of lesbians kissing. What did you think the ads were going to show, Crackhead Bob?

[via Orbitcast]

It looks like ranks of millionaires on the Howard Stern show are growing. Fans already knew that Howard, Robin Quivers, Artie Lange, Fred Norris, and likely Gary Dell'Abate were all swimming in dough. But to those names you can add... Jon Hein?

Yes, Jon Hein. Hein, the creator of the ingenious web site Jump The Shark, and also an on-air staffer for Sirius' Howard 100 and 101 channels, announced this morning that he sold his web site to TV Guide for an undisclosed sum. As part of the deal, he will also be a contributor to the TVG web site.

I'm guessing that Jon finally decided to sell the site, in which users chronicle when their favorite shows started slipping creatively (like when Fonzie jumped the shark on Happy Days), to concentrate on his work with Howard. I'm surprised, actually, that the site went as long as it did after Jon joined Howard's crew. But I'm happy for the guy; he seems like a nice guy and a hard worker, and if anyone deserves to profit from one of those "why didn't I think of that?" ideas, it's Jon.

Now I wonder what our friends over at "The Guide" are going to do with the site. Hope they don't ruin it.

Starting in June, SIRIUS Satellite Radio will begin airing a weekly show revolving around the upcoming season of HBO's Deadwood. Hosted by The Gem Saloon's own W. Earl Brown (he plays Dan Dority), the show will feature interviews with other cast members, discussions of previous episodes, and news about upcoming ones. The nice thing about SIRIUS is that all of them will be able to swear and curse as much as we're accustomed to hearing. The recap show premieres on SIRIUS on Saturday June, 10 at 8PM and the Deadwood season three premiere airs on HBO the following night at 9PM. It was recently announced that this will be the final season of Deadwood.

[via Orbitcast]

Did you miss Howard Stern's triumphant debut on Sirius this morning? I didn't; I woke up at 5:30 excited to hear the new show. I even had to devise an "antenna on a stick" in order to get decent reception. But at 6, Howard came on and ended up doing over five commercial-free hours of unrestricted radio. He and the crew sounded energized and loose, and the program, while it didn't have a lot of profanity, did have a nice uninterrupted flow that I haven't heard on the show in fifteen years. It was quite a satisfying listen.

(UPDATE: I forgot about one other new wrinkle to the show: George Takei is the new announcer! He'll be on the show live all week. He meshed surprisingly well with the cast. What a great move.)

What does this have to do with TV? You mean, besides the unyielding coverage that will be on the news and entertainment shows? Well, somewhere during the morning, Howard mentioned that the entire first show will be available on his Howard Stern On Demand channel later tonight. So if you have HSOD and are curious as to what the new studio looked like, keep an eye out for the program tonight.

[Photo: Richard Drew/AP]