With a year's worth of perspective to look back on last summer's war of words between NBC and Fox executives, the controversy looks . . . even stupider now than it did then.

Particularly when you consider the fact that it was all over a pair of boxing shows that bombed.

To recap, NBC announced it would produce a reality show, "The Contender," featuring a boxing competition. And NBC-Universal President Jeff Zucker was in a huge snit when Fox execs announced their own extremely similar show, "The Next Great Champ," shortly thereafter — and their plans to get theirs on the air first.

"Quite frankly, they (Fox) used to be innovators, and now they're imitators," Zucker said. "And I think it's unfortunate what they're doing. . . . I think it's a sign of desperation more than anything. It's just bad for the business and it's bad for everybody, and I don't think that all is fair in love and television."

Well, ethically, I suppose not. But Fox essentially maintained that everybody rips off everybody in the TV business.

"This is the way television works," insisted then-Fox Entertainment president Gail Berman (who has since left the network). "There is nothing new about this. This is a competitive businesses and producers come up with ideas every day."

Yes, it's just that some of them come up with those ideas by stealing them.

What made this somewhat different was that Fox stole the idea before NBC had gotten it on the air. And had Zucker breathing fire.

"That's what happens in television — somebody sees an idea and there's 10 rip-offs. I think that that's OK," he said. "But I think what's going on right now is, there seems to be a tendency to see somebody else's idea . . . and try to take it before the other guys does. And I think that raises some real ethical issues."

Yes, it did sort of sound like a thief asking for honor among thieves.

ABC got into the act, accusing Fox of stealing the idea for "Trading Spouses" from "Wife Swap." Whereas ABC licensed that idea from the producers of the British version of the show, Fox just simply appropriated it.

We're back to that honor-among-thieves thing here.

Of course, anytime you start making noises like this in front of a room full of people who have long memories (and transcripts of the press conferences), you're setting yourself up for trouble.

After Zucker made so much about networks pirating other networks' reality shows, his network put "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Search" — or, as I liked to call it, "American's Next Top Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model" — on the air. The irony of that wasn't lost on UPN Entertainment president Dawn Ostroff or anybody else.