Well, amusing if you don't work at or have stock in News Corp., the parent company of Fox and MyNetworkTV.

Essentially, News Corp. stuck it to CBS, and, in the end, got the short end of the stick itself.

Back in 2000, News Corp. outbid Viacom/CBS for Chris-Craft Industries and its United Television stations. The group included KTVX Ch. 4 in Salt Lake City, but it was made up mostly of big-city UPN affiliates.

(United Television — the "U" in UPN — partnered with Viacom's Paramount, which was the "P," to start UPN.)

This was very, very bad for Viacom, which by that point had bought out Chris-Craft's share of UPN. News Corp. owned the UPN stations in the nation's three largest TV markets — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — and could have put UPN out of business by bolting.

Eventually, News Corp.'s stations signed UPN affiliation agreements, but with terms that weren't exactly favorable to Viacom.

But when CBS (which was part of Viacom until the company split) and Time-Warner decided to merge UPN and The WB, News Corp. was left out in the cold. News Corp.'s big-city UPN affiliates were suddenly network-less, leading to the formation of MyNetworkTV as a desperation move.

(Technically, UPN and The WB didn't merge. Both went out of business, giving News Corp. no legal recourse.)

MyNetworkTV has flailed around since then, trying to figure out a way to survive.

Again, maybe repeats are the way to go. Certainly, nothing else has worked.

If you live in northern Utah and don't have Dish or DirecTV, chances are you can't see MyNetworkTV.

You're not missing much, so don't worry about it.

Really.

E-mail: pierce@desnews.com