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Friday, June 13, 2003

Spike TV spiked
Talk about a bad Friday the 13th nightmare: I actually find myself sitting here defending corporate behemoth Viacom from the crazy rantings of Spike Lee.

Shockingly, a Manhattan State Supreme Court justice won a preliminary injunction yesterday that blocks Viacom from changing the name of its TNN cable network to Spike TV on Monday.

I'm beside myself how ridiculous this is. Spike Lee truly believes the name "Spike" has become his trademark, never mind that volleyball players spike the ball, Snoopy's brother is named Spike and director Spike Jonze has had bigger, better movie success in recent years. And how I wanted to believe that this was a publicity ploy by MTV Networks to launch the net! (Insiders at the network, by the way, say a number of people have approached them thinking this was a marketing stunt!)

UPDATE: Type in "www.spiketv.com," and you'll now be directed to MTV's website. Also, the network has put its "The New TNN" website back up; that site had been taken down and replaced with a teaser for Spike TV.

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