Viacom

The ABC.com episode player has delivered more than a half-billion episodes and a billion ads while ABC and Disney (NYSE: DIS) have sold "tens of millions" of episodes through iTunes, Anne Sweeney, co-chair, Disney Media Networks, and president, Disney-ABC Television Group, said during an Industry Insider session at CES this afternoon.

Viacom's Harmonix is breaking out of its annual development cycle for Rock Band this year to focus on the new Beatles' game due for holidays '09 and to avoid the limits that come along with cranking out new version, CEO Alex Rigopulos told attendees Billboard Digital Music Live this afternoon. "A lot of our creative energy this year is focused on the Beatles project," he explained, which makes a certain amount of sense given the high expectations for anything done in the name of the iconic group and the need for Harmonix to avoid being a one-trick pony.

—Roku player gets Amazon VOD: Owners of the Roku "Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) Player" will soon also be able to download content from Amazon's VOD service. The deal adds more than 40,000 movies and TV shows to the library currently available via Netflix—though Amazon's content is on a pay-per-view model as opposed to Netflix' subscription.

The TV Guide saga continues ... Macrovision (NSDQ: MVSN) has a new buyer for its TV Guide Network and TV Guide Online properties—Lionsgate Entertainment.

Time Warner Cable and Viacom may have reached a tentative agreement this week but, in the long run, battles between network operators and content companies are bound to intensify as content migrates online.

-While you were getting drunk on champagne in the early minutes of 2009, executives from Time Warner Cable and Viacom were hammering out a new carriage agreement, ending an ugly stand-off. [THR]

-Kathy Griffin brought a little extra salt to CNN's New Year's festivities. Anderson Cooper was simply scandalized. [NYP]

Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Cable CEO Glenn Britt and Viacom (NYSE: VIA) CEO Philippe Dauman are both standing by as negotiations continue in a fee dispute that could result in MTV Networks being pulled from TWC at midnight.

-The Village Voice has laid off Nat Hentoff, who's written for the paper since 1958. That's just sad. [NYT]

-Viacom cable channels are due to disappear from Time Warner Cable at midnight tonight unless the two conglomerates can agree to new carriage terms. Viacom is appealing to consumers in hopes that they'll pressure Time Warner to cut a deal. [WSJ]

Subscribe to Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Cable and have a kid with a Dora addiction? Get ready to pop in DVDs. Need your daily fix of The Daily Show?

No financial Armageddon today for Sumner Redstone, who gets an indefinite reprieve on either paying—not gonna happen—or restructuring some $800 million in debt coming due for National Amusements. The total debt is about $1.6 billion. Redstone owns 80 percent of the company, which owns movie theaters and controls Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and CBS (NYSE: CBS).