ADAM LAMBERT IGNITES NEW CENSORSHIP FUROR

Almost certain to provoke a new ruckus at the FCC, American Idolrunner-up Adam Lambert's live performance at Sunday Night's American Music Awards was regarded as so salacious by ABC, which broadcast it, that portions of it were deleted for the West Coast rebroadcast. Lambert expressed outrage. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Lambert said, "If it's gonna be edited, then in a way that's discrimination. I don't mean to get political, but Madonna, Britney and Christina weren't edited. ... It's a shame. Female entertainers have been risque for years. Honestly, there's a huge double standard." The Timesoffered a clip of the performance on its website, but clicking on it brought up the notice, "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation." Lambert's performance drew attention from the awards themselves and particularly detracted from the triumph of Taylor Swift, who received five trophies. It was the second time Swift had been upstaged at an awards ceremony. In September, when she won for Best Female Video at MTV's Video Music Awards, rapper Kanye West leaped onto the stage and yelled that Beyoncé should have received the award.

AMA AWARDS CHALLENGE FOOTBALL

ABC's telecast of Sunday night's American Music Awardsaveraged 14.16 million viewers and beat out NBC's Sunday Night Football from 9:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., according to overnight Nielsen ratings. The football telecast -- Philadelphia at Chicago -- nevertheless averaged 15.11 million viewers and was the top-rated broadcast of the night, except for the overrun of CBS's own non-primetime football telecast, which pulled in 20.61 million viewers at 7:00 p.m.

OPRAH'S DEPARTURE WON'T HURT CBS, SAYS ANALYST

CBS's syndication arm is not expected to take a big hit when The Oprah Winfrey Show ends its run in Sept. 2011, Broadcasting & Cablereported today (Monday), citing a J.P. Morgan research note. "We think Oprah's significance is likely overblown for CBS," the note reads, noting that while the show accounts for about $300 million in total revenue, Winfrey and her Harpo Productions receive more than $250 million of that amount. "So while the loss of a longstanding distribution deal is disappointing for CBS, it's hardly a material hit to numbers, in our view," the J.P. Morgan note said. The CBS syndication unit, B&Cnoted, earns far more from Judge Judyand Entertainment Tonightthan it does from Oprah.

VIVENDI COULD UPEND GE-COMCAST DEAL

Vivendi is playing hardball in its dealings with General Electric and is balking at the valuation that GE and Comcast have placed on NBC Universal. Vivendi must sell its 20-percent stake in the media company in order for GE and Comcast to form a joint venture that would run it. The Wall Street Journalsaid today (Monday) that GE and Vivendi are several hundred million dollars apart on a deal and that Vivendi is also asking GE to pay at least part of the price before any deal with Comcast closes. The newspaper cited a person familiar with the matter as saying that Vivendi doesn't want to assume the risk that the GE-Comcast venture could be blocked later on by federal regulators.