Who didn't see this coming? I want a daily feed of "Pardon the Interruption" for my video iPod. Also "Baseball Tonight."

Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN cable sports network is mulling a deal to distribute some television programs on Apple's iTunes music and video service, possibly joining its corporate cousin in a landmark deal, ESPN and ABC Sports president George Bodenheimer said on Monday.

Although ESPN has not held talks with Apple Computer Inc. yet, the top rated cable sports network plans to offer its diet of original shows and game clips to "any pipe, any device," Bodenheimer said at the UBS global media conference.

"We're not just in the TV business anymore ... We're going to the table as a sports media company," Bodenheimer said.

Being an early adopter sort, I felt compelled to try CNN Pipeline this morning. CNN Pipeline is CNN’s new pay news service delivered via the Web. Being a thrifty sort, I am on the 99 cent “for the day” trial.

Some early thoughts:

1. If you want the desktop player, it’s a funky download requiring some sort of Microsoft runtime to be installed. I am not a big fan of such things, but I figured the collateral damage would be slight.
2. The picture is the size of an index card which is pretty decent. I don’t see a full screen mode anywhere.
3. There are many viewing options including a mini mode that is relatively unobtrusive. I cannot figure how to get the player to persistently stay on the screen no matter what else I am doing (checking email, using Word,, etc..)
4. There is a cool feedback feature that populates an email to allow you to share your thoughts. Gotta figure there will be an AIM client soon (AOL and CNN are both in the TWX family)
5. There are four pipes (channels) running at the same time on varying themes. Right now, there is an international story, something on the White House, weather forecasts and a general news feed. The anchor appears to be dedicated to the Pipeline as opposed to a rebroadcast of an existing feed.
6. There are no commercials
7. There are lots of on-demand feeds and segments on such topics as sports, entertainment, business, etc..

On a 0-10, it gets a solid 7.5 so far. There’s nothing better than watching a live feed of  heavy snow falling in Virginia when it’s sunny and 65 at your home.

As Mike and I mentioned on our most recent MADCast, we are crazy about Yahoo!’s new RSS feed reader which is baked into the Beta client of the new Yahoo! Mail (hopefully coming soon to a PC near you).

Today, if you go to Inform, you can create your own customized RSS feeds (and, of course loading them into your Yahoo! mail client). You need to do a search at which point you can follow a few steps and generate an RSS feed. You cut and paste the feed script into your reader of choice, and away you go. It’s especially useful for topics that don’t have a natural RSS feed. Worth a try.