Coda

New York — One would have thought that Motorola’s announcement last week that it would split into two businesses on the surface would appease activist investor Carl Icahn, who has pressed for the separation for more than a year. Well, guess again.

Icahn, who has accumulated a 6.4% interest (145 million shares) in the electronics giant over more than a year, fired off a missive to Motorola management March 26, expressing dismay that the separation would take more than a year to complete, and disputing company claims that he rejected outright the company’s proposal to accept two of his board nominees if he would drop his long-standing proxy fight against the company. The letter was filed that day with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Icahn also took exception to a comment by Motorola CEO Greg Brown on the conference call announcing the split. On that call, Brown said that Motorola had discussed board nominees with Icahn and proposed two potential directors but the investor declined.

Icahn conceded that he had spoken with Sandy Warner, the head of Motorola’s board nominating committee, about the nominees, adding that he would gladly accept the terms if the board would also appoint Icahn Enterprises vice chairman Keith Meister. Warner, Icahn said, replied that Meister was not “qualified.”

In his letter, Icahn wrote: “I asked Mr. Warner what does one have to do to qualify — lose $37 billion?”

— Mike Farrell

New York — Jason Gaedtke, a one-time Internet engineer at Comcast who joined CableLabs as chief scientist in November, has been recruited to be chief architect of Internet TV startup Joost.

Gaedtke, reached via e-mail, confirmed that he will join Joost starting today (March 31). Joost and CableLabs representatives last week declined to comment. Joost’s previous chief technology officer, Dirk-Willem van Gulik, left the company to join the BBC’s Future Media and Technology Group as chief technical architect earlier this year.

At CableLabs, Gaedtke led Internet-related research projects on peer-to-peer architectures and services, “semantic Web” incubation and metadata management, and online gaming platforms. Joost uses a peer-to-peer architecture to distribute video among users’ with proprietary client software.

Before joining CableLabs, Gaedtke was chief architect and fellow for Comcast Interactive Media. In January, Joost announced it hired Matt Zelesko, who previously was vice president of engineering for Comcast Interactive Media, where among other things he led the team behind the online video platform for Fancast. Zelesko is Joost’s senior vice president of engineering operations.

— Todd Spangler

New York — Henry Schleiff, CEO of Crown Media Holdings, parent of Hallmark Channel, has a way with words. At Hallmark’s upfront presentation to the press at the Museum of Modern Art last Tuesday, Schleiff alluded to CBS CEO Les Moonves’s recent remarks about upscale 18-to-34 viewers as being a “bullshit demographic.”

Schleiff noted that such a phrase would have been bleeped in a Hallmark movie. Rather, he had been talking up the “40 and over” crowd — those who spend a fair amount of time watching Hallmark — as having “assets, not allowances.’

Schleiff then summarized his opening remarks that painted the family-friendly network on the upfront upswing owing to distribution and ratings growth, the buying power of its baby boomer target audience and their willingness to be influenced by commercials and Hallmark ranking second only to Disney in terms of entertainment Q score.

“All of which makes for a perfect storm, or at least a perfect ad-sales environment,” Schleiff said. “And that why we’re here: Show us the Monet.”

While our highly educated MOMA tour guide might not have gotten it, Schleiff’s Monet remark brought one much more low-browed attendee’s mind back to Mel Brooks’s History of the World Part I. In the 1981 theatrical, Harvey Korman co-starred as the Count de Monet, who, much to his chagrin, is constantly greeted as “count da money.”

— Mike Reynolds

New York — Spike TV has the basic-cable rights to the complete Star Wars saga through 2013; and for its initial run the first two weekends in April, the network is doing its best to ensure that the advertising force will be with you.

The multiplatform, multimedia campaign, valued in the multimillions, comes in support of Spike’s presentation of the six movies, which will be presented together for the first time on a basic-cable network.

Spike has lined up cross-channel spots on MTV Networks’ services, as well as on Sci Fi Channel, National Geographic Channel and CNBC, complemented by spot broadcast and spot cable buys.

Spike’s messages can also be found on several male-targeted and science-fiction-themed Web sites.

The extensive outdoor effort includes 800 taxi tops in New York and Los Angeles, as well as in 1,000 Big Apple subway stops and bus shelters, home to a light saber display.

The campaign plays off the theme “There is Much To Be Learned,” a nod to the films’ sage Yoda character. Additional content interstitials from LucasFilm will accompanying the movies and include an exclusive clip of LucasArts’ videogame Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, scheduled for a summer release.

Spike will debut uncut episodes I-III on April 4-6. The original theatricals (subsequently dubbed parts IV-VI) air the following weekend.

— Mike Reynolds