Last month we learned, from the Daily Beast’s Peter Lauria, that the Viacom (VIA) chairman was moonlighting as a talent promoter: Redstone was reportedly trying to get his MTV channel to run an unwatchable reality TV show about the Electric Barbarellas–a “scantily clad new all-girl group” the octogenarian was supposedly “smitten with.”

Now we learn, from Lauria as well, that Redstone is working on a new project: Trying to figure out which Viacom employee leaked last month’s story to Lauria.

Redstone, a lawyer by training, isn’t beating around the bush here–he just called up Lauria and told him to give up the name. “You will be well-rewarded and well-protected,” he promised. Here’s the astounding voicemail he left:

For the record, Lauria isn’t giving up the name of his source.

UPDATE: I’ll admit I’m a bit surprised to hear from Viacom at all on this one. But PR boss Carl Folta wants us to know that Redstone’s call was a freelance affair, and not a reflection of Viacom policy. “There is no investigation under way at Viacom,” he says.

So, maybe a “Jersey Shore” game, where you get badges for visiting the gym, the tanning salon or the Laundromat? I dunno. Work with me here.

Every big media company is enamored with social games these days, in part because users seem to be–see Zynga–and in part because investors seem to be– see Zynga. Not coincidentally, Social Express is staffed with vets from Zynga, the dominant social game company now valued in the billions.

Wait a minute. Doesn’t Viacom (VIA) have a slew of gaming assets, acquired during the last Web boom? It does! And those help generate 22 million unique visitors a month, says comScore (SCOR). But the first Viacom/Social Express games will show up this fall, so we’ll see what Sumner Redstone got for his money.

It’s hard to remember this conflict sometimes because it started all the way back in the spring of 2007, after Google offered $500 million to appease Sumner Redstone and company, then thought better of it. Viacom countered with a billion-dollar lawsuit claim, which has been dragging its way ever so slowly through the legal system since then.

The latest reminder: A report from CNET pointing out that Google (GOOG) has deposed Viacom (VIA) employees Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but that “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have yet to hand over documents the search giant’s lawyers have requested.

“The missed deadline isn’t amusing to Google,” Greg Sandoval relays.

This is theoretically important because both sides are trying to prove that their opponents’ employees knowingly uploaded copyrighted clips to the site.

If Viacom can prove that Chad Hurley and company were doing it, it bolsters its claim that YouTube knew it was violating copyright law and didn’t do anything about it. If Google can prove that “The Daily Show” or “South Park” dudes were doing it, it can argue that it’s impossible to tell when it was okay to run Viacom clips and when it was verboten.

Alas, in a slow-motion case like this, it’s impossible to imbue any particular move with particular weight. For instance: Google’s interest in deposing Stewart et al dates all the way back to August 2007. So the fact that the company’s lawyers have talked to him recently means that…it has talked to him recently.

Still, it does give us a chance to play the classic “South Park” YouTube tribute clip–legally, I should add.

Midway (MWY) blames its unfortunate situation on Sumner Redstone’s decision to sell National Amusement’s majority stake in the company in December. That change in ownership has apparently allowed him to make “substantial progress” on restructuring National Amusements’ debt, as Redstone said this morning. But it was disastrous for Midway as evidenced by today’s announcement.

“This was a difficult but necessary decision,” Matt Booty, Midway’s president, chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “We have been focused on realigning our operations and improving our execution, and this filing will relieve the immediate pressure from our creditors and provide us time for an orderly exploration of our strategic alternatives. This Chapter 11 filing is the next logical step in an ongoing process to address our capital structure. Midway enters this process with strong underlying fundamentals, as evidenced by solid fourth-quarter sales that exceeded expectations in spite of a challenging retail and general economic environment.”

Apparently, Booty wrote that last line without a hint of irony. But clearly it’s soaked through with it. Fact is, Midway hasn’t had a profitable year in nearly a decade. And given the somber outlooks of far more potent rivals like Electronic Arts (ERTS) and Take-Two (TTWO), and its anemic game catalog, this year will be no different.

The short story: The lousy ad market will be even worse than people think.

The longer story: Pali Research’s Rich Greenfield has chopped his estimates for News Corp. (owner of Dow Jones, which owns this site). He expects operating income for the company’s fiscal 2009 (which wraps up this summer) to be down 22 percent; he’d previously pegged the number at -18 percent.

Dragging down the business: The company’s international newspaper and domestic TV operations; he thinks their operating income will drop a staggering 39.6 percent and 60.4 percent, respectively.

And Barclays Capital’s Anthony DiClemente takes a similar whack at Viacom: He had previously forecast that Viacom’s operating income would drop by 1.9 percent in 2009; now he figures the decline will be eight percent.

DiClemente predicts that advertising at Viacom’s cable networks, which power the majority of the company’s financials, will drop seven percent in the coming year. That’s worse than the three percent drop he thinks that cable TV in general will see, in large part because MTV’s target audience has been disappearing as of late.

Check out the following chart from Barclays, which tracks ratings for the core demographics at Viacom’s biggest cable channels (click to enlarge):

Notice that MTV’s 23.9 percent decline has happened amidst tons of press for its reality shows, notably “The Hills,” which is supposedly a sensation among the kids these days (that’s some of the cast, at the top of this post). (UPDATE: An earlier version of this post reproduced inaccurate data that Barclays sent out regarding Viacom’s Noggin channel; Viacom points out that the channel registered a 64 percent increase in its core demo from the fall of 2007 through the fall of 2008).

Meanwhile, did you know that MTV has followed up “A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila,” a reality show/dating game hosted by a bikini-wearing bisexual pin-up girl, with “A Double Shot At Love,” which is…well, you can probably guess.

If you need it spelled out, here’s a promo clip:

The Wall Street Journal reports that Redstone’s National Amusements holding company has sold its 87 percent stake in Midway (MWY) for $100,000, plus the assumption of $70 million in debt, to Thomas. On Friday, that stake was worth something like $30 million.

The real upside for Redstone, the paper says, will be a tax loss of some $800 million, though it’s unclear how he will be able to use that to help restructure his debt. Over the years, Redstone invested an estimated $500 million in the game maker. Redstone still has a few other assets that aren’t CBS (CBS) or Viacom (VIA), but those are by far his most valuable properties.

What does Thomas get out of this? It’s not entirely clear. Midway is best known for its “Mortal Kombat” franchise, which was once considered controversial because it allowed players to rip out the still-beating hearts of their opponents. But that’s old hat these days, and even new iterations like “Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe” haven’t been able to sustain the company, which has lost $494 million in the last five years and has been under constant threat of losing its NYSE listing in recent months.

Like most of Wall Street, Pali Research’s Rich Greenfield is sure that Sumner Redstone will have to sell big blocks of CBS and Viacom shares in order to resolve a looming debt dilemma–even though that will beat down the price of the battered stocks even more.

Unlike most of Wall Street, though, Greenfield is sure that Viacom (VIA), at least, is a media business that’s well-positioned to survive the econalypse.

And his thesis makes sense: A big chunk of the cable company’s revenue is guaranteed, no matter what happens to ad rates, because it comes directly from cable operators, who pay Viacom a fee for each one of their subscribers. So unless millions of people stop getting basic cable (not going to happen), that’s going to remain a reliable source.

Add in the fact that the company’s Nickolodeon brand remains dominant, even if other franchises like MTV are showing their age, and the company should be okay for years to come, Greenfield argues.

The problem: It’s become increasingly clear that Redstone is going to have to unload big blocks of his holdings in CBS and/or Viacom, a move he insists he won’t do. But there doesn’t seem to be any alternative. Redstone’s National Amusements holding company has $1.6 billion in debt, $800 million of which comes due next month. Some of the CBS and Viacom holdings will have to go, and they should go sooner than later, Greenfield says in a note today:

While a block trade by the Chairman and Founder cannot be looked at as a positive, we believe investors are already assuming it will happen. We would simply like to see Redstone and NAI get the trade out of the way, so that investors can focus on the compelling value offered by Viacom’s stock price. With NAI in breach there is no timetable for a remedy (in discussions with its lenders), which we believe makes it critical for NAI to at least explain to investors what its current asset and debt situation is.”

BoomTown might have been remiss in my post yesterday on top candidates for the Yahoo CEO job, after the news Monday that Jerry Yang is stepping down, by leaving out several key possibilities.

Yesterday’s roster included News Corp.’s Peter Chernin, Google’s Tim Armstrong, Kevin Johnson of Juniper Networks (JNPR) and also two Yahoo board members, among others. (The main internal candidate, Yahoo President Sue Decker, seems unlikely to get the nod.)

So here is an addendum to my initial list–all of whom are Yahoo (YHOO) outsiders.

Tom Freston:

Chernin is not the only media mogul whose name is being bandied about–the other prominent one is former Viacom head Tom Freston.

Freston apparently got shafted by the–let’s be polite here–disturbingly volatile founder of Viacom (VIA), Sumner Redstone, for not buying MySpace. In fact, News Corp. (NWS), which also owns this Web site, did. But Freston remains a well-respected and creative exec and has been dabbling in the Internet space since leaving Viacom.

Also, Oprah and Arianna love Freston–which is all I need to know.

Jeff Jordan:

Jeff Jordan, the former top eBay (EBAY) exec who is now the CEO of OpenTable, was also on the short list for COO at Facebook, a job that went to former Google exec Sheryl Sandberg.

While the restaurant reservations Web start-up has been headed for a public offering, that event has obviously been pushed out indefinitely by the econalypse, which might be just the impetus to convince Jordan that bussing tables all day is too dull.

Some speculate that Yahoo could buy OpenTable and get Jordan in the process.

Richard Rosenblatt:

Another interesting idea is Richard Rosenblatt of Demand Media, a company that Yahoo was sniffing around not too long ago.

The network of social-networking sites and apps maker is an innovative play in the space and might give Yahoo some much needed Web 2.0 DNA. Demand could still be bought by Yahoo, in order to put Rosenblatt into place.

(Rosenblatt, for those who do not remember, ran the company that owned MySpace, and he was key to selling it to News Corp.)

Also, Lance Armstrong likes Rosenblatt.

Shelby Bonnie:

A reader actually made the excellent suggestion of former CNET head Shelby Bonnie, who is now investing in start-ups. Bonnie is another steady exec–despite leaving CNET, now owned by CBS (CBS), under an options backdating controversy–and is well-liked in the Internet industry.

Yahoo would be a much bigger job than he has ever held, although he certainly has both tech and advertising experience online.

David Rosenblatt:

Lastly, especially if Yahoo is interested in an exec who has turnaround talent, there is probably no better a choice than DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt. An experienced online advertising exec, he is also sharply outspoken and knows how to get companies in line and fast.

He is also impossibly rich after Google (GOOG) bought DoubleClick out from under–wait for it–Yahoo recently. While he is still running the show for Google, after having decided to stay, Yahoo might present an interesting challenge for the very savvy Rosenblatt.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

In a research note earlier today, Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield noted that the combination of the declining value of National’s public holdings and “unfriendly credit markets” are going to force Redstone to take action. Greenfield thinks his best move would be to put Viacom (VIA) up for sale, but that Redstone isn’t likely to allow that.

Read the rest of this post

But the layoffs that Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke predicted would get announced today have not materialized.

Gawker did get its hand on a memo from Bob Bakish, who is president of Viacom’s MTV International unit, in which he tells everyone that the group has stopped hiring and has “instituted significant restrictions on discretionary items such as on travel, entertainment, consulting, third party services and the like.”

This comes a day after Viacom told all of its workers it would be nixing holiday parties but was giving everyone two extra vacation days off instead, which is a great idea.

Finke was correct in thinking that this would be an excellent day to shovel bad news out the door, though. Hard to imagine that anyone is paying attention to anything that doesn’t have the word “election” in it. But for the record, here’s Bakish’s memo:

From: Alexander, Linda-LA
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 2:29 PM
To: All at MTVNI O&O
Cc: [A bunch of people]

Subject: On behalf of Bob Bakish – IMPORTANT

Team:
We are living in a time of unprecedented economic challenges. It is clear that the global economic slow down is real and will take us into next year. With that in mind, we need to dramatically reduce our spending for the balance of the year and for 2009.

Senior managers across the regions and strategic services have been given this message and are in the process of identifying savings opportunities. As you know, we have suspended all hiring (including staff, temps and freelancers) and instituted significant restrictions on discretionary items such as on travel, entertainment, consulting, third party services and the like.

I know these actions are not pleasant and delivering this message is not easy. However, it is the right thing to do. We, like others around us in media and the general business community, have no choice but to respond quickly to this difficult environment. It is only with this type of response that we can ensure our Brands will continue to prosper and provide our global consumers the innovative content they want and our partners the unique value they expect.

In addition, as many of you read in Philippe Dauman and Tom Dooley’s e-mail, our company will be forgoing all divisional, regional and corporate holiday parties and instead giving all employees, including everyone internationally two additional vacation days to be used during your respective holiday season as coordinated with your respective supervisor. We feel in times like these, giving our employees the extra time to spend with family and loved ones is much appreciated.

Again, I know this is not easy but we are not alone and we will make it through. Thanks as always for focusing on driving us forward–even in this period where going forward means spending less.

Bob”

Redstone altered the standard introduction he makes at the beginning of each quarterly earnings call to address his recent sale of $233 million worth of shares in CBS (CBS) and Viacom (VIA). Those sales, made to appease lenders to Redstone’s National Amusements Inc. holding company, were a one-time event, he insisted: “This was not something NAI wanted to do, nor is it something that NAI intends to do again … NAI has no intention of selling a single share of Viacom or CBS.”

National Amusements, which is both a movie theater operator and Redstone’s personal holding company, is  trying to renegotiate some $1.6 billion in loans. A debt covenant triggered the share sales earlier this month, and investors have been wondering whether Redstone will have to unload even more shares.

CBS shares are down more 50 percent over the last year, and Viacom’s price has dropped nearly 70 percent.

Note that Redstone couldn’t definitively promise that he wouldn’t sell another share in his companies. And CBS officials wouldn’t let analysts ask him about his debt issues during the conference call.

CBS’s Interactive division, run by M&A maven Quincy Smith (pictured), posted revenues of $140.7 million, up from $35.9 million last year. That year-to-year comparison doesn’t mean much, since the CNET numbers aren’t included in the 2007 numbers. But CBS (CBS) says that if CNET had been around last year, the division would be recording a six percent increase in revenue, pushed up by a 12 percent increase in display ads.

Back in the good ol’ days, like earlier this year, a big Web publisher would be flayed for posting six percent revenue increases. And in fact, that’s just what happened to CNET’s old managers, who were hounded by a group of activist investors for delivering single-digit growth while the rest of the Web was booming.

But given the cratering economy, six percent doesn’t look that crappy, especially compared to the results posted by the likes of Time Warner’s AOL (TWX) and Yahoo (YHOO). And the display ad boost should be heartening for CBS, which would very much like to be able to tell investors that it has a growth engine.

Next up: Getting Interactive to contribute a profit. It recorded an operating loss of $15.2 million this quarter.

Recently, while I was at a conference in Los Angeles, I caught up with Veoh Founder Dmitry Shapiro.

BoomTown will be focusing a lot on online video this year and Veoh is one of the several online video-sharing sites–a group of smaller players that includes sites like Joost, Hulu, Dailymotion, Vimeo and others that I like to call not-YouTube.

But there are pluses to not being the Google-owned (GOOG) video behemoth, in that major entertainment companies who want to figure out how to put their content online aren’t wondering all day long whether to hug or sue you (or both if you are Sumner Redstone).

Today, for example, the Los Angeles-based Veoh announced that the ABC (DIS) television network would put full episodes of its hot prime-time shows–such as “Ugly Betty” (love it) and “Desperate Housewives” (not so much)–up on the site on a non-exclusive basis.

While Veoh has a lot of short, user-generated material, it has also made a push to get more professional material from big media companies like CBS (CBS)–which wins kudos for being the most promiscuous of networks–on its service.

Interestingly in this deal, media connections seem at play here: Disney-owned ABC is giving over content to Veoh, which has former Disney poobah Michael Eisner as one of its principal investors.

The traffic-type deal is typical–Veoh gets paid to send audience to ABC’s site or gets it to use ABC’s really nice player, and ABC tries to monetize it. Veoh currently says it has 28 million unique monthly visitors.

Of course, Veoh is also trying to figure out that nettlesome monetization issue that all online video sites face, which centers on building audience with the attractive big media content and then getting them to watch other ad-supported fare on its site.

But, as with all video sites, it is still in the early stages and, thus, Veoh got another tidy pile of new funding just two weeks ago to help it muddle through.

That would be $30 million more to add to the kitty of about $40 million previously raised.

Along with existing investors–Shelter Capital Partners, Spark Capital, Goldman Sachs (GS), Eisner’s Tornante Company, Tom Freston’s Firefly3, Time Warner (TWX) Investments and Jonathan Dolgen–Veoh’s latest round included Intel Capital, Adobe Systems (ADBE) and also media and tech investor Gordon Crawford.

I talked to Shapiro, who now serves as Veoh’s chief innovation officer, about the money and more here:

Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield thinks Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone ought to consider that question carefully. In a research piece this morning, Greenfield recalls that in July 2006 he wrote a report entitled “Dear Mr. Redstone: Take Viacom Private.” Since that time, he says, Viacom has installed a new CEO and CFO, topped EPS expectations in 2006 and 2007, showed improving cable ratings and bought back $3.3 billion of stock, or about 11% of the shares outstanding. But in that period, the stock has dropped 2%, cutting its one-year forward EPS multiple to 10.6X from 14.4X.

Greenfield thinks that “given increasingly broad investor distaste for Viacom’s management team and the lack of respect and confidence in the company’s earnings prospects,” Redstone should “seriously revisit our go-private analysis.”

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For viewers just tuning in, so far this week on “As the Tiny-Incestuous-Petty-Juvenile-Digital World Turns,” Yahoo (YHOO) has been plenty busy:

An AOL (TWX) mashup deal!

A Google (GOOG) search-ad partnership!

Even–cue the trumpets!!!–the late entrance of that man-about-Silicon-Valley from Web 1.0, Frank Quattrone, working for Google, which is helping Yahoo on AOL (and, fun, snake-eating-itself fact: as a banker, Quattrone worked for Yahoo when it was contemplating buying eBay).

This is so deliciously sweet, in terms of geek soap opera, that I fear I may get a major cavity soon.

But like any hungry viewer, I want more! What, what, what could be the next twist and turn?

Here are three of my more creative brainstorms:

1. Reunite the dream team in United States v. Microsoft to scare the living daylights out of Steve Ballmer.

It will be like an antitrust version of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” I am almost certain that Joel Klein, Janet Reno, David Boies and the ever-irascible Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson (the latter two pictured here) still are capable of giving Microsoft (MSFT) the willies.

2. If you want make former Yahoo merger partner and now Microsoft merger parter News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch squirm, there’s nothing like adding yet another wizened media mogul to the mix. My No. 1 choice would be some kind of hopelessly complex mashup with the properties of Sumner Redstone (pictured here), who controls both CBS (CBS) and Viacom (VIA). I am thinking something that includes SpongeBob SquarePants and those irksome girls from “The Hills” (also pictured here) and, say, Katie Couric.

3. Of course, the most surefire way to get more money from Microsoft: Hire Mark Zuckerberg (pictured here). So far, the 23-year-old wunderkind and his team at Facebook (well played, Owen Van Natta, well played!) have been the only ones able to get Microsoft to fork over an ungodly amount of money for a chance to own a small part of a hope and a dream and not-a-very-impressive bottom line.

If Zuckerberg can get a $15 billion valuation by putting up only SuperPokes and news feeds as collateral, I would find what he is drinking and get me some for myself.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Speaking at the Dow Jones and Nielsen Media and Money conference this week, Redstone, whose company is suing YouTube seeking $1 billion in damages for what it terms “massive intentional copyright infringement,” said content still rules the digital domain. “Copyright compels creativity,” he said. “It furnishes the incentive to innovate. If you limit the protection of copyrights, you stifle the expression of new ideas. Think about it. You cannot pay the rent posting videos on YouTube. And most aspiring novelists do not aspire to self-publish. You cannot make it as a musician or filmmaker or writer without the shelter of effective and enforced copyright legislation.

“… If content is king,” Redstone concluded, “then copyright–the legal and moral position that the fruits of intellectual labor should be protected in order to encourage creative expression–is its castle.”

And YouTube is, clearly, the Trojan rabbit that’s already made it past the gates …

Speaking at the Dow Jones and Nielsen Media and Money conference this week, Redstone, whose company is suing YouTube seeking $1 billion in damages for what it terms “massive intentional copyright infringement,” said content still rules the digital domain. “Copyright compels creativity,” he said. “It furnishes the incentive to innovate. If you limit the protection of copyrights, you stifle the expression of new ideas. Think about it. You cannot pay the rent posting videos on YouTube. And most aspiring novelists do not aspire to self-publish. You cannot make it as a musician or filmmaker or writer without the shelter of effective and enforced copyright legislation.

“… If content is king,” Redstone concluded, “then copyright–the legal and moral position that the fruits of intellectual labor should be protected in order to encourage creative expression–is its castle.”

And YouTube is, clearly, the Trojan rabbit that’s already made it past the gates …

Also, I might add that these parody videos posted below–a mashup of the ribald animated series and the Apple ads and another with “Harry Potter”–are chock full of jacked material!

Oh yes, I just grabbed this fine picture of the “South Park” character right off the Web without a problem.

I await Viacom owner Sumner Redstone’s wrath and expect his legions of lawyers to come raining down on me asap.

Herein lies the problem and the impetus for a new–and I would say not insignificant–deal just signed by the creators of “South Park” with its principal distributor, Viacom’s Comedy Central, which a New York Times report outlined in today’s paper.

According to the story, “South Park” creators and executive producers Matt Stone and Trey Parker, sick of seeing their valuable content ripped off pretty much everywhere it can be digitally ripped off, have decided to get into the viral video game themselves, which should have occurred to them, oh, many, many moons ago.

“If I’m overseas and have to get an episode right away,” Stone said to the Times, “you literally have to go to an illegal download site.”

I cannot imagine what a “South Park” character would do with an obviously obvious statement like that, but it would surely involve a bodily function.

Under terms of the deal, in which it appears Comedy Central (a division of MTV, which is a division of Viacom, which is a division of owner Sumner Redstone’s increasingly pissed-off-about-YouTube brain) will be footing the bill, they will create a Web hub to get “South Park” material out there before all the piraters can (and will still continue to, by the way).

To combat that too, the new unit will try to create new material well beyond the show. New television concepts, perhaps even bigger than the massive “South Park” franchise, could even emerge.

As part of the arrangement, they’ll all apparently split any ad revenue from SouthParkStudios.com, which should tell you all you need to know about the mood of Hollywood right now.

Studios are justifiably scared of the digital onslaught and actually have started to imagine funding talented people to create material to compete and to share in the ventures’ success might be a good idea.

While that’s business-as-usual in tech funding, the idea is an anathema to the entertainment industry, which likes to keep its talent happily overpaid with pap (though giant) salaries, all while keeping the really good and lucrative stuff–the actual ownership of the creative product–to itself.

The artists are no better, accepting the pricey pay-off in exchange for their work. Or as Stone said in an interview with the Times: “People always ask us, ‘You own it, right? No? Why’d you sign that deal?’ And I have to say, ‘Because I was sleeping on my friend’s couch.’”

Thus, the Google twins are billionaires many times over and the “South Park” dudes are merely really rich.

That’s achingly typical, and Hollywood execs argue that it’s because they take all the risk by funding, distributing and marketing the various entertainment projects. But with the advent of digital distribution and creation, it obviously all needs a bit of retooling.

Not that Viacom has not tried everything, in a panic after the not-buying of MySpace, which has definitely been a flash point for the company. Another, of course, is the $1 billion lawsuit it is waging against Google over copyright infringement on YouTube.

But I like this kind of move a lot better, even if it is a big flop and even if it is only reserved for giant rainmakers like Stone and Parker. While Hollywood powers like Viacom surely won’t allow others in on the game quite yet, it is an encouraging and even bold direction to the usual picture of Redstone (pictured here) harrumphing about digital piracy of its material.

While I agree that that is a problem that tech companies like Google need to address and have been arrogant about not addressing quickly enough, new CEO Philippe Dauman (whom I interviewed at D5 in May) is obviously a good influence.

It’s a move that should be replicated to make Web content as important as it could be. Hollywood needs to make more smart moves like this or else they are cooked.

Or maybe they are already, in the words of Cartman:

Stan: Dude, dolphins are intelligent and friendly.
Cartman: Intelligent and friendly on rye bread with some mayonnaise.

Now that’s funny, as are these two parody videos:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google (owner of YouTube).