Charlie Ergen? (Photo: NBC)

Dish Network announced today that it has submitted a $25.5 billion bid for Sprint Nextel in an effort to circumvent an offer from Japanese telecom company SoftBank. Charlie Ergen, the chairman of Dish, related the company's purchasing strategy to the plot of Seinfeld: "You initially didn’t know exactly where things were going, but it seemed to all come together in the end." [New York Times]

Facebook Home has only been out for three days, but that’s totally enough time to call it a failure. Out of 4,000 reviews, roughly 47 percent of users gave it a 1-star rating. [Daily Dot]

Foxconn is adding 10,000 new employees to its ranks as it prepares for the launch of the next Ping Home iPhone. [CNet]

Cornell's planned high-tech campus on Roosevelt Island is still years away, but some of the classes are getting started in a nondescript, third-floor loft in Chelsea. [New York Times]

Baidu, a.k.a "Chinese Google," has opened an artificial intelligence lab in Silicon Valley to look for top talent to join the growing company. [ZDNet]

Hopping into headlines, thanks to CBS.

This morning, The Verge published a damning report on an apparent conflict of interest in CNET’s “Best of CES” awards.

The post claimed that CNET's editorial staff, which votes on the award, crowned Dish Network's Hopper set-top box device the winner. But before the staff could reveal its decision, CBS--CNET's parent company--interceded because of litigation filed by CBS and other networks over the Hopper's ability to skip past commercials.

"Before the winner was unveiled, CBS Interactive News senior-vice president and General Manager Mark Larkin informed CNET's staff that the Hopper could not take the top award. The Hopper would have to be removed from consideration, and the editorial team had to re-vote and pick a new winner from the remaining choices. Sources say that Larkin was distraught while delivering the news — at one point in tears — as he told the team that he had fought CBS executives who had made the decision."

CNET's initial disclaimer about the awards did not state that Hopper had been chosen a winner, only that it was removed from the running. According to the disclaimer:

"The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product."

The Verge says both Mr. Larkin and reviews lead Lindsey Turrentine "fought for full disclosure, but were rebuffed by CBS."

Not long after The Verge's report, Greg Sandoval, a veteran reporter who has worked at CNET since 2005 announced his resignation on Twitter under the handle @SandoCNET over concerns about "editorial independence."

He appears to be the first staffer to voice his misgivings about the actions of CNET's corporate parent. Judging by the last big dustup over conflicts of interest in tech reporting, we don't imagine he'll be the last. But like Buzzfeed said, this is pretty much every tech reporter's worst nightmare.

We've reached out to Mr. Sandoval for comment and will update the post when we hear back.

UPDATE: Both CBS and CNET editor-in-chief Lindsey Turrentine have responded to the controversy. CBS released a statement calling its interference in the CES awards "an isolated and unique incident in which a product that has been challenged as illegal."

"The product in question is not only the subject of a lawsuit between Dish and CBS, but between Dish and nearly every other major media company as well. CBS has been consistent on this situation from the beginning, and, in terms of covering actual news, CNET maintains 100% editorial independence, and always will."

Of course, as CNET's competitors have pointed out, according to their previous disclaimer, this means that CBS views product reviews as something other than "actual news."

So, according to CBS, product reviews aren't journalism. Good to know!

— matt buchanan (@mattbuchanan) January 14, 2013

Like TechCrunch before it, however, CNET has covered the meta story in its webpages. Editor-in-chief Lindsey Turrentine confirmed that her editorial team had indeed selected Dish Hopper as the winner. She also called CBS' conflict of interest "real" because "a legal case can impact the bottom line of our company and introduce the possibility of bias," but expressed remorse about the lack of transparency in the process:

"If I had to face this dilemma again, I would not quit. I stand by my team and the years of work they have put into making CNET what it is. But I wish I could have overridden the decision not to reveal that Dish had won the vote in the trailer. For that I apologize to my staff and to CNET readers."

We never meant to hurt anyone.

Reed Hastings has a surprise blog post up this morning announcing that, after all the sturm und drang, Netflix won't be splitting its business in two after all.

The announcement comes just as all the major players have submitted their bids to purchase Hulu, the web TV platform created by the big TV networks, which no longer appeals to them as a business.

Taking a look at two of the biggest names in the web TV space, it's becoming clear that the internal battle between analog and digital television is creating real problems for companies hoping to straddle both worlds.

From the beginning it was obvious that Qwikster was an ill-considered stopgap measure. Netflix tried to pivot away from its original DVD-by-mail business and focus on streaming video only. But they did so by raising prices, which infuriated subscribers and hurt their quarterly numbers.

Long suffering Hulu CEO Jason Kilar published another "look at me guys" blog post, noting that Hulu now has over a million paying subscribers and that it anticipated subscription revenue would account for more than half its overall revenue in the next twelve months.

Unfortunately for Mr. Kilar, the issue isn't the health of Hulu's business. By owning a web TV platform, the big companies that back Hulu--News Corp, Disney and Comcast--are essentially cannibalizing their core revenue stream from the big cable companies.

It's the same dilemma that has plagued Netflix, forcing what had long been a consumer favorite to commit public sentiment suicide. By raising its prices for DVDs and then spinning that business off into a separate entity, Netflix hoped to free itself to succeed as a streaming video company.

In the case of Hulu, the big networks would rather not have to explain to their partners on the pay television side why they are building great web TV. That can be somebody else's battle, and the networks can just collect hefty licensing fees.

Dish Network, Amazon and Google are the final three bidders for Hulu, which leaves three very distinct possibilities for this unwanted child of the major TV networks. Dish Network would be the simplest choice for the owners, because it wouldn't fundamentally disrupt any of what Hulu is already doing online. Amazon and Google, by contrast, both have big platforms for delivering streaming video over the web, and would likely be keen to integrate Hulu with their current offerings.

The big difference between Amazon and Google is that the search giant has never been able to build a good reputation as a platform for selling content. Amazon, by contrast, can position itself closer to Apple, a premium storefront for moving digital goods.

It was only a short while ago that Dish executives were complaining in public about the negative effects of Hulu on the TV industry. But it seems they have come around and are keen to own one of web TV's best brands, or at least its backend technology.