AT&T however, actually has about $20 billion in debt, but some of that is associated with AT&T Broadband's ownership of stakes in Cablevision, Time Warner Entertainment and Rainbow Programming.

Earlier this year, Fox Sports and Liberty Media got together with the Cablevision Systems Corporation, which controls Rainbow Programming.

Fox recently added New York's two regional sports networks, MSG and Sportschannel, by investing $850 million in the parent company of the networks, Rainbow Programming.

In addition, each has a 20 percent stake in Rainbow Programming, a venture controlled by the Cablevision Systems Corporation.

Rainbow Programming, an affiliate of Cablevision, which splits ownership of SportsChannel with NBC, had pressed Time Warner to make the SportsChannel shift.

But the two companies are in the process of reworking that investment so that NBC will instead own a piece of the parent company of those services, Rainbow Programming, which is now wholly owned by Cablevision.

Cablevision can equalize the respective shares within a year by paying ITT cash, or by peddling ITT a share of Rainbow Programming, which runs SportsChannel and other cable services.

"We want to launch the most wonderful, touching channel we can," said Josh Sapan, the president of Rainbow Programming, a unit of Cablevision.

Questioned about the cable schedule as a whole, Mr. Sapan of Rainbow Programming, who conceived the "Voices Against Violence" effort, said he thought the week's programming was at least a step in the right direction.

Finally, when Rupert Murdoch joined this mind-bending confluence of power by buying into Rainbow Programming, the holding company for the Garden, in his bid to establish a sports cable network to challenge ESPN.