A scuffle between CNN and Fox News is taking place after Fox News relayed CNN's signal for a short time on Saturday when news broke about the Space Shuttle Columbia breaking up over southern-central portions of the United States.

The Hollywood Reporter says that CNN's control room technicians called Fox when they noticed their arch-rival was broadcasting CNN's signal from CNN Dallas affiliate station WFAA on their own channel.

Fox's rebuttal came in the form of this rather amusing statement: "Their PR department should call to thank us because we gave them great exposure." The channel said it had permission to relay WFAA's signal and cut from CNN's feed to a clean feed once they noticed their error.

It wasn't all smiles in the press for CNN today though, as a report in the LA Times revealed the network's much-touted lead anchor, Aaron Brown, stayed golfing on Saturday even after learning about the shuttle accident. Other TV anchors having a restful day, such as Judy Woodruff at CNN and Tom Brokaw from NBC, turned up for work on their respective networks, the paper reports. Brown's golfing exploits did however let the more qualified space correspondent, Miles O'Brien, lead CNN's coverage of the breaking news - to much acclaim.

Even the oft-critical co-founder of CNN, Reese Schonfeld, praised the network - on his Bits and Pieces website, Schonfeld commented: "His [O'Brien's] insights were keen, he expertly managed confusing phone calls from various eyewitnesses, contradictory reports from various reporters and verbose statements from NASA officials. And all the time he had a producer in his earpiece, who wouldn’t shut up. I thought that, from 9 to noon, CNN was the place to be on Saturday."

He was however less thrilled at CNN/Headline News simply relaying CNN/US's signal for much of Saturday, noting that the network was designed to offer rolling news as an alternative to extended coverage on the main network.