MOGULS WRESTLING OVER TUBE.

Byline: Tom Hoffarth

Imagine Ted Turner straddling a nuclear warhead like Slim Pickens in the final scene of ``Dr. Strangelove,'' yipping it up as if he's on a mechanical bull while the thing rockets toward its final target.

Which is, most likely, the satellite dish in Rupert Murdoch's backyard.

A recently escalated spitting match between media mogul Turner and media mogul Murdoch is, on one level, an amusing example of the corporate gamesmanship and public politics that drives those in the business of sports television.

Both, of course, have interests in things beyond sports TV. But because of their active participation in where sports TV will likely veer into the 21st Century, we should probably pay attention here.

Not only are we just bugs on their windshields, but the Turner-vs.-Murdoch clash could turn us into viewer pawns on a high-scale one-upsmanship.

Turner's totality, of course, includes his baseball Braves, basketball Hawks, a potential NHL team and the new facility in Atlanta used for the recent Olympics (soon to be renamed Turner Stadium). Add to that TBS and TNT, created in his own image, and CNN, the genesis of all-news cable TV. Last week, he became vice chairman of Time Warner, which runs HBO (Turner hates boxing, by the way), Sports Illustrated and the upcoming SI-CNN all-sports news channel.

Murdoch's magic kingdom is News Corp., with a portfolio that includes Fox and its take-no-prisoners sports division that has cannibalized as many cable and regional television systems as possible.

Murdoch says he had a contract promising that his new cable channel, Fox News, which premieres Sunday, would be part of Time Warner's cable system. No go, said Time Warner, which changed its mind to carry MSNBC instead.

Murdoch promised retaliation and a challenge to the FTC before formal Turner/Time Warner approval is granted.

Turner, in response, compared Murdoch to ``the late Fuehrer'' and said it wasn't right to use his media properties as weapons in the war of saturation.

Murdoch hasn't responded to that - the Aussie's German is a little rusty.

Meanwhile, the Disney/ABC/ESPN coalition has trademarked the slogan ``The worldwide leader in sports.''

Anyone who's trying to make some kind of sense can stop at any time. Both of these kajillionaires lost perspective years ago before they started buying up sports properties and shoving them into their toy boxes.

It's scary enough to think about what the two would do with power tools in their hands. But when Turner wakes up and douses his Lucky Charms with Diet Pepsi, there's a chemical reaction that the public should be protected from.

It's in Turner's and Murdoch's best interests to keep that sports TV programming coming. Let us drown in it while the two of them swim in their mergers and acquisitions statements.

But enough's enough.

Turner and Murdoch have about as big a piece of the pie as any two humans should be entitled. It's become a tangled web that the public can't even follow any longer.

Downsizing should be required at some point. To scratch the surface, will a show like HBO's ``Real Sports'' think twice about an expose on the Braves? Will Fox do whatever possible to keep the Braves off its major-league game of the week?

We don't think this ego royale will end with some pay-per-view event. Neither could give up the rights to it if it did.

But that visual of Turner riding high atop a Strangelove scud isn't so crazy, either.

These two keep this garbage up, and it's bound to mean slim pickings for the rest of us.

MEMO: Staff writer Tom Hoffarth's media column appears Friday in the Daily News. He can be reached on-line at sptmediaaol.com.