Mark Fleischmann

Two flat-panel TV mounts have been recalled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Circuit City because they pose a safety hazard.

Recent press reports that Jack Valenti passed away last week were not quite complete. This blog has learned that the man who likened the VCR to the Boston Strangler was, in fact, strangled by a VCR. Police say the videocassette recorder snuck into the bedroom of the former head of the Motion Picture Association of America as he slept. Spitting out a cassette, the VCR uncoiled the tape and wrapped it around the neck of the veteran lobbyist who once told Congress: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone." The murder was captured by a security camera connected to, ironically, another VCR. Valenti began his career as a publicist and served in the administrations of presidents Kennedy and Johnson. At the MPAA he pioneered the rating system and cried wolf insistently enough to secure passage of the unbelievably fascistic Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which criminalizes anything and everything to do with home recording devices, including just looking at one. According to police, forensic evidence in the form of Super Avilyn particles may eventually tie the murder weapon to the rogue VCR. They also say the getaway car was driven by a TiVo.

Internet radio broadcasters may get a reprieve from Congress. A bill surfaced last week that would reverse the recent royalty rate hike that net radio outfits say would have doomed them to extinction.

At least one major cable operator is pruning analog channels in advance of the end of analog broadcasting, slated for February 17, 2009. Time Warner Cable's Staten Island Project will provide 100 new channels of HDTV to the southernmost borough of New York City.