Barry Willis

When will prices drop to truly affordable levels for flat-panel televisions?

News Corporation's <A HREF="http://www.fox.com/">Fox Network</A> and the <A HREF="http://www.nab.org/">National Association of Broadcasters</A> have gone their separate ways. Fox made the announcement on June 8 in protest over the Association's refusal to lobby against legal limits on the number of television stations one company can own. The limit is now defined by Federal law as a total number of stations that reach no more than 35% of the more than 100 million homes in the US. Three weeks earlier, <A HREF="http://www.nbc.com/">NBC</A>, a unit of General Electric, had threatened similar action over the NAB's refusal to change its policy.

Former Chrysler Corporation CEO Lee Iacocca was famed for saying that, in the auto industry, a company "either leads, follows, or gets out of the way." Fox Television has apparently decided that where high-definition programming is concerned, it had better follow or get left behind.

Questioning their own legal authority, <A HREF="http://www.ftc.gov/">Federal Trade Commission</A> regulators have backed away from suggestions that they move to limit promoting and marketing violent films and video games to children and adolescents. "After a careful review of the entertainment industry's marketing practices and an analysis of the law, the commission believes that there are a number of significant legal limitations, including substantial and unsettled constitutional questions, to effective law enforcement actions under the FTC Act," FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky stated.