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For more than 70 years, royalty payments for air time have flowed to the songwriters and music publishers but not to the musicians or record companies. Now there is a renewed drive to revisit that arrangement, and in recent weeks the volume of the discussion has increased several decibels.

"Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts and NBC Universal President & CEO Jeff Zucker faced a barrage of questions Feb. 25 in a marathon--over five hours with one break--hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on their proposed joint venture, their third Hill visit in as many weeks as they push for government approval of their $30 billion joint venture.\nDuring that time, the pair defended their records on diversity, and in some cases pledged to do better, reiterated their pledges to keep NBC free and over the air, and their programming available to competitive distributors."

Superbowl most watched show in history--breaking the previous record held by M*A*S*H. This article explores the enormity of the feat given the fractured nature of today's television viewing audience.

Move over Hawkeye Pierce, looks like Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints just took your ratings crown along with the Super Bowl title. A record 106.5 million people watched the Saints write a storybook ending to their dream season by beating the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 in Super Bowl XLIV on CBS, according to Nielsen. That's not only the biggest audience to date for the Super Bowl, but the biggest audience for a televised event ever -- barely knocking off the finale of \nCBS' "MASH," which averaged almost 106 million viewers when it ran in 1983.

"Twenty-five years ago, MTV was best known for music videos starring Michael Jackson and Madonna. These days, its reigning queen is not a recording star at all but rather Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, the rowdy party girl from the reality series "Jersey Shore. So maybe it's not surprising that this week the 29-year-old network bowed to the inevitable and finally scraped the legend Music Television" off its corporate logo."

Universal Music Group is using music download service Grooveshark for offering pre 1972 Universal Recordings for free without permission.

Explains why television remakes of TV series always fail whereas movie adaptations of TV shows have a better track record. Nevertheless remakes of Rockford Files, Charlie's Angels, and Hawaii Five-O are forthcoming.

The issue of pairing fan-created videos with recorded music is one that still awaits court ruling. Music companies are suing video sites for copyright infringement when fans upload self-created videos using songs from their copyrighted artists.

The Obama administration is backing $675,000 in damages a Massachusetts student must pay the Recording Industry Association of America for file sharing 30 songs.

PARIS - Worldwide sales of recorded music fell by about 10 percent last year, a trade group said Thursday, as revenue growth from digital services was insufficient to compensate for a continuing fall in sales of compact discs.

"Are newspapers dead, dead, dead? If you can believe everything you read in them, apparently so. Hal Fuson, a veteran of 44-years in the news business, didn't think those obituary writers had their stories straight. In fact, they were reporting myths about the dire state of the industry as though they were facts. When Fuson, who is a member of First Amendment Coalition's board, recently retired from Copley Press, decided to set the record straight. 'I had a few things to get off my chest,' Fuson writes, 'So I agreed to be interviewed by a journalist I trust: myself.'"

The RIAA argues ISP's should perform copyright enforcement, and claim Net Neutrality blocks such efforts.