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FCC chairman Michael Copps noted that TV stations looking to make the digital transition before June 12th may be barred from doing so. As many as 690 local TV stations want to make the transition now to save thousands of dollars in broadcasting fees. So far only 190 stations have been granted permission to make the the switch.
As expected, the Justice Department is set to investigate the Live Nation, Ticketmaster merger. The deal, worth a reported $2.5 billion, would create a monopoly in the entertainment industry.
CNET is reporting that Apple will introduce a $99 iPhone this summer. The entry-level iPhone, which would carry 8GB of memory, would run on the EDGE networks and may have a “light” data plan at half the cost of regular iPhone plan. If Apple does release a cheaper iPhone and agrees to a deal with Walmart, the iPhone could become increasingly more prevalent in the marketplace.
Liberty Media, the parent company of DirecTV, is in early discussions with Sirius XM about a possible merger. Liberty Media is the direct competitor of EchoStar (who owns Dish Network), who made an unsolicited bid for Sirius in December and has been looking to taking over the company. Some analysts believe that Liberty Media’s talks with Sirius could be a ploy to get EchoStar, their arch nemesis, pay an inflated price for the company.
According to the AP, Facebook is now being valued at $3.7 billion. The AP notes that the appraised value of the social network came from court documents from a lawsuit against Facebook which claimed Marc Zuckerberg stole fellow students idea. The $3.7 billion valuation was the set value used to deliver employee stock options.