Hollywood believes the Internet is the key to its future. But its constituents are again squabbling over how to get there. As in the recent television writers strike, the major studios are at odds with some members of the creative community over digital distribution.

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The Federal Communications Commission was poised on Monday to impose a cap on fast-growing subsidies the government allots to providers of telephone service in rural America. A proposal to limit the phone subsidies moved towards passage as FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell threw his support behind the idea, giving it a crucial third vote on the five- member commission.

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In comments filed at the Federal Communications Commission Monday most broadcasters argued that new localism proposals are unnecessary and burdensome.

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Hospital administrators and medical device manufacturers fear unlicensed use of "white spaces" spectrum between television channels could interfere with medical devices. "If a new white space application that's operating thousands of times more powerfully came online, either in the hospital or outside the hospital, it could very well directly interfere with the telemetry system and prevent patient monitoring," Tim Kottak, engineering general manager for GE Healthcare's systems and wireless division, said in a telephone interview with CNET News.com this week.

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The Republican National Committee has developed a new method for rebutting attack ads against John McCain: Send threatening letters to any cable networks that might run them. RNC chief counsel Sean Cairncross has notified NBC, CNN and MSNBC that he believes the new Democratic ad attacking John McCain's "maybe a hundred" years in Iraq line is illegal on two counts: 1) It is misleading, in that Cairncross says it distorts McCain's words, and 2) It constitutes collaboration between the Clinton and Obama camps and the DNC in fashioning a message against McCain.

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The week began with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton bashing each other with negative TV ads on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary. It ended with the prospect of a longer, tougher contest after Clinton’s win, and with the volatile issue of race again occupying a prominent place in the media narrative.

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Rupert Murdoch has made headlines this week with the resignation of Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli, a reported $580 million bid for Newsday and more talk of how he is transforming the Journal’s front page coverage to take on the New York Times.

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Public radio is drawing its largest audience ever, some 28 million listeners nationwide each week. But if it’s a golden era, you wouldn't know it from the frenetic activity to remake the genre.

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U.S. newspaper circulation fell 3.6 percent in the latest set of figures released by an industry group on Monday, reflecting a migration of readers to the Internet and publishers' efforts to streamline their businesses.

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Television stations in Indiana and North Carolina may receive an advertising windfall of more than $8 million in campaign spots as the Democratic presidential nomination race drags out longer than expected.

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The odds may be long against Congress overturning new Federal Communications Commission rules that make it easier for newspapers and TV stations in a market to buy each other, but the broadcasting and newspaper industries are concerned enough to attempt to forestall such action.

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In a potential setback for fans of broadband over power lines, a federal appeals court has sided in part with amateur radio operators who challenged rules designed to speed the nascent Internet service's rollout.

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By now you know the story: The business of newspapers is in decline. It's a terminal decline, if you believe experts such as Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California at Annenberg.

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The big three TV network newscasts lost about 1.2 million viewers last year, and advertising on their three big morning news shows fell to an estimated $1.03 billion. The average viewer is 60 years old, and the demographic marketers most want to reach is more likely to be facing a computer screen than a TV screen when the evening news comes on.

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When it comes to campaign commercials, Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) are going where no candidate has gone before. "Obama and Clinton have spent a combined $110 million on TV ads to this point; we've had a race that's literally gone on since last summer for ad spending," said Evan Tracey of TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, CNN's consultants on campaign commercials.

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A look at the 10 technologies that are keys to our digital age. Without realizing it, you've probably used at least one of them already today -- if not all.

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National Public Radio continues to move aggressively against Federal Communications Commission proposals that would, if not allow nonprofits to build more Low Power FM stations (LPFM), at least let existing ones survive the intrusion of new full power neighbors.

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The proposed merger of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. was opposed by four states that say the combination of the only two pay radio companies poses a threat to competition.

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It's become an annual rite of spring at the Illinois Capitol (Springfield, if you're playing at home): lawmakers putting forth measure after measure to crack down on troubling aspects of the Internet, dangling the promise of making schoolchildren safer.

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U.S. media conglomerates are expected to shrug off the deteriorating economy in the first quarter thanks to strength in their cable networks, but real pain could hit as early as in the second quarter.

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