Headlines

The Obama transition team is interviewing broadcast and consumer groups to get a handle on what kind of challenge it faces with the digital television switch, which takes place less than a month after he becomes president.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is pushing for action in December on a plan to offer free, pornography-free wireless Internet service to all Americans, despite objections from the wireless industry and some consumer groups.

In an effort to help resolve his debt problems, Sumner Redstone has sold his controlling stake in videogame company Midway Games to a private investor. Redstone's holding company, National Amusements Inc., is expected to announce Monday that it sold its 87% stake in Midway to investor Mark Thomas, a move that represents a significant loss on the media mogul's investment but secures a hefty tax benefit as he negotiates other asset sales.

Even as bettors around the world gamble millions of dollars online, confusion reigns about the legal status of those bets and the companies that handle them. Critics of online gambling see the industry as murky and unregulated.

CNN, in the afterglow of an election season of record ratings for cable news, is elbowing in on a new line of business: catering to financially strained newspapers looking for an alternative to The Associated Press.

In the same way national security became the common denominator of public policy in the Bush administration following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, economic growth is apt to be the common thread running though the Obama White House, the Democratic-led Congress and a new-look Federal Communications Commission in coming years.

The Federal Communications Commission has adopted new rules requiring broadcast television stations to provide better contact info on closed captioning.

The International Telecommunication Union has published its annual report detailing a set of regulatory strategies designed to lower the costs of network rollout. Sharing strategies, examined in the new ITU report, are seen as conducive for infrastructure development in the telecommunications/ICT sector, particularly in light of the deepening global financial crisis.

Clearwire and Sprint Nextel announced Friday that they have completed the transaction to combine their high-speed wireless Internet businesses, a venture that has received backing from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, Intel and Google.