• Disfigured patients to be exploited for entertainment value on new reality tv show; prudish sorts protest.

• CBS plays its hand close to the vest by announcing that they would be "very interested" if Time Warner ever were willing to sell CNN.

• Nobody is watching local news anymore. Apparently everyone—even your grandfather—recently made the switch to The Daily Show.

• FCC continues to be unimpressed with Sirius/XM radio's proposed merger, Howard Stern's unique brand of lewd humor.

• "Man charged with putting 24 on the web." And the war on terror continues!

• The Weather Channel has apparently become a "hot-button" issue. And here we thought the Doppler 4000 was risqué!

• Dan Rather to make a cameo appearance as…Dan Rather! Quick, to the DVRs!

• CBS proves they're the hippest thing to embrace the internet since…Al Gore.

• Daily Candy hires execs away from NYT; NYT responds by poaching Perez Hilton to head up its Washington bureau.

• Amazon to sucker-punch iTunes by opening a digital music store that's really, really easy to manipulate.

• Vanity Fair gets "novel" treatment by the mag's deputy editor.

• XM listeners accustomed to Opie and Anthony's crudeness; appalled by Opie and Anthony's suspension.

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Well, it's (almost) official. XM and Sirius plan to join forces to become a single, unstoppable satellite radio superpower. Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin will be CEO of the new company, and XM chairman Gary Parsons will become its chairman.

And while Mel and Gary celebrate atop giant piles of money, apparently not everyone is certain the deal will get greenlighted by the powers that be.

Like, for instance, National Association of Broadcasters' spokesman Dennis Wharton, who said that NAB "would be shocked" if the merger was permitted by the FCC, given "the government's history of opposing monopolies in all forms."

Plus, Wharton had some not-so-nice things to say about the satellite radio stock prices, and isn't too fond of Howard Stern, either.

[P]olicymakers will have to weigh whether an industry that makes Howard Stern its poster child should be rewarded with a monopoly platform for offensive programming. We're hopeful that this anti-consumer proposal will be rejected.

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