Ben Berkowitz
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Ben Berkowitz is the business news editor at AOL. His weekly column highlights business stories with significant implications that were overlooked at first glance.

The story you didn't read this week but should have is the news that the Commerce Department is going to make $40 coupons available to people with TVs that can't tune digital signals and aren't hooked up to satellite or cable.

This is important because, in less than two years, analog TV as we know it will end in the United States. From February 17, 2009, stations must broadcast in digital only. The reason of course is money; it takes a lot less spectrum to broadcast digital signals than analog, and all those analog airwaves are worth untold billions of dollars.

So it's in Uncle Sam's best interest to ensure that the switchover happens, and the best way to do that is to do the heavy lifting (financially) for those who still love their rabbit ears.

Here's the funny part though (funny as in "oh geez not again," not "hah hah" funny): to get one of these $40 coupons from Uncle Carlos (AKA Commerce Secretary Gutierrez), all you have to do is ask.

Even if you don't need one, you can still go to a special National Telecommunications and Information Administration Web site starting Jan. 1, 2008 and request up to two $40 coupons per household. (Each converter will be about $50). The best part is this: if the initial $990 million in coupons runs out, the NTIA can ask Congress for $510 million more.

Ben Berkowitz is the business news editor at AOL. His weekly column highlights business stories with significant implications that were overlooked at first glance.

The story you didn't read this week but probably should have was actually two stories you may have read lately: Bob Wright's "exit interview" in Fortune and Friday's front-page Journal story on AT&T (NYSE:T) and Yahoo(NASDAQ:YHOO) renegotiating their deal. The interesting thing in both these stories is the almost off-handed way in which they disclose how close two major conglomerates came to being bought and sold.

The AT&T - Yahoo piece, almost as an afterthought, mentions that in 2004 AT&T and Yahoo actually jointly hired bankers to make a run at buying Disney(NYSE:DIS). (This was in response to Comcast trying to buy Disney and a suspicion that even Microsoft might make an offer too).

Think about that for a second. AT&T and Yahoo buying Disney. It's almost too incongruous to believe. But anyone who knows anything about AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre knows he likes buying stuff. A lot. And some sort of Yahoo-Disney tie-up is a very old rumor. (Yahoo CEO Terry Semel ran Warner Bros. after all, so he knows old media).

(Full disclosure: About 10 years ago I accepted a job offer from SBC, but changed my mind a few weeks later and never actually worked there).

Meanwhile, before handing over the reins at NBC Universal, Bob Wright sat down with Fortune to talk about his tenure at the media company and where he thinks GE(NYSE:GE) might take it. Like a good reporter would, Fortune's Tim Arango asks Wright if GE ever actually got close to selling NBC. Surprisingly enough, Wright says yes, yes it did, and then gives details!

Apparently in 1993 GE sold NBC to Gulf + Western (former owner of Paramount), and then in 1994 it sold half of NBC to Disney. Both deals collapsed. But considering how adamant GE has always been about not selling NBC, it's surprising to hear that the company spent the better part of two years trying to do that very thing.

It makes sense though. Think back to the early 1990s for a second. In the 1992-1993 season, NBC only had two shows in the top 20, "Cheers" and "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." Not particularly impressive and not a good sign for revenue. It was not much better in the '93-'94 season with three top-20 shows ( "Seinfeld," "Fraser" and "Wings"). But by 1994-'95 things had turned around, with six top-20 shows, including the top two on television, "Seinfeld" and "ER."

It's always interesting to hear these sorts of things, even years later. Makes you wonder how close any given conglomerate is to being sold at any given moment. If AT&T and Yahoo were seriously considering buying Disney, then who else was/is for sale? Verizon-Viacom maybe? News Corp.-DirecTV? (Oh wait, nevermind. Tried it, didn't work out too well).

In other words, don't necessarily believe GE when it says that it will never sell NBC - it's been saying that for 20 years but clearly it has tried in past and could again. And if AT&T ever says it's not shopping for something, well, fool me 16 times, shame on you, but fool me 17 times, shame on me.

Ben Berkowitz is the business news editor at AOL. His weekly column highlights business stories with significant implications that were overlooked at first glance.

The story you didn't read this week but should have is that Bill Gates is heading for the exit on housing and energy stocks. When the world's richest man, who certainly has money to burn, says "nah, no thanks" to an entire sector, pay heed.

Gates sold out of a laundry list of stocks: KB Home (NYSE:KBH), Centex Crop. (NYSE:CTX), Pulte Homes, Inc. (NYSE:PHM), Lennar Corp. (NYSE:LEN), Beazer Homes USA, Inc. (NYSE:BZH), Ryland Group Inc. (NYSE:RYL) and WCI Communities, Inc. (NYSE:WCI) in the housing space; and AES Corp. (NYSE:AES), Chevron Corp. (NYSE:CVX), Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED), Dominion Resources, Inc. (NYSE:D), Duke Energy Corp. (NYSE:DUK), FPL Group, Inc. (NYSE:FPL) and Ameren Corp. (NYSE:AEE) in energy and utilities.

His move in housing was particularly striking - a November filing by his foundation showed new positions in a number of home builders, only to then sell the shares by Dec. 31.

Could it be that the housing market is just so lousy that Gates does not feel compelled to bother? This is a man who is so rich that, if he sold off everything he owned, he could give every man, woman and child in the United States something like $160 and still have plenty of money left over for the Egg McMuffins he was once known to favor.

Ben Berkowitz is the business news editor for AOL. His weekly column looks at news stories with long-term significance that were initially overlooked.

The story you didn't read this week but should have is the almost off-handed way that super-billionaire Sam Zell said he'd perhaps like to buy Tribune Co. (NYSE: TRB). And if that wasn't enough, now everyone's favorite even-bigger billionaire Warren Buffett is said to be snapping up shares of the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT).

These titans of industry understand something that even the Internet has not changed: owning a newspaper is both a mark of prestige and an easy way to have a very loud voice. Anyone who thinks their motives are altruistic has perhaps been sniffing too much newsprint.

Sam Zell is a real-estate baron. What on earth would he do with a newspaper chain? (Yes, Trib also owns the Cubs, and some TV stations, and a few other properties, but the same question applies. There are easier ways to own a baseball team.)

Keep asking: why does housing developer and art patron Eli Broad want the Los Angeles Times? Or supermarket magnate Ron Burkle? Why would insurance heavyweight Hank Greenberg want the New York Times? Why does Jack Welch want the Boston Globe? Hint: remember the rumors about Welch trying to steer election coverage in various NBC newsrooms in 2000.

Simple: they want to control mainstream media outlets to push their agendas. Broad has a vision for changing the future of Los Angeles. Burkle is a big Democratic supporter. Greenberg has been abused mercilessly in the press for the financial doings at AIG. Welch's wife is a journalist.

The motives for Zell and Buffett are less clear; maybe Zell wants to take a crack at Trib for the sake of it? Great businessmen love challenges. And Buffett, well, just do what the man says. He buys it, you buy it. Really, he didn't get rich on his looks or fashion sense.

This week's story that no one read and everyone should have is about tortilla riots in Mexico. Yes, tortilla riots. In Mexico. Some 75,000 people protesting the rising price of tortillas.

Not to be overly blunt, but who cares, right? It's just a single grocery item in some other country. But the reason the people are up in arms is more important than anyone realizes.

Poor Mexicans rely on tortillas for their diet. And a lot of other poor people in a lot of other places rely on other foodstuffs made from corn.

The problem is ethanol. Ethanol, that fuel additive that reduces pollution and helps us wean our dependency on foreign oil and makes farmers rich and politicians look silly when they stump in Iowa. As the U.S. adds more ethanol to its gasoline, the price of corn is surging dramatically, leading to extreme market volatility.

President Bush wants to use a variety of sources to make ethanol as the government pushes increased use of the additive, but for now most U.S. producers seem to be eschewing sugar and other products in favor of corn. If that remains the case, corn prices will only go higher and the poor of Mexico and elsewhere will be further pinched.

Of course, publicly-traded corn companies like Archer-Daniels-Midland (NYSE: ADM), Bunge Ltd. (NYSE: BG) and Corn Products International Inc. (NYSE: CPO) can't and don't mind that much - their profits are soaring. Big multinationals like Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) must be happy too -- higher prices on big-selling staples are always a happy thing.

After months of speculation and one bad headline after another (SEC probes, exploding laptop batteries, wilting market share), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) did what most people expected and replaced Kevin Rollins as CEO with company founder Michael Dell. The move continued a long tradition of "encore CEOs" who get called back when companies they founded or led to greatness fall on hard times.

Experts say it is rare for a company to go back to its executive roots. The movie signals both a sense of desperation and a need for a proven hand at the helm.

The question now is whether Michael Dell will be the next Steve Jobs or the next Ted Waitt. Jobs famously saved Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL), which lost its way in the 1990s and saw its already-small market share in PCs shrink dangerously. Jobs revitalized the company, pushing for a new operating system (OS X), new designs (the iMac) and new products (the iPod).

But on the other hand, there was Ted Waitt, who started Gateway(NYSE:GTW) and became an icon (as much for his ponytail and cow-spotted box as for his computers). At the peak of Gateway's strength Waitt handed over the reins, but when the dot-com bubble burst Gateway started to suffer and Waitt stepped back into the corner office. All of his skills and long hair were not enough, though, to turn the company around. He left Gateway again (this time entirely) in 2005.

Other CEOs have done it, with mixed results, among them Charles Schwab at his eponymous firm (NASDAQ:SCHW)(which has gone well) and Ken Lay at Enron (which did not go as swimmingly).

It raises the question, though, of the long-term future for Dell (the company), and it may prove instructive for any business looking to make a leadership change.

At some point, you have to move on.

Michael Dell can not run Dell forever. Bill Gates could not run Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)forever, and knew it, ergo Steve Ballmer. Mom-and-pop businesses that thrive do so because son-and-daughter are ready to step in when the need be.

Some suggest that poor prep work by a corporate board (or Mom and Dad) is to blame for bad transitions. A business has to be preparing itself for new leadership all the time. The recipe seems to be something like this: come to terms with the need for new leadership, swallow your pride, find someone qualified, and then get out of the way and let them run your business for you.

Even if it does feel like cutting off a finger.

If a crack dealer has to report his sales on the local street corner as taxable income, would it then be reasonable for said dealer to deduct crack pipes purchased to give his best customers as a business expense? Similarly, if a lobbyist bribes members of Congress regularly with paper sacks of $100 bills, and those members duly note the gratuity on their 1040s, are the sacks deductible?

The questions are not so far-fetched, really, because it turns out bribes and crack revenues and various other interesting things are all taxable.

According to IRS Publication 17, Chapter 12, illegal income is taxable, as are bribes.

Credit to Consumerist for originally giving this chestnut the attention it so richly deserves: "Illegal income, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21, or on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity."

It's right there in black-and-white. Sell little balloons of black tar heroin from the back of a McDonald's, report it on line 21.

It started with just a couple of people at a couple of restaurants in New Jersey, but within a day or two, Taco Bells across New York and New Jersey were being shuttered as dozens came down sick with the E. coli bacteria.

Having had an E. coli infection myself when I was young, I can attest to how unpleasant and unfortunate it is -- think lots of pain, dehydration, lack of sleep, inability to eat. And that's in a very mild case; the sickest victims are suffering permanent kidney damage and worse.