According to this news source, Princess delivered a healthy number of young viewers. About 8.5 million watched. Last year's Disney movie Camp Rock scored a little higher in its debut. The article points out what High School Musical 2 scored, which was about twice as many viewers in its initial run (hey, you can't beat Musical). The article further points out that all these statistics do not include time-shifted ratings, which takes into account later viewings facilitated by digital-recording technologies.

Well, as Boorstin rightly points out, CBS (NYSE: CBS), Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC, General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC, and News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) Fox do need to worry. These DVR technologies basically translate to a drop in the economic value of advertising. Let's face it: who watches commercials when they don't have to?

World Wrestling Entertainment (NYSE: WWE) is calling on an old friend to help it bring in an audience beyond the media company's hardcore demographic. Donald Trump, who has worked storylines with WWE before (remember the battle between Trump and Vince McMahon, the one that saw McMahon lose his hair?), recently appeared on WWE's Raw television program. In fact, TVSquad.com discussed the high-profile promotion Trump's involvement received over this past weekend. TV Squad also covered the little controversy caused by Trump's "purchase" of WWE's famous asset (I honestly cannot believe that some investors actually sold the company's stock based on a storyline).

Using Trump isn't a bad idea. He's a pretty good performer, and he seems, at times, like a natural for the wrestling business. How should an investor process his involvement, however? Does it show that WWE is having a hard time developing engaging angles with its own talent roster?

4Kids Entertainment (NYSE: KDE), a producer of children's content that engages distribution and licensing opportunities, has not been a great stock idea. Although shares of the company have perked up as of late, the longer-term trend hasn't been so encouraging. Let's see if the first-quarter numbers might change your mind.

Well, I don't know about your mind, but my mind so far hasn't been changed. Revenues declined by 32%. There was a net loss of 15 cents per diluted share. Now, granted, that was far better than the net loss last year, which calculated out to 48 cents per diluted share. I give the company credit for narrowing the loss, but something tells me that I don't necessarily want to invest hard-earned money in a business that is based on the fickle nature of a very young target audience.

"Regulators are fundamentally dumb," Taleb added. "Traders will go around them. I want the system where regulators can be stupid without you and I being harmed by it."

If we're going to try to move away from the Madoff model of economic policy, there are quite a few places we could start, but this one's my favorite: The United States government is buying cars from General Motors (NYSE: GM) to help the company demonstrate viability and secure more government loans.

Or we could take the principled stance and admit that what Madoff is doing isn't different from what Wall Street and the government dose everyday with little fanfare -- and let him get back to work.

Armed with wit and logic, investment legend Jim Rogers made the case on Bloomberg TV that the United States government's bailouts of failed companies may thrust the global economy into a depression.

"The U.S. is taking assets from competent people and giving them to incompetent people. That's bad economics."

Rogers argued that American International Group (NYSE: AIG) should have been allowed to descend into bankruptcy, and he feels the same about similarly situated businesses. It just doesn't make sense to divert money from healthy, prudently-managed companies and plow it into debt-burdened companies that are being run badly at best and criminally at worst.

There's been no shortage of heartstring-jerking reports from the current economic crisis -- seniors whose retirement accounts have been wiped clean; families relocating from homes to motels; MBAs forced to wear their resumes on sandwich boards.

However, in my humble opinion, today's news might be the most pathetic: Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization that produces the classic Sesame Street TV show, is slashing 20% of its 355-member workforce.

The underdog tale of Slumdog Millionaire and the bittersweet nomination of the deceased Heath Ledger may have had a few more people tuning in to last night's Oscar broadcast, which aired on Walt Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC Network. Preliminary Nielsen ratings indicate a 6% increase from last year.

The bad news? Last year marked a record low for the awards broadcast as 32 million viewers tuned in. And this year, if early numbers hold true, will be among the three least-watched Academy Awards broadcasts ever.

CBS (NYSE: CBS) reported Q4 earnings after the bell on Wednesday. Revenues declined 8%, and earnings per share from continuing operations on an adjusted basis dropped 39% to $0.34. Let me tell you, the bottom line really beat the analysts. Expectations were set at $0.25 per share. That's a $0.09 beat. Pretty awesome, right?

Well, not to my way of thinking. You see, CBS has read the writing on the wall about its dividend. Due to current economic circumstances, the quarterly payout was reduced to $0.05 per share. Previously, CBS was doling out $0.27 per share.