Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) didn't really like the FCC's idea that it label all analog TV sets with a warning label -- something I posted on a month ago. In fact, the retailer is now challenging the FCC's authority to require retailers to slap those "Warning: Analog TV" stickers on those retail shelf boxes.

The FCC seems to believe it will be Y2K all over again when the analog television frequencies are vacated next February for all those who receive TV signals via antenna. Standard issue for the federal government, I suppose. Best Buy not only doesn't want to have even more labels and customer communication littering up its stores, but it argues that the fines levied by the FCC for the non-use of these stickers are invalid as well.

Best Buy was fined $280,000 and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) was fined $992,000 for failing to include these analog TV stickers on the appropriate products. Wal-Mart had not decided what its plans were yet, but my guess if that it will unite with Best Buy to present a huge challenge to the FCC's authority. Best Buy's biggest argument was that retailers are not commission licensees by the FCC --- so how can the FCC impose fines? There are quite a few more arguments being made by Best Buy that should hold up in a court of law easily if it gets to that.

One would think that the recent FCC auctions of the about-to-be-abandoned analog TV airwaves would give enough cash back to the FCC's coffers than stupid fines like this. Apparently not.

My guess is that the majority of television-watching American have no idea that in about two years, those analog television signals beaming TV programming to all those television sets will go away permanently in favor of the newer all-digital signals.

In fact, the radio spectrum that is being vacated by the shutdown of those analog television signals is being highly sought after for all kinds of uses; mainly, high-speed Internet access over wireless devices or another radio band in which companies can provide wireless voice service, including possibly Google.

What can leading consumer electronics retailers like Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE: BBY), Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC) and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) do to alleviate the pain? How about capitalizing on this in perfect promotional fashion and sell newer high-definition sets like never before? There are also concerns that will come from the advertising industry, and who will make the devices to allow older TVs to tap into the newer digital airwaves? Many questions abound. Read on.

The rules of engagement within the television broadcasting industry are changing -- everyone knows this. But the trusted guard of influential and mind-shaping TV is ill-equipped (as always) to change at the breakneck pace it needs to and therefore new, disruptive industries swing by for a chat and end up making up new rules. Case in point: Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) YouTube.

While YouTube is not a replacement for television at this time (lower quality, internet connection needed, etc.), it is becoming increasingly so for some people. As that list grows steadily but surely, the big studios -- like the music and newspaper industries before them -- will learn to compete or face the defection of ad clients and audiences to newer online media that don't have such a tightfisted control over content. Consumers demand more -- and they are getting it here in the infancy of internet TV.

Will studios like Viacom Inc. (NYSE:VIA) and General Electric Co.'s (NYSE:GE) NBC use backhanded tactics to get their respective programming on YouTube? Sure they would, as a last-second desperate tactic. The largest video portal in the world is YouTube, not Viacom or NBC; but like I said earlier, YouTube needs to step up things quite a bit to achieve the quality and accessibility freely available analog networks now have (until 2009 when digital TV will be mandatory).

Once that internet connection in all those homes, apartments, condos and other living structures is as common as running water, the age of internet TV will have really arrived. If traditional studios think they have it bad now, it's not even close. So, to all network television execs -- better start ponying up for those partnerships unless you want to explain to your largest advertisers the audience shift out of your properties and onto ... YouTube. Next up -- the Apple TV's capability to change the game, in traditional Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) style.