OK, here's good news and bad news. Let's get the bad news out of the way first. The Five Families of the Music Business will now be cut down to four, as Sony Music and BMG music merge. The European Community, thought to be the toughest hurdle for the merger, has given their approval. It is expected that the much more lenient US Federal Trade Commission will wave the merger through. This now means that there are four major record labels in the entire world: Sony/BMG, Universal Music, Warner/Elektra/Atlantic, and EMI. Just another symptom of the disease of media consolidation going around nowadays.


Good news now: It looks like Ruby, the African elephant shipped out of the LA Zoo and away from her longtime companion Gita, an Asian elephant, will be returned to the LA Zoo. There is no timetable for the reunion of the two, but one hopes it would be soon.