1) The Simpsons are going to… cable! FXX, the recent comedy-focused spin-off of Fox-owned FX network has claimed the first cable rights to The Simpsons in a massive, $750 million dollar deal (though this could rise as new seasons are produced) that includes over 530 episodes (and counting). This is the biggest off-network deal in television history, adding another record to the long-running series. Perhaps even more intriguing is the deal’s inclusion for online streaming on the soon-available FXNOW mobile app as well as via video-on-demand. More details on the deal and scheduling are sure to emerge before the syndication begins next August.

2) An even bigger deal may be soon on the horizon as Time Warner Cable appears to be on the market with interest from both Comcast and Charter. First, the Wall Street Journal reported Charter Communications Inc. was nearing an agreement to raise funds for the purchase, a move that falls in line with Liberty Media’s John Malone’s (which owns 27% of Charter) recent pushes for cable consolidation. If that wasn’t enough, CNBC reports Comcast is also interested in a deal for Time Warner Cable, a move supported by their shareholders. This officially makes Time Warner Cable the belle of the ball, as TWC stock jumped to a 52-week high amid the purchase chatter. The FCC hasn’t said anything yet because of course not. But one has to wonder what role they’ll play.

3) Speaking of those guys, the FCC, under newly-appointed chairman Tom Wheeler, has voted to raise the cap on how much foreign entities can own of broadcast stations, both radio and television. Currently, there is a 25% cap on how much foreign companies can invest, a level current commissioners are described as outdated.

4) A new study out of (the) Ohio State University and Annenberg Public Policy Center has found the level of gun violence in PG-13 films is now greater than R-rated films. The study looked at 945 films from 1950 to 2012, noting an overall increase in gun violence and a marked increase in PG-13 rated films since that rating’s inception. The authors call for new restrictions from the MPAA as related to gun violence, particular in those lower rated films.

5) Two of the most iconic pop culture figures of the last 50 years, Superman and James Bond, have now had long-standing copyright lawsuits settled. First, Warner Bros. won an appeal case against the estates of Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, ending a copyright claim filed back in 2003 and giving them complete control. Next, MGM & Danjaq have now acquired all copyrights for James Bond after settling with the estate of Kevin McClory, who opened the case 50 years ago after claiming he proposed the idea for making a Bond film to creator Ian Fleming.

6) A big courtroom victory for Google and fair use as a federal judge has ruled Google Books is considered fair use and “provides significant public benefits.” The case had been active for nearly 10 years, when a coalition of authors and publishers started the case in 2005. The ruling will surely move to appeal, but the precedent for fair use is powerful and will certainly have impact beyond just Google’s service.

7) From lawsuits ending to one just beginning: the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) held a conference where they announced their intention to take legal action against music lyric websites, claiming the sites profit from copyrighted works through their ad revenues. The publishers have targeted 50 websites and sent takedown notices, claiming they will not push for legal action unless the requests for heeded.

8) A new wrinkle in the enduring, critical lawsuits against network streaming startup Aereo as the National Football League and Major League Baseball have taken a side against Aereo, claiming they will move all of their games to cable if Aereo is found to be legal. This “friend of the court” filing with the Supreme Court aims to sway judges and show support for the multiple broadcasters taking Aereo to court. Barry Driller, a major investor of Aereo, doesn’t seem fazed, claiming the NFL is “just making noise.”

9) In the same week Sony released its next-generation video game console Playstation 4 with over 1 million sales, the company announced plans to cut $100 million from Sony Entertainment, making the company leaner and more focused. A large part of this will be reduced film production, a move Amy Pascal says will create “a more equitable balance between risk and reward.”

10) It probably won’t lead to Obamacare level criticism, but Barack Obama hasn’t made friends with some visual effects artists. After it was announced President Obama would visit DreamWorks Animation studio for a speech and visit with Jeffrey Katzenberg, visual effects artists at the company have planned to protest the visit due to the increased outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries.

And finally, two silly stories from a silly industry:

The Internet exploded this week when it was reported an “It’s A Wonderful Life” sequel was being planned. In a surprising twist (like in the movie!), Paramount announced it would fight any proposed sequel, claiming any project would require a license from the studio. With the film possibly dying a quick death, we will all have to ask an angel to show us a world where this sequel did, in fact, get released.

Mike “The Situation” “The Stupid Nickname” Sorrentino of Jersey Shore ‘fame’ is under federal investigation as the U.S. Attorney’s office has issued subpoenas for company records from businesses Sorrentino owns like MPS Entertainment and a clothing line. I would make a joke about this, but I don’t know enough about this ‘celebrity’ to say something witty.

Splitting in two, however, would not be a narrative gimmick invented by creative writers for the character, but instead a legal gimmick imagined by creative lawyers.  The U.S. legal system has been busy parceling ownership of intellectual property recently estimated to generate $1 billion annually.  The conflict between DC’s parent company Time Warner and the estates of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster involves copyright and trademark, work-for-hire and rights termination.  But it also demonstrates the ways in which, for 21^st century media companies, the value of intellectual property is forever and complexly entangled with the narratives it offers.

Consider Smallville:  after ten seasons of serial narrative featuring the adventures of an initially youthful Clark Kent learning to become what every viewer already knew he must become, the literally-titled “Finale” episodes finally returned us to where we started before Smallville ever aired: with Superman.

There are two ways to understand this inevitable if disconcerting return to the start.  The first was articulated nearly 40 years ago by Umberto Eco who argued that for Superman to remain Superman, the mythical character we know, he can never really do anything profoundly new.  Every Superman narrative must start over again at a “virtual new beginning” and essentially repeat the story that made him Superman.  If he were to move on from where the story last left off, our hero would be located in time, within a specific continuity, and thus he would begin a process of consumption that could only, ultimately, lead to death.  As a modern myth, Superman is instead meant to be eternal.  Smallville simply delayed this virtual new beginning for more than 200 episodes as the novel events of Clark’s life before he became Superman inched inevitably nearer the globally familiar, 73-year-old myth that is Superman.

As I have written elsewhere, Smallville‘s engagement of corporate property through the indefinite balance of iteration and attenuation has both semiotic and economic implications.  What holds for myth also holds for branding and the maintenance of trademark.  Superman’s story can’t really change much or he is no longer Superman.  As character or property, truly moving forward can lead only to the end.  To avoid this he must instead always start over.  This helps explain the logic of renumbering DC will put into practice this fall.  It is why the feature films continually revisit Superman’s origins.  It is why Smallville could only ever end with where we had already been.  It is why splitting in two would likely be devastating.  Superman is the myth attracting the audience and the property that Time Warner values.  But this value diminishes if his story is not told enough, so the trick is to render him inexhaustible, allowing him to be consumed without dying.

For the second way of understanding the finale, then, recall another set of comic heroes, Calvin and Hobbes, in a strip in which the eminently reasonable Hobbes asks Calvin how he can ever expect his comic books to become valuable if every kid in America is also carefully saving five copies, sealed in airtight plastic bags.  These books won’t be consumed, they won’t be rare, and they therefore won’t gain in value.  Calvin simply suggests, “We’re all counting on the other guy’s mom to throw them away.”

What Calvin implicitly understood was something Michael Thompson had called rubbish theory to explain why the value of some cultural objects is transient while for others it is durable.  Transient objects lose value inexorably from the moment they are first exchanged.  Durable objects, meanwhile, increase in value over time and are perceived to persist indefinitely into the future.

A transient object eventually loses all value.  Everyone (and their moms) will throw it out.  It becomes rubbish.  But its very lack of value suggests the possibility of transformation.  This is the paradox of Calvin’s insight—he knew that only after the comics are considered rubbish could they start to gain in value.  But as Hobbes intuited, such shifts can be riskily dependent on the uncertain actions of others.  Calvin was holding on to his comics to demonstrate they could persist indefinitely into the future even while hoping everyone else would perceive of their copies as losing all value.

Our current moment, as Smallville demonstrates, is characterized by corporate efforts to do Calvin one better.  Not satisfied with the uncertainty of allowing property to become rubbish, hoping it will be revalued, the culture industries are trying everything to instill their textual productions with built-in durability.  If Smallville leaves us where we started, with Superman again, it offers us Superman retroactively reproduced as the afterlife of a decade of the television series.

Thus the significance of the finale’s final reassertion of the property, the brand, and the character:  Clark atop the Daily Planet building, pulling his shirt open at the chest, revealing a red “S” on blue tights (filling the screen with a final realization of the promise obliquely made in the pilot episode’s much reproduced iconic image) while a version of John Williams’ indomitable theme from 1978’s Superman swells and the series ends.  Thus did Smallville finally catch the narrative up to the start of Superman’s story, his virtual new beginning now novel again.

Despite such extreme semiotic efforts to maintain intellectual property, is the revaluing process of cultural production that easy to short-circuit?  In point of fact, of course, value is not a quality of the text per se.  It is a quality the audience gives a text through interactions and social practices.  Durability is the side effect of labor at the point of consumption, around and about the object, the work of watching, that generates value.  Efforts to bypass the audience as the (always uncertain) source of value notwithstanding, the audience and the culture industries remain crucially interdependent.  If Smallville can teach us anything, then, it may be to both admire and shudder at Lex’s metatextual profundity: “We have a destiny together, Clark… only on different sides.”