LG Electronics scrapped annual performance and “stretch” bonuses for its U.S. sales force in the face of $178 million consolidated U.S. loss in 2010, versus a targeted $73.8 million profit, sources familiar with the company said. The operating loss was partly from LG’s U.S. wireless business and a shortfall in LCD TV sales, they said. While LG initially targeted selling 4.1 million LCD TVs in 2010, it lowered the goal to 3.2 million and ended up at less than 2.7 million units, they said. LG also suffered when hhgregg and Wal-Mart sold a larger-than-expected mix of lower-end 32- and 42-inch sets rather than the step-up models that were targeted.

An auction of TV spectrum may not raise as much money for the U.S. government and the incumbent broadcast licensees as some incentive auction proponents estimate, said an economist’s paper released Thursday by the NAB. The title of the paper by Managing Director Jeffrey Eisenach of Navigant Economics is: “Revenues From a Possible Incentive Auction: Why the CTIA/CEA Estimate is Not Reliable.” Those two groups’ estimate of winning bids of at least $33 billion to $34 billion is “based on historic spectrum prices, which are subject to wide variation,” it said.

Google picked Kansas City, Kan., to build its ultra-high-speed fiber network, after a year-long search for a location to test broadband at speeds 100 times faster than existing technologies in wide use. The company plans to offer service starting in 2012, pending approval from the city’s Board of Commissioners, Google Vice President Milo Medin wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

Sixth Avenue Electronics and lender GE Commercial Distribution Finance are negotiating a possible settlement that could throw a life line to the struggling New Jersey retailer, vendor sources familiar with the discussions said.

There continued to be ample supplies of the 3DS to meet demand at all the major U.S. retailers that we checked with on Wednesday, three days after the autostereoscopic 3D portable game system’s launch in the market. Supplies are typically spotty at retail in the first week of a major videogame system’s launch.

CEA has offered some concessions to environmental groups seeking more manufacturer accountability in a TV recycling measure making its way through the Texas Legislature, the Texas Campaign for the Environment (TCE) said.

The CE industry said it was blindsided by an EPA proposal in the Obama administration’s 2012 budget to charge “user fees” for manufacturers seeking to use the Energy Star label. “The consumer electronics industry is a major stakeholder in the Energy Star program, and EPA did not reach out to us regarding its plans to impose user fees on Energy Star program participants,” said Douglas Johnson, CEA vice president-technology policy.

Sherbourn Technologies, purchased late last year by ODM/OEM Jade Designs, is coming to market “in the May-June timeframe” with a new lineup of Control4-enabled AV products, the company said Tuesday. Sherbourn hopes to grab a piece of the custom installation market and “fill a hole” not currently served by other suppliers, President Dan Laufman told Consumer Electronics Daily.

Netflix continues to gobble up bandwidth, but the company’s explosive growth still hasn’t threatened cable, said a study released Tuesday by analyst Bruce Leichtman.

The England and Wales Court of Appeal, upholding a lower court ruling, said Virgin Media’s interactive program guide didn’t infringe Rovi patents because they weren’t innovative enough to be valid. The three European patents at the heart of the three-year legal battle covered the display of program lists in a grid format, the recording of content on a device and the marking of “favorite channels.” Gemstar’s method for selecting favorite channels on an IPG was “anticipated” by STV/OnSat’s SuperGuide, a guide for C-band satellite systems that was introduced in 1986 and locally stored a week’s worth of program data, it said.