Blockbuster closed another 300 stores in Q3 as it prepared to file a bankruptcy reorganization plan by Nov. 30, with a goal of having it confirmed by March 15, the company said. The chain, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 23, has been operating under a $125 million debtor-in-possession financing, $20 million of which is being used for a TV advertising campaign touting Blockbuster’s advantages that started Monday and runs through Christmas.

Flat-panel TVs will be a top draw for Black Friday this year, presenting an “interesting phenomenon,” according to Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for The NPD Group. “We've always seen really low-priced things do well,” he told Consumer Electronics Daily, but this year TVs have helped “turn that aside.” Historically, the leading product for Black Friday features “a lot of money off” on low-priced goods, he said. “Now we're seeing stuff at $300, $400 and $500 being a great deal and Black Friday doorbuster products,” he said.

Netflix raised the prices of most of its subscription plans as it introduced Monday a streaming-only subscription option in the U.S. The new plan, which allows members to instantly view an unlimited number of movies and TV show episodes on their TVs and computers, costs $7.99 a month. The price changes took effect Monday for new customers and will start in January for current subscribers, Netflix said.

EDISON, N.J. -- Newegg’s proposed IPO remains pending more than a year after the initial filing (CED Sept 29/09 p1) and there are no firm dates for it, company officials said Monday during a tour of the company’s warehouse. They declined to comment further.

Consumers using cellphones to shop for deals will account for $127 billion of the $447 billion in U.S. holiday spending that the National Retail Federation projects this year, said a report by IDC Retail Insights. IDC surveyed more than 1,000 consumers over age 19 in September to find out how growing familiarity with mobile and social media commerce will play out this shopping season.

NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow’s decision Friday to leave this spring was the culmination of months of his considering what he wanted to do next, and now he’s looking to work as an executive on the operational end of a company, perhaps in the media or telecom sector, cable industry officials said. They said McSlarrow seemed to face no pressure to leave from members of NCTA, where his contract runs until 2012 and was extended for four years in 2008. Though he'd been considering leaving NCTA for some time, the decision came as some surprise to industry insiders and came two hours after he spoke to a panel about online video. (See separate report in this issue.)

The surge in types of video available online and in the sheer amount of it offer opportunities for broadcasters, cable operators, DBS providers and newer Internet and other new-media companies, executives from those industries said on a panel Friday. Executives from Disney and the NCTA said they see such trends as adding to the total amount of time consumers spend viewing video, not subtracting from it. “We view it as an opportunity for established media companies,” and Google TV represents one such product, said an executive of that company. An underlying concern expressed by some at the event organized by the Media Access Project is that “disintermediation” of content bundling could threaten the business models that pay for high-quality content.

Even lawyers for Sujata “Sue” Sachdeva, the former Koss Corp. executive sentenced to 11 years in prison for embezzling more than $34 million from the company (CED Nov 19 p2), are mystified how her crimes of such magnitude went on undiscovered for so long, they said in court papers filed last week. Government prosecutors also said they're at a loss to explain how she embezzled so much money without getting caught, and said that’s a “testament” to the complexity of her crimes and her cover-up.

Absence of a sound business model still plagues 3D TV as the nascent technology approaches the six-month milestone since ESPN launched ESPN 3D. At the “3DTV 2011: What’s Next?” event in New York Thursday, video content and service providers cited the increased costs associated with developing 3D content with a lack of advertising support, sponsorships and subscription fees to help recoup those costs.

STANFORD, Calif. -- Movie studios are pressing credit card companies, PayPal and ad brokers not to do business with websites that offer unauthorized copies of full movies, said Scott Martin, Paramount Pictures’ executive vice president of intellectual property. Paramount and unspecified other studios, individually and through the MPAA, have in effect been saying to the businesses, “please” cut off the sites “or we'll go to Washington,” he told us after he took part in a panel discussion Friday at Stanford Law School. The reference to Washington relates to proposals in Congress to extend liability to companies that enable infringers, Martin said.