LOS ANGELES—The feature event of last Sunday night was the 83^rd Annual Academy Awards, the 3-hour-plus program where the movie industry strokes its collective ego in the guise of recognizing individual achievement. And as parents all over the country set star-struck eyes on television screens, a more impressive performance was happening in their own homes: all of their children vanished.

Early reports confirm a direct link between the households watching the Oscars and the missing persons reports that have been filed over the last 24 hours. The widespread nature of these disappearances have made it a federal case. And the FBI agent in charge of the investigation has already assured the public that this event, which seems to be “the largest-scale abduction since the Pied Piper,” could have been avoided.

“There was a reason why Fox used to say, ‘It’s 10pm; do you know where your children are?’” Chief Investigator Al Menetti said to the press last night. “But now with all this Us Weekly and TMZ and who knows what other nonsense people are addicted to, it’s a wonder this kind of thing hasn’t happened sooner. I just hope that Americans can take enough time away from Charlie Sheen to keep their eyes and ears open for anything that can help us…with this many children missing, it’s only a matter of time until we find them, all the sooner if people are paying attention to what actually matters in this world.”

Menetti and his team suspect that the disappearances may have been orchestrated by an intricate digital campaign via facebook and mobile text messaging, both platforms to which more young children have access than ever before. When asked who could execute a plan of this magnitude, Menetti offered some names, but it is difficult to tell if he was serious.

“Peter Pan is a possibility, but the tech savvy required for a job like this is out of his wheelhouse…we don’t have enough to go on to bring Master Shredder in for questioning yet. But the second a flat screen or Blu-ray player goes missing, he’s ours.”