Bought a new 42' flat - "No Program or Weak...

Question

I just bought a 42' HD Flat screen TV for my family. When we try to play VCR tapes, we get an error message: "No Program or Weak Signal" flashes on the screen. We are able to watch just a few seconds of a movie then it goes black and the above alert comes on the screen. We can watch a DVD movie no problem, it just the VCR. We can't record anything with a VCR tape because we get the same message. We did not have any problems with our old TV which we replaced with the new JVC. Any advice would be helpful because my daughter cannot watch some of her programs. Thanks! Steve and Lisa Holstein