help needed for wii remote

i purchased a wii for my kids abou a year ago, and needless to say, i'm not into the games like i once was. recently, the remote seemed to stop working. did the obvious thing of changing the batteries. still nothing. so i assumed they just dropped it one too many times and its life had expired. so i got a new remote yesterday and still nothing. the game itself comes on, goes to the main menu screen, and nothing from the remote. i checked all the connections and hookups, and it appears to all be in the same spots from when i initially hooked it up.

any suggestions as to what could be wrong?

thanks