Headline Highlights -- Media and Telecom Policy Developments September 2008

Headline Highlights -- Media and Telecom Policy Developments September 2008

Sure, we get it -- September is hurricane season. But did anyone predict the storms we've seen in the past month? Hurricane Hanna got every one's attention, especially federal regulators overseeing Wilmington, North Carolina's transition to (almost) all digital television broadcasting. No one saw the technical problems on the DTV radar, however. In was late August when Sen John McCain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his Vice President. The selection led to what some called "Hurricane Palin," a storm that forever changed the dynamics of the 2008 election. These stories nearly drowned out some carry-over issues from August like the FCC's first major Network Neutrality decision. The biggest tempest, however, is a financial crisis is interrupting the 2008 campaign.

I. Wilmington Survives Hanna and DTV Transition -- Will the US?

In late August and early September the National Weather Service and others had a close eye on Hurricane Hanna, a powerful storm which moved up the East Coast of the U.S. The storm was, perhaps, watched most closely for its effects on Wilmington, North Carolina, where five commercial television broadcast stations were scheduled on September 8 to become the nation's first to permanently switch to all-digital signals, serving as a test of the transition that other stations across the country will make in February. Thankfully, Wilmington survived both storms.

The results of the Wilmington experiment have created a new disturbance in Washington. Observers found that the message about the early transition in Wilmington made it to residents there and many made the effort to adjust how they receive their TV signals. But despite the many efforts of the FCC, the commercial broadcasters, and local officials (including firemen), there were technical issue -- not for TV stations, but for consumers. People calling broadcasters and the FCC after the transition needed help programming the digital-to-analog converter boxes used to allow old television sets to continue to work. Researchers also found that viewers did not have antennas or, if they did, they weren't powerful enough, placed high enough or pointed in the correct direction. Additionally, some people who were used to receiving signals from some stations suddenly found themselves outside the stations viewing area. The FCC is now estimating that the smaller digital footprint of TV broadcasters may affect as many as 15 percent of television markets in the US. The FCC is still calculating what impact that may have nationwide. It's not certain what -- if anything -- the FCC or broadcasters can do for affected viewers, short of recommending that they buy a bigger antenna.

Even though calls generated by the Wilmington transition only amounted to approximately half of 1% of the area's residents, that could mean trouble in February 2009 when the rest of the nation goes through the transition. Then the transition could generate over half a million calls by people with problems receiving broadcast signals. And, if a large proportion of those callers need antenna installations or adjustments, it could be a cold, potentially dangerous fix in areas with below-freezing temperatures.

Further complicating transition plans are a revelation by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that the agency would run out of funds for its digital-to-analog converter box coupon program in January 2009, a time when consumers may be most aware of the transition and most interested in taking action to preserve their TV signals. (DTV Coupon Funds Running Out; Congress Wants to Know Why ). The late request for additional funding, made with just days left before Congress was to adjourn, infuriated lawmakers. As lawmakers stretch in Washington moved into October, Congress was working on giving the NTIA additional funding to ensure the coupon program remained intact -- and more money for the FCC to raise awareness of the transition.

On September 12, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps (http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-285373A1.doc), the driving force behind the Wilmington test, wrote FCC Chairman Kevin Martin with recommendations on how to address the Wilmington lessons. He suggested the following steps:

Conduct additional field testing
Dedicate a special FCC Team to the needs of at-risk communities
Ramp up the FCC Call Center
Prepare comprehensive DTV contingency plans
Create an online DTV Consumer Forum
Educate consumers on DTV trouble-shooting, including antenna issues and the need to "re-scan" converter boxes and sets
Ensure that broadcasters meet their construction deadlines
Encourage the rapid deployment of small, battery-powered DTV sets
Find a way to broadcast an analog message to consumers following the transition

Later in September, House Democrats told Chairman Martin and the FCC to:

Establish a public/private/nonprofit-sector information campaign that focuses on the need for new antennas or adjustments to existing antennas to receive digital-TV broadcast signals;
Encourage Americans to act now to buy and install a DTV converter box, test the reception and then take action to resolve any problems as soon as possible;
Update information on the FCC's Web site and other related government DTV Web sites to include in an obvious, accessible location a clear explanation of antenna matters; and
Expand the FCC's call center, especially in the weeks immediately preceding the transition, to address questions concerning antenna matters.

By the end of the month, the NTIA adopted a new pitch to television viewers, encouraging them to "apply, buy, try" new converter boxes to ensure they are ready for the February transition.

John McCain faces reporters II. McCain, Palin and the Rift with His "Base"

Sen. John McCain's pick of relatively unheard of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate caught many by surprise. The move set off what Slate's Jack Shafer called, "Hurricane Palin," a media frenzy to fill the vacuum of what was unknown about the candidate as the GOP convention opened. Feeling the McCain campaign did little to feel the void, the press hotly pursued on Gov. Palin's earmark flip-flops, her political inexperience, her Alaska Independence Party connection, her views on teaching "creationism," her book-banning phase, plus the "troopergate" scandal, her husband's ancient DUI, and her pregnant teenage daughter. The McCain campaign was soon on the defensive, accusing media outlets, liberal bloggers and the Obama campaign of sexism.

In St. Paul, McCain's campaign made its anti-news-media message central to the convention program. Some journalists were shocked -- was Sen. McCain really dissing his base to appease his party's base? Then Jim Rutenberg wrote in the New York Times about how in 2004, when Republicans gathered at Madison Square Garden to celebrate President Bush's second nomination, Sen. John McCain gathered at a restaurant with some of the biggest stars in journalism to celebrate his birthday. Among those mingling over cocktails and fine French food with McCain and his wife, Cindy, were Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Bob Schieffer, Maureen Dowd, Tim Russert — "our people," as an old campaign hand reminisced on during this year's convention. Those there that night in 2004, Rutenberg wrote, were now in St. Paul feeling as if they are living in some sort of alternate reality. The convention included some of the most intense attacks against journalists by a campaign in memory. For conservative talk radio, it was a different story. From the titans of talk -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham -- to conservative hosts who loom large in their local markets, the cheering for Palin was nearly unanimous.

In the days after the GOP convention, the McCain campaign let journalists know that media access to Sarah Palin would be tightly controlled, restricted to those with "some level of respect and deference." The move was playing a dual -- or, perhaps more accurately, duelling -- purpose: 1) for the first time in the three months since the general election campaign began, Sen. John McCain generated more coverage than Sen. Barack Obama (although Gov Palin got even more coverage than Sen. McCain) and 2) the campaign had cast the media as the enemy (-- with the media hitting back. See, too Don't be swept away by hype in the Palin campaign] -- ironically, as Adam Reilly pointed out, the same media that had made McCain a political superstar in the first place.

[Note: The McCain campaign reserved special disdain for the New York Times (McCain camp attacks New York Times McCain-Palin Love-Hate Media McCain Camp Aims Again at The Times When all truth is relative)

Gov. Palin did appear before cheering crowds, using the "greatest hits" of her convention speech, but fact-checkers soon derided parts of her rhetoric -- and McCain ads -- that weren't true. So the anti-media campaign spread to include even fact-checkers even as one journalist declared that fact-checking should become the #1 priority for anyone covering the campaign. (How Fact-Checking Took Center Stage in 2008 Campaign). McCain himself derided "Gotcha journalism" as the press quoted Gov. Palin.

With all the McCain complaints, the media may have already been easier on him than on Sen. Obama. In a review of the media's coverage of two stories negatively affecting or reflecting on Sen. Barack Obama and two stories negatively affecting or reflecting on Sen. John McCain -- specifically Obama's ties to Bill Ayers and Antoin Rezko, and McCain's dealings with donors whom he reportedly benefited and his association with G. Gordon Liddy -- Media Matters found that the five major newspapers and the three evening network news broadcasts have frequently mentioned Obama's ties to Ayers and Rezko, but have rarely mentioned McCain's dealings with donors and have ignored his association with Liddy.

All this led the San Francisco Chronicle's Joe Garofoli to conclude, "The McCain campaign is attempting to do something unheard of in the modern political era. It is not just running against the mainstream media, it is running around it."

III. FCC's Comcast/Net Neutrality Decision Plays Out

October 1 marked the beginning of Comcast's new broadband traffic management plan, a result of the FCC's August ruling finding that the cable TV giant had impropoerly blocked Internet traffic. Comcast appealed the ruling in early September, triggering a legal battle that could determine the extent of the government's authority to regulate the Internet. Comcast is arguing the FCC's findings in the matter did not justify its decision. But the company wasn't the only litigant: the Media Access Project, representing Consumers Union PennPIRG and Vuze Inc, filed appeals in New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco asking the courts to eliminate the FCC's Dec 31 deadline and make Comcast comply with the agency's order immediately. The combined cases will be heard by the US Court of Appeals DC Circuit.

Comcast's new plan, rather than targeting specific types of bandwidth-intensive applications like peer-to-peer file sharing, will slow Internet speeds for its heaviest users at peak times when its network is congested. Comcast will do this by creating a second stream of traffic for recent heavy users that will have a lower priority when compared to its other customers. The so-called protocol-agnostic approach is intended to comply with the FCC's Network Neutrality principles, which restrict Internet service providers like cable and phone companies from degrading traffic from particular companies.

IV. Financial Meltdown

What this past Spring was referred to as the housing crisis became, in September, a crisis of the financial sector which the Bush Administration said need a $700 billion life preserver. By mid-month, the meltdown on Wall Street re-oriented the campaign and re-wrote the storyline. The crisis was not only the media's top story -- marking only the second time this year that an event other than the campaign emerged as the No. 1 topic of the week. It also raised the possibility that a major policy issue, the economy, might emerge as the decisive factor of the campaign.
Wall Street News

Coverage of the issue spanned far from the political to raise concerns about jobs, the newspaper industry, telecommunications, and television.

Some looked at how the crisis was affecting coming decisions on support research and auctioning spectrum.

Some articles pointed to technology as a possible new economic driver . But there were also questions about whether journalism was up to the challenge of reporting on the crisis and the decisions about how to address it. Others looked at the parallels between financial deregulation and the Network Neutrality debate. And, if we might circle back to Washington and the presidential race, the LA Times reviewed John McCain's history of pro-deregulation, but reliance on government control during a crisis.

For updates on our coverage of the impact of the financial crisis on communications, technology and journalism, see www.benton.org/taxonomy/term/1427

September's Most-read Headlines