Communications-related Headlines for 4/26/2000

MERGERS
Groups Oppose AOL Merger (WP)
CBS-Viacom Merger Wins Conditional Approval of FCC (WSJ)

ECOMMERCE
New Gizmos Alert Marketers When Ads Pique a Consumer's Interest (WSJ)
No Credit for Web Surfing (WP)

EDTECH
Computers in Schools, Sure. But What About Technical Support?
(CyberTimes)

FCC
A New FCC For The 21st Century (FCC)

INTERNATIONAL
Iranian Students Protest Crackdown on Newspapers (NYT)
European Commission to Relax Scrutiny of Mobile-Phone Business (WSJ)
State-Backed Companies Join China's Internet Race (WSJ)

MERGERS

GROUPS OPPOSE AOL MERGER
Issue: Mergers
Arguing that the marriage of America Online and Time Warner "adds
a dangerous new dimension to the emerging structure of the cable
TV/broadband Internet industry," a coalition of consumer and media groups
today will become the first to publicly call on the federal government to
block the pending merger. Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of
America, the Center for Media Education and the Media Access Project say
that they will file petitions with the Federal Communications Commission and
the Federal Trade Commission asking the agencies to deny the merger outright
or at least impose strict conditions on the combination. The collation
expresses concern about the concentration of power in television and
Internet content as well as its distribution through narrow-band telephone
lines and broadband cable. Several AOL and Time Warner rivals also have
raised questions and concerns about the merger. The American Cable
Association has submitted a letter to the FCC expressing concern that the
powerful giant created by the merger would stamp out smaller cable
companies. Antitrust experts have said they expect few problems with the
merger by traditional rules, but several senators in recent months have
called for regulators to look at the merger through a special lens, saying
the unchartered territory of the Internet raises
numerous competition concerns for the future.
[SOURCE: Washington Post (E1), AUTHOR: Ariana Eunjung Cha]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13380-2000Apr25.html)

CBS-VIACOM MERGER WINS CONDITIONAL APPROVAL OF FCC
Issue: Merger
Staff of the Federal Communications Commission has recommended a conditional
approval the proposed merger between CBS and Viacom. The recommendations
suggests giving the new company one year to sell television stations to
comply with nationwide ownership limit. A combined CBS-Viacom would own 41%
of the nation's TV stations, exceeding the 35% cap and would
also be in violation of a rule that prevents any of the four major networks
from owning another major network. But the FCC is considering changing the
rule to allow Viacom to keep UPN, which some observers say might not survive
if sold. While the proposal hasn't drawn many critical comments since it was
filed with the FCC in November, the American Cable Association did raise
questions about access to content, and National Black Media Coalition voiced
concerns about minority-hiring practices.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal Interactive, AUTHOR: Mark Wigfield]
(http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB956703198912182170.htm)

ECOMMERCE

NEW GIZMOS ALERT MARKETERS WHEN ADS PIQUE A CONSUMER'S INTEREST
Issue: E-commerce
Beginning this fall, magazines such as Forbes, Wired and GQ will plant codes
in advertisements that, when scanned, will whisk a reader directly to a
specifically tailored Web site that features the advertised product being
offered for sale or that provides more in-depth information on the
advertised product. Companies that include this new technology in their
advertisements can count the number of online hits generated by each print
ad. "It gives an absolute measure of reader response," said Dan Brewster,
chief executive of American Express Publishing Corp. But not everyone is
convinced that this new technology will be used by consumers. "Are people
really sitting in front of a computer when they read a magazine [or watch
TV]," asks Dan O'Brien, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. There are
two scanning technologies on the market today. The first scanner is called
CAT (vs. mouse) and plugs into the back of the computer - alongside the
mouse. It's designed to look like a cat. It reads a regular bar code placed
somewhere within the advertisement. The second device is a PC camera that
reads an invisible "digital watermark" embedded in the magazine page. The
watermark appears hundreds of times on the page so the camera can be pointed
anywhere on the page to work. Drew Schutte, publisher of Wired magazine, is
hedging his bets, "What we are looking to do is expose readers, advertisers
and ourselves to this technology to get a sense how people use it," he says.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B1), AUTHOR: Matthew Rose and Kathryn
Kranhold]
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB956709813836977168.htm

NO CREDIT FOR WEB SURFING
Issue: Ecommerce
Apparently, the explosion of Web sites offering consumers the chance to see
what kind of deal they can get for a mortgage, new car or credit card is
adversely affecting some people's credit ratings. If a site requires a
consumer to enter a social security number, it usually means that the site
is going to run a credit check on that individual. Too many of these checks
makes lenders think that person is a poor risk, because people who seek a
large amount of credit are generally considered to be strapped for cash. In
response to the increase in credit checks, Fair, Isaac & Co. (FICO), a
credit-scoring firm, has adjusted its models to consider several queries in
any two-week period as a single request, and to ignore any queries within a
month of the request being considered. This might not be enough to save
surfers' credit though. A recent study by The Gartner Group Inc., a
Connecticut technology consulting firm, says that online "window shopping"
for credit is still on the rise. The study states that 13 million Americans
have applied for credit including mortgages, auto loans and credit cards
online, but only 10 percent of these applications have actually closed.
[SOURCE: Washington Post (E1), AUTHOR: Caroline E. Mayer]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15430-2000Apr25.html)

EDTECH

COMPUTERS IN SCHOOLS, SURE. BUT WHAT ABOUT TECHNICAL SUPPORT?
Issue: EdTech
Computer support is a standard cost of doing business in corporate America.
But in schools, where budgets are not so flexible, the influx of computers
in the classroom has seen schools being forced to make do, sometimes sharing
one or two tech administrators for an entire district, and leaving a handful
of tech-savvy teachers to handle computer crashes and finicky networks. The
long-term cost of maintaining these networks has emerged as "one of the
hottest topics among educators," according to the National School Boards
Association and others. "You can't run a school district on volunteers,"
said Keith Krueger, executive director of the Consortium for School
Networking, a Washington-based organization of school districts and
technology companies. "You need professionals who know what they're doing,"
Mr. Kruger added. "If you're standing in front of 40 students and the
network goes down, the teacher can't stop to fix it." In a small survey of
124 school districts done by the National School Boards Association last
fall, 94 percent of schools reported that they rely on teachers, librarians
and other non-technology staff to help provide technical support, and 57
percent said they relied on students to help provide support. The National
School Boards Association recommends that school districts spend 30 percent
of their technology budgets on professional development, including support
staff, said Rachel Kliewer, the group's education technology programs manager.
[SOURCE: CyberTimes, AUTHOR: Rebecca Weiner]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/04/cyber/education/26education.html)

FCC

A NEW FCC FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Issue: FCC
A public forum to discuss the status of the initiatives announced last
August in Chairman Kennard's strategic plan, "A New FCC for the 21st
Century," will be held Friday, April 28, from 10 am to noon. The draft plan
is available on the FCC website at: www.fcc.gov/21st_century. The forum will
be held in the Commission Meeting Room at 445 12th Street, SW, Washington,
DC. It will be open to the public and seating will be available on a first
come, first served basis.
FCC Chief of Staff Kathryn Brown will give an overview of the status of the
Draft Strategic Plan as detailed in the implementation "Report Card," which
was delivered to Congress on March 21. Updates will be provided by members
of the four steering committees that were established to oversee the
implementation of the plan's four primary goals to successfully carry out
the transition from a market regulator to a market facilitator. Those goals
are to (1) create a model agency for the digital age; (2) promote
competition in all communications markets; (3) promote opportunities for all
Americans to benefit from the communications revolution; and (4) manage the
electromagnetic spectrum. Time will be available for questions and answers
following each presentation and at the end of the forum.
For additional information, contact Lisa Sockett at (202) 418-2030, TTY
(202) 418-1169.
[SOURCE: FCC]
(http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Miscellaneous/Public_Notices/2000/pnmc0008.html)

INTERNATIONAL

IRANIAN STUDENTS PROTEST CRACKDOWN ON NEWSPAPERS
Issue: Journalism/International
Students from two Iranian universities held peaceful demonstrations
yesterday to denounce the government's widening crackdown on the country's
independent press. In just two days, judges have closed 13 newspapers.
President Mohammad Khatami, whose pledges of wider political freedoms
inspired the reform movement and an explosion of feisty newspapers, has also
remained silent in the face of the recent assault on liberal newspapers,
editors and clerics. He has defended the notion of a free press in recent
speeches but has not commented publicly on the closure of nearly every
national newspaper that supports him.
[SOURCE: New York Times (A10), AUTHOR: Susan Sachs]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/042600iran-protest.html)

EUROPEAN COMMISSION TO RELAX SCRUTINY OF MOBILE-PHONE BUSINESS
Issue: International/Wireless
The European Commission today will announce its plan to relax its scrutiny
of mobile-phone companies that don't dominate specific markets.
Specifically, the EC plans to raise the dominance threshold at which
telecommunications regulations kick in to 50% of a given market, up from the
25% under the current law. The shift is meant to decrease the regulatory
hurdles cellular network operators face early in their growth curve. The
commission apparently was influenced by Vodafone Airtouch's willingness to
provide access to its mobile-phone network to rivals in exchange for
regulatory approval of its purchase of Mannesmann AG. Vodafone had argued
that EU telecom regulation should focus on former monopolists such as
British Telecommunications, and not on relative newcomers such as itself.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (A21), AUTHOR: Brandon Mitchener]
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB95669359815771617.htm

STATE-BACKED COMPANIES JOIN CHINA'S INTERNET RACE
Issue: International/Internet
Chinese Internet start-ups are facing a strange competitor, the Chinese
government. Chinese government-backed groups are launching Internet ventures
and could lock out commercial rivals from the key content they need to fill
their pages. The soon-to-be-launched site eastday.com.cn is partially owned
by a company headed by the son of China's president and backed by Beijing's
two largest newspaper publishers. With its government ties, eastday.com.cn
is sure to enjoy strong protection from authorities and it has been able to
force reporters from the two newspapers involved to do double-time supplying
stories to the new site. Yet being a state supported Internet venture also
has its constraints. Most of eastday.com.cn employees are assigned by the
city government, instead of being hired from a wider pool, and the Chinese
government bureaucracy is rife with rival power bases that rarely act in
concert and often compete amongst themselves. Also, the government appointed
bureaucrats running the new site will find themselves pressed to compete
against the more savvy and streamlined private firms. "This is just another
example of the government pushing its way into an industry that it should
just leave alone," said a reporter working on the eastday.com.cn site.
"Entrepreneurs work 20 hours a day and have invested their own money, the
public sector will never be able to compete with that," said Firtz
Demopoulos, who runs a Web site on Chinese sports.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (A22), AUTHOR: Leslie Chang]
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB956685193876775551.htm

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