Nov 4, 2009 (Broadcasters, Spectrum and Broadband)
"If we can't fix what's broken, if we can't rejuvenate broadcast journalism, reopen shuttered newsrooms, put the brakes on mind-numbing monoprogramming, stop the dumbing-down of our civic dialogue and take advantage of the great potential of local broadcasting, then maybe those who want that spectrum back have the better of the argument."
-- FCC Commissioner Michael Copps
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 4, 2009
Two events today: 1) Broadcasters make their media ownership case at the FCC and 2) two House Subcommittees examine distracted driving. http://bit.ly/15s1g9
NETWORK NEUTRALITY
Comcast Attacks Network Neutrality
Content and Its Discontents
NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN
Broadcasters Meet With FCC On Spectrum
Stations Need To Hang On To Spectrum
Belo Rejects Cash-For-Spectrum Plan
FCC Seeks Comment on Broadband's Role in Education and E-rate Reform
One Economy Proposes National Digital Literacy Initiative be part of National Broadband Plan
Rural Broadband: Let's Talk About Cost
Will the Digital Divide Close by Itself?
THE STIMULUS
Broadband Stimulus money unlikely for Philadelphia
OWNERSHIP
Copps Questions Broadcasters Use of Spectrum
Public Interest Groups Argue Against Loosening of Ownership Rules
MAP Urges FCC to Focus on Media Ownership Diversity in Rules Review
Minority Ownership Stays Flat
Shared services agreements come under attack
CONSUMER PROTECTION
FTC Virtual Worlds Report Due Dec. 10
PTC Pushes Stations To Preempt 'Gossip Girl'
WIRELESS
Droid vs. iPhone: It's Really About the Carrier
AT&T to Verizon: We Have a Lawsuit for That
BROADCASTING
The Switch from Analog to Digital TV
Nielsen: Radio Reaches 77% of Adults Daily
Demand for TV Ad Time Rises
MORE ONLINE ...
Industry should lead cybersecurity partnership
Tribune to Terminate Employee Stock Ownership Plan
Auletta: Google Is Not Trying to Harm Old Media
Introducing The Texas Tribune
Top Digital Cities Announced for 2009
Australia's Broadband Blunder
The Greatest Generation (of Networkers)
NETWORK NEUTRALITY
COMCAST ATTACKS NET NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Jenna Staul]
The Sunlight Foundation reports that Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Brady signed a letter to the Federal Communications Commission critical of its new network neutrality policies. Of the 72 lawmakers who signed onto the letter, Rep Brady is the leading recipient of campaign contributions from telecom companies -- since 2007 alone he's received $91,650 just from Comcast, which is based in his district of Philadelphia. Comcast, which has played an aggressive role in the debate over net neutrality, spent $3 million on lobbying in the third quarter of the year, according to disclosure reports. Not surprisingly, Brady has a long history of supporting Comcast's policies. And the letter sent to FCC bears a striking resemblance to Comcast's announcement on net neutrality.
benton.org/node/29411 | Huffington Post, The
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CONTENT AND ITS DISCONTENTS
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Gigi Sohn]
[Commentary] Public Knowledge recently celebrated its 8th birthday of defending citizens' rights in the digital culture. Unlike any other public interest group in Washington or elsewhere, we are dedicated to ensuring openness at every layer of our communication system, and that includes the content layer. That's why our work to ensure balanced copyright is so important -- we cannot have an open Internet if large corporate copyright holders can exploit overly burdensome copyright laws to sacrifice legitimate speech at the altar of trying to stop piracy. Some in Hollywood, like Disney, were in favor of Network Neutrality in the late 90's because they knew well the powers that the network owner has. More recently, they changed course, believing that net neutrality would somehow prevent them from enforcing their copyrights. Copyright enforcement and net neutrality can co-exist, unless one seeks to enforce their copyrights through network level filtering.
benton.org/node/29390 | Public Knowledge
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NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN
BROADCASTERS MEET WITH FCC ON SPECTRUM
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: ]
Television broadcasters have begun making their opposition to the Federal Communications Commission's cash-for-spectrum plan known in visits with FCC officials. The plan calls for broadcasters to swap most of their spectrum for a share of the proceeds that would come from the auctioning of the spectrum to wireless broadband providers. TV stations would keep just enough bandwidth to continue broadcasting a single standard definition (SD) channel. The broadcasters said they questioned an assertion by an FCC official that most over-the-air service in a market could be provided in an SD format by a single digital channel. And they suggested that they needed to hang on to their spectrum so they could continue broadcasting HDTV and mobile digital television.
benton.org/node/29406 | TVNewsCheck
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STATIONS NEED TO HANG ON TO SPECTRUM
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Harry Jessell]
A Q&A with Media Strategy Group president Steve Ridge. He advises TV broadcasters to hang on to their spectrum, seize mobile and online opportunities, reorganize as 24-hour news operations, share retransmission revenue with networks and continue to build viewer loyalty with a strong anchor desk. That Ridge has advice to share is no surprise. For the past 26 years, he has worked at one media's preeminent research and consulting firms, Frank N. Magid Associates. Ridge says, "Local TV operators have the potential to amass a very powerful grassroots lobbying effort. TV operators have direct access to consumers in their markets and the ability to energize and motivate a huge base of opposition to a spectrum take-back. Sure, they can't outspend Google or other lobbies on Capitol Hill, but they can win the war in their own backyards where they have huge influence."
benton.org/node/29405 | TVNewsCheck
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BELO REJECTS CASH-FOR-SPECTRUM PLAN
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Harry Jessell]
Belo CEO Dunia Shive is lining up against the Federal Communications Commission proposal under which TV stations would swap their channels for some of the proceeds derived from selling it to spectrum-hungry wireless broadband operators. "We are not interested in cash for spectrum," Shive told securities analysts earlier today after release of the publicly traded TV station group's third-quarter financial results. "We are interested in developing opportunities that ... are afforded by the digital transition and the investment we made in it." Shive said that she is particularly interested in mobile DTV, noting that Belo is working with other station groups in developing a business model for the technology that enables stations to broadcast full-motion video to mobile devices. Belo is also using excess digital spectrum for multicasting — that is, broadcasting ancillary programming in an SD format, Shive said. Five Belo stations are airing Estrella, a Spanish-language network, on digital subchannels, she said. Shive made a quick case against giving back spectrum. "The spectrum we use has value beyond the financial value in that we reach nearly every household, we serve the public interest and we provide timely emergency information to viewers."
benton.org/node/29417 | TVNewsCheck
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FCC SEEKS COMMENT ON BROADBAND'S ROLE IN EDUCATION
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: ]
The Federal Communications Commission is seeking comment on various issues related to broadband access in education and on modifications to the schools and libraries universal service support mechanism (the E-rate program) to improve broadband deployment to meet the instructional and informational needs of schools and libraries. In addition, the FCC seeks comment on whether and how increasing broadband deployment to schools can affect or stimulate the adoption of broadband more widely in communities and whether and how the E-rate program can be structured to more effectively distribute available funding. Comments are due November 20; reply comments are due December 11.
benton.org/node/29410 | Federal Communications Commission
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ONE ECONOMY PROPOSES NATIONAL DIGITAL LITERACY INITIATIVE
[SOURCE: One Economy, AUTHOR: Rey Ramsey]
One Economy has proposed the Federal Communications Commission include a National Digital Literacy Initiative as part of the National Broadband Plan. The NDLI is a four-part plan to deliver digital literacy efforts in communities, in schools, through online and mobile curriculum, and through a national awareness campaign. It targets unserved or underserved people in urban and rural communities, including: low-income and minority individuals, persons who speak English as a Second Language, the elderly, Americans with Disabilities, and tribal communities.
benton.org/node/29409 | One Economy | Read the proposal
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RURAL BROADBAND: LET'S TALK ABOUT COST
[SOURCE: Daily Yonder, AUTHOR: Nick Muntean]
[Commentary] The story of how the federal government helped bring electricity to rural America teaches an important lesson to those who are now deciding how to spend $7 billion on extending broadband to the countryside. It's this: Cost is just as important as build-out. In fact, affordability of broadband is probably more important than its availability. The comparison of electric service and broadband isn't exact, of course. But it is worth pausing for a moment to reflect on the lessons we can learn from the last government-sponsored effort to bring massive infrastructure improvements to rural areas — that of the rural electrification movement of the 1920s and '30s. With so much of the present discourse focused on questions of build-out, it is important to realize that one of the gravest issues facing rural electrification was not simply the extension of electric lines to every nook and cranny of rural America but the affordability of electrical services for the end user. Given the present financial situation of many rural residents, this issue must be addressed in any appropriations bill for rural broadband development.
benton.org/node/29408 | Daily Yonder
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WILL THE DIGITAL DIVIDE CLOSE BY ITSELF?
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Stefanie Olsen]
Reed Hastings, the founder and chief executive of Netflix, argues that at the advent of any new technology — television, cars, even rockets — people get riled up and wring their hands over a growing gap between the haves and have-nots. He said that gaps narrow naturally as the market evolves and prices drop, enabling more people to bring new technology into the home and schools. One of Google's founders, Sergey Brin, says connecting to Internet will eventually be like electricity: easy and cheap.
benton.org/node/29391 | New York Times
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THE STIMULUS
STIMULUS MONEY UNLIKELY FOR PHILADELPHIA
[SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer, AUTHOR: Joseph DiStefano]
Philadelphia Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank helped prepare the city's broadband stimulus applications that call for: 1) A city-sponsored plan to link its existing fiber-based Internet loop downtown to neighborhood police, health and recreation centers, for $22 million; 2) A Free Library-based Internet training program, for $15 million; and 3) A jobs and services system at the Philadelphia Housing Authority, for $2.3 million. Pennsylvania officials reviewed a majority of the state's 130 applications, said Gary Tuma, spokesman for Gov Rendell. They rated 13 of the plans "Highly Recommended," including the Philadelphia Housing Authority proposal. They said they'd "support" another 12 plans, including the Free Library proposal. But the state left the city's main proposal off its preferred lists. Some city Internet advocates blamed corporate Internet providers, believing they feared competition. They noted that David Cohen, the Comcast executive vice president, told Bloomberg News last week the company opposed "applications to provide service in areas where there is already broadband service" because they would compete with Comcast. "The telephone companies and Comcast didn't want this to happen," said Todd Wolfson, a Rutgers professor who helped write the city's application. "The market model, which they champion, hasn't gotten the Internet into the hands of people who are working class," Wolfson said. He thinks it "is wrong" that they won't tolerate government doing it either.
benton.org/node/29407 | Philadelphia Inquirer
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OWNERSHIP
COPPS QUESTIONS BROADCASTERS USE OF SPECTRUM
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Michael Copps]
Speaking at the Federal Communications Commission second workshop to kick off the 2010 Quadrennial Review of Media Ownership Rules, Commissioner Michael Copps said, "There are many important issues pending before the FCC. In long-term importance, none exceeds-and I don't think any matches-the future of our media environment. If we can't fix what's broken, if we can't rejuvenate broadcast journalism, reopen shuttered newsrooms, put the brakes on mind-numbing monoprogramming, stop the dumbing-down of our civic dialogue and take advantage of the great potential of local broadcasting, then maybe those who want that spectrum back have the better of the argument." Noting that some broadcasters strive to serve the public interest, Commissioner Copps lamented that "their ranks have been thinned, to say the least, and we've made it-Wall Street and Washington, DC have made it-ever more difficult for them to act as they would like to act while the tune has been called by Wall Street and see-no-evil government regulators." He called on his colleagues at the FCC to not use the media ownership review to delay much needed action on minority and female ownership, localism, and public interest licensing.
benton.org/node/29395 | Federal Communications Commission | Broadcasting&Cable | WashPost
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PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS ARGUE AGAINST LOOSENING OWNERSHIP RULES
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Public interest groups Free Press, United Church of Christ and Media Access Project, testifying at a Federal Communications Commission workshop on media ownership rules, said that the broadcasting industry isn't in such bad shape and the FCC should not loosen its ownership rules as a way to "prop up" the industry. The groups favor structural regulations. FCC Media Bureau Chief William Lake said it would take five or 10 years to figure out whether the current tanking economy for newspapers and broadcasters was a cyclical event or a sea change. He asked how the FCC should take into account the economic downturn given that it did not have the luxury of waiting until those final returns were in. Derek Turner, research director at Free Press, said he didn't think the economic slump looked any different from past recessions. He said the FCC should be concerned about broadcasters' ability to make a profit, but that it was not the commission's job to prop up the industry, or to assume that relaxing the rules is going to be the answer to problems, many of which the industry created for itself. He also said that even if the FCC did loosen the rules, the tendency would be for the industry to engage in the same behavior that led to its current state.
benton.org/node/29394 | Broadcasting&Cable
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MAP URGES FCC TO FOCUS ON DIVERSITY
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Media Access Project President Andrew Schwartzman urged the Federal Communications Commission to consider a study of the impact on ownership diversity of relaxing regulations as part of its review of media ownership rules. He said the Commission needs to look at shared services agreements, which he says are an evasion of the local ownership rules, and the UHF discount, which he says has been rendered obsolete by the DTV transition. (Station owners only get charged with half the audience for a UHF station when it comes to national audience ownership limits.) He said the quadrennial media ownership rule review should not be turned into a referendum on the state of the media marketplace in general.
benton.org/node/29393 | Broadcasting&Cable
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MINORITY OWNERSHIP STAYS FLAT
[SOURCE: Radio Ink, AUTHOR: ]
A study by Professor Catherine Sandoval of the Santa Clara University School of Law -- partnering with SCU School of Law Professor Allen Hammond and Minority Media and Telecommunications Council Executive Director David Honig -- found that minority radio ownership has remained virtually flat over the past two years: A 2007 Free Press report found that 812, or 7.76 percent, of 10,506 licensed commercial stations were minority-owned, while the new report, as of mid-2009, found that 815, or 7.24 percent, of 11,249 stations were minority-owned. The new study looked at records from the Federal Communications Commission's Consolidated Database System and at Internet sources on ownership and formats to analyze the effect of FCC policies on minority ownership, program diversification, and public service. The study found that 324 different minority owners control the 815 full-power stations, with 139 of those Hispanic and 129 African American. Sixty-one percent of those owners own a single station. About three-quarters of the minority-owned stations air minority-oriented formats -- a Spanish format, Urban, Urban News, Asian, Ethnic, or minority-targeted religious formats such as Gospel or Spanish Christian.
benton.org/node/29392 | Radio Ink
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SHARED SERVICES AGREEMENTS COME UNDER ATTACK
[SOURCE: Radio Business Report, AUTHOR: ]
Cheryl Leanza, Policy Director, The Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, Inc., used a Federal Communications Commission media ownership workshop to set her sights on the increasing use of shared services agreements (SSAs) in local television markets. She noted that they are used to form virtual duopolies. The loophole that makes them possible, the rule stating that the service provider may program no more than 15% of the station's programming, allows it to control the only truly important portion of that station's programming - its local news. She was also not pleased that SSAs are frequently used to combine two of the top four stations within a given local market, something that is expressly forbidden in markets large enough to support an actually owned-and-operated duopoly. Media Access Project's Andy Schwartzman agreed that addressing television SSAs should be a major part of the FCC's review of ownership rules.
benton.org/node/29416 | Radio Business Report
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CONSUMER PROTECTION
FTC VIRTUAL WORLDS REPORT DUE DEC 10
[SOURCE: CongressDaily, AUTHOR: Andrew Noyes]
On December 10, the Federal Trade Commission will unveil the results of its congressionally mandated examination of online virtual worlds like the popular platform Second Life, an agency official told a Commerce Department Internet safety working group Tuesday. Commission attorney Phyllis Hurwitz Marcus said the report will include recommendations for best practices for industry, parents and youth. The examination was required under the 2009 omnibus appropriations bill but Congress didn't give the FTC much guidance other than asking them to zero in on "explicit content," Marcus said. The report, which will be released as part of an OECD conference the FTC is hosting on e-commerce, breaks down categorically to describe the content and volume of what investigators found, Marcus said. While she was hesitant to offer a preview of the Commission's findings and recommendations, she said the study revealed a glut of user-generated text-based explicit content. She also indicated that sites not typically thought of as virtual worlds, including interactive gaming sites, were reviewed.
benton.org/node/29404 | CongressDaily
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PTC PUSHES STATIONS TO PREEMPT 'GOSSIP GIRL'
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The Parents Television Council has sent letters to CW affiliates -- about 120 in all -- asking them to preempt the infamous November 9 episode of Gossip Girl which reportedly includes a sexual tryst among three main characters. "Our members will not hesitate to contact local and national advertisers; and if this program violates broadcast decency law, rest assured that our members will contact the Federal Communications Commission," writes PTC President Tim Winter.
benton.org/node/29402 | Broadcasting&Cable
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WIRELESS
DROID VS IPHONE IS REALLY VERIZON VS AT&T
[SOURCE: PC World, AUTHOR: Tony Bradley]
The clock is ticking to the release of the Droid, and its smaller brother the Droid Eris, this Friday from Verizon. The media is filled with rhetoric drawing comparisons between the Droid and the iPhone. Those stories miss the point that the real battle isn't between the Droid and the iPhone, but between Verizon and AT&T. AT&T has faced a fairly steady stream of complaints from customers--the majority of those complaints coming from the dedicated legions of iPhone users. There have been complaints that the battery can't be replaced, complaints that the data service is slow, complaints that 3G access is dysfunctional, complaints that the device couldn't do MMS messaging, and more. AT&T and Apple have also been the focus of controversy related to rejecting the Google Voice app, and trying to block third-party VoIP solutions. iPhone users love their iPhones, but they aren't quite as dedicated to the wireless provider the iPhone is tied to. Verizon seems to be the number one wireless carrier in the country for a reason. It has a better quality network and higher customer satisfaction, and it is capitalizing on those attributes in its marketing. In preparation for the Droid launch, Verizon has two clever campaigns. The iDon't ad campaign is aimed at spotlighting the deficiencies in the iPhone and highlighting the fact that Droid has those capabilities. The other campaign plays off of Apple's "There's an app for that" iPhone campaign to compare maps of the 3G coverage of Verizon vs. AT&T. Do you want to know why you can't find a 3G connection with AT&T? There's a map for that.
benton.org/node/29388 | PC World
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AT&T TO VERIZON: WE HAVE A LAWSUIT FOR THAT
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
In the time-honored tradition of dealing with competition by suing the pants off someone for an inaccurate ad, AT&T today filed suit against Verizon for its "There's a Map for That" advertising campaign. The AT&T complaint alleges that the Verizon ads use misleading maps that show wide areas of the country where AT&T doesn't have 3G coverage, and implies that in those areas AT&T has no coverage at all. The two companies had been back and forth since Oct. 7 on the ads, with Verizon apparently tweaking them a bit, and adding some fine print, but AT&T isn't satisfied. So it wants them taken off the air and Verizon to pay for any losses incurred by AT&T as a result of the ad being successful.
benton.org/node/29401 | GigaOm | C-Net|News.com
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BROADCASTING
THE SWITCH FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL TV
[SOURCE: Nielsen, AUTHOR: Sam Sewall]
Nielsen reviews its data on consumer preparedness for June 2009's transition to all-digital television broadcasting. By the time the June 12 deadline arrived, most U.S. homes were ready for the conversion to digital. There was a sharp decline in the number of completely unready homes (just 2.5% of U.S. households) for the digital transition in the week leading up to the digital transition. And as of October 4, that number was reduced to 0.5%. Those homes that were completely unready were more likely to be African American, Hispanic, Asian, younger, lower income, and were less likely to have Internet access. In general, unready homes represented just 12% of total television tuning before the June 12th transition. Television sets that were not ready for the digital transition were viewed about one-third of the time compared to ready sets. Unready sets were viewed 1.5 hours a day on average, while ready sets were viewed 5.1 hours per day. And in the week leading up to the analog shut off, almost 60% of unready sets had no television tuning at all. Unready sets were typically found in rooms that are not focal points of television viewing, such as secondary bedrooms, kitchens and other locations. The location of these sets corresponds to the fact that they were used less for television viewing. In total, TV stations that transitioned to digital only experienced an 8% share decline immediately following the analog shut-off.Stations that changed channel positions from UHF (ultra high frequency) to VHF (very high frequency) were more impacted, showing a 13% share decline.
benton.org/node/29399 | Nielsen
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NIELSEN: RADIO REACHES 77% OF ADULTS DAILY
[SOURCE: MediaPost, AUTHOR: Erik Sass]
In Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Seattle in 2008, broadcast radio reached 77% of American adults every day, making it second only to television, which garnered 95% daily reach. The Nielsen data bolsters radio's audience claims at a critical time for the medium -- but it's unclear whether these kinds of findings can still sway advertisers. Within the audio category, radio's daily reach far exceeded the percentage of American adults who listen to CDs or tapes, at 37%, or listen to portable audio devices like iPods or MP3 players, at 12%. What's more, Nielsen found that the 12% who listen to iPods or MP3 players every day overlap a great deal with the 77% who listen to radio, with radio reaching 88% of the iPod/MP3 group. Compared to other media, on a daily basis radio also beat the Internet -- excluding email usage -- at 64%, newspapers at 35%, and magazines at 27%. Radio scored even better in the coveted 18-34 age group, reaching about 80% of this cohort on a daily basis.
benton.org/node/29398 | MediaPost | C-Net|News.com
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DEMAND FOR TV AD TIME RISES
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sam Schechner]
Viacom Inc. and Discovery Communications Inc. said they are seeing increased demand and higher prices for TV commercials as they head into the holiday season, adding to an up-tempo chorus after a brutal year for advertising. After months of pulling back, advertisers may end up spending more money in the holiday season than last year, some ad buyers say. Some of the new spending in the fourth quarter is simply money that had been cut from earlier quarters, however, and may not carry over as new spending next year, ad buyers say. Moreover, price increases for last-minute ads come after TV networks were forced over the summer to accept lower prices for advance commercial sales, in what is known as the "upfront" marketplace. Total television-ad spending in the U.S. is projected to decline 5.1% in 2010, according to Publicis's ZenithOptimedia. Even U.S. cable networks, which have been the most insulated against the downturn, are projected to see spending fall 1% next year.
benton.org/node/29415 | Wall Street Journal
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