May 2008

Only 20 percent of kids under 17 were able to buy "M"-rated games in the United States this year, according to a government report out Thursday. While parents' groups might like that percentage to be higher, the video game industry is probably pretty happy about the findings. The Federal Trade Commission report studied kids' success at buying tickets to R-rated movies or purchasing R-rated DVDs, mature CDs, and M-rated games. In every case, the FTC found, the success rate had dropped over every previous year it conducted its study. But nowhere was the drop sharper than with video games. According to the study, while 20 percent of under-17 kids were able to buy M-rated games in 2008, the number had been 42 percent in 2006 and between 60 percent and more than 80 percent in previous studies.
http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9939246-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=...

Google's top executives on Thursday gave a glimpse into how it might try to deflect antitrust concerns of a possible ad-sharing deal with rival Yahoo, advising observers to look at the overall ad market. "You are narrowly focused on search advertising," co-founder Sergey Brin told reporters at the company's headquarters here before Google's shareholder meeting. "Advertising as a whole is much broader, and Internet advertising is much broader." The observation has bearing on the issue of whether Google has a monopoly and whether a deal with a rival would therefore reduce competition. "Advertisers always have multiple choices. It makes sense (for advertisers) to always use more than one," Chief Executive Eric Schmidt added. "It's incorrect to assert there's lock-in or opportunity for dominance in the ad space. Don't map (computer) platform economics to ad economics."
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9939473-7.html?tag=

When Americans last year were asked to name the journalist they most admired, showing up at No. 4 on the list was a comedian. Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central and former master of ceremonies at Academy Award shows, tied in the rankings with anchormen Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and cable host Anderson Cooper. Are Americans confused? What is Stewart doing on his program, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which might cause people to consider him a journalist? How is the show similar to, and different from, what people get from the mainstream press? Beyond that, who --and what -- gets skewered by Stewart and company, and who does not? The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism studied the content of The Daily Show for an entire year (2007), compared its news agenda with that of the more traditional news media, examined the lineup of guests and segments and tried to place the program into some kind of media context The results reveal a television program that draws on the news events of the day but picks selectively among them -- heavily emphasizing national politics and ignoring other news events entirely. In that regard, The Daily Show closely resembles the news agenda of a number of cable news programs as well as talk radio. The program also makes heavy use of news footage, often in a documentary way that employs archival video to show contrast and contradiction, even if the purpose is satirical rather than reportorial. At other times, the show also blends facts and fantasy in a way that no news program hopefully ever would. In addition, The Daily Show not only assumes, but even requires, previous and significant knowledge of the news on the part of viewers if they want to get the joke. And, in 2007 at least, the joke was more often on the Bush Administration and its fellow Republicans than on those from the liberal side of the aisle.
http://www.journalism.org/node/10953

A bipartisan group of senators led Sen Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has written Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin urging him to abandon a plan to use reverse auctions to award universal service fund support to eligible telecom carriers in rural areas. They wrote, “Reverse auctions leave too many unanswered questions about stranded investment and the lack of incentive for a carrier to improve and expand their network, let alone maintain their current systems. We must not create a race to the bottom. … This would in all likelihood leave Americans living in rural and high-cost areas without adequate, affordable communications services.... Reverse auctions would ultimately do little more than stymie the innovative communications infrastructure build out that is envisioned by our national universal service policy. Such an untested mechanism is far too risky to impose as we charge communications providers with the responsibility of providing advanced communications services to some of the most rural and expensive-to-serve areas of the country." They also let Chairman martin know that they support a separate FCC proposal to eliminate a rule that gives wireless carriers high-cost USF support equal to that given to landline telecom carriers in rural locales.
http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080508/FREE/30124582...