May 2008

The FCC's Regulation-Wary Regulator

Another Q&A with Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Robert McDowell. He's resisting FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's push to adopt new rules to promote localism in broadcasting. He dissented on the FCC’s enhanced disclosure rules requiring stations to file quarterly reports on their local programming efforts. What’s more, he has sharply questioned proposals to require stations to set up community advisory boards and meet minimum local programming quotas. Two weeks ago, in a speech at the Quello Communications Law and Policy Symposium in Washington, Commissioner McDowell reiterated in his strongest language yet his opposition to Martin’s localism initiatives and his skepticism about regulation in general. “Simply put, government cannot outsmart an unfettered and competitive market,” he said. In this interview, McDowell elaborates on his problems with the localism push, expresses sympathy for those who would like to see less broadcast ownership regulation at a national and local level and touches on other issues of importance to broadcasters.
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2008/05/06/daily.6/

Hill Wants FCC to Investigate DOD 'Experts' Program

House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-MI) and Rep Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a senior member of the House Committee on Appropriations, want to know whether news networks bear any culpability related to a Department of Defense program to recruit ex-military officers to talk up Iraq and other policies on TV, online and elsewhere. Following a story in the New York Times about the program, they have asked FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to investigate whether the program may have violated requirements of sponsorship identification. “While we deem the DoD’s policy unethical and perhaps illegal, we also question whether the analysts and the networks are potentially equally culpable pursuant to the sponsorship identification requirements in the Communications Act of 1934 and the rules of the Federal Communications Commission,” the pair wrote Martin. “When seemingly objective television commentators are in fact highly motivated to promote the agenda of a government agency, a gross violation of the public trust occurs," they said. "The American people should never be subject to a covert propaganda campaign but rather should be clearly notified of who is sponsoring what they are watching." The analysts also have ties to lobbying groups that are not disclosed to viewers, the Times story said. Reps Dingell and DeLauro called for an immediate investigation. At least one FCC commissioner, Democrat Michael Copps, supports the move.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6558164.html?rssid=193

DeLauro press release
http://www.house.gov/delauro/press/2008/May/DeLauro_Dingell_5_6_08.html

FCC asked to probe TV 'surrogates'
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117985191.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&nid=...

'03 White House E-Mails Not Found

The Bush administration has not found disaster recovery files for White House e-mails from a three-month time period in 2003, according to court documents filed this week, raising the possibility that messages sent before and after the invasion of Iraq may never be recovered. The White House chief information officer, Theresa Payton, said in a sworn declaration that the White House has identified more than 400 computer backup tapes from March through September of 2003 but that the earliest recorded file was dated May 23 of that year. That period was one of the most crucial of the Bush presidency. The United States launched the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, and President Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1. Payton and other officials said that older e-mails could still be contained on the tapes because of the way the files are dated. The administration also said it is still searching computer archives for e-mails that have been filed in the wrong "digital drawer." In addition, Payton and other officials have said that any e-mails missing from the White House archiving system might still be available on disaster recovery tapes. But that did not satisfy an advocacy group suing the administration for e-mail records.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/06/AR200805...
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Screen Actors Guild talks end without a contract

Hopes for a last-minute breakthrough in negotiations between Hollywood studios and the Screen Actors Guild were dashed Tuesday when contract talks ended on a bitter note, fueling anxiety over the prospect of another strike. After three weeks of talks, studios walked away from the table, saying that negotiations were "thrust into reverse" by what they called "unreasonable demands." SAG accused the studios of turning their backs on the guild to focus on contract talks with the smaller actors union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. "It's deeply troubling because we said we wanted to stay in the room and make a deal and our pleas were ignored," SAG President Alan Rosenberg said.
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-sag7-2008may07,0,3186...
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SAG, Hollywood Producers End Contract Talks (Associated Press)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/06/AR200805...

Hollywood studios, actors break off labor talks
http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN0651004520080507

SAG, Studios End Talks Without Deal
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6558178.html?rssid=193

Cable Operators Ask for 'Quiet' on Retrans Disputes after DTV Transition

A group of cable operators has asked the FCC to step in and mandate that no TV stations be pulled from cable systems during the months around the February 2009 DTV transition date, even if cable operators and stations can't come to terms on carriage agreements. Mediacom Communications, along with Charter Communications, Insight, GCI, Suddenlink and Cequel Communications, has filed a petition asking the FCC “to promptly adopt a retransmission consent ‘quiet period’ to ensure that private commercial disputes in the months surrounding the February 17, 2009 digital transition do not unnecessarily trigger consumer confusion or service disruptions at a time when the American public is most dependent on the cable industry’s delivery of broadcast signals." That’s according to a copy of testimony slated to be delivered Wednesday by Edward Pardini, senior VP of Mediacom Communications, at a House Small Business Committee hearing on the DTV transition.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6558148.html?rssid=193

NAB Defends Ownership Change...As Far As It Goes

The National Association of Broadcasters weighed in Tuesday in support of the FCC's decision to loosen the newspaper/broadcast crossownership rules. Actually, broadcasters, including NAB, don't love the change. In fact they have taken the FCC to court over it because they believe it is not deregulatory enough. But in a filing at the FCC, the NAB came down in support of the rules change in an effort to counter the arguments of media-consolidation critics who say the rule change was too deregulatory. NAB called the FCC order a modest reform that made no changes to the local TV or radio ownership rules (NAB had wanted the FCC to loosen those, and excise the newspaper-broadcast crossownership ban entirely).
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6558157.html?rssid=193

US newspaper gloom overshadows industry survey

The gloom hanging over the US newspaper industry is distorting an otherwise optimistic mood among the world’s newspaper editors, according to a global survey of newsroom opinion. Only 30 per cent of North American newspaper editors polled by Zogby International believed that the quality of journalism would improve over the next decade, compared to 45.5 per cent in Western Europe and over 60 per cent in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. The majority of blogs and other online commentary about the industry came from the US, said Bertrand Pecquerie, Director of the World Editors Forum, who described one recent meeting of editors in Delaware as being “like a funeral”. Editors outside the US “don't understand it at all,” he said. The Newsroom Barometer report, sponsored by Thomson Reuters and the World Editors Forum, found that the pessimism in the US was balanced by booming new markets such as India and resilient print markets such as Japan.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c19e3d84-1b98-11dd-9e58-0000779fd2ac.html
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Headline Highlights April 2008

April showers, of course, bring May flowers. But the first full month of Spring also witnessed the flowering of a number of key telecommunications debates. Just add water and -- presto -- there's some controversy. Here's a quick recap of developments concerning the digital television transition, the public interest obligations of broadcasters, media ownership, and universal, open broadband.
http://www.benton.org/node/10822

All the news that's fit to predict

As downsizing news outlets endeavor to "do more with less," one might think old-fashioned reporting and analysis would be enough to keep them occupied. But no, the prevailing trend extends beyond that into Carnac the Magnificent territory, prodding pundits to forecast what's to come. Welcome to the age of all the news that's fit to predict.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117985194.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&nid=...

Spain Told to Curtail TV Ads

The European Commission on Tuesday warned Spain it had to change its television advertising practices or face court action. The commission, the European Union's executive arm, complained to the Spanish authorities that the country wasn't complying with EU rules on television advertising, which limit commercials and teleshopping broadcasts to 12 minutes an hour. The limit is in place to improve the viewing experience for audiences and to promote quality television across Europe.

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