July 2008

FCC Broadband Hearing in Pittsburgh

The Federal Communications Commission traveled to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh Monday to discuss "Broadband and the Digital Future." The FCC commissioners heard about privacy, fairness and commercial possibility. Rep Mike Doyle (D-PA) helped organize the event saying it was intended to address two major concerns -- the so-called "digital divide" between those who have broadband access and those who don't, and "Network Neutrality," or the openness of the Internet. The United States government needs to expand its broadband mapping efforts and collect information about Internet speed tiers, Federal Communications Chairman Kevin Martin said. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said, "No matter who you are, or where you live, or how much money you make ... you will need, and you are entitled to have these tools (broadband Internet) available to you, I think, as a civil right." Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein echoed Doyle's and Martin's calls for regulations and seconded Martin's belief that America must find a solutions that will help increase broadband deployment and speed while also lowering the cost of broadband. Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate emphasized her efforts to crack down on online child pornography. Internet service providers should be free to take unilateral action against such sites, she said. Tate also cited the need to respect intellectual property rights online. Commissioner Robert McDowell, appearing to reject some of the more regulatory policies of his colleagues, said that the Internet has flourished because engineers have, and should continue, to be the solvers of engineering problems, not governmental officials.

China's Unreality TV

[Commentary] China has gone to extraordinary lengths to spruce up its image before next month's Olympics: shuttering factories to reduce air pollution, mopping up algae in sailing waters, harassing critics and threatening journalists. To win the right to host the Games, Beijing promised to expand press freedoms for foreign reporters and implied that opening China to the world would help expand human rights more generally. We will never know whether China's leaders intended to keep their word. What we do know is that the International Olympic Committee, corporate sponsors and governments around the world should have held China to its word. They have not, and China has read their silence as complicity. Even with all of the intimidation, human rights advocates (and maybe some athletes) will likely try to use the Games to protest China's repression. Beijing needs to know that the world will be watching how it handles that bit of reality TV.

War Takes center Stage of Campaign Coverage

According to the Campaign Coverage Index of Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism for the week of July 14-20, more than one-third of the campaign coverage last week focused on Iraq and Afghanistan and Sen Barack Obama's trip to the Middle East. The week was also the sixth straight since the general election began in which Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, Obama, enjoyed a distinct advantage in the race for exposure over the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain. Last week, Obama was a significant presence in 83% of campaign stories studied, vs. McCain in 52%. (To be a significant presence in a story, 25% of the story must be about that person.)

Start-Up May Aid Telecoms' Reach

As the telecom industry gears up to reach billions of potential mobile-phone users in developing countries, a Swedish-Indian start-up has developed an innovative piece of equipment: a build-it-yourself radio tower that consumes about as much energy as a light bulb. For years, telecom operators have been trying to expand into rural areas in Asia, Africa and the Middle East -- a major growth opportunity at a time when urban areas are saturated. Some two billion new subscribers are projected to start using mobile phones in the next five years, and 80% of them live in developing-world markets, according to analyst estimates. Yet wiring villages without reliable electricity, and where residents have little money to spend, requires a technological rethink.

Time Warner Cable, Verizon to Duel

As Verizon gears up to offer pay-TV service in New York City, Time Warner Cable is making a series of moves to compete more aggressively with the phone titan for one of its most prized markets. Verizon received final approval from local authorities last week to launch its FiOS TV service in New York. It has already begun taking video-service orders and plans to begin installing starting on August 1, says Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Capital, who downgraded Time Warner Cable's stock to a sell on Monday because he thought the company was ill prepared for the heightening competition. Greenfield arrived at his conclusion in part after phoning customer-service representatives at Time Warner Cable. Some of the reps didn't know what FiOS was, and others didn't seem to have a plan in place to keep customers who talked about defecting to FiOS. "I didn't get the sense from talking to them that they were really prepared for the coming competitive onslaught," Mr. Greenfield says. He estimates that Time Warner Cable gets 10% of its revenue from its New York City market.

XM-Sirius Deal: Inching Closer, Or Falling Apart?

[Commentary] So, is the XM-Sirius merger going to happen or not? The Motley Fool suggests that Sirius should walk away from its merger deal with XM rather than accept additional concessions posed by the Federal Communications Commission. Kharif has the opposite view arguing that 1) the satellite radio companies have already come too far to back out of the merger now, and 2) the additional concessions the companies have been asked to make aren't as serious as they appear.

Product Placements in TV Newscasts

KVVU, the Fox affiliate in Las Vegas (NV), following the lead of a few TV stations across the country, is integrating product placements into newscasts. McDonald's is paying for two iced coffee look-alikes (no, it's not really iced coffee) to sit before the news anchors of KVVU's news anchors. The station and McDonald's won't disclose how much the fast food empire paid for the product placement. But lest there be any concerns about mixing fact (the morning news) with fiction (fake coffee), KVVU news director Adam Bradshaw points out that the cups are put out only after 7 a.m., when the hard news gives way to light lifestyle news. "I stress the fact that it is being done on a program that is a combination of news entertainment and lifestyle programming," Bradshaw says. Kelly McBride, the ethics group leader for Poynter Institute, the nonprofit journalism training organization, isn't convinced. Product placement in a newsroom, she worries, represents the "slippage" of news into advertisement, a descent into a dark world where conglomerate companies control coverage.

MMTC Issues Road Map for Media Diversity

The Minority Media & Telecommunications Council has released the Road Map for Telecommunications Policy, seeking "nothing less than the complete eradication of racial discrimination and its present effects from the nation's most influential and important industries -- mass media and telecommunications." Recommendations include more minority Federal Communications Commission commissioners and staff; asking Congress to give the Federal Trade Commission the power to prohibit racial discrimination in advertising; opposing cable a la carte; and calling for an investigation into radio ratings. Four of the Federal Communications Commission's five commissioners weighed in on the issue of media diversity at Monday's MMTC conference. All agreed that more needed to be done. Commissioner Michael Copps said the FCC lacked the commitment to do something about a fundamental national problem of lack of diversity in media ownership and employment. He added that the FCC had been frightened by the courts into a position of not wanting to do anything for fear that it would be overturned. Instead, he said, it should have been finding creative ways to stake out a middle ground. Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said this FCC had made strides, including banning discrimination in advertising contracts. Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate -- who got a shout-out from the MMTC for a record of advocating for minority issues -- said she also liked to look at the positive, while pointing out that as the only woman on the Commission, the issue was near to her heart. Commissioner Robert McDowell said the small steps the FCC had taken -- including adopting a number of diversity initiatives and putting out others for comment -- were steps in the right direction. He favors helping minorities get more deals done it a tough economy and he hoped some deals would come out of an "access to capital" hearing the FCC is holding next week in New York.

Women, Minorities Advance in Local News

The percentage of journalists of color and women working in local television and radio news rose in 2007, as did the percentage of both groups in newsroom leadership positions, according to a survey released by the Radio-Television News Directors Association. The 2008 RTNDA/Hofstra University Annual Survey conducted in fourth-quarter 2007 shows that minorities made up 23.6 percent of local television news staffs, an increase over the 21.5 percent result in 2006, and the second highest percentage since the peak in 2001. The bigger picture appears more mixed. In the past 18 years, the minority population in the United States has risen 8.1 percent; but the minority workforce in TV news is up 5.8 percent, and the minority workforce in radio is up by just 1 percent. The percentages of Asian Americans, Native Americans and Hispanic journalists all increased, while the percentages of African Americans remained steady at 10.1 percent of the broadcast journalism workforce. At non-Hispanic stations, the minority workforce was 20.1 percent, an increase of the previous year's 19.4 percent. Asian Americans and African-Americans gained ground while the number of Hispanic and Native American journalists remained the same. The percentage of minority television news directors reached an all-time high of 15.5 percent, up from 10.9 percent in 2006. In radio, the percentage of minority news directors returned to 5.9 percent, down from the previous year's spike, but more in line with earlier percentages. Measurement of minority news directors in radio fluctuates each year based on which stations complete the survey. In local radio, the minority workforce was 11.8 percent, the first increase after a steady decline for more than a decade. At 40.2 percent, there was no significant change in the percentage of women in the television news workforce in 2007, the study found, but the number of women news directors reached an all-time high of 28.3 percent.

AT&T agrees to lower rates to amend for overbilling

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) said Monday that her office has reached an agreement with AT&T's Illinois subsidiary, under which some Illinois phone customers who were over-billed will receive -- in addition to $1.5 million in refunds they have already garnered -- an additional $5.5 million in future rate concessions through November 2011. Madigan's office said it had last year detected billing errors on certain rate packages, known as Consumers Choice Basic and Consumers Choice Extra formats. The Illinois Commerce Commission had mandated rate reductions on those packages, but AT&T had not implemented the reductions. As part of the agreement, AT&T Illinois also agreed to $5.5 million in future rate concessions. In one element of those concessions, the AT&T unit will forgo the last of three rate hikes that the ICC has previously authorized, which was scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2009. AT&T Illinois will also freeze the current 4 cents per local call rate for 18 months, providing a savings to customers who pay basic per-call rates an estimated $4 million through July 1, 2010. In addition, AT&T Illinois has agreed to cap the "Consumers Choice" packages for another year. The ICC approved those packages to protect consumers from expected price increases resulting from deregulation and AT&T Illinois will retain those low-priced, bare-bones packages through November of 2011, "saving consumers another $1 million."

Benton

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