September 2008

Broadcast news campaigns against cable outlets in the race for election viewers

As the 2008 presidential campaign moves into its final, frenzied push, the race has never been more competitive. In this case, the rivals are the broadcast television news divisions and their cable news challengers jockeying to win viewers for their political coverage. The cable channels showed clout during the party conventions, but ABC, CBS and NBC are hoping that their evenhanded style and high-profile exclusives will keep people watching this fall. Even with less air time, broadcasters argue that they deliver weightier and more substantial coverage. Still, four years after Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather were the dominant television figures covering the presidential race, there's no question that the authority traditionally wielded by network anchors is eroding.

The Ads That Aren't

When Democrats turned their attention to national security themes at their nominating convention last month, Sen. John McCain's campaign was ready. In a withering TV commercial called "Tiny," McCain claimed that Sen. Barack Obama had called Iran a "tiny" country that "doesn't pose a serious threat." As reporters scrambled to vet the claims -- which, it reportedly turned out, distorted Obama's comments -- few noticed something curious about the commercial itself: "Tiny" appeared almost nowhere on the air except in news accounts. Since introducing the much-discussed commercial two weeks ago, in fact, McCain's campaign has bought airtime for it just 10 times. The McCain ad, in other words, wasn't really much of an ad at all. In political parlance, "Tiny" was a "vapor," or "ghost," ad. The goal of such spots is to stir up news-media interest rather than to reach voters directly through the purchase of expensive TV time.

Here comes digital TV

[Commentary] The biggest change to television broadcasting since the introduction of cable is coming Feb. 17, when 1,800 local stations turn off their analog transmissions and broadcast only in digital. The benefits include crisper pictures and more channels for the 17 million or so households that rely on rabbit ears or antennas. Of course, those benefits will flow only to viewers equipped for the switch, with either digital sets or converter boxes. And despite a decade of hype about digital TV, some advocacy groups for minorities and senior citizens warn that many people will be caught unprepared. On Monday, broadcasters in Wilmington, N.C., gave the rest of the country a preview of the switch to digital. The FCC, which paid firefighters in Wilmington to help distressed TV viewers, plans to arrange the same kind of education and support in Los Angeles and 79 other markets with numerous over-the-air TV watchers. But local officials shouldn't wait for the feds to lead on this issue. Wilmington showed that the digital transition is too big a leap for some people, many of them elderly residents for whom TV is a vital source of information, entertainment and companionship. It's not too early to start lining up volunteers to keep viewers connected and to quickly reconnect the ones who will undoubtedly be cut off.

Time Warner Nixes NBCU Merger Idea

A top Time Warner executive threw lukewarm water Wednesday on any possible merger or alliance with NBC Universal. Questions about the future of NBC (now NBCU) within General Electric have percolated for at least a decade now, but the likelihood of a divestiture remains slim. Time Warner Executive Vice President and CFO John Martin said his company has not "heard anything that they would be interested in selling or be open to a potential strategic alliance."

CTIA convention a stage for wireless innovators

People want to use their phones for more than just talking. CTIA-the Wireless Assn., said this week that revenue from wireless data services rose 40% in the first half of 2008, to $14.8 billion. Grabbing a piece of that pie is a different story, especially with so many products doing very similar things.This week, CTIA exhibitors include 10 companies that deal in billing and accounting systems for phones, 22 that work in location-based services and tracking technology and 33 that deal in mobile entertainment such as ring tones and games. There are companies that help you use your phone to avoid traffic and companies that track trucks stuck in traffic, services that turn voice mail into text messages and other services that turn text into voice. They all are jockeying for the attention of consumers, carriers or handset manufacturers, angling for a piece of the growing market.

Who needs a good memory when there's Google?

[Commentary] In this technocratic age we have come to rely less and less on memory. In fact, we rely less on our own authority altogether. The future of everyday cellular is quietly moving beyond asynchronous communication to what mobile digerati are calling memory augmentation - an application for recording, organizing, and archiving the elements of your life and then creating sophisticated indexing taxonomies upon which to search and retrieve its details. "What was that cute song our toddler sang in the bathtub?" "Was that a hint of irony in your brother's wedding toast?" A Bluetooth-like appendage registers and compresses the days of our lives and holds them in cache until we need them again. With so many of us slave to tin can memory, our human capacity for identification is jeopardized. Because when we commit things to mind, we become the authors of experience. When we choose to remember, we relate to our most fundamental resource and, in so doing, achieve a unique and perfect balance between representation and meaning.

FCC Report on Wilmington DTV Transition

In two releases, the Federal Communications Commission is reporting back on what happened in Wilmington (ND) on Monday. The 400,000 viewers in the Wilmington area represent an estimated 180,000 households, of which nearly 14,000 receive free over-the-air television programming with roof-top antennas or "rabbit-ears." During the first day of the transition, approximately 800 (797) area residents or less than one-half of one percent of area homes called the FCC helpline asking questions and seeking help with the switch-over to digital television. On September 9, the second day of the transition, the number of calls decreased by almost 50 percent from the first day to 424. Based on calls to the FCC helpline through the first day, most consumers were aware of and ready for the transition. The Commission's helpline received just 23 calls from consumers who said they were not aware of the switch to digital television and/or did not know the date of the transition.

Digital TV test shows the FCC will need more phones

Although Monday's apparently successful test of the digital TV conversion in Wilmington, N.C., still must be fully analyzed, new data released Wednesday indicates one thing: Federal officials are going to get a whole bunch of calls from confused viewers when the rest of the nation makes the switch in February. The Federal Communications Commission said that 797 Wilmington residents called a special government helpline on Monday after the region's five commercial TV stations permanently turned off their analog signals at noon EDT and began broadcasting only in digital. On Tuesday, the number of calls dropped to 424. The FCC noted that those first-day calls represented "less than one-half of 1%" of the region's 180,000 TV-viewing households. And combining the second day calls, the figure is still well under 1%. But translate that to the rest of the country, which has 112.8 million TV-viewing households, and even a call volume of 0.5% would produce approximately 564,000 calls.

Television finds unlikely ally in troubled economy

It's been a tough run for the television business, with all the buzz around new media and those killer devices that let audiences skip right through commercials. But fortunes may be turning for the TV industry, at least for the moment. A number of media executives have indicated this week that TV advertising sales are weathering the current economic storm better than media categories like radio and publishing, and perhaps even the Internet. For advertisers, the big advantage that TV holds over other media is that it still allows them to reach the biggest audiences at any given moment in time. It's also familiar to advertisers, who have decades of experience with 30-second spots and vast research about audience behavior. Other traditional media have not held up as well, with radio and publishing both hard hit by the downturn, continuing trends that were evident even in a healthier economy. Local advertising has been the culprit, deteriorating faster than national advertising across media, even TV.

FCC Looks to Revive Leased Access Rules

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday took the first step toward revising cable leased access rules in response to objections raised by the budget arm of the Bush administration. The national media and communications regulator decided to seek public comment on two proposals by the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm representing the United Church of Christ's Office of Communication. In an Aug. 26 filing, MAP asked the FCC to exercise its authority and overrule the Office of Management and Budget, which refused to approve the FCC's implementation of regulations for the new cable leased access rules, particularly the vast information collection requirements. OMB, which is under direct White House control, said the FCC's data collection burden placed on cable operators violated the Paperwork Reduction Act, a law designed to reduce bureaucratic red tape on regulated entities, especially small business. MAP also urged the FCC to revise its rate formula to address cable's objections that lease access programmers could get on cable systems by paying nothing. The FCC is accepting initial public comments until Sept. 24 and subsequent responses by Oct. 1.

Benton

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