September 2008

The hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast could be a test for the country's wireless carriers, which faced criticism and a regulatory push after Hurricane Katrina took out networks. Gustav slammed Jamaica on Friday, and forecasters said it could hit the Louisiana coast at the beginning of next week as a major hurricane. If so, wireless networks would have two main vulnerabilities. The cell towers may be unhurt by the buffeting winds of a hurricane, but to keep working, each one needs electrical power and a connection to the larger network, usually via landline. After Katrina, the Federal Communications Commission seized on the power issue, and sought to mandate that almost all cell sites in the U.S. have at least eight hours of backup power in the event main power fails. But that requirement has been held up by court challenges from wireless industry association CTIA, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA. The carriers said the FCC failed to follow federal guidelines for creating new mandates and went far beyond its authority in creating the requirement. Requiring each cell site, even in areas that aren't disaster-prone, to have its own backup power is expensive and robs them of the flexibility to deploy generators in more sensitive areas, they said.

Over 38 million Americans tuned in for television coverage of Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) accepting the Democratic nomination for president on Thursday in what is believed to be the most watched convention speech ever. Obama's TV audience, reaching nearly a fourth of all US households, was by far the largest of the four-day Democratic National Convention, surpassing the addresses by his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del) and his onetime rival for the nomination, Sen Hillary Clinton (D-NY). It also easily eclipsed the acceptance speeches of either of Obama's two immediate Democratic predecessors or the 27.6 million viewers President George W. Bush drew on the fourth night of the Republican National Convention in 2004, when he was nominated for a second term. Obama's historic address, by the first African American chosen to lead a major political party in the race for the White House, averaged 38.4 million US viewers across all major networks, Nielsen Media Research reported on Friday. That figure is the highest for any single night of any major party convention going back to 1996, the last election cycle for which Nielsen keeps night-by-night data.

On the eve of the 2008-09 television syndication season, distributors are facing the prospect of a heated election that's likely to wilt initial ratings for daytime shows. Election season typically produces not only bolstered ratings for cable and broadcast news coverage, but fewer opportunities to place promotional spots for the new syndicated shows, as commercial time instead goes toward revenue-generating political ads.

Brace yourself for attack ads by the boatload. Shadowy advocacy groups will crawl out of the woodwork solely to fund vicious takedowns. The starting guns have just sounded for marathons of spin and counterspin on crucial issues, like how much the candidates' houses are worth. Soon, most pundits will express outrage. Soon, most citizens will express exhaustion. Just about the only happy folk, besides seriously degenerate political junkies, will be the owners of local TV stations. They stand poised to grab 70%, or more, of the $2 billion that could be spent between Labor Day and Election Day. But it has been such a lousy year for local TV that not even a billion bucks will stop stations from scoring less revenue than they did in '07. A down '08 will follow a revenue decline in '07. Politics is the last major ad category that slavishly worships TV, and this raises its own issues. "The calendar could run out before the money does," says Evan Tracey, who tracks political ads for TNS. "If you're going to try to get a TV spot in central Florida or Ohio, be prepared to pay through the nose to get [an ad on] the equivalent of Wayne's World." There are some situations, though, that not even a roller-coaster, cash-crazed election cycle can salvage. The viewers, as always, will suffer deeply throughout all of it. But this year, once the election's over, the station owners will, too. The Internet may be the up-and-coming medium for political advertising, but it's not yet a replacement for television, some experts in politics and advertising suggested during a forum at the Democratic National Convention. "It's not quite there yet," Joe Trippi told a forum sponsored by Democratic group NDN. "It's moving exponentially but it's not TV.