After analog broadcasts end on Feb 17, 2009, about one-fifth of existing over-the-air TV viewers will simply let their sets "go dark," according to a survey by ABI Research. About 10% will switch to cable or satellite services, while 70% plan to attached a digital-to-analog converter box to their TVs, the ABI survey found. The firm conducted the Web-based survey of 1,002 U.S. consumers in April 2008.
In response to a request made by Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, ION Media Networks, NBC Universal, Telemundo, and members of the Association of Public Television Stations, will spearhead analog shut-off tests in markets across the country, ION said Tuesday. The so-called ASO tests — planned as temporary interruptions of the over the air signals — will take place in multiple major markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Hartford, Conn. The tests are in preparation for the Feb. 17 government mandated analog shut-off and transition to digital television. The ASO tests, which are designed to ensure consumer DTV preparedness and a smooth transition to DTV, will begin in New York City, with a two-minute shutdown between 5:59 p.m. and 6:01 p.m. Oct. 28.
A group of community broadcasters and the recently formed Coalition for Local Television (CLT) were left in the lurch this month when the Federal Communications Commission unexpectedly cancelled its Oct. 15 meeting in Nashville, Tenn., which was to include a proposal that would allow Class A TV stations an opportunity to apply to earn full-power TV status, giving them full spectrum rights and access to cable distribution. Many of these stations serve minority and rural communities and include a range of Azteca América and Telemundo affiliates nationwide.
Media executives are all anticipating a brutal 2009 first quarter, and so are trying to be prudent in their planning by making whatever cuts they can now. It's reflective of how nervous executives are, and how little comfort they found in a poll at the recent gathering of the Association of National Advertisers that found that half of marketers don't plan major changes in their spending for next year (33% of the major marketers surveyed said they intend to maintain their level of marketing spending next year, and 27% said they would spend more). Another 33% said they would decrease spending, while the rest were unsure of their plans. That group that is unsure is no doubt influencing media sellers' decisions.
[Commentary] Clearly, the entire media landscape stands to be changed by the adverse impact of advertising revenues, economically demanded changes in operating structure, ownership change, falling stock prices and company values, loan covenants and other financial requirements. Corporate chiefs are being forced to sell their holdings to avoid breaching loan covenants or to meet margin calls in response to plummeting stock sales. Halting rigorous stock buyback programs--a good idea while prices were falling and cash was flowing--now seems the least of media company concerns. The places to go for money are narrowing as global financial institutions have racked up $585 billion in writedowns and losses since the start of 2007, and as private equity companies increasingly assume the corporate debt of the portfolio companies they purchased in leveraged buyouts. The lack of affordable liquidity and options (including IPOs) will result in increased corporate defaults and bankruptcies.
Advanced Wireless Service-3 (AWS-3), which operates in the 2155-2180MHz band, sat around in the FCC closet collecting dust for more than a decade. No one seemed to want it until John Muleta and Milo Medin, co-founders of M2Z Net-works and, respectively, CEO and chairman of the board said something like, "if you're not using it, anyway, we'll take it off your hands." Perhaps these two gentlemen saw something others didn't. Major wireless broadband providers are fighting hard to keep AWS-3 off the market. Having paid a lot of money for AWS-1 bandwidth at auction, current wireless providers T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T don't seem too keen on the idea of someone else giving away similar bandwidth for free. Their first tactic was to say that AWS-3 interferes with AWS-1, which operates in the 2,110-2,155MHz range. Last week, the FCC announced test results that found no interference between the bands. There are still many hurdles to overcome before AWS-3 sees the light of day. Everything from producing chips in volume to laying out the network infrastructure. What's worth noting is that half of the cell towers available in the United States aren't actually owned by today's carriers. Instead they owned by third parties that lease room on the towers, "like hotels."
Rumors of the death of Yahoo's proposed search advertising partnership with Google were not exaggerated at all, according to lawyers familiar with the deal. The Justice Department's Assistant Attorney General Tom Barnett met on Oct. 17 with lawyers for the parties for the second time in two weeks. The outcome of the meeting, which took place just ahead of an expected DOJ challenge to the agreement, was grim, said a lawyer who asked not to be identified. "Nothing good came from it," he said.
Students and educators disagree on whether their schools are preparing graduates adequately for the jobs of the 21st century. Two-thirds of principals in a recent survey said they believe their school is preparing students to be competitive in the global workforce. But most tech-savvy students didn't share that view, said Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow (formerly known as NetDay). Project Tomorrow surveyed more than 370,000 students, teachers, parents, and administrators about their views on technology and education during its Speak Up 2007 research. Of the nearly 320,000 students surveyed, 24 percent considered themselves to be "advanced tech users."
Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Federal Trade Commission Chairman William Kovacic announced the release of a report from the President's Identity Theft Task Force on progress the federal government has made in addressing identity theft since the Task Force's Strategic Plan was released last year. Highlights include expansion of the Task Force's data security and identity theft business and consumer education campaigns; exploring means of improving consumer authentication processes to prevent the use of stolen information to commit identity theft; launching new initiatives to help identity theft victims recover; and improving law enforcement tools to investigate and prosecute identity thieves. The Strategic Plan, issued in April 2007, outlined 31 recommendations the federal government should undertake to help prevent the theft and misuse of consumers' personal information, help consumers detect and recover from identity theft, and increase the prosecution and punishment of identity thieves.
"This year and the next year are probably the most significant years for Internet's evolution that I can remember," said Vint Cerf recently. The biggest change is the move to IPv6, which will give the Internet a much larger address space and ensure future growth. The current estimate is that the number of IPv4 addresses that can be allocated will be exhausted around the middle of 2010. He says the current lack of addresses, and the IPv4 32-bit address space, is his fault. "My only defense is that decision was made in 1977, at a time when it was uncertain if the Internet would work," said Cerf, and adding that a 128-bit address space seemed excessive back then. But IPv6 isn't the only project that will keep the industry busy. The implementation of domain name system security using DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) has also gotten off the ground. If the DNSSEC is supposed to improve security on the Internet, the addition of internationalized domain names (the support for non-Latin character sets) is supposed to make it a more global place. Languages like Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and so on, will all become a part of the domain name systems vocabulary.
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