October 2008

Sens Barack Obama (D-IL) and John McCain (R-AZ) are urging the TV networks and Presidential Debate Commission to allow debate footage to be distributed and used freely on the Internet and to allow the public more input on debate questions. The Open Debate Coalition, comprising groups from both sides of the political spectrum, had asked the presidential candidates in letters last week to pledge to hold more Internet-friendly debates, including requiring media companies to release rights to video footage. That includes ground rules that media companies make debate video freely available for sharing, blogging and posting. Coalition members include craigslist founder Craig Newmark, David Kralik of Newt Gingrich's American Solutions, Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org, Republican strategist Mandy Finn, Arianna Huffington and Josh Silver of Free Press.

The global cell phone market should grow at much slower-than-expected rates next year as consumers put off buying new devices due to deepening economic concerns, according to forecasts from analysts. While industry executives often say cell phones are the last thing consumers will give up to save money, analysts are now citing lengthening phone replacement cycles and weakening economies around the world for their weaker sales estimates. UBS analyst Maynard Um halved his forecast for 2009 global handset growth to 3 percent from 6 percent, pointing to particular weakness in Europe and North America.

A House Commerce Committee panel is readying a report expected to question whether Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin went too far in keeping FCC decisions and policymaking to a close-knit group of subordinates. Since last December, the committee's Oversight and Investigations subcommitte, headed by Chairman Bart Stupak (D-MI), has been examining Chairman Martin's management in the wake of complaints, some made publicly by the cable industry and by other Commissioners. Most of the public complaints were that Chairman Martin kept a tight rein on data essential to decisions — including one to expand the FCC's oversight of cable — until the last minute, making it difficult for other Commissioners and the cable industry to weigh in or rebut. In several letters to Chairman Martin, the panel has stated that it has also heard private complaints from FCC staffers that Martin has made it difficult to do their jobs. There also have been complaints that the FCC doesn't follow basic processes of open government, disclosing few details about items Commissioners vote on before the vote is over, essentially preventing public input.

The Federal Communications Commission has granted a group of broadcasters a 30-day extension on the Oct 7 deadline for filing amendments to their pending requests for a waiver of the FCC's new adjusted newspaper-broadcast crossownership rule, which the Commission says went into effect July 9. The broadcasters were scheduled to buttress their cases for the combos with information, but want an extension of the deadline until 90 days after a federal court rules on a number of challenges to that rule change, a decision that likely won't come for many months. The FCC gave them another 30 days while it considers the request for the longer extension. The waiver requests predated the rule change and all include combinations of multiple stations and/or newspapers that the FCC said would not have been appropriate to grant "across-the-board," but would instead look at them on a case-by-case basis using the new public interest standards it was applying for requests for newspaper-broadcast combos per the changed rules. Those include showings of impact on diversity of independent voices, particularly news and information. In their request not to have to file the additional information necessary for that case-by-case review, the broadcasters argued that it was a time-intensive process and that, additionally, the uncertain legal status of the rules leaves unclear "precisely what criteria the Commission ultimately will use to conduct waiver analyses and whether it will be able to apply those factors with reasonable certainty."