October 2008

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have told the Federal Communications Commission not to change its main-studio rules or require 24-hour station staffing. The FCC had asked for comment on proposals to require stations to relocate their main studios in their cities of license and to have a warm body at the station at all times -- part of an effort to close its media-ownership rule review by both loosening the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule and taking various steps to promote localism. But in a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin this week, caucus members said the cost of either measure would impose "a significant financial hardship on minority broadcasters." They point out that the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters and the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council also oppose those changes. They legislators argue that forcing stations to break their leases and find new space in their cities of license could put some stations out of business, as would "requiring a station to hire extra personnel to staff a station 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, on the chance that a disaster may occur in the middle of the night," which they said was a "disproportionate burden on stations for a nominal potential increase in public service."

Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, is this week's guest on C-SPAN's The Communicators. The fundamentals of the cable business are "pretty strong," he says, but liquidity and the credit markets remain an issue for the industry. He says he's "a little disappointed" that telecommunications policy was not higher on the agenda of either presidential candidate. But he did say he thought he could work with either administration and whoever was picked to staff the Federal Communications Commission (as long as his first name isn't "Kevin"). He said Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) "may be a little better on some of the content side of the spectrum." Asked to elaborate, he said he was talking about an approach to content that recognized that there are technologies available today -- the V chip, set-top boxes -- to empower parents to take responsibility and control over TV viewing, rather than having government step in to regulate content. "I think he has shown recognition of that," McSlarrow said, adding that he was not "hanging his hat on that." Sen John McCain (R-AZ), for his part, "has been clearer that he is very cautious about micromanaging how people operate and run their networks," he said. "It will be a mixed bag." McSlarrow said he was also well aware of where McCain stood on cable a la carte. While McSlarrow said McCain clearly preferred an a la carte world, he added that the Republican candidate did not want it mandated, which McSlarrow called a "significant" difference.

Mapping the areas where Americans have access to various broadband Internet services and making this information publicly available are key steps in closing the digital divide, said attendees of a Sept. 26 broadband policy summit -- yet current federal policies prohibit the release of this information. Kenneth Flamm, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said people need to recognize that broadband access is a key piece of public infrastructure. "Broadband infrastructure will become an essential part of the economic structure," he said, adding that fast Internet connections are a "quality-of-life" issue. Rachelle Chong of the California State Public Utilities Commission said California is lucky in that Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger has agreed with the need for broadband expansion. "He understood that if you don't have broadband, you're not going to have state-of-the-art economic development," she said. The utilities commission, she explained, had to convince policy makers that broadband access is a necessary piece of infrastructure. "If you let it wane, citizens are disadvantaged when they get their education," she said, noting that providers tend to invest in urban areas but not in disadvantaged areas of California. "We want to ensure that no child is left behind because of the digital divide."

Yahoo's deal to put some Google Inc ads on its searches may hurt the industry, and warrants monitoring by the Justice Department even if the agency eventually approves the deal, according to Chairman Herb Kohl (D-WI) of the Senate's antitrust subcommittee. He did not urge that the deal be blocked, saying on Thursday his panel was not privy to "confidential business information supplied by the companies to the department." But he added that "should the amount of advertising outsourced by Yahoo to Google grow significantly, we believe the threat to competition will also increase." He urged the Justice Department to step in "if, over time, you determine that Google is gaining a dominant market position as a result of the Google-Yahoo agreement."