December 2008

Tribune: After the Fall; Company's Troubles May Cost Studios

Warner Bros., Twentieth Television, Disney-ABC and NBC Universal face multimillion-dollar ramifications after Tribune's announcement last week that it was declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to restructure its massive debt. According to Tribune's bankruptcy filing before a federal court in Delaware last week, Tribune owes Warner Bros. $23.7 million, Twentieth $8.1 million, Disney-ABC $6.2 million and NBCU $4.9 million. Tribune has a few options it can exercise to deal with its outstanding studio debts. It could just proceed with business as usual, paying its bills on time. It could also negotiate longer payout terms with the studios. Another possibility is that studios will be forced to take writedowns for portions of payments they expected to receive and accounted for, but now will not be paid. Regardless of any revenue hits, studios will likely want to work with Tribune to find ways to preserve future business. But players in the industry say the manner in which the studios resolve this issue could set a precedent should other TV broadcast groups be forced to declare bankruptcy in the rocky months to come, a scenario that wouldn't surprise many industry executives.

MediaNews Sees Bad Timing on Newspapers, Not Bad Bets

Dean Singleton expanded his newspaper empire at the worst possible time, in the worst part of the country he could have chosen, and he has been paying the price ever since in plummeting advertising and shrinking papers. Yet somehow, even in today's adverse climate, he professes optimism. In 2006 and 2007, as prices for newspapers were peaking, Mr. Singleton's company, the MediaNews Group, bought this city's daily, The Mercury News, and more than 30 smaller San Francisco Bay Area papers. He gambled his company on California just as the bottom was about to fall out for newspapers, especially here. "In retrospect, the timing was not good," said Mr. Singleton, the head of and a major shareholder in the company, which is privately held. "But in our business, you buy newspapers when they're for sale. If we could have foreseen the current economic downturn in the state, it might have changed our views, but we couldn't foresee that."

An Imperiled Newspaper's Threads in a Small City's Fabric

[Commentary] The Bristol Press has been covering Bristol since 1871. but may be shutting down soon. Last month the newspaper's financially troubled owner, the Journal Register Company, announced that The Bristol Press and a sister newspaper, The New Britain Herald, would cease to publish if not sold — cheaply, by the way — by mid-January. And it is true that even among the newsprint faithful, few weep for the Journal Register Company, brought down as much by its own bad business decisions as by declining advertising revenues. Often derided as a profit-mad, quality-journalism-be-damned company, it would begrudge the electrical cost of those holiday lights now faintly brightening the Bristol Press newsroom. But if this is the future, at least let us pause to appreciate what a small, imperfect daily newspaper means to this small, imperfect city, where the clocks and watches of America were once made, where General Motors once produced its ball bearings, where ESPN is based, and where springs — yes, unheralded yet essential customized springs — are produced.

The Fed Who Blew the Whistle

In the spring of 2004, Thomas Tamm had just finished a yearlong stint at a Justice Department unit handling wiretaps of suspected terrorists and spies—a unit so sensitive that employees are required to put their hands through a biometric scanner to check their fingerprints upon entering. While there, Tamm stumbled upon the existence of a highly classified National Security Agency program that seemed to be eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. The unit had special rules that appeared to be hiding the NSA activities from a panel of federal judges who are required to approve such surveillance. When Tamm started asking questions, his supervisors told him to drop the subject. He says one volunteered that "the program" (as it was commonly called within the office) was "probably illegal." Tamm agonized over what to do. He called the new York Times and that one call began a series of events that would engulf Washington—and upend Tamm's life. Eighteen months after he first disclosed what he knew, the Times reported that President George W. Bush had secretly authorized the NSA to intercept phone calls and e-mails of individuals inside the United States without judicial warrants.

Future of the Internet III: Experts and analysts assess the future of the Internet in a new survey

A survey of Internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the Internet itself improves. They disagree about whether this will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations, or better home lives. Key predictions: 1) The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020. 2) The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness. 3) The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.

The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World

[Commentary] Consumers are flocking to blogs, social-networking sites and virtual worlds. And they are leaving a lot of marketers behind. the authors offer these principles: 1) Don't just talk at consumers -- work with them throughout the marketing process. 2) Give consumers a reason to participate. 3) Listen to -- and join -- the conversation outside your site. 4) Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell. 5) Don't control, let it go. 6) Find a 'marketing technopologist.' 7) Embrace experimentation.

Using YouTube as a study aid

YouTube is perhaps best known for its cavalcade of homemade performances and TV clips, but many people are turning to it for free tutoring in math, science and other complicated subjects. Math videos won't rival the millions of hits garnered by laughing babies, but a YouTube tutorial on calculus integrals has been watched almost 50,000 times in the last year. Others on angular velocity and harmonic motion have more than 10,000 views each. The videos are appealing for several reasons, said Kim Gregson, an Ithaca College professor of new media. Students come to the videos when they're ready to study and fully awake, which is not always the case in 8 a.m. calculus classes. And they can watch the videos as many times as they need until they understand.

HDTV: Content is playing catch-up

If you get a high-definition television this holiday season, don't be surprised if the picture doesn't look as good in your living room as it did on the showroom floor. High-definition sets have been on the market for about a decade now, and most of the major over-the-air and cable networks can now broadcast in high definition. But a lot of movies, television channels and programs are still in standard-definition. The number of movies and TV programs available in higher-resolution formats is increasing, but the particular show or film you want to watch may not yet be available.

Startup banks on making money from free broadband

For the past three years, a startup called M2Z Networks has been figuring out a way to blanket the nation with a free wireless broadband network to ensure all Americans have access to basic high-speed Internet connections. Along the way, the company has found support in powerful corners of Silicon Valley and Washington. It has attracted funding from several of the Valley's top venture capital firms. And it has captured the interest of Kevin Martin, the chairman of Federal Communications Commission, who is backing a plan essentially mirroring the M2Z proposal as a way to promote universal broadband. Finally, this month, the company was nearing a breakthrough. Martin pushed for a full FCC vote on his plan, which would set the rules for auctioning off the slice of wireless spectrum that M2Z wants to put its ideas into action. But opposition forces gathered steam, deferring M2Z's dreams for now.

FCC Cancels Dec 18 Meeting

On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it has canceled its open meeting scheduled for Thursday, Dec 18. The cancelation came in response to a request by Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Rep Henry Waxman (D-CA) that the FCC pay more attention to a smooth transition to digital television early next year. The meeting agenda had included votes on changes to program-access complaint rules, including putting a shot clock on the FCC's handling of complaints, as well as opening an inquiry into a related proposal to prohibit cable programmers from dictating placement on programming tiers as a condition of carriage agreements. The agenda also included a proposal to create a free broadband service as part of a wireless spectrum auction, another item that had drawn criticism from those who supported the proposal but opposed a condition that the service include a content filter to protect minors from inappropriate content.

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