Feb 8, 2009 (Update on Stimulus, DTV)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for SUNDAY FEBRUARY 8, 2009
Check out Headlines on the web at http://benton.org/headlines
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Media, Pentagon Spar Over Control of Information
THE ECONOMY
GOP Lawmakers Outnumber Dem Lawmakers By Almost 2 To 1 In Cable News Stimulus Debate
Obama grassroots network meets over stimulus
President Obama Names Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Broadband Stimulus Funds Bring Debate Over Distribution; Package Moves to Vote
McCain and Limbaugh's Murky Crystal Ball
We Can't Afford To Short Change Rural America
Why Hide Competitive Data When We Want Competition?
Media Cos. Emphasize Caution
DIGITAL TELEVISION
US Analog Shutdown Riskier Than Most
DTV Switch Date Rankles TV Stations
Broadcasters Challenge Nielsen Digital 'Preparedness' Counts
More Stations Opt for Early DTV Switch
POLICYMAKERS
Wanted: A Broadcaster for the FCC
CONTENT
Sony takes up HD-blocking Selectable Output Control fight
Stabenow: Senate Could Hold Hearings on Fairness Doctrine
Bloggers Contemplate the Economy, Rush, and Zombies
Travel firms respond to events, share news via Twitter
PRIVACY
Critics: New Google App Gives Abusers Too Much Latitude
Recent Comments: Response to henry geller's Op-Ed by timjames
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
MEDIA, PENTAGON SPAR OVER CONTROL OF INFORMATION
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: ]
Critics say the purpose of violent Department of defense videos released to the media is not to inform the public about what the military is doing, but to promote it. Public affairs officers argue that they are in a battle with insurgents to shape the public perception of the wars they are fighting, and they will use every means available to push the military's version of events. The Pentagon now spends more than $550 million a year -- at least double the amount since 2003 -- on public affairs, and that doesn't including personnel costs. Public affairs officers are, in the words of the military's training manual, a "perception management tool." Their job is to provide facts but not spin to American audiences and the American media. Over the past two years, the number of public affairs officers trained by the Defense Information School has grown by 24 percent to almost 3,500. The military is also expanding its Internet presence from 300 to 1,000 sites and increasing its free cable programming on the Pentagon Channel by 33 percent to 2,080 programs. Along with putting out its own messages, the public affairs arm tries to regulate what other media put out.
http://benton.org/node/21778
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THE ECONOMY
GOP LAWMAKERS OUTNUMBER DEM LAWMAKERS BY ALMOST 2 TO 1 IN CABLE NEWS STIMULUS DEBATE
[SOURCE: Think Progress, AUTHOR: ]
In the debate over the House economic recovery bill on the five cable news networks, Republican lawmakers outnumbered Democratic lawmakers 75 to 41 on cable news interviews. Fox News hosted 24 Republicans and only 11 Democrats; CNBC had more than twice as many conservatives, with 14 Republicans and 6 Democrats. Fox Business was even worse, hosting 20 Republicans for just 4 Democrats; only MSNBC hosted more Democratic members of Congress than Republicans, with 17 Democrats and 12 Republicans. Though the imbalance is already stark, the tilt of the coverage would have been even more lopsided if the analysis had been broken down into whether a lawmaker who appeared on TV was a supporter or a critic of the economic recovery plan. Some of the most frequent Democratic guests this week were outspoken critics of the proposed stimulus plans, such as Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Kent Conrad (D-ND).
http://benton.org/node/21752
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OBAMA GRASSROOTS NETWORK MEETS OVER STIMULUS
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Matthew Bigg]
Thousands of groups of ardent fans of President Barack Obama met across the country during the weekend in hopes of converting the grassroots energy that fueled his election campaign into a durable movement. The meetings were the first test of Organizing for America, a body that wants the army of 13 million people who signed up for Obama's record-shattered shattering campaign to be harnessed to his presidential agenda. Organizing for America grew out of Obama for America, a group that took U.S. politics by storm by its use of social networking websites, text messaging and the Internet to build and motivate vast numbers of voters and raise money. Prior to the group's existence, few in U.S. politics recognized the power of new technology as an electoral tool. But even supporters say they fear it could be difficult to sustain the campaign's momentum.
http://benton.org/node/21777
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PRESIDENT OBAMA NAMES ECONOMIC RECOVERY ADVISORY BOARD
[SOURCE: The White House]
President Barack Obama named the members of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. The board will be chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and will be directed inside the White House. Several experts on the 15-member panel have close ties to the high-tech community: 1) John Doerr, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers who helped launch companies like Amazon, Google, Compaq and Netscape. 2) Oracle Corp. President Charles Phillips, who was previously with investment bank Morgan Stanley and a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. 3) University of California at Berkeley business school dean Laura Tyson, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton and author of a recent report on the economic impact of intellectual property enforcement. 4) General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, who has been with GE since 1982 and serves on the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
http://benton.org/node/21754
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BROADBAND STIMULUS FUNDS BRING DEBATE OVER DISTRIBUTION; PACKAGE MOVES TO VOTE
[SOURCE: BroadbandCensus.com, AUTHOR: Andrew Feinberg]
Funding for broadband deployment makes up approximately one percent of President Obama's approximately $820 billion economic stimulus package. But a hearty debate has unfolded over how, where, and to whom those funds should be distributed. After a late-Friday deal that keeps the momentum going on negotiations in the Senate, a vote to cut off debate on the broader package was expected on Monday, to be followed by a final Senate vote on Tuesday. As regards the Senate's $9 billion proposed for broadband - a sum that CNN and The New York Times reported had been cut to $7 billion - the heart of the debate was over who would receive the billions of dollars in funding for broadband deployment. The House-passed bill split its $6 billion for broadband between $2.825 billion in grants to be made from the Commerce Department and $2.825 billion in loans to be made by the Agriculture Department. An additional $350 million would go to administering the new grants at Commerce. By contrast, the Senate bill would put the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration in charge of channeling almost all of the $9 billion in Thursday's version of the Senate bill. That Senate version also allowed for some of those funds to be transferred to the Agriculture Department, or the Federal Communications Commission, subject to various preconditions.
http://benton.org/node/21776
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MCCAIN AND LIMBAUGH'S MURKY CRYSTAL BALL
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Tim Karr]
[Commentary] Getting more people connected to broadband is the kind of stimulus that expands education and opportunity, promotes innovation and makes the United States more globally competitive. Among other things expanding broadband could reduce health care costs, help our kids in school, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and make it easier for citizens take part in our democracy. Building broadband means putting immediately back to work engineers, technicians, equipment manufactures, vendors and construction workers to lay fiber optic cables, raise wireless towers and connect American homes. And that's just the start. No one who initially developed the Internet ever imagined it would become such a tremendous engine for growth across every sector of the economy. The challenge Americans face in the 21st century is to extend this new prosperity to the tens of millions of Americans who can't get connected. We have a choice to make. We can remain stuck in the past while these dinosaurs stand in the way of real progress. Or we can put good ideas ahead of old ideologies and get started on building a new era of American opportunity.
http://benton.org/node/21775
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WE CAN'T AFFORD TO SHORT CHANGE RURAL AMERICA
[SOURCE: App-Rising.com, AUTHOR: Geoff Daily]
[Commentary] To anyone in Congress trying to cut funding for rural broadband, ask yourself this: do you care about the future economic viability of the rural communities you represent? If so, how can you justify taking away money from the only infrastructure that gives these rural communities a fighting chance to not just survive but thrive in the 21st century? It's like saying, "Rural America doesn't deserve to be a player on the world's stage, their businesses don't need any help competing in the global economy, their children are just fine being disconnected and unable to access the resources of their peers, their elderly and sick can get by without top-flight medical care" and so on. I can't help but feel that anyone trying to cut funding from rural broadband is basically saying, "Well, this looks like it's going to be hard, and there's no guarantee it's going to succeed, so let's hedge our bets and back off from pushing all in."
http://benton.org/node/21756
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WHY HIDE COMPETITIVE DATA WHEN WE WANT COMPETITION?
[SOURCE: App-Rising.com, AUTHOR: Geoff Daily]
[Commentary] The challenge of broadband mapping has long been that broadband providers refuse to make the data in their service maps transparent to the public. Their stated reason for this refusal is that this data is competitive intelligence. But wait a minute: isn't the whole point of mapping broadband availability to spur deployment and competition? The precise reason private providers don't want to give up this data is why they should have to.
http://benton.org/node/21755
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MEDIA COMPANIES EMPHASIZE CAUTION
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Mike Farrell]
As the doom and gloom surrounding the overall economy continues to build, three of the biggest cable programmers — The Walt Disney Co., Time Warner Inc. and Scripps Networks Interactive — reported fourth-quarter earnings last week, painting an increasingly cloudy picture for the advertising market in the coming months. While results for the most part were in line with expectations, there were a few surprises — perennial Disney ad powerhouse ESPN showed declines in the quarter, for instance — and most executives were cautiously optimistic for the future. But the emphasis was on caution, as the uncertainty surrounding the economy and the advertising market is preventing many companies from making any predictions as to when a turnaround may occur or what the landscape may look like once it does.
http://benton.org/node/21771
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DIGITAL TELEVISION
US ANALOG SHUTDOWN RISKIER THAN MOST
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: ]
The US has planned for more than a decade to have TV broadcasters turn off their analog signals, yet when the Feb. 17 deadline loomed, it flinched, delaying the mandatory shutdown for four months. The delay, which causes confusion for TV viewers and havoc for broadcasters, is a symptom of the unique way the US conceived the shutdown: No other big country has dared to, or plans to, end its analog TV broadcasts all in one go. All developed countries are looking at turning off their analog TV signals because of the obvious benefits. Going digital improves the quality of TV reception and frees up large swaths of the airwaves for other services like wireless data. But other countries are being more cautious about moving into the digital age. Austria, which is the size of South Carolina, turned off its analog signals over seven months in 2007, moving area by area from west to east. Germany, slightly smaller than Montana, shut down area by area over five years. To find countries that turned off their signals all in one go, as the U.S. essentially was about to do Feb. 17, you'd have to go to countries like the Netherlands, about the size of Maryland, and Luxembourg, which is smaller than Rhode Island. Those countries aren't just small - they also have very few households that watch over-the-air TV broadcasts.
http://benton.org/node/21774
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DTV SWITCH DATE RANKLES TV STATIONS
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Congress agreed to move the DTV transition date to June 12 last week, but that may be the only certainty in an issue where the seams are most definitely showing. The goal is a seamless transition through the next four months, rather than the "bungled" one overseen by the previous administration. But hundreds of stations will likely go digital on Feb. 17 regardless, which may cause the Federal Communications Commission to step in. In implementing the rules, the FCC has said that while stations may still ask to pull the plug on Feb. 17, the Commission may deny the request if it feels it is not in the public interest—for example, if all the stations in a market with high analog-only penetration want to make the switch early. So, while the date move was billed as voluntary for stations, in practice it may not be.
http://benton.org/node/21773
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BROADCASTERS CHALLENGE NIELSEN DIGITAL 'PREPAREDNESS' COUNTS
[SOURCE: MediaPost, AUTHOR: David Goetzl, Joe Mandese]
Nielsen says some 5% of U.S. homes are still unprepared for the digital transition. In a surprise move, the National Association of Broadcasters issued a statement late Thursday contesting the accuracy of Nielsen's estimate, claiming it overstates the degree of unpreparedness among US TV viewers. "Nielsen's measure of 'complete' unreadiness is inflated, because it does not account for people who have not installed their converter boxes yet or those who have coupons but have not yet redeemed them," NAB Vice President for Digital Television Transition Jonathan Collegio asserted, adding, "Currently more than 10 million coupons are active but not yet redeemed, and NAB research shows that nearly 40 percent of converter box owners have yet to hook up their boxes. These viewers may be technically unready in the strictest sense, but they are not completely unready. To get a truly accurate snapshot of consumer readiness, the specific actions taken by these households should be acknowledged." A Nielsen spokesman countered the NAB assertion, noting, "Our readiness report does provide a snapshot of where we are right now, with whose ready and whose not."
http://benton.org/node/21758
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MORE STATIONS OPT FOR EARLY DTV SWITCH
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Michael Malone]
Each day brings another batch of stations that say they'll make the switch to digital television Feb. 17, as they've been planning for months, as opposed to waiting for the Congress-approved delayed date of June 12. Among those making the early jump are the major Providence stations, those in northern Vermont, Billings (MT), Cedar Rapids/Waterloo/Dubuque, and some in Madison, Wisconsin. Station executives don't like the idea of paying for both digital and analog transmission facilities over the next four months, and say the countless hours (and dollars) they've spent drilling the Feb. 17 date into viewers' heads should not be for naught. Many broadcasters believe they've done their part to educate the public, and that those who are unprepared as of now may never be prepared.
http://benton.org/node/21757
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POLICYMAKERS
WANTED: A BROADCASTER FOR THE FCC
[SOURCE: tvnewsday, AUTHOR: Harry Jessell]
So, if Julius Genachowski will be named the next Federal Communications Commission chair and Mignon Clyburn of the Public Service Commission of South Carolina gets a seat vacated by current Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who fills the vacant Republican seat? Over the last decade or so, choosing minority commissioners has almost become the prerogative of the minority party. The list of possibilities include: Brian Hendricks, a telecom aide to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison; David Cavicke, the top GOP staffer on the House Energy and Commerce Committee; Lee Dunn, an aide to Sen. John McCain; Mike O'Reilly, an aide to Senator John Ensign; and Ajit Pai, deputy general counsel of the FCC and former aide to Sen. Sam Brownback. Do you see the common denominator? All these people work or used to work on Capitol Hill. They are basically experts on policymaking, crafting legislation and Washington politics, but not much else. The seat is turning into a reward for loyalty and a test of whose boss has the most clout. Bad idea. As the professed champion of business, the Republicans should award the seat to a businessman or a businesswoman
http://benton.org/node/21772
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CONTENT
SONY TAKES UP HD-BLOCKING SELECTABLE OUTPUT CONTROL FIGHT
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Matthew Lasar]
On Tuesday two top executives from Sony Television and Sony Pictures, accompanied by an influential lobbyist, met with the Federal Communications Commission to talk up "the advantages of expanded consumer choices in the marketplace" which would supposedly come with a waiver on the agency's ban on Selectable Output Control. That bright idea originates with the Motion Pictures Association of America. Present at the meeting were Sony Pictures TV President Steve Mosko, Sony Executive Vice President Frances Seghers, and Jim Free of the Free-Smith Group, which got almost a million bucks to lobby for Sony in 2008. They met with FCC Chair Michael Copps and Paul Murray, the Wireless Bureau's senior attorney. It's unclear what Chairman Copps thinks of the MPAA's proposal, which his predecessor Kevin Martin essentially punted to the latest FCC. As Ars reported, in early June the MPAA filed a request for agency permission to work with cable and satellite providers to disable analog output of pre-DVD release movies in favor of "secure and protected digital outputs." Current Commission rules forbid SOC use limiting either analog or digital transmission. But the MPAA says that analog streams are insecure. They "either lack, or can easily be stripped of, protection measures," in the trade group's words, and broadcast over them will "facilitate the illegal copying and redistribution of this high value content, causing untold damage to the DVD and other 'downstream' markets." Hollywood contends that relaxing SOC rules will allow the studios to release movies over cable and satellite prior to their DVD release without fear of copyright infringement.
http://benton.org/node/21770
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STABENOW: SENATE COULD HOLD HEARINGS ON FAIRNESS DOCTRINE
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Sen Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told radio host Bill Press this week that she thought there needs to be more balance in broadcasting and suggested there would be hearings in the Senate during this Congress on possibly reinstating the fairness doctrine. She was responding to the news that a liberal radio station in Washington had closed and as part of a discussion about the dwindling number of those stations in the face of the popularity of conservative talk radio.
http://benton.org/node/21750
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BLOGGERS CONTEMPLATE THE ECONOMY, RUSH, AND ZOMBIES
[SOURCE: Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR:]
According to the New Media Index, outrage over economic troubles, President Barack Obama's comments about a radio talk host, and a Texas-sized practical joke captured the attention of bloggers, user news sites and other social media last week. On YouTube, the top news video was Obama's weekly address which focused on his economic stimulus plan. While the more traditional press overwhelmingly focused on the economic crisis and the stimulus plan, the new media's attention was equally divided among three diverse subjects—the villains of the financial meltdown, Obama's decision to criticize Rush Limbaugh, and jokesters who changed a road sign to warn of a "zombie attack." The two politically oriented stories gave rise to often intense discussions, with ideological finger pointing on both sides of the aisle.
http://benton.org/node/21751
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TRAVEL FIRMS RESPOND TO EVENTS, SHARE NEWS VIA TWITTER
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Rebecca Heslin]
Travelers are turning to Twitter as they travel. And the travel industry has taken notice. Hotels, airlines, airports and other travel companies are joining the Twitter community, too, to pitch services, update travel conditions and respond directly to the individual needs of customers. They're finding the mobile nature of the technology is ideal for talking to travelers. "We consider our Twitter account akin to an information booth," says Morgan Johnston, manager of corporate communication at JetBlue Airways. "Responding to situations after they've happened is a great idea; responding to situations while they're happening is even better."
http://benton.org/node/21769
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PRIVACY
Critics: New Google App Gives Abusers Too Much Latitude
CRITICS: NEW GOOGLE APP GIVES ABUSERS TOO MUCH LATITUDE
[SOURCE: MediaPost, AUTHOR: Wendy Davis]
The watchdog group Privacy International is sounding an alarm about Google's new phone tracking system, Latitude. "As it stands right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends," Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said in a new report. Google's Latitude, unveiled this week, allows users to track other people via smartphones. The feature comes with some built-in privacy protections. Among others, users must opt in to the service, and even after enabling the feature, retain control over which of their contacts can track them. But Privacy International says the system has a design flaw: Other people can get their hands on users' phones, and then change the settings. For instance, the group said, a phone left in a repair shop could be secretly enabled. Or someone could give another a Latitude-enabled phone as a gift.
http://benton.org/node/21753
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