May 2009

At the same time Comcast is telling customers they don't have to worry about broadcast television's 'digital transition,' the company is putting its customers through a different digital transition. By the end of the year, Comcast plans to move its basic cable channels, those from 35 to 85, from analog to digital signals for all of its customers in the Bay Area. To continue to get those channels, customers will need to have a television with a digital cable tuner — or a set-top box from Comcast. Comcast's ads assuring customers they didn't have to worry about the digital broadcast transition have never made note that they would soon need to deal with a digital cable transition. And while those commercials have been running widely on Comcast's networks for a year or so now, long before broadcasters were slated to shut off their analog signals, the company didn't start talking about its own transition until early February, about six weeks before it planned to start rolling it out. Even then, the marketing messages have tended to target customers in specific communities immediately before Comcast upgraded its system in those areas, rather than an areawide mass-marketing campaign.

[Commentary] The Obama administration recently signaled a new, tougher antitrust policy. But the free market does not need more strict antitrust policy; it needs simple protection from fraud. The problem is that, in the 119 years that antitrust laws have existed, there is little empirical evidence that "vigorous enforcement" of them can promote the interests of consumers. And it was for the alleged benefit of the consumers that the laws were created. Indeed, antitrust history is riddled with silly theories and absurd cases that themselves have restricted and restrained free-market competition and hampered an efficient allocation of resources. A look at a few examples is reason to believe that President Obama's antitrust regulation won't be any different.

[Armentano is a research fellow of the Independent Institute.]

This summer, the Federal trade Commission is expected to issue new advertising guidelines that will require bloggers to disclose when they're writing about a sponsor's product and voicing opinions that aren't their own. The new FTC guidelines say that blog authors should disclose when they're being compensated by an advertiser to discuss a product. It's the first revision of the FTC's guidelines for editorials and testimonials in ads since 1980, and regulators say it's needed in an era when consumers increasingly turn to blogs and other amateur Web sites for information about the goods and services they buy. The rules seek to clear up some of the tangled connections on Web sites that make it hard for readers to tell who's getting incentives from whom.

Web site started by former senator Alan Cranston's son helps voters decide. The fledgling site, which debuted just before the fall election, reproduces sample ballots and provides users an easy way to see where advocacy groups, such as the California League of Conservation Voters or the California Chamber of Commerce or labor unions or the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, stand on the sometimes complex issues put to voters. It offers a way for users to register and promote their own positions. It includes a section listing big contributors to campaigns.