October 2009

[Commentary] Any time a persuader can pay to embed messages in mass media without the public's full awareness, citizens are at risk. Today, product placement is considered a legitimate revenue stream in the television industry, raising concern that some producers may be paid to showcase guns and, by extension, gun violence, on television. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles warned in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing last year that marketing drugs in television story lines poses serious risks to consumers; the same can be said for marketing weapons, alcohol, tobacco, gambling and junk food. Using branded products to convey realism is one thing; accepting a payment to "place" a product in a story line is a Trojan horse of another color. When a portrayal is "induced by consideration" (a payment), the product will usually be shown in a positive light, even glamorized, injecting promotional bias that is anticipated in advertising but that may slip under the radar in other contexts. Beginning Dec. 1, the Federal Trade Commission will require bloggers and, more important, stealth corporate marketers to post "clear and conspicuous" disclosures when they receive payment for endorsing products online. Though the details have been hotly contested, the principle is sound: People have a right to know when someone is trying to sell them something.

The Federal Communications Commission is considering rule amendments that would (1) make disclosures more salient to the audience, (2) extend disclosure rules to satellite and cable networks and (3) ban product placement in programs for children under 12. Because media providers are blurring the line between advertising and content, FCC action is critical. Parents have a right to know who is doctoring the programs their children watch, and citizens have a responsibility to hold companies accountable for their marketing practices. But without full transparency, the public is in the dark and youths are at risk.

[Marsden is a volunteer coordinator of Fairness and Integrity in Telecommunications Media (FITMedia), a coalition of 50 organizations and professionals seeking FCC rulemaking on embedded TV advertising.]

[Commentary] Broadband wasn't marketed as a flat-rate service solely because of technical limitations. It was marketed as such in order to get people to sign up for it. This is how companies, even back in the dial-up days, got people to go online and explore. Speed is still a huge element of the ISPs' marketing, even if many folks can't tell the difference between a web page loading at 5Mbps and 15Mbps. So why push speeds? Because people can tell the difference between tiers for heavy-data services such as video steaming and large downloads. Carriers may complain that we're using more broadband, but they are actively exploiting that demand in their marketing of faster (and more expensive) service tiers to customers. But they want to exploit their customers' wallets as well. And here's where I have the biggest issue with Harries' article. He bases his entire argument about metered billing, when in fact he's talking not about true meters but about a consumption- or usage-based plan analogous to those offered by cell phone companies. When ISPs talk about meters they're talking about different service tiers that don't reflect actual usage, but herd customers into set plans where most will be paying a monthly fee for more than they use. And if they go over their tier, they get walloped with fees.

The Fox News Channel is viewed by Americans in more ideological terms than other television news networks. And while the public is evenly divided in its view of hosts of cable news programs having strong political opinions, more Fox News viewers see this as a good thing than as a bad thing. Nearly half of Americans (47%) say they think of Fox News as "mostly conservative," 14% say it is "mostly liberal," and 24% say it is "neither in particular." Opinion about the ideological orientation of other TV news outlets is more mixed: while many view CNN and the three broadcast networks as mostly liberal, about the same percentages say they are neither in particular. However, somewhat more say MSNBC is mostly liberal than say it is neither in particular, by 36% to 27%. The perceptions of those who regularly tune into these news networks are similar to those of the public. Nearly half (48%) of regular Fox viewers say the network is mostly conservative. About four-in-ten (41%) regular viewers of CNN describe the network as mostly liberal and 36% of regular MSNBC viewers say the same about that network.

In a filing at the Federal Communications Commission, the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition says community anchor institutions need very high-bandwidth broadband connections to provide essential services, including remote medical care, distance learning, job training, access to e-government benefits, and many more. Because of the increasing prevalence of high-definition video and other bandwidth-intensive uses, these institutions need to upgrade their connections simply to maintain their current level of service, and they need even greater levels of bandwidth to plan for the future. They often need capacity of 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) or even 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps), which is far greater than the bandwidth needed by individual households. CAI use these high-capacity broadband capabilities to provide essential services to rural, low-income, disabled, the elderly, students, immigrants and many other underprivileged and vulnerable segments of the population. These reasons alone warrant treating community anchor institutions as significant cornerstones of the FCC's National Broadband Plan. Yet, there is another, equally important reason that community anchor institutions should be considered as essential building blocks of the National Broadband Plan ­ open fiber connections to CAI can benefit the surrounding community.