October 2009

[Commentary] Jenkins suspects the "biggest political scrum in the near future won't be over classic net neutrality at all—it will be a battle over usage-based pricing, which is one of the few ways to keep excessive demand in check." Data collector AdMob reports that mobile Web page requests grew 9% from July to August -- a 180% annual growth rate. And Motorola recently went public with worries that a handful of mobile Slingbox users (a video streaming device) could wipe out cell service in a whole neighborhood. This is a mobile meltdown in the making. Freeing up spectrum and speeding cell phone tower construction are "sensible" efforts for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, "superintending a false panic about wireless net neutrality isn't." The Obama administration should at least focus on three ways to help, Jenkins concludes: Free up more spectrum, sit on its hands when mobile phone operators begin to do the merger dance, and relax about network neutrality.

Amid calls from the Obama administration and traffic safety advocates to ban texting and talking on hand-held cellphones while driving, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV) has thrown his support behind the effort -- a sign that the Senate could pass such legislation this year. The powerful chairman of the Commerce Committee has written a bill that would offer federal funds to states that enact laws against driving while texting or talking on a hand-held device. That incentive approach probably would have a better chance at passage than punitive legislation introduced in July by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) that would require states to ban texting while driving or risk losing federal highway funds. Rockefeller has scheduled a hearing on his proposal in two weeks.

The Consumer Electronics Association is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to dissuade California regulators from passing the nation's first ban on energy-hungry big-screen televisions. On Tuesday, executives and consultants for the influential lobby group asked members of the California Energy Commission to instead let consumers use their wallets to decide whether they want to buy the most energy-saving new models of liquid-crystal display and plasma high-definition TVs. "Voluntary efforts are succeeding without regulations," said Doug Johnson, the association's senior director for technology policy. Too much government interference could hamstring industry innovation and prove expensive to manufacturers and consumers, he warned. But those pleas didn't appear to elicit much support from commissioners at a public hearing on the proposed rules that would set maximum energy-consumption standards for televisions to be phased in over two years beginning in January 2011. A vote could come as early as Nov. 4.

Amid signs of disagreement over war strategy within the Obama administration, Afghanistan led the news last week, the first time since the News Coverage Index began in January 2007 that the eight-year-old war has emerged as the top story. From October 5-11, Afghanistan accounted for 20% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. That doubled the previous high-water mark for coverage. Last week's coverage seems to put to rest emphatically the sense of Afghanistan as a low-level conflict occurring largely out of public view. The shift in media emphasis may signal that the war, and the impending Obama decision on how to prosecute it, will attract the kind of press attention that accompanied the domestic debate over Iraq strategy several years ago. Afghanistan was primarily a television story last week. It filled 30% of the airtime studied on network news and 25% on cable news.