December 2009

Keeping Sesame Street relevant to today's children

Gary E. Knell, President and CEO of Sesame Workshop, will discuss the challenges of using new and ever-changing media to keep Sesame Street relevant to today's young children. Sesame Street this year celebrates its 40th anniversary on television. After four decades of using media to teach, Sesame Street now extends far beyond the television set to bring its entertaining way of teaching to popular media platforms like cell phones and mobile gaming devices. Knell will also discuss where he sees children's media going next as Sesame Workshop continues to seek new ways to reach children where they are with lessons that are both appealing and relevant to the needs of today's child. Knell will be joined by Grover, one of the original Muppets from the flagship television show, which was created in 1969 to help disadvantaged preschool children prepare for school. It was considered a groundbreaking experiment in television, and has been shown in more than 140 countries. Children are welcome to attend.

Wanted: A Smokey Bear for cybersecurity

Cybersecurity has become more than a homeland security issue; it has become a national lifestyle issue that hinges on raising education at the individual level, a panel of information security experts said. If the U.S. is going to continue to be a center of innovation in the world, we need to up our game" and get on par with the science, engineering and technology schooling of China and India, according to Richard Schaffer, information assurance director at the National Security Agency. Beyond formal education, U.S. cybersecurity strategy needs to develop a public awareness campaign that permeates the workplace, schools and homes -- much like the development of Smokey Bear to promote fire safety, panelists said.

University turns iPhones into musical instruments

Students at the University of Michigan are learning to design, build and play instruments on their Apple Inc. smartphones, with a public performance planned for December 9. The university said it believed the course, called Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble, is a world first. It is taught by Georg Essl, a computer scientist and musician who has worked on developing mobile phones and musical instruments.

Bandwidth Meters: First Step Toward Curbing Cord-Cutting?

Comcast is experimenting will bandwidth meters, allowing customers to track consumption which is bound to go up as people increasingly download video and as broadband speeds increase. In fact, it's not hard to imagine that Comcast's current 250GB cap will one day be laughably inadequate. At the same time, cable companies like Comcast have an obvious incentive to discourage online video consumption: If people can watch programs for free on Hulu, why would they pay for cable TV subscriptions? One way of curbing cord-cutting is by imposing low bandwidth caps or charging for metered access. So far, efforts of Internet service providers to do so have met with significant consumer pushback. Metered billing or bandwidth caps wouldn't be troubling in themselves if there was more competition among ISPs. But many people only have a choice of two broadband connections -- a cable modem or DSL line. Given the dearth of options, and the logistical difficulties associated with changing providers, a decision by a cable company to triple the cost of Web access could effectively hinder many people's ability to use the Internet.

Madison Ave.'s Wish List for Comcast-NBCU

Advertisers are weighing the implications of Comcast-NBC deal and some think the combination could deliver some positive results. The deal might speed the progress of addressable advertising, the ability to tailor more suitable ad messaging to the consumer potentially giving networks the ability to sell the same ad spot numerous times to different clients targeting different subsets of the audience. Another potential benefit of the deal for Madison Avenue might be speeded up access to set top box data for better audience measurement.

PTC Also Takes Aim At Proposed Comcast-NBCU Combo

The Parents Television Council is calling the proposed Comcast-NBC deal anti-family, anti-consumer, and said it would "destroy the concept of consumer choice." "Pairing the nation's largest cable provider with the behemoth that is NBC Universal can mean only one thing: less choice for families and consumers," said PTC President Tim Winter, himself a former NBC exec, in a statement. Winter said PTC wants an exhaustive review and conditions that include the unbundling of all cable programming.

Roberts Says Hulu, TV Everywhere Are Complementary

The Comcast/NBC Universal deal has broad implications in both company's ongoing initiatives in the areas of authentication, addressable advertising and interactive television. Acquiring a 51% stake in NBC Universal, now gives Comcast a 27% stake in Hulu. During a conference call with reporters, Comcast CEO/Chairman Brian Roberts said he does not expect to make any changes anytime soon, noting that Comcast will still be a minority owner (with Disney, News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners all having a stake) and that Hulu is very well regarded by consumers. Roberts also says that it is not an "either-or" choice between Hulu or the authentication idea referred to informally as TV Everywhere, which Comcast is jumping into using the moniker Xfinity. "I actually think Hulu and TV Everywhere are very complementary, there is a place for both," he said.

NBC Affiliates Cautiously Pleased With New Network Parent

While they say it's early to speculate, many of the general managers at NBC affiliate stations are encouraged by today's announcement that Comcast is acquiring a majority stake in NBC Universal. With Comcast's programming expertise, seemingly all hope the cable monolith will give NBC's long ailing primetime a shot in the arm. General managers acknowledge that the regulatory process could take over a year, and no one knows for sure if the FCC will sign off on the massive deal. And few have any inkling as to what Comcast's strategic plan for the network-and the affiliates -- will be, beyond what they read in today's media reports. The general managers all concede that it's too early to draw any hard conclusions on how Comcast will affect the hundreds of NBC stations around the country.

Will NBC Universal JV end up AOL-TW part 2?

Comcast-NBC has been drawing comparisons to the ill-fated blockbuster merger of America Online and Time Warner nearly a decade ago. But is it really that similar? To be sure there are plenty of issues to work out, with potential culture clashes -- something that dogged the AOL-TW merger right from the start -- likely at the top of the list. While GE's culture may be closer to the buttoned-down culture of a Philadelphia cable company, NBC executives are working in the far glitzier media centers of New York and Los Angeles, both of which are filled with stars and outsized personalities on both sides of the camera. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of reasons why it could work well for the two new partners.


Federal Communications Commission
Dec. 15, 2009
1 p.m.

FCC staff will hold an initial round of public workshops in December and January as part of the open Internet Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). These workshops will explore issues raised in the proceeding, including the technical realities of broadband networks and the impact of the Internet's openness on various interests, including speech, democratic engagement, consumers, innovation, and investment. The dates, locations, and topics for additional spring workshops on the open Internet rulemaking will be announced in early 2010.

PANELISTS:

  • Stuart Benjamin, FCC, Moderator
  • Michele Combs, Christian Coalition
  • Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit
  • Jonathan Moore, Rowdy Orbit
  • Ruth Livier, YLSE
  • Garlin Gilchrist, Center for Community Change
  • Bob Corn-Revere, Davis Wright Tremaine
  • Jack Balkin, Yale Law School
  • Andrew Schwartzman, Media Access Project

An agenda the workshop will be made available soon

All workshops will be open to the public; however, admittance will be limited to the seating available. Audio/video coverage of the workshops will be broadcast live with open captioning over the Web on www.openInternet.gov.