January 2011

The Health and Human Services Department plans to develop and maintain a continuous scan of current and emerging health information technology innovations to help HHS agencies understand and be aware of potential breakthroughs in healthcare delivery.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT will collect information about technology trends along with subject-matter experts and health IT innovators and developers, according to a Dec.30 announcement in Federal Business Opportunities. HHS will use a vendor to support the innovation scanning effort. ONC will update the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality on the development of the most promising health IT innovations that may support the achievement of meaningful use and the adoption of health IT, as well as other program efforts that will be affected by technological advances. This exchange will offer the systematic identification of health IT innovations that tackle critical problems in areas of care delivery as well as the early identification of emerging, breakthrough advances that may shape policy and technology initiatives, the announcement said.

A flurry of ex parte filings at the Federal Communications Commission in the Comcast/NBCU proceeding were posted January 6 as commissioners and their staff vetted the FCC's draft approval of the deal and interested parties made their cases.

A commission source says there is no new draft since the initial one was circulated just before Christmas. For example, Comcast and NBCU execs met with top staffers to Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn on Jan. 4 to talk up its commitment to adding 10 new minority-controlled independent nets, and apparently to defend the eight-year timeline for doing so. According to its filing, Comcast execs including Comcast EVP David Cohen and NBCU General Counsel Rick Cotton explained "that the timeline for adding those independent networks is reasonable given how long it typically takes to identify, contract with, and launch a new network." American Cable Association President Matt Polka lead a delegation that told the FCC that a baseball-style arbitration for carriage negotiation impasses--one of the FCC's proposed conditions on the deal, according to the draft--would provide no relief for small cable operators. Between them, Dish and DirecTV execs met with staffers from the offices of Clyburn, Copps and Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell, in at least Dish's case to push for applying program access, arbitration and standstill provisions that apply to traditional and online content alike. Bloomberg, a big critic of the deal, also met with Copps' staffers to push for a neighborhooding requirement--some variation is said to already be in the draft -- that would require Comcast to place a business news competitor like Bloomberg's TV channel adjacent to other business news channels like NBCU's CNBC.

[Commentary] The new media is threatening journalism. The continuing collapse of many newspapers in North America -- 70 in the past decade -- is a storm warning of more to come. Magazines are in trouble, too, and your favorite has probably never had such a dearth of advertising. It turns out people will not pay for news as a commodity. In an age of Twitter, bloggers, WikiLeaks and social networks, people can find the news without buying a paper. As one youngster said, "If the news is important it will find me."

The Internet has destroyed the business model for print. Print publications will survive, but not in the long term, and this has big implications for journalism. Compared to the massive physical assets of, say, The New York Times, online newspaper The Huffington Post has almost zero printing and distribution costs. The New York Times employs more than a thousand people in its editorial department alone. The Huffington Post employs 97 and a volunteer roster of thousands of writers. The site is thriving, with 20 million readers. But how will we defend core journalistic values like objectivity, quality and truth? How will journalists make a living? What will happen to quality in this democratized world when the traditional filters for accuracy, balance and journalistic standards are gone? Will investigative journalists who are losing their jobs be replaced in society by public-relations flacks? With no one seemingly accountable for the truth, who can we trust? Journalism will surely survive, just not in its present form. People will not pay for commodities, whether it's news or other content. But they will pay for compelling, differentiated value, as The Economist, Thomson Reuters, and In-Style Magazine show. The key will be to develop new business models, offer distinctive value and not get too hung up on trying to defend a legacy business being killed by the digital age.

This year, like many in the recent past, Washington will consider issues that could fundamentally affect the broadcast industry -- for both radio and TV, and affecting the growing online presence of broadcasters.

The Federal Communications Commission, Congress, and other government agencies are never afraid to provide their views on what the industry should be doing but, unlike other members of the audience, they can force broadcasters to pay attention to their views by way of new laws and regulations. And there is never a shortage of ideas from Washington as to how broadcasters should act. Some of the issues are perennials, coming back over and over again (often without resolution), while others are unique to this coming year. Issues unique to radio and TV, and those that could affect the broadcast industry generally: spectrum reclamation, white spaces, low power TV's digital transition, retransmission consent reform, performance royalties, ownership rules, localism and the future of media, equal employment opportunity rules, and political advertising rules.