March 2011

Fox News suspends Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum

Fox News has suspended -- for the next 60 days -- contributors Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum until they decide whether to run for president.
Both, anchor Bret Baier said, “have signaled possible runs for the presidency” and it “is Fox policy” for them to be suspended. With the suspensions, the network has taken its first big step to address mounting concerns that it could run afoul of campaign finance laws and journalistic ethics by continuing to keep on its payroll people who are maneuvering to run for president. But the suspensions of two contributors also leads to questions about three others on the Fox payroll -- Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and John Bolton -- who are also weighing White House bids.

Panel Agrees To Dems' Request For Network Neutrality Hearing

House Commerce Committee Republicans have agreed to a request from the panel's top Democrats to hold a hearing on a resolution that would block the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality rules.

The Communications and Technology Subcommittee postponed its scheduled markup Wednesday of a resolution of disapproval, offered by its chairman, Greg Walden (R-OR) to block implementation of the FCC's open Internet rules. The Congressional Review Act gives lawmakers a limited amount of time to pass a resolution of disapproval aimed at blocking regulations approved by federal agencies. While such resolutions are subject to the regular congressional process, they can not be amended. A committee spokeswoman said that the committee has agreed to a request from Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA), the ranking member on the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, to hold a hearing on the resolution before marking it up. The spokeswoman did not say when such a hearing would occur.

Plan to help low-income people access broadband is a 'mistake,' its creator says

In a speech to the Joint Center on Political and Economic Studies, National Broadband Plan architect Blair Levin targeted two Federal Communications Commission assistance programs: Lifeline, which subsidizes phone service, and Link-up, which helps households pay to install traditional phone lines or activate wireless phones. They should both be phased out rather than expanded to promote broadband, Levin said, because spreading broadband to low-income groups is a different kind of problem than spreading telephone access.

"Cost is an issue. But it is just one issue," he said. The spread of broadband comes with challenges around device literacy, search literacy, and even basic word literacy. "No one needs these to use a phone," he said. Levin detailed a new way forward, proposing an FCC assistance program created from scratch. The program would entirely focus on broadband, and heavily emphasize training. Levin stressed the importance of conditional subsidies in such a program, dependent on recipients taking certain positive actions. For instance, a family could receive a broadband subsidy if their child uses the Internet for homework, and maintains a certain grade point average. He also suggested ways to drive down costs, including auctions allowing broadband providers to compete for the chance to offer low-cost service, which would win them business from the people on subsidies.

Towards a More Targeted and Predictable Merger Review Process

Speaking at the Institute for Policy Innovation Communications summit, Federal Communications Commission member Meredith Attwell Baker said the FCC should set a timetable and limiting principles for merger reviews so the process will not chill investment.

Commissioner Baker says the FCC should enforce its 180-day shot clock on vetting industry mergers, should make it clear merger conditions have to be truly merger-specific rather than general policy in conditions' clothing or the FCC equivalent of earmarks for public interest groups, and consider whether to get rid of the dual-review system that has both the FCC and either Justice or the Federal Trade Commission reviewing the same merger. She would like to see that change to answer three main questions: 1) should mergers be subject to dual reviews? 2) do the reviews take longer than necessary? and 3) do adopting wide-ranging conditions serve the public interest? She did not definitively answer the first question, but suggested the dual review was duplicative and that the FCC's role of approving license transferred had "morphed into a full-fledged merger review -- similar to, but not identical to, the antitrust review." She said the FCC should "We should work with Congress to help evaluate whether this dual review structure as currently configured remains the best use of limited government resources in this era of tightening budgets."

TechAmerica Warns of Fed Shutdown Consequences

A shutdown of the federal government would have adverse consequences for hundreds of companies that contract with the US government and more than 7.6 million federal contract employees, Phil Bond, president and CEO of TechAmerica, warned Democratic and Republican leaders in both chambers in a letter. While he applauded Congress for agreeing to a Continuing Resolution to keep the government operational for the next two weeks, he strongly urged lawmakers to pass a broader funding measure for the remainder of fiscal 2011.

The Underestimated Over-The-Top Device: The PC

Attention Google TV, Apple TV, Boxee, TiVo, XBox, Bravia: It’s no use. Make way for an old-fashioned solution to Internet-connected TV that may be more prevalent than you might assume: the PC.

A new study from TDG Research found some surprising persistence to consumers who link their laptops or desktops to their TV screens as a means of viewing Internet video. It’s a counterintuitive notion to say the least given all the aforementioned players that are attempting more sophisticated, seamless solutions. And when you look at the numbers a little closer, there may not be much to this. One-third of adult broadband users surveyed used some form of PC-to-TV connection at least once a year, TDG found. What that infrequency may suggest more than anything is that every once in a while there’s a video experience that makes the most sense to take in on a bigger screen, like a high-definition film. The research further breaks down the PC-to-TV market into four segments, with just 16.8 percent of them using that solution on a daily basis.

CenturyLink-Qwest deal gets Arizona approval

CenturyLink announced that the Arizona Corporation Commission has approved the independent telco’s merger with Qwest Communications. The ACC was one of the few final state regulatory agencies that still needed to approve the deal, with the remaining holdouts being Minnesota, Washington and Oregon. Regulatory agency staffs in Washington and Oregon already have given the deal an initial recommendation of approval. Minnesota regulators, in an unexpected move, actually delayed putting a stamp on the deal last month.

Indecency Complaint, With A Spanish Accent

The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) have filed a complaint (173 pages in all, including extensive attachments) with the FCC against a TV station in the Los Angeles area.

The focus of their complaint: the Spanish-language television talk show “José Luis Sin Censura” (translation: “José Luis Uncensored”). According to NHMC and GLAAD, over 20 episodes of the show that aired between June-December of last year contained images and language that were indecent and that would have been routinely edited out of English-language broadcasts. The complaint alleges the repeated use of sexually-oriented terms such as “pinche” and “culero”, along with anti-gay epithets (“maricón”, “joto”, “puñal”) and anti-Latino slurs (e.g., “mojado”). Presumably recognizing the likelihood that the FCC may not be familiar with Spanish pejoratives, the complainants have included a “Note on Translation” in which they provide the approximate English equivalents. (“Pinche” is said to be “roughly equivalent” to “fucking”; “culero” means “assfucker”; “maricón”, “joto” and “puñal” are derogatory terms for gay people, akin to “faggot”; “mojado” refers to “wetback”.) They've also posted a collection of examples (including a number of NSFW items, such as semi-clad women) demonstrating their point on YouTube.

To Serve Broadcasters*

In what appears to be an ongoing effort by the Media Bureau to soften the ground on the spectrum re-purposing front in advance of an eventual all-out assault, Bureau Chief William Lake recently spoke to the National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations, preaching the gospel of incentive auctions.

His message: We come in peace, with broadcasters’ interests at heart. Submit to our plans and everything will work out for the best. Honest. Maybe theirs is the path to the ultimate win-win-win situation. As we have previously urged, broadcasters should keep an open mind and give careful consideration to any final plan the Commission eventually comes up with. But broadcasters might also be forgiven if, at least for now, they opt for skepticism over unquestioning acceptance.

In his speech, Lake lays out five basic points:

The need for more spectrum for wireless broadband is real.
All the good spectrum is already occupied, so somebody’s going to have to be relocated – and that somebody should be TV.
The FCC has the broadcast industry’s interests at heart.
“It is natural to fear the unknown.”
Keep an open mind.

AMA to ONC: EHR program doesn't work for docs

Many physicians -- specialists in particular -- will not participate in the federal electronic health-record adoption incentive program because it requires them to include patient data that they do not otherwise collect, according to a Feb. 25 letter from 39 medical organizations letter to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

The barriers to physician participation will only grow, according to the letter, as proposed new criteria for meaningful use of EHR systems, which clinicians must meet to qualify for federal incentive payments, require the use of not-yet-available IT infrastructure and tools for sharing patient information among clinicians. The physician groups recommended several changes to the proposed regulations, including the addition of an "exclusion option" that would allow clinicians to opt out of a measure that the groups say has "little relevance to the physician's routine practice" and still receive the federal subsidy.

Benton

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