June 2011

Nielsen: Two Thirds of All TV Homes Now Have an HD Set

The new Cross Platform Report from Nielsen has found that HDTVs are now available 75.5 million homes, about two thirds of all homes, a 20% bounce over last year, and that video viewing has increased across all platforms.

The report found that traditional TV viewing saw a 22 minute monthly increase between the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of this year, with online video seeing a one hour and 10 minute bounce, mobile video growing by 43 minutes and time shifted viewing increasing by one hour and 10 minutes. But the report also noted that those people who spend the most time watching online video have the lowest consumption of traditional media. The heaviest online video users, who averaged 18.8 minutes of viewing streaming online video per day, also spent the least amount of time with traditional TV, about 272 minutes. Likewise, the most infrequent users of online video, a group that averaged only 0.1 of a minute of online video viewing, were also the heaviest traditional TV viewers, with 290 minutes per day.

Members of Congress Investing Big in Media Companies

The Center for Responsive Politics released a report detailing the value of stock that members of Congress or their spouses hold in media companies.

All told, 59 members of Congress own assets in media companies and news organizations. The most popular company among elected officials is Walt Disney Co., which counts 30 members of Congress among its investors -- those 30 members have, between them, at least a quarter of a million dollars in the company. In second place is Comcast, with 22 Congressional shareholders.

Keeping the Public Interest Bargain Alive

Speaking at the New America Foundation's "Conversation On the Future of the Media," Federal Communications Commission member Michael Copps said that the FCC's recently-released "The Information Needs of Communities" revealed cracks and chasms running through the landscape by documenting, in particular, shortfalls in the production of local accountability journalism. The question before us now, he said, is "what do we do about it?"

One school of thought on the role of government says let's leave this important task up to the free market and deregulate entities that serve this purpose. The second school maintains that there is a role for government in general and the Federal Communications Commission in particular: that role is to ensure that the public’s spectrum is put to the public purpose of informing democracy’s dialogue. Under this theory, a license to broadcast is a privilege, not a God-given right, and the privilege of keeping that license depends upon the caliber of trusteeship a station delivers. He outlined measures he believes the FCC can and should take:

adopting real public interest obligations for broadcasters,
complete the FCC's localism proceeding,
finalize disclosure rules,
adopt recommendations of the FCC's Diversity Advisory Committee, and
hold public hearings around the country encouraging the American people to say what they think about the news and information they are receiving

Sens Pryor, Rockefeller Introduce Legislation to Protect Consumers' Personal Information and Prevent Identity Theft

Sens Mark Pryor (D-AR) and John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV (D-WV) reintroduced legislation to require businesses and nonprofit organizations that store consumers’ personal information to put in place strong security features to safeguard sensitive data, alert consumers when this data has been breached, and provide affected individuals with the tools they need to protect their credit and finances. Currently, there is no single federal standard for guarding many types of consumer information.

The Data Security and Breach Notification Act requires entities that own or possess data containing personal information to establish reasonable security policies and procedures to protect that data. If a security breach occurs, entities would have to notify each individual whose information was acquired or accessed as a result of the breach. Affected consumers would be entitled to receive consumer credit reports or credit monitoring services for two years, as well as instructions on how to request these services.

States weigh in on AT&T-T-Mobile merger

AT&T is lobbying in DC to win approval for its acquisition of T-Mobile. But its also working hard in state capitols across the country (the carrier has even gotten into a tussle with Sprint over a possible state review in West Virginia). And at the time of this writing, AT&T has been successful. Though three states are taking a closer look, 17 state governors have voiced their approval for the deal. Here's how the states are lining up so far.

An AT&T/T-Mobile Merger Will Not Lower Prices

[Commentary] As part of its campaign to conquer the wireless market by buying out T-Mobile, the fourth-largest wireless carrier, AT&T is trying to tell anyone who will listen that going from four national carriers to two will actually lower prices. Nothing of the sort will happen. Rather, the result will be just the opposite. AT&T will be sitting along with Verizon to create a national duopoly of big carriers. They will also gain a monopoly on GSM wireless technology, as AT&T and T-Mobile are the only national carriers that provide national GSM coverage. But in an effort to distract from this reality, AT&T is using modified charts and irrelevant statistics to make its case.

AT&T T-Mobile deal gets support from Georgia leaders but not consumers

Some Georgians so strongly opposes the pending $39 billion mobile phone transaction that they filed online statements with the Federal Communications Commission.

Even though AT&T's wireless division is based in Atlanta, comments from Georgians and Atlantans show there are few fans for this home team. An informal sampling of the statements from state residents ran against the transaction by 28 to 1. Some consumers say the move would make AT&T too big, reducing competition for low prices and innovative technology. Many residents also complained about AT&T’s service quality and fear that the issue of dropped calls and spotty coverage would spread to T-Mobile once the deal is complete. The FCC routinely invites public comment on major issues of interest. Atlanta's AT&T Mobility is the richest, strongest and fastest-growing unit of Dallas-based AT&T. If approved, the new company would be the nation’s No. 1 carrier with 129 million subscribers, serving about 43 percent of mobile phones in the United States.

LightSquared Asks FCC To Extend Deadline

The Federal Communications Commission granted LightSquared's request for an extended deadline for filing preliminary research on potential interference, just hours before the highly anticipated report was due.

A mass amount of new data forced LightSquared to ask federal regulators to extend the deadline by two weeks, a company spokesman said. The report will spark the next stage of debate between LightSquared and opponents who worry the company's plan could block global positioning systems. LightSquared wants to build a nationwide broadband network, but the GPS industry says the new system could interfere with GPS receivers. LightSquared was due to submit preliminary research on potential interference to the FCC by 11:59 pm June 15. But much of the data was submitted to the company late June 14 and was still coming in on June 15, giving LightSquared staff little time to process and analyze the information, a spokesman said. LightSquared asked the FCC to extend the deadline to July 1st.

House boosts budget for broadband satellites

The House Appropriations Committee, in its version of the $538.9 billion Defense Department budget, sharply boosted funding for the department broadband communications satellites and chopped most of the requested budget for a Defense Information Systems Agency program to lease commercial satellites to serve the Middle East.

The House increased funding for Wideband Global System satellites by $335 million above the $473.7 million request for a total of $808.7 million and slashed $416 million from DISA's requested budget of $500.9 million to lease commercial satellites to provide service to the Middle East. Each Wideband Global System satellite has a throughput of 6.2 gigabits per second.The department has three satellites in service out of a planned constellation of eight, with the cost of one funded by Australia. Despite this existing and planned capacity, 80 percent of the traffic to Afghanistan, Iraq and other areas in the Middle East is handled by commercial satellites. DISA had planned a 15-year lease of a commercial satellite with roughly the same capacity as a Wideband Global satellite to serve the region, a project effectively killed in the House budget.

The House almost doubled the 2012 budget request for tactical communications equipment for the Special Operations Command from $76.5 million to $148.5 million. The panel fully funded the requested $298 million budget for the Army's Warfighter Information Network-Tactical communications system,but sliced the requested budget for the Joint Tactical Radio System by $53 million, from $688.1 million to $635.1 million. In May, Defense said it wanted to find commercial alternatives to the ground mobile radio that Boeing Co. developed.

House GOP moves to cut network neutrality funding

House Republicans are trying for a second time to kill the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rules by denying enforcement funding. The House Appropriations Committee released a draft of its FY12 Financial Services Appropriations bill with language that would prohibit money for the agency’s Open Internet Order. Republicans say the FCC rules amount to government over-regulation of the Internet. But net neutrality supporters were quick to criticize the GOP’s move. “The legislation the majority wrote would allow the largest telecommunications companies to reshape the Internet in their own image, favoring some and disadvantaging others,” Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said.

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