December 2011

FCC’s CALM Act Rules Puts Ball in Viewers’ Court

The new Federal Communications Commission rules aimed at quieting loud commercials and promos take a light approach to compliance and enforcement, industry experts say.

For finding trouble, the FCC will rely of complaints from viewers and will take action only if it finds "a pattern or trend." The rules don't require broadcasters to continuously monitor syndicated and network programming for compliance. However, "large" broadcasters will have to perform annual spot checks of imported programming if it hasn't been certified to be in compliance.

AT&T Investors Face Risks if T-Mobile Deal Is Pulled, Says Fitch

AT&T’s endangered $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile USA could create greater risk for bondholders if it’s killed and the company opts to boost stock buybacks or spectrum purchases, according to Fitch Ratings.

Without the benefits the deal would bring, AT&T could increase share buybacks beyond “moderate levels,” Fitch said. “AT&T’s need to enhance its capacity could lead to a rise in capital spending and/or the acquisition of spectrum through other transactions,” according the report. “We would evaluate those negative factors in the context of the company’s strong free cash flow and its capital spending flexibility,” the Fitch report said. The report also says a scrapped deal could have “knock-on effects” for the credit of other players in the industry including T-Mobile which could have trouble remaining “independently viable and competitive.” Should AT&T decide to end the deal, it will pay T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom AG a $3 billion cash fee. Deutsche Telekom has said it values the total breakup package at as much as $7 billion, including lower charges for its customers to terminate calls on AT&T’s network.

Tough Sledding for Broadcast TV

In what’s shaping up to be an annus horribilis for the broadcast networks, ratings for returning series are plummeting and only a few newcomers are finding an audience.

Eleven weeks into the 2011-12 TV season, ratings for a staggering 32 series are down by 10 percent or more, while another eight returning shows are off by single-digit percentages. Of the 56 veteran programs—a roster that includes newsmagazines, reality series, and Sunday Night Football—71 percent are experiencing year-over-year declines in the core 18-49 demo.

AT&T awfully picky about the spectrum it claims to need

AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile may be on hiatus, but Ma Bell hopes to secure a consolation prize. The Federal Communications Commission is set to approve its purchase of Qualcomm’s 700 MHz Flo TV spectrum, allowing AT&T to build a more powerful LTE network. But the FCC may impose restrictions on the band to make it easier for small operators to roam on AT&T’s network and get a hold of the choicest new 4G smartphones. AT&T isn’t happy about those restrictions and is threatening to scrap the deal if they’re imposed. For an operator that claims to be facing a spectrum crunch, AT&T is awfully finicky about the spectrum it’s buying.

Apps vs. the web: Are they enemies or allies?

George Colony, the chairman and CEO of Forrester Research, re-ignited a minor firestorm recently, with a presentation at the LeWeb conference in which he argued that the web is dead, and being replaced by the app economy — with mobile and smartphone apps that leverage the cloud or other services rather than the open web. That sparked some strong responses from longtime open-web advocates such as RSS pioneer Dave Winer, who argued that apps are not the future, and others who compared them to the “interactive” CD-ROMS of the 1990s.

Do apps necessarily mean the death of the web, and if so doesn’t that mean we are losing something important? Colony (whose presentation is here and slides are here) argued that the “app Internet” is the future in part because of the continuing increase in computing power — both in the cloud, where giant server farms store and process our data, and in the devices we hold in our hands (in the 1990s, according to Forrester, the iPad2 would have been one of the most powerful computers in the world). But bandwidth hasn’t kept up with these changes, said Colony, and therefore the web as we know it has to give way to a world of apps that process and display the data coming from services in the cloud.

Publishers still missing the point on e-book prices

When the major book publishing firms signed an agreement with Apple that allowed them to control the prices for their e-books — unlike the deal they had with Amazon, which gave the online retailer the right to cut prices if it wanted to — they probably thought they had won a major battle. But as a Wall Street Journal story points out, they are still shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to e-book prices, by keeping them artificially high in an attempt to shore up their profit margins and protect their existing print business. In the long run, that pricing model could wind up doing far more damage than the model it replaced. The Journal piece notes that e-book prices, particularly for some best-selling and popular titles, are in many cases actually higher than prices for the comparable print version. And how do publishers justify doing this? Among other things, they claim that consumers are actually willing to pay more for the e-book version of a novel because of the convenience and other features that they get with an electronic edition — the ability to search, make highlights, and so on. This sounds like a giant case of wishful thinking, and there is mounting evidence to indicate it is just that.

Congress, please don’t kill white spaces

[Commentary] The spectrum bill that passed the House this week will make any technologist weep. I know the tech community is upset over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), but this bill represents a somewhat geekier threat -- killing more unlicensed spectrum. So Silicon Valley may want to get active over this one, too.

The House version of the bill will ensure that none of the airwaves auctioned off from the digital TV band will be used for unlicensed wireless, where services such as Wi-Fi or white spaces broadband exist. So far this bill eliminates more unlicensed spectrum, which is a problem as our demand for more mobile data threatens to push mobile operators into the red. But in many of the predictions of a looming data tsunami the importance of Wi-Fi, (which relies on unlicensed airwaves) goes understated. But, instead of focusing more on delivering licensed airwaves to handle the demand for mobile broadband, the industry, FCC and Congress should be looking at ways to prioritize what types of traffic need to run over licensed airwaves.

San Francisco Launches Pay by Phone Parking Meters

In San Francisco and don’t have change for a parking meter? Fear not. You can now pay for it using your cellphone. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has launched the PayByPhone parking payment service. Drivers can pull into a spot and pay for parking time online via a mobile device or call a toll-free number.

The service is now available for parking meters in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood and will spread to other areas of the city by early 2012. “Parking is one of the greatest frustrations people experience in their daily lives,” said San Francisco District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, in a statement. “We need to make it easy to pay for parking, and this program puts us on that path. I’m thrilled that the Castro was chosen to roll out this innovative program.” To use the system, drivers will enter the meter location number and the length of time they want to pay for on the phone. In addition, as time runs down on the parking meter, those using PayByPhone via cellphone will receive a text message reminder when time is about to expire, along with the ability to pay for additional time and receive receipts via email.

Here’s A Real-ish Kindle Number From Amazon

Amazon has released a real number for how many Kindles are selling. Well, sort of. Amazon announced that “for the third week in a row, customers are purchasing well over 1 million Kindle devices per week.”

Message To Congress: With All Due Respect, If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It

[Commentary] With an approval rating that is heading for sub-zero, Congress would do well to take this advice on many subjects. But the one topic I'm focusing on -- as the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission -- is just this: please do not tell the FCC how to auction spectrum.

If there is one thing that all should agree that the much-maligned FCC has done well since the early 1990s, under Democratic and Republican chairs, it is spectrum auctions. Yet this is the one thing the Republican majority wants to condition, limit and micromanage, and almost certainly foul up. The bill that passed the House earlier this week would tell the FCC how to sell spectrum. It would tell the FCC who should be allowed to bid. It would tell the FCC not to grant spectrum for the unlicensed uses that include, for example, the way many people use Wi-Fi to connect from their laptop to a router in or near their cable box. It would even tell the FCC how to hold auctions. In all these respects, Congress would break, by pretending to fix, the methods and techniques that the FCC has perfected, for the benefit of the taxpayers and to the envy of every spectrum agency in the world.

Benton

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