December 2011

For Local NBC Stations, Collaborative Journalism

On Dec 6, NBC will announce a series of partnerships between its television stations and nonprofit news organizations.

Effectively immediately, NBC’s station in Chicago will work with The Chicago Reporter blog and magazine; its station in Philadelphia, with WHYY, a public radio station, and its community site NewsWorks; and its station in Los Angeles, with KPCC, a public radio station. All 10 of NBC’s stations will at times collaborate with ProPublica, the acclaimed investigative journalism nonprofit organization.

The partnerships — which NBC said would help its stations better cover their cities — are a byproduct of Comcast’s successful bid to gain control of NBC Universal, including the 10 television stations owned by NBC. As the government considered the bid last year, Comcast made a number of promises about news coverage, one of them being that it would set up such partnerships with at least five of its stations. The proposal was modeled after the relationship between the NBC station KNSD in San Diego and the local Web site voiceofsandiego.org. The government subsequently put the partnership commitment in writing, and NBC started a casting call of sorts last May. Somewhat surprisingly, the company did not link exclusively with Web sites like voiceofsandiego.org, which is nationally recognized for its highly local journalism. Instead, it also teamed up with radio and print outlets. The Chicago Reporter, for instance, is a blog and bimonthly magazine that focuses on race and poverty issues and specializes in data analysis. WHYY, an affiliate of NPR, operates NewsWorks, a hyperlocal news site.

Power in Numbers: China Aims for High-Tech Primacy

If the future of the Internet is already in China, is the future of computing there as well? Many experts in the United States say it could very well be. Because of the ready availability of low-cost labor, China has already become the world’s dominant maker of computers and consumer electronics products. Now, these experts say, its booming economy and growing technological infrastructure may thrust it to the forefront of the next generation of computing. For China, the quest to develop advanced computing centers is not simply a matter of national pride. It is an attempt to lay the groundwork for innovative Chinese companies and to reshape the technological landscape by doing something more than assembling the world’s desktop PCs.

Death Knell for the Lecture: Technology as a Passport to Personalized Education

[Commentary] Our education system is in a state of crisis. Among developed countries, the United States is 55th in quality rankings of elementary math and science education, 20th in high school completion rate and 27th in the fraction of college students receiving undergraduate degrees in science or engineering. As a society, we can and should invest more money in education. But that is only part of the solution. The high costs of high-quality education put it off limits to large parts of the population, both in the United States and abroad, and threaten the school’s place in society as a whole.

We need to significantly reduce costs while at the same time improving quality. The key to this transition was the use of technology—from crop rotation strategies to GPS-guided farm machinery — which greatly increased productivity. By contrast, our approach to education has remained largely unchanged since the Renaissance: From middle school through college, most teaching is done by an instructor lecturing to a room full of students, only some of them paying attention.

The Rise of Google, the Ascent of Facebook and the Decline of Everyone Else

If you pay the slightest bit of attention to Internet advertising, you know this. But it’s always good to see it spelled out: Google is ginormous! The other takeaways are also old news: Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL are foundering and have been for years (hence their new alliance). And Facebook is starting to generate a real ad business — as opposed to just a very sticky Web site.

Cable-TV Honchos Cry Foul Over Soaring Cost of ESPN

Dissent is growing within the media business over the rising cost of sports programming, even as the NFL is negotiating new agreements that are expected to boost broadcast networks' fees by 60% to about $3.2 billion a year.

Such sharply rising costs—including in a recent deal already agreed between the National Football League and ESPN—are producing a vocal backlash from some media companies, which are afraid customers will drop services as prices escalate. Liberty Media Corp. Chief Executive Greg Maffei described the rising cost of ESPN as a "tax on every American household." He said the cost increases create an opportunity for alternative TV offerings that could undercut the way cable channels are packaged—as bundles of different programming.

NFL Near Major Media Deals

The National Football League is close to inking an eight-year extension of three media-rights deals that should earn it a total of about $3.2 billion a year from its broadcast partners, a 60% increase over its prior contract.

The agreements, which would be struck with News Corp.'s Fox, Comcast Corp.'s NBC and CBS Corp.'s CBS, shows just how valuable NFL rights have become for broadcasters, which view high-profile live sports as the key element to maintaining their value at a time when consumers have an ever-growing number of entertainment options. The deals would last through 2021. The agreements, including deals with Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN and satellite operate DirecTV Group Inc., are expected to lock in total average annual media fees for the NFL of about $6 billion. The expected fee increases are in the range of the NFL's $15.2 billion deal with ESPN for "Monday Night Football." That agreement, which also spans eight years through 2021, included an average annual rights fee increase of $800 million, bringing ESPN's average payment to the league to $1.9 billion per season. The deal also allows ESPN to show games on certain portable devices.

Carrier IQ, T-Mobile, Sprint, RIM face class-action suits

Joining the growing parade of class-action lawsuits against cellphone software company Carrier IQ, suits have been filed by a group of five California plaintiffs alleging that the company and affiliated wireless carriers and phone makers violated state law by "surreptitiously intercepting communications" of smartphone customers. The plaintiffs are all clients of Century City attorney Susan Yoon, who filed the class-action suits in Los Angeles County Superior Court against Carrier IQ, T-Mobile USA, Sprint Nextel, Motorola Mobility Holdings, Samsung Telecommunications America and BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion Ltd. Each suit alleged that the companies secretly recorded user cellphone activities. The suit also alleges that Carrier IQ's software "records and transmits to defendants keystrokes, content of text messages and passwords."

Verizon carves new landscape with spectrum deal

Verizon Wireless agreed to buy $3.6bn of spectrum owned by a joint venture of Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks known as SpectrumCo. The result is a reshaped competitive landscape where cable and telecoms companies will be competing in some markets, but co-operating just miles away.

Commenting on the announcement, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett titled his note: “The End of the World as We Know It.” Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the two largest US cable companies, now have the nation’s leading wireless provider as a partner; one of the main benefits of the deal for them is that it puts to rest speculation that they were poised to build or acquire their own wireless networks. The deal also highlights the different strategies that the US wireless telecoms groups are adopting to deal with what they perceive to be a looming spectrum crunch driven in part by the success of smartphones. US regulators are seeking to free up additional spectrum for wireless communications, but it could be several years before that is available for auction. Verizon Wireless clearly believed it could not afford to wait. As several analysts noted, the spectrum purchase should ensure that Verizon can continue to deliver what it has positioned as a premium network experience to smartphone and tablet PC users. The deal also has knock-on effects for other cable and telecoms companies. Dish Networks, the satellite TV provider, is sitting on a large swath of valuable spectrum. With SpectrumCo’s licenses now accounted for, that makes the Dish assets more valuable. “It makes Dish’s spectrum all the more scarce,” said Stefan Anninger, a Credit Suisse analyst who put a value of about $8.6bn on the Dish spectrum.

Facebook should thank FTC for privacy settlement

[Commentary] Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ought to consider adding members of the Federal Trade Commission to his holiday gift list. They wouldn't be allowed to accept his gratuities, but he certainly owes them a great big thank-you for the settlement announced last week that will, among other things, require Facebook to "not misrepresent itself" when it comes to what information it collects and how it uses it.

The reason Zuckerberg ought to be thankful is the final part of the agreement, which requires Facebook to obtain "independent, third-party audits" that its privacy program "meets or exceeds the requirements of the FTC order," and to "ensure that the privacy of consumers' information is protected." Those privacy auditors might very well wind up on Zuckerberg's best-friends list because, assuming Facebook lives up to its agreements, the audits will serve as government verification that it's being honest about how it treats user information. It's almost as if the FTC is putting its stamp of approval on Facebook's future privacy policies.

US power grid needs cybersecurity protection

The threat of cyberattacks on the U.S. power grid should be dealt with by a single federal agency, not the welter of groups now charged with the electric system's security, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported.

While acknowledging there is no absolute insurance against such attacks, the MIT researchers said a single U.S. agency would be better able to address the problem than the disparate federal, state and local entities responsible for various aspects of safeguarding the power grid. In a report on the future of the U.S. electric grid, through 2030, the team recommended that the federal agency should work with industry and have the appropriate regulatory authority to enhance cybersecurity preparedness, response and recovery.

Benton

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