February 2012

Republicans See Politics in Chrysler Super Bowl Ad

The most talked-about advertisement of the Super Bowl was a cinematic two-minute commercial featuring Clint Eastwood, an icon of American brawn, likening Chrysler’s comeback to the country’s own economic revival. And within 12 hours of running, it became one of the loudest flashpoints yet in the early re-election campaign of President Obama, providing a reminder, as if one were needed, that in today’s polarized political climate even a tradition as routine as a football championship can be thrust into a partisan light.

Some conservative critics saw the ad as political payback and accused the automaker of handing the president a prime-time megaphone in front of one of the largest television audiences of the year. Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who served as President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, said Chrysler was trying to settle a debt to the Obama administration for rescuing Detroit carmakers with billions of dollars in loans. The White House cast the ad, which was accompanied by similar full-page newspaper advertisements on Monday, as an affirmation of the president’s economic policies. Asked by a joking reporter whether the commercial counted as an “in-kind contribution” from Eastwood, Jay Carney, President Obama’s press secretary, said it merely laid out the facts, and indeed the ad resembled a main theme of the president’s State of the Union address last month.

With Verizon, a Coinstar Is Reborn

February 6 was a telling day in home entertainment. Two ambitious players bought into the video-streaming business and one left its DVD division on the curb.

Telecommunications giant Verizon Communications broke ranks with rivals by announcing a video-streaming partnership with Coinstar, which operates Redbox DVD kiosks. Both companies want a piece of streaming online video, whose pioneer Netflix threatens to steal Verizon's pay-TV customers and users of Redbox. Separately, vending-machine company NCR sold its DVD kiosks and related assets to Coinstar after buying them just over two years ago. Who comes out on top? Verizon, which has a 65% stake in the streaming deal, looks unlikely to get much out of it anytime soon. Redbox has millions of customers already using its kiosks in nearly 30,000 locations -- plus the thousands more it will get from NCR. As users gradually shift to streaming video, Redbox can try to migrate those to its streaming service. But Redbox has a casual, rather than monthly subscription, relationship with customers. With Netflix's unlimited streaming priced at $8 a month, Redbox will feel pressure to offer an ultracheap deal to get attention. The lesson for investors is to follow the money. While Coinstar's DVD business should keep it afloat for a while, its future will be decided in the fiercely competitive online world.

Disney, Univision may launch English-language cable news channel

Apparently, Walt Disney and Univision Communications, the nation's leading Spanish-language broadcaster, are in talks about launching an English-language cable news channel.

Disney's ABC News could compete for viewers with established round-the-clock cable news operations, such as News Corp.'s Fox News, Time Warner Inc.'s CNN and Comcast Corp.'s MSNBC. Until now, ABC has shown little appetite for joining the cable news wars. Univision, meanwhile, could use the news channel as another platform to reach English-speaking Latino viewers. The nation's Latino population is sizable and fast-growing. Some 50.5 million people described themselves as Latino in the 2010 U.S. census, up from 43% a decade earlier. Second- and third-generation Latinos also have greater disposable income than their parents or grandparents, making them an attractive and underserved audience. Targeting these viewers would help differentiate the channel from more established cable competitors.

UCLA study gives qualified support to film tax credit program

While California's film tax credit is providing an economic benefit to the state, it may not be providing as much of a return to taxpayers as an earlier study claimed.

That's one of the main conclusions from a new study conducted by UCLA's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment about a program the state adopted in 2009 to help curb runaway production. The state sets aside $100 million annually for the program, under which filmmakers can receive a credit of 20% to 25% of qualified production expenses (salaries of actors are excluded). They can apply the credit to offset any sales or business tax liability they have with the state. The UCLA study concludes that the California tax credit "is creating jobs and is likely providing an immediate economic benefit to the state," but finds that some claims about the program's value have been exaggerated. In particular, the study takes issue with some aspects of a report by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. and financed by the Motion Picture Association of America that found that for every $1 the state allocated in a tax subsidy, the state recouped as much as $1.13 in spending.

Stanford study of tween girls' technology habits is a lesson to us all

Maybe we didn't need another study to remind us that the explosion of digital devices and the content that they put at our fingertips have changed the way we relate to each other. And in fairness, the Stanford researchers who recently published work on the way multitasking and media immersion affects tween girls weren't trying to reach conclusions about the way we should live our lives. That's the role of philosophers and preachers, not academics and statisticians. But the study by communication professor Clifford Nass and education and learning science professor Roy Pea has me thinking that we might all learn something from their work.

Their big conclusions? Eight- to 12-year-old girls who spend a lot of time multitasking and using media, including television and social networking, tend to report that they feel socially inferior and out of the ordinary. The researchers could not go so far as to say heavy media use and multitasking caused girls to feel bad about their social lives. In fact, it could be that socially awkward tweens turn to technology and media for comfort. But the good news here? The research also found that the more time girls spend in face-to-face conversations, the more likely they are to feel happy with themselves and their social standing. In fact, it appears, face-to-face conversations can inoculate heavy media users from feeling like social flops.

Those Millions on Facebook? Some May Not Actually Visit

If it is hard to believe that 483 million people are visiting Facebook every day, that’s because well, they aren’t, exactly.

Those eye-popping numbers should have an asterisk next to them. Facebook counts as “active” users who go to its Web site or its mobile site. But it also counts people if he or she “took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party Web site that is integrated with Facebook.” In other words, every time you press the “Like” button on NFL.com, for example, you’re an “active user” of Facebook. Of course, this raises an obvious question: How many users actually are active, using a more traditional definition? In December, Nielsen Company, which tracks usage on the Internet, counted 153 million unique users on the Facebook Web site for the month in the United States, though Facebook says in its filing that it has 161 million monthly active users. Assuming that Facebook’s United States traffic accounts for only about 19 percent of its business, that means the numbers are off by at least 40 million users from the 845 million Facebook defines as “active.”

Breastfeeding moms hold Facebook nurse-in protest

Mothers angry at the way Facebook has taken down photos of women breastfeeding their children staged nurse-in demonstrations at the company's new Menlo Park headquarters and satellite offices around the world.

Facebook officials said that breastfeeding photos are taken down only when they are flagged as inappropriate and that sometimes errors happen. But protesters called on the social-networking giant to better train employees to recognize legitimate photos and to institute a better way to contact the company when an error is made, especially one that causes a member's account to be suspended.

Turning Girls into Tech Entrepreneurs with a Single App

The Technovation Challenge encourages girls to become tech entrepreneurs.

As part of the competition, teams of girls work together for 10 weeks to brainstorm and develop an idea for a mobile phone app. At the end, they create a prototype with online software called App Inventor, according to Jeri Countryman, director of curriculum at Iridescent, the nonprofit organization that runs the contest. The teams present their work to venture capital judges at regional and national pitch events. The winning team gets the opportunity to have its app professionally developed for the market. The Technovation Challenge, which started again last week, reaches out to high school teachers, who recruit students to participate in the event. The contest has grown from 45 girls in 2010 to 230 last year. Organizers expect the number to reach 400 to 500 this year. Such companies as Microsoft, Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn are hosting teams of girls and their female mentors and teaching assistants, who will create the apps.

Is the Open Web Doomed? Open Your Eyes and Relax

[Commentary] Whether the Web is dead or open or shut is not a question that will be settled once and for all, but rather a situation that will fluctuate in cycles. So what's the difference between paternalism and our duty to save people from tyrants or from companies whose privacy statements are incomprehensible? If people are happy with Facebook, why should we disturb them? If the Iraqis weren't going to topple Saddam Hussein, what right – or obligation - did we outsiders have to do so? In a world where Facebook can go from dorm-room project to $100-billion IPO in seven years, it may seem careless to suggest that we can wait for 5 or 10 years for a backlash if one is necessary, but I think that's the case.

I don't actually think we're facing a world of no choices. In fact, we all have many choices...and it's up to us to make them. Yes, many people make choices I despise, but this is the world of the long tail. Of course, the short, fat front is always more popular; it all gets homogenized and each individual gets either one central broadcast, or something so tailored he never learns anything new, as in Eli Pariser's filter bubble... That's exactly when some fearless entrepreneur will come along with something wild and crazy that will totally dominate everything 10 years later.

FCC Releases Lifeline/LinkUp Order

The Federal Communications Commission released its Lifeline and Link Up Reform and Modernization report and order – and further notice of proposed rulemaking (FNPRM).

“In this Order, we comprehensively reform and begin to modernize the Universal Service Fund’s Lifeline program (Lifeline or the program). Building on recommendations from the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service (Joint Board), proposals in the National Broadband Plan, input from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and comments received in response to the Commission’s March 2011 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,1 the reforms adopted in this Report and Order (Order) substantially strengthen protections against waste, fraud, and abuse; improve program administration and accountability; improve enrollment and consumer disclosures; initiate modernization of the program for broadband; and constrain the growth of the program in order to reduce the burden on all who contribute to the Universal Service Fund.”

In the FNPRM, the FCC seeks comment on the creation of Lifeline eligibility databases at the state level.

Benton

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