New Federal Communications Commission member Jessica Rosenworcel became the first commissioner to visit the offices of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APSCO) International, according to the organization. Commissioner Rosenworcel visited this week to talk public safety communications with officials there, a topic on which she is well versed.
While tennis fans watch the action on the courts at the French Open, Jean-Luc Vuillemin is more focused on what’s happening in the stands. Across the Roland Garros complex in Paris, fans use mobile devices to keep an eye on matches other than the one they’re attending -- potentially overloading parts of the France Telecom SA (FTE) wireless network that Vuillemin oversees.
“More and more spots just like this one are going to pop up,” Vuillemin said. “Our networks overall have enough capacity, but we face challenges where large crowds connect in one place and generate loads of traffic.” From stadiums to airports, train stations to business centers, wireless networks worldwide get bogged down when thousands of users packed into tight spaces reach for their handsets to video chat, watch movies and play games online. Ericsson AB, Alcatel-Lucent SA and Huawei Technologies Co. say they have a solution: downsized antennas, smaller and cheaper, made to hang on lamp posts, traffic lights or on the side of buildings where networks need the boost and full-blown gear can’t fit. While no widespread installation of these new “small cells” has been announced, manufacturers have high hopes for the technology.
Sure, the television spot business is recovering from what many people have branded “The Great Recession,” but TV executives at the SNL Kagan TV and Radio Finance Summit in New York see new revenue streams adding to that positive momentum.
So even with a slow national economic recovery, the TV business is looking attractive for the next several years. The core business, of course, is still local and national spot. “That for us, we think over the next five years, is sort of a low- to mid-single digit growth rate,” said Peter Markham, chairman-CEO of Granite Broadcasting. Other panelists seemed to agree with that assessment, but retransmission consent revenues are growing at a must faster clip and digital revenues, while still small, are becoming more significant. Markham noted that digital revenues doubled for his company over the past two years, with growth continuing. “We’ve got five revenue streams now, where 10 years ago we had one,” noted Robert Prather, president-COO of Gray Television. “We’ve got our regular channel, we’ve got multicast, we’ve got retrans, we’ve got digital and we’ve got mobile. So I think the revenue streams are great going forward.” But he also noted that broadcasters now have more competition than ever before.
Broadcast industry executives are turning up the heat in their campaign to retain a Federal Communications Commission rule that requires cable television operators to ensure that all of their customers have access to local must-carry signals. Unless it takes action, the FCC's so-called three-year-old “viewability rule” is set to automatically expire on June 12. The rule ensures that all 58 million cable TV subscribers have access to local must-carry signals -- not just the 46 million who subscribe to digital cable. Eliminating the viewability rule would severely undermine the viewership of independent, religious and foreign-language stations that rely on the regulation to reach all cable viewers, broadcasters say.
Watching television isn’t what it used to be. With smartphones, computers and tablets, people have more ways to watch shows, and even people watching TV are often simultaneously engaged with their phones and tablets. Optimedia’s fifth annual Content Power Ratings attempts to measure all of this, from cross-platform delivery across platforms to a show's social engagement and buzz. For the fifth year in a row, American Idol was the top-ranked in Content Power Ratings as well as Nielsen. But as the high rankings of other shows like Glee and Family Guy demonstrate, high social activity doesn’t always translate into big television viewing audiences.
More than three in four British businesses are ignoring online privacy regulations that came into force last month amid confusion about the so-called “cookie law”, research by KPMG has found.
In an analysis of 55 representative UK websites, and drawing on its own work for clients, the professional services firm found that only 20 percent were complying with the EU privacy directive, which came into force on May 26. That marks just a small improvement in compliance since a KPMG survey conducted before last month’s deadline, which found 95 percent of the same sample had failed to change their sites to obtain visitors’ consent for the use of cookies and other online tracking technologies. The Information Commissioner’s Office, which enforces the law in the UK, can fine site owners up to £500,000 for non-compliance. The ICO last week said it had received dozens of complaints from members of the public about sites using cookies without permission.
[Commentary] What a curious year for communications policy reformers! Those of us who consider ourselves activists in the causes of media democracy, ubiquitous broadband, an Open Internet, more competition in our communications industries, and helping minorities and women to equal opportunity in owning and managing these businesses find ourselves stymied by half steps (or, too often, no steps) and a campaign season where the choices are shaping up as four more years of the same or, alternatively, four years of something worse. What’s a reformer to do?
During the last summer Olympics, NBC wouldn’t show some of the most exciting events live on the Web, because it wanted to protect its ratings for its taped TV highlights. Four years later, the programmer has wised up, and will livestream every single event. This is great news, with only one catch: If you want to see all of it, you’ll need to pay for cable TV. Actually, make that two catches: You’ll also need to prove to NBC that you pay for cable TV (or telco TV, or satellite TV). That’s one of the fundamental precepts of the “TV Everywhere” plan that the cable guys are using to hold off disruption, and in practice it’s a hassle. It requires digging up your cable bill so you can find your account number, and starting up yet another online account and password. Not rocket science, but certainly not one-click easy. The TV guys, to their credit, don’t pretend that it’s easy, either. “It’s painful, we know, but it’ll be worth it … trust us.”
What’s the business opportunity for getting young kids on Facebook? Experts say it’s hard to determine if parents would be more willing to let their children under 13 sign up if Facebook changed its age rules. But the numbers offer financial promise for the social networking giant. About 60 percent of 12- and 13-year-olds own a cellphone, according to the Pew Internet and & American Life Project. An older study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 31 percent of 8- to 10-year-olds own a cellphone. This is one of the most active group of cellphone users — youth send an average of 60 text messages a day. Put that together with another data point: Facebook is one of the most addictive apps for mobile phone users, according to Sandvine, a networking analytics firm.
For media buyers negotiating with broadcast networks on behalf of their clients this week for 2012-13 primetime ad commitments, it's got to feel a bit like a supermarket out there. But what among the crop looks freshest, and what looks like it's got a fast-approaching expiration date on it? What do you pick up for the younger set, and heck, what do you want (you know who you are...and how old you are)?
Nielsen viewer data from the past season indicates that there is, in fact, a cart's worth of choice among returning shows. Advertisers looking for younger audiences can take a couple of routes. The broadcast TV series reaching the youngest median ages are on Fox's Sunday animation block, and they hit a majority of harder-to-reach males. The two youngest-skewing shows on broadcast TV are Fox's animated Family Guy and American Dad, each with a median age of 30, followed closely by Bob's Burgers and The Cleveland Show with viewer median ages of 31, and The Simpsons with a median age of 32. The youngest-skewing live-action scripted show on broadcast TV is The CW's Gossip Girl, with a median age of 32. All of The CW's other returning shows except for Nikita have median age audiences under 40, including 90210 (33), The Vampire Diaries (34), The Secret Circle (37), America's Next Top Model (38) and Hart of Dixie and Supernatural (both 39).
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