November 2012

Business, labor groups spent big in 2012 cycle on ad wars for Senate control

Business groups and unions have spent millions of dollars during the 2012 election cycle in a proxy war for control of the Senate. Trade associations and labor groups have opened their war chests in an attempt to sway Senate contests in presidential battlegrounds like Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records on independent expenditures. Most of the business and industry spending has been made in support of Republican candidates, while unions have dug deep to help Democrats retain their majority. Control of the Senate is seen as vital to the legislative agendas on both sides, regardless of whether President Obama or Mitt Romney takes the oath of office in January.

In Late Push, Candidates Target Big Ten Network

Local sports have elbowed their way into the presidential election season, as both campaigns and the various PACs looking to sway voters have targeted regional sports networks (RSNs) in key battleground states.

President Barack Obama’s campaign has been particularly active on Fox Sports’ RSNs, outspending Republican candidate Mitt Romney by nearly a 10-to-one margin. At the same time, both camps have invested heavily in college football games aired by Big Ten Network, an RSN jointly owned between the athletic conference and Fox Sports. According to Kyle Sherman, evp of Home Team Sports, a subsidiary of Fox Sports, the rival campaigns will have spent “in the mid-to-high seven figures on Big Ten Network, when is all said and done.” He added that the channel serves football-mad markets in swing states like Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Given its role as kingmaker, Ohio has attracted the bulk of the Big Ten-targeted ad spend.

A Trail of Clicks, Culminating in Conflict

Washington is pushing Silicon Valley on children’s privacy, and Silicon Valley is pushing back.

Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have all objected to portions of a federal effort to strengthen online privacy protections for children. In addition, media giants like Viacom and Disney, cable operators, marketing associations, technology groups and a trade group representing toy makers are arguing that the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed rule changes seem so onerous that, rather than enhance online protections for children, they threaten to deter companies from offering children’s Web sites and services altogether. “If adopted, the effect of these new rules would be to slow the deployment of applications that provide tremendous benefits to children, and to slow the economic growth and job creation generated by the app economy,” Catherine A. Novelli, vice president of worldwide government affairs at Apple, wrote in comments to the agency.

But the underlying concern, for both the industry and regulators, is not so much about online products for children themselves. It is about the data collection and data mining mechanisms that facilitate digital marketing on apps and Web sites for children — and a debate over whether these practices could put children at greater risk.

France to Probe Mobile Upstart

The French government asked the country's antitrust authority to study whether France's new cut-rate mobile-phone operator, Free Mobile, is benefiting from a sweetheart roaming agreement, potentially giving ammunition to incumbent companies that have argued the deal is forcing them to cut jobs.

France's independent competition watchdog said that it will give an opinion by the end of February on whether Iliad SA's Free Mobile, France's fourth mobile-phone operator, would gain a "lasting advantage" over competitors if it extends its roaming agreement with partly state-owned France Télécom SA, the country's largest mobile-phone operator by subscribers. The government also asked the authority to weigh in on whether France's mobile operators can pool resources to roll out shared wireless networks in rural areas, as well as whether the operators can share wireless networks in urban areas "without harming competition, jobs and investment." The government request could signal a shift in French telecommunications and competition policy.

Value of spectrum use in UK up 25% in five years

The value of the airwaves used by mobile phone services and broadcasters in the UK has risen by a quarter in five years, which will boost hopes for a strong return from the auction of 4G spectrum due next year. The economic value of spectrum use in the UK was £52bn in 2011, an increase of 25 per cent in real terms since 2006, according to a study by Analysys Mason, the consultancy.

There are plans for the release of 500MHz of spectrum, currently used by the public sector, for commercial use by 2020, which could deliver a further windfall for state coffers as well as boosting the wider economy. Radio spectrum is a valuable but scarce resource used under license by a range of companies and public bodies. Different types of spectrum have different values, but increased demand for access has prompted the government to review where freeing up airwaves can add the most economic value. The study was released as the European authorities decided to allow additional spectrum for 4G mobile broadband use that had previously been assigned for 3G use, underlining the shift towards using phones for mobile internet services.

CPB Provides Emergency Grants Following Hurricane Sandy

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is providing New York-based public media stations WNET and WNYC with emergency grants of $250,000 each to address their urgent and critical needs in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Stations will use the funds, available immediately, to continue broadcasting news and information about relief efforts to communities throughout New York and New Jersey, as well as to repair station infrastructure damaged in the storm.

Station Web Traffic Explodes During Sandy

The websites of broadcast television stations located in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy experienced up to three times more traffic during the height of the storm than on a typical weekday, according to the two leading providers of Web-based services for TV stations across the U.S.

Based on data provided to the National Association of Broadcasters by Worldnow and Internet Broadcasting, 10.4 million unique visitors logged onto the websites of TV stations in states affected by Hurricane Sandy between Oct. 28 and Oct. 30. This was more than double their normal traffic and for one group of stations, more than four times their normal weekday traffic. These TV station website visitors viewed 76 million pages of content, or 2.5 to 3.5 times more pages than on a normal workday. Data does not include mobile traffic.

Republicans hate to (spectrum) share: How the election affects the FCC

For those of us in the broadband policy world, the choices the electorate makes on November 6 could have repercussions for everything from network neutrality to how much wireless spectrum is released. Let’s take a look at what folks in D.C. circles see ahead depending on who wins.

As a general rule, a Romney victory would most benefit the incumbent telcos, according to a report from Stifel Nicolaus: “We believe the two Bells would gain the most from a Republican victory and de-regulatory telecom thrust, while some of their rivals would do better under the Democrats, including non-Bell wireless carriers, CLECs, and other upstarts. We suspect that cable will do fairly well under either party, with some risks, and that midsize telcos, DBS, edge/tech giants, and broadcasters face various trade-offs.”

The reason for this can be summed up in a pithy quote provided by Richard Bennett, a senior research fellow at the industry-dominated think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. When I asked what was at stake for the FCC and telecom policy in this year’s elections, he said, “It’s either going to get down to Chairman McDowell or Chairman Levin,” referring to current Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell or a Democrat heading up the FCC in the model of Blair Levin. Bennett said that Levin, who helped write the National Broadband Plan and is now spearheading a gigabit fiber project to connect U.S. universities, might not actually take on the Chairman role, but someone who thinks like he does would be a likely candidate.

Fox Directs Viewers To Website For Full Obama Speech, After Airing Entire Romney Comments

Fox News' election coverage continues to overwhelmingly favor Mitt Romney just a day before Election Day.

On Nov 5, Fox News kicked off election coverage by airing Romney's entire campaign speech live in Orlando, Florida, but did not extend the same coverage to President Obama's speech in Madison, Wisconsin later in the day. America's Newsroom started airing footage from Romney's campaign rally at the top of the 9 a.m. ET hour and went live to his speech three minutes later. Romney spoke uninterrupted for about 26 minutes before co-host Martha MacCallum returned to provide a positive overview of what he had just said. By contrast, Happening Now cut away from Obama's speech in Madison after just eight minutes. Co-host Jenna Lee then told viewers: "If you'd like to watch the president and what he has to say in Madison, you can do so at FoxNews.com." Since last week, Fox News has provided significantly less coverage to Obama campaign speeches, airing two hours and 48 minutes of Romney's speeches, as compared with 27 minutes of Obama's speeches from the morning of November 1 to 5 p.m. ET on November 4. So for every minute of airtime Fox News gave Obama, Romney was afforded a little over six minutes.

5 social media questions 2012 will answer

The 2012 race marks the first time a new type of high-level campaign staffer — the digital director — had a seat in the top tier of the presidential campaigns as well as most major congressional races. In the case of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, theirs were senior staffers with significantly more input than ever before and multimillion-dollar budgets. Nearly every major Senate race had a prominent social media guru, too. After November 6, the political world will start looking back to see how it worked and what might change next time.

Here are five burning questions to be answered once the votes are counted:

Was social media worth the hype?
Which social media channels mattered most — and least?
What becomes of Obama’s much-vaunted e-mail list?
Speaking of e-mail, is it still the king of online fundraising?
Where does mobile fit in the campaign ecosystem?

Benton

Search