November 2012

Telecom service improves in Sandy hit areas, challenges remain

Telecom companies continued to show improvement in their services over the weekend in areas hit by Hurricane Sandy, but challenges remain in some pockets of the hardest-hit spots. Some outages continue as the restoration of commercial power hasn't yet occurred in some areas and infrastructure damage poses hurdles to repairing damaged or unconnected equipment.

The wireless carriers are generally providing public charging stations and other resources; many have provided flexibility for customers to delay paying their bills without risk of a service disconnection. Cellular networks are a collection of individual sites that connect wireless devices to a core, wired network, but they also require power to function. While backup generators and batteries provide some cushion, obtaining fuel and gaining access to the cell sites themselves can make it harder to keep power flowing. Restoring power will help the situation, but some sites are also down because they have no connection to the core network or because equipment is damaged. The wireless carriers have had technicians working on the problems around the clock. Verizon Wireless said 98.1% of its cell sites are working in the area impacted by Sandy.

Wireless Industry Resisted Calls To Back Up Cell Towers Before Sandy

One key factor helps explain why communities ravaged by Hurricane Sandy could not use cell phones to call for help and communicate with the outside world: mobile telephone companies have for years lobbied to kill rules that would have forced them to maintain backup power at their cell phone towers. After Hurricane Katrina knocked out communications along the Gulf Coast, federal regulators proposed that wireless companies have backup power at all cell towers. But the wireless industry sued to block the requirement, saying it would be a financial burden and regulators didn't have authority to impose it. An appeals court later sided with the industry.

New Jersey to Allow Voting by Email (and Fax) for Residents Displaced by Superstorm Sandy

Less than a week after the storm -- and just three days before Election Day -- New Jersey officials have announced that they will allow those displaced from their homes and first responders to submit their votes by email or fax.

A directive issued by Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno officially designated displaced New Jersey residents as "overseas voters," thus giving them the electronic voting option already available to New Jersey residents serving in the military. In addition, displaced voters and first responders may also vote by provisional ballot at any New Jersey polling location. Voters who opt for an electronic ballot must email or fax an application to their county clerk who will then determine whether the person qualifies for the provision.

NBC’s Sandy Benefit Concert Draws $23 Million in Pledges

NBC says its benefit concert for Superstorm Sandy victims drew nearly $23 million in donations to the American Red Cross. The hour-long telethon included performances by artists native to the areas hardest-hit by Sandy, including New Jersey natives Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi and Billy Joel of New York's Long Island. Others who took part in the special included Sting, Christina Aguilera, Mary J. Blige, Tina Fey and Jon Stewart.

Obama slammed by attack ads in final weekend of campaign

In the final weekend before Election Day, President Barack Obama was hit with more than $37 million in attack ads; Romney faced less than $1 million in attacks, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Outside spenders dropped roughly $56.3 million on the presidential election on Nov 2-4, with more than two-thirds of the ads being negative, a Center for Public Integrity analysis shows. On all federal races, outside groups spent roughly $73.3 million over the weekend. The biggest outside spender, not counting party committees and traditional political action committees, was the conservative super PAC American Crossroads, co-founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove.

Beck Acts as a Bridge Between Romney and Evangelical Christians

On radio and on his Internet network, the influential conservative pundit Glenn Beck frequently invokes God, religious freedom and the founding fathers, but he does not regularly discuss his own Mormon faith. But in early September, he broke with practice and hosted a special one-hour show, asking his audience, “Does Mitt Romney’s Mormonism make him too scary or weird to be elected to president of the United States?” Beck has not always supported Romney. (“I think he’s an honorable man, but I don’t trust him,” he said last year.) But as perhaps the best-known Mormon after the Republican presidential candidate and a major influence on evangelical Christians, Beck has emerged as an unlikely theological bridge between the first Mormon presidential nominee and a critical electorate. At the same time, Beck’s defense of his and Romney’s shared faith speaks to the long-frayed relationship between evangelical Christians and Mormons and raises the question of whether evangelicals will ultimately put aside religious differences and vote on common conservative issues.

Inside The Candidates' Code: What The Campaign Websites Say About Obama And Romney

A political campaign website has a singular purpose: vacuum up personal information and donations. How they do it is a matter of priorities. Content-heavy sites are slow to load and expensive to operate; running one in a cost-conscious manner means eliminating unnecessary server requests, tracking user behavior, optimizing every interaction, and shaving kilobytes off pages. So who does it better, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? The answer could provide yet another clue into how effective each man would be leading the country's economic recovery. A side-by-side comparison reveals that neither site is perfect--and that they are not very similar.

Lucasfilm deal tightens ties between Hollywood and Bay Area

With the announcement that Disney will buy Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, the ties between Hollywood and the Bay Area have been cinched tighter. As new technologies reshape the entertainment landscape, the Bay Area -- and specifically Silicon Valley -- is emerging as a major force in the future of filmmaking.

"I do think there is something that is happening under the surface in Silicon Valley that is very exciting," said Jim Breyer, a partner at Accel Partners who personally invested in Marvel Entertainment, acquired by Disney in 2009 for $4.3 billion. He added that leading movie and television executives in Hollywood and New York, while worried about how Silicon Valley technology is upending their businesses, are also keenly aware of how that same technology can help them make better movies and attract bigger audiences.

Coke Gets Hacked And Doesn’t Tell Anyone

Federal Bureau of Investigation officials quietly approached executives at Coca-Cola on March 15, 2009, with some startling news. Hackers had broken into the company’s computer systems and were pilfering sensitive files about its attempted $2.4 billion acquisition of China Huiyuan Juice Group, according to three people familiar with the situation and an internal company document detailing the cyber intrusion.

The Huiyuan deal, which collapsed three days later, would have been the largest foreign takeover of a Chinese company at the time. Coca-Cola, the world’s largest soft-drink maker, has never publicly disclosed the loss of the Huiyuan information, despite its potential effect on the deal. It is just one in a global barrage of corporate computer attacks kept secret from shareholders, regulators, employees -- and in some cases even from senior executives.

Kagan: Retransmission to Top $6 Billion by 2018

SNL Kagan is projecting retransmission consent fees to surpass $6 billion by 2018 (the prediction is $6.05 billion), almost triple the projection of $2.36 billion for 2012, and on pace for a little south of $1 per sub.

In November 2011, Kagan projected $4.86 billion by 2017. Kagan said that the increased projection was due to "the success of a wider range of TV station owners in securing sequentially higher retrans fees from multichannel operators over the last year of negotiated deals." Or put another way, more stations getting more money for their signals. But according to Kagan, that is still only 10% of the estimated $43 billion by 2015 that cable operators are projected to pay cable programmers in affiliate fees.

Benton

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