November 2012

Changing channels: Chicago TV stations face management churn, digital competition

While change has roiled executive suites atop newspaper outlets around town, management of Chicago's TV industry has been relatively stable for years, as dependable as a sports lead-in to the 10 o'clock news. But no more. Three new business managers have arrived at the city's local TV stations since June.

WLS-TV/Channel 7 in June hired John Idler as general manager after Emily Barr, who led Chicago's market-leading station for 15 years, took the helm of Washington Post Co.'s TV unit. Meanwhile, WBBM-TV/Channel 2 poached Marty Wilke in September from WGN-TV/Channel 9, leaving WGN with an acting general manager, Steve Farber. The management churn is likely to stoke competition in a market long dominated by ABC-owned WLS. But this will be no old-fashioned ratings war. Local TV stations—indeed, the entire broadcast television industry—are coping with new threats as the Internet, YouTube, smartphones, DVR devices, iPads, video games and even cable TV reruns draw viewers' eyeballs away from local broadcast TV.

Update on Communications Improvements and Restoration

The Federal Communications Commission continues to collect data from communications companies about the impacts of the storm, but we have begun narrowing our data collection to a more targeted geographic area as restoration progresses, and will continue to do so as needs change. As a result, today’s report does not contain data for Delaware, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, where service has been largely restored. Our report covers 146 counties in the remaining seven states and Washington D.C., down from an earlier total of 158 counties. This remains a fluid situation, and we consider the data supplied each morning by communications providers to be preliminary but useful.

As of 10 a.m. November 2, our assessment indicates continued steady improvements in wireline and wireless communications networks throughout the affected area. As before, however, restoration efforts in the hardest hit areas – including New York and New Jersey – are more difficult. While communications providers are still working hard to replenish fuel supplies for generators, they tell us that the fuel situation is beginning to improve. Our latest data still indicate that calls throughout the affected area can be received at 9-1-1 call centers, but there are still limited cases where calls are being re-routed to another center or do not contain location information. We are staying in contact with the affected 911 centers, state and local authorities, and communications providers to help ensure that 9-1-1 remains operational while full capabilities are restored. … The data indicate that the number of cell site outages has declined to 15 percent overall. This is down from approximately 25 percent on Tuesday morning and 19 percent yesterday morning for the earlier, larger reporting area. As before, this figure includes many cases where cell sites that are otherwise operational are effectively inoperable because of outages in other parts of the communications infrastructure, which is highly interdependent. With regard to cable services, it appears that outages for today’s smaller geographic are at 17 percent. Today’s estimate includes, for the first time, data from a company that serves many areas that have been severely affected by the storm and widespread power outages. Excluding the additional reporting, the percentage of cable outages would have shown a continued decline from yesterday’s estimate of 12-14 percent of subscribers.

Cellphone Users Steaming at Hit-or-Miss Service

To wireless customers, cellphone networks might seem to be made out of thin air. But they are plenty vulnerable to catastrophic storms — and bringing service back can take an excruciatingly long time.

On November 2, four days after Hurricane Sandy, the major carriers — AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA and Sprint — were still busily rebuilding their networks in the hardest-hit areas. One-quarter of the cell towers in the storm zone were knocked out, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Many had no power, and their backup battery systems soon drained. The lines connecting those towers to the rest of the phone network were ripped out. Carriers deployed generators to provide power, but eventually those required more fuel — another limited resource. In an emergency, a lack of cellphone reception can be dangerous, especially as more people have chosen to snip landlines out of their budgets. About 60 percent of American households have landlines, down from 78 percent four years ago, according to Chetan Sharma, an independent mobile analyst. The carriers say they are trying their best to deal with an unusual disaster. But in the past, they have steadfastly objected to recommendations from regulators that they spend more money on robust emergency equipment, like longer-lasting backup batteries.

Media, the Storm and How Sandy Changed Reporting Forever

[Commentary] The changes in news media around Hurricane Sandy surprised me in a number of ways. In particular: their speed, volume, and news value.

Mainstream media no longer tried to ignore the power of social media; instead, they used the crowd-sourced information to feed (and in some cases mislead) their audiences. On the local news stations, anchors literally held their phones in their hand, scrolling through tweets as they ad-libbed their way through their newscasts. Perhaps the most surprising was the volume -- the sheer volume of video that made its way unfiltered onto the web. So, the question is: Does this replace professional journalism? Far from it. UGC Newsgathering adds sources, point of view, and reach. But it also adds noise, and inaccuracy, and fakes. Tons of fake PhotoShop images. Tons of false reports about water on the floor of the stock exchange, or other rumors amplified by the speed of the social web. So, going forward, we need the power and voice of UGC news, as well as the curatorial tools and fact checking chops of working Journalists to help us filter signal from noise. Welcome to the new world of media, where the volume is massive, and the filters are human. It's a new way to think of news, but it's the way we're going to in the future.

Sandy, Sandy, my darlin', you hurt me real bad

[Commentary] At least 74 deaths. An estimated $50 billion in economic damages. Superstorm Sandy measured 1,000 miles across, lashed winds up to 90 miles per hour, dropped 12.5 inches of rain on Eaton, Maryland and 34 inches of snow on Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The storm forced evacuations from Ocean City, Maryland to Dartmouth, Massachusetts. In its wake, some 8.5 million homes were without power. These numbers alone can’t help us comprehend the impact of the huge storm that hit the Eastern Seaboard this week. So we look at just a small slice of it: the critical role of communications in preparing for, surviving and recovering from a natural disaster. What this week teaches us, again, is that during an emergency, one of the most precious commodities is information and the ability to communicate it without impediments.

How to Tweet Responsibly During a Breaking-News Event

[Commentary] Since Oct 29's tweeting on Hurricane Sandy, there's been a great debate in social-media circles over whether Twitter is self-correcting, or whether misinformation spread there and on other social-media platforms can then flood into the real world, outside the range of any pullback.

"What happens on Twitter doesn't stay on Twitter," warned Bloomberg's Jared Keller. Writing on GigaOM, Matthew Ingram had a contrary view, hailing Twitter as a "self-cleaning oven" for news. The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal got into the fact-checking business here on this site, knocking down fake Sandy photos and pondering ways to counter misinformation on the viral web. And Poynter's Craig Silverman even proposed that his organization and other groups should "work together to secure a grant and test whether a centralized, non-profit organization could act as a (mis)information clearinghouse during breaking news and other big events, as well as a source of best practices for knocking down misinformation." But I wonder almost if this is over-thinking the issue. "When we get mad at others for fooling us, we should also be mad at ourselves for fooling our readers," the Guardian's Heidi Moore wrote. She's right.

Over 20 million tweets sent as Sandy struck

Twitter users flocked to the micro-messaging network this week as Hurricane Sandy swept through the eastern U.S. seaboard, sending more than 20 million tweets about the storm between October 28 and November 1. This far exceeds the 13.7 million tweets sent during the Super Bowl in February, typically the largest media event of the year. The 20 million tweets included the terms "sandy," "hurricane," "#sandy," and "#hurricane."

The Sandy effect: how Manhattan looks on Foursquare after a hurricane

Foursquare has released a heat-map of check-ins showing how Hurricane Sandy affected local traffic in Manhattan. The southern half of the city, which suffered blackouts and flooding, took the brunt of it the impacts.

What’s Really Happening In Blacked-Out Manhattan

The lights are still out for a quarter of a million people in Lower Manhattan, and things are getting dangerous. But cell phones and social media are enabling an entirely self-organized recovery effort that is showing up where FEMA, the Red Cross, and the city are not.

It’s about the info, not the outlet

As Hurricane Sandy devastated the eastern seaboard, news outlets, networks, and Twitter flooded the airwaves with information. For those able to turn to the Internet for help, locating correct information in an instantly digestible format wasn’t an easy as it should have been.

While many news outlets did a solid job providing coverage, it was a map produced by Google that stood out as the most comprehensive display of the data available about the storm and its recovery. Google’s Superstorm Sandy map and its NYC version aggregated information about weather conditions, shelters, evacuation zones, and transportation. The maps were built by Google’s Crisis Response Team which is a project of , Google’s philanthropic arm. The Crisis Response Team has been responding to natural disasters since 2005, when members worked on a similar project for Hurricane Katrina. Google’s map is effective because it pulls the right data in quickly and displays it clearly. The layout is clear and simply formatted; users can select various layers of information they want displayed. For example, they can filter out all the other layers except for shelters. They can then add on the traffic update layer to see the fastest and safest route to their closest shelter.

Benton

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