November 2012

The damage to the electrical grid from Superstorm Sandy is just a taste of what could happen from a major cyberattack, says Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano. And a DHS task force said that one way to minimize that kind of risk is to recruit a "Cyber Reserve" of computer security pros that could be deployed throughout the country to help the nation defend and recover from such an attack.

Could a "Cyber Reserve" mitigate the threat? DHS Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute believes that until DHS can improve its in-house capabilities, a reserve is the way to go. Jim Finkle reports at Reuters that the Deputy Secretary hopes to have a working model for a Cyber Reserve within a year, with the first members drawn from retired government employees now working for private companies, but also recruit from Department of Defense contractors, veterans' organizations and outside groups. The management of such a reserve of security pros could be tricky, however, since it would involve security clearances and allowing people access to confidential information and tools that could leak into the wild unless they were tightly controlled.

Appearing on C-SPAN's "The Communicators", Mignon Clyburn, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), expressed confidence in the agency's ability to execute its ambitious plan to auction off television stations' airwave licenses to cellular service providers.

"We have no plan B, there's a plan A. We're doing all that we can to make sure that there are market synergies, that there are market forces, that there are market opportunities that both the buyers and sellers can take advantage of," Commissioner Clyburn said. She said the auctions could be extremely beneficial to the United States and the FCC is working hard to make sure the process is underway by its 2014 deadline, so she's not concerned that wireless carriers will go to back Congress to ask for more spectrum. "It has the opportunity to bring more spectrum into play than we've seen in 25 years, so I am not concerned. We are doing all we can to make it all that it can be," Commissioner Clyburn said. "I'm not going to be speculative as to how much [spectrum] it will bring to market, but it has the potential to really put us on a firm pathway of meeting the needs of this nation by way of mobile engagement."

The digital future is coming to radio, eventually. For now, Internet radio still represents a small portion of the radio listening audience. And, according to the latest earnings report from Clear Channel Communications, a radio giant that has been moving aggressively into the streaming world, its value is still unclear.

The Clear Channel all-purpose online music brand iHeartRadio attracted advertising in the latest quarter that helped offset losses from more traditional kinds of broadcasting. Yet the costs associated with streaming music weighed down what otherwise would have been savings on the terrestrial radio side. In results reported by CC Media Holdings, Clear Channel’s parent company, the media and entertainment division, which includes radio, had $799 million in revenue for the third quarter, up 0.9 percent from the same period last year, and the division’s earnings grew 2.6 percent to $310 million. CC Media Holdings, which also includes separate outdoor advertising divisions, had $1.59 billion in revenue over all, up only $4 million from last year, and its net loss narrowed to $39 million from $67 million. The holding company’s operating income before depreciation, amortization and noncash compensation expenses, its preferred method of measuring earnings, was unchanged at $480 million.

There’s an increasingly thorny debate on how to monitor advertising aimed at children when they are confronted with so many new forms of marketing online. If even the ad industry can’t agree on the definition of an online ad, who can?

Kids spend more time than ever in front of screens beyond the living room television. Advertisers have responded with sophisticated ad campaigns that can start on the TV and then move to apps, social media sites and online games. And federal regulators are struggling to keep up. So far, the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t regulate advertising to kids on these new platforms, except to ensure that marketing messages aren’t false or misleading. The Federal Communications Commission limits ads on television but doesn’t police the Web either. That worries children’s advocates, who say that the FTC and FCC may make distinctions but that to kids, a screen is a screen is a screen — and everything on it looks like entertainment to them.