February 2013

Common Sense: Ratings Promo Campaign Good as Far as It Goes

Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer says the new TV and movie ratings promotion campaign is good as far as it goes, but that isn't far enough.

Common Sense provides reviews and recommendations on family-friendly programming for a host of media companies including Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Disney and Tribune, all members of the associations who collectively announced the new campaign, which include both new PSAs and existing PSAs from the last time a D.C. spotlight was put on content issues. "We give credit to the entertainment industry for this proactive first step in acknowledging their role in creating content that contributes to the culture of violence in America," Steyer said, although the associations participating in the effort -- National Association of Broadcasters, National Cable and Telecommunications Association, American Cable Association and the Motion Picture Association of America -- have stopped short of acknowledging any causal connection. Steyer said the campaign stops short of getting at some key issues.

"[T]his industry effort puts the onus entirely on parents to screen the media that their kids consume when 75% of America's parents tell us that -- ratings or no ratings -- they have a hard time shielding their kids from viewing violent media," said Steyer. "The PSA campaign is a good start, but it doesn't address the bigger issue of industry's ongoing marketing of age-inappropriate violent content to kids. It's also a glaring omission that the video gaming industry is absent from this initiative, when 77% of parents believe media violence -- including video game violence -- is of concern. We hope the next step for the industry will be to support the president's call for more important research into the possible impact of media violence, and at the same time, for the industry to stop marketing violent media to our nation's kids."

Google Helped Honor FTC Chairman During Agency Inquiry

Google contributed $25,000 to honor the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission while the company was under investigation by the agency for antitrust violations, Senate records show.

Google donated the money to Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based advocacy group that gave FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz an award for his work in developing policies to help children, according to a January disclosure report. Google was listed as one of the sponsors of the awards ceremony along with several other companies, including Comcast, AOL and a charitable arm of Goldman Sachs Group. At the time, the FTC was investigating whether Google unfairly disadvantaged competing websites by favoring its own services in search results. The agency ended the 20-month antitrust probe on Jan. 3 with no enforcement action. Google agreed to voluntary changes in some search practices and signed a consent decree regarding the use of certain patents.

AT&T Goes After Former Merger Partner T-Mobile With Attack Ads

AT&T took aim at T-Mobile USA’s network performance in newspapers ads, escalating a rivalry between two companies that were once poised to merge.

Responding to unspecified claims by T-Mobile, AT&T ran a full-page counterattack in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. The ads say T-Mobile drops twice as many calls and its network speeds are only half as fast as AT&T’s. In criticizing T-Mobile, AT&T is going after the industry’s underdog.

FCC: Budget Cuts Could Harm Vital Missions

Sequester-related budget cuts could affect public safety, consumer protection, spectrum and universal service, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

"The cuts to the FCC's budget required by sequestration are very significant, particularly at a time when staff levels are lower than they have been in nearly 30 years," said a FCC spokesman, "and will harm vital agency missions including public safety and homeland security, law enforcement, universal service, spectrum, and consumer protection. We have been developing plans to try to mitigate the impact of these cuts on consumers, the communications sector, and our staff." The total FCC budget is $341,923,845. Sequestration would cut about $17 million, and would need to be realized in seven months. The FCC is going to try to avoid furloughing any employees through a combination of cuts to travel and expenses (contractors). If there are furloughs, it will be a Friday off every other week, as is the plan in other parts of the government. The FCC may also be slow to hire as folks retire, rather than a moratorium on new hires.

Pelosi, Waxman: : FCC Can Require More Extensive Political Ad Disclosures

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA, House Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo (D-CA) said a new Government Accountability Office clarifies Federal Communications Commission authority to require political ads on broadcasting and cable TV to identify their sponsors.

The Members of Congress went beyond that to say the FCC is obligated to use that authority. According to the legislators, the report clarifies that the FCC has the power "to prevent advertisers from misleading consumers and voters" by requiring ads to identify the "true" sponsors. "It's been said that sunlight is the best disinfectant -- and this report makes clear that the FCC has the power, the authority, and the responsibility to shine a bright light on the organizations and campaigns behind our political advertisements," Rep Pelosi said. "The FCC must simply update its rules to reflect the law, ensuring disclosure in our elections, transparency in our campaigns, and fairness for all voters."

What Does Your Lawyer Want You to Know About Social Media?

The benefits of social media have been well documented in the public sector. From soliciting new ideas and opinions on Facebook to sending out key announcements through Twitter, social networks have become vital communication mediums for government agencies. But while online tools have made interacting with the public more convenient, the legal pitfalls associated with social media have also been exposed. Chief among those concerns are the free speech rights of users, particularly if a government entity deletes comments off its social pages.

Municipal attorneys recommend that agencies refrain from deleting user commentary on official government Facebook walls or Twitter if those pages are open to public posting, which could be construed as a public forum in the eyes of the law. A public forum is a venue open to all types of expression allowed under the First Amendment like parks and streets. However, there is an exception if the speech incites violence or is threatening. In those cases, removing the comments won’t subject an agency to liability on the basis of a First Amendment challenge.

Conservative geeks want a wired GOP

Silicon Valley and the GOP — together at last?

That may seem like a peculiar proposition given all the public soul-searching and dirge-singing since Election Day over the digital failure of Republicans in modern campaigning. But a blast of cheerful California sunshine may be starting to light the way in the form of an underground gang of young, conservative hackers in the Valley assembling via a communal Google Document to brainstorm about what they can do to save the party from the clutches of tech-phobic leaders. “There’s this myth that there aren’t any Republicans out here who are willing to drop everything to help the way Democratic hackers have,” said Aaron Ginn, who with Garrett Johnson have dubbed their nascent brain trust the Republican Stealth Mob. “We’re out here, and we want to help.”

The Media House of Cards and Netflix’s Big Disruption

[Commentary] Right now we are witnessing firsthand the efforts of a disruptive company as Netflix looks to explode the way we watch quality scripted programming.

On February 1st Netflix made available all 13 episodes of its new program, House of Cards and the resulting discussion amongst the media, and the consumption habits of Netflix subscribers, has been fascinating. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has a vision for TV that ought to scare studio heads as much as Netflix’s first business--direct-by-mail DVDs--scared Blockbuster. So, what is Netflix’s plan for disruption? The streaming TV network wants to turn into the HBO of Internet TV and as media critic Michael Wolff notes: It has formally "broken channel power."

There are in fact two entrenched systems that Netflix is looking to disrupt--first, the current prison of waiting. A week for a new episode, months (or years) for a new season. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, has a name for this prison and what it does to the people trapped inside it: managed dissatisfaction. Hastings is smashing this prison by allowing you to watch what you want, on whichever device you want, when you want, and crucially in whatever volume you want. Watch one episode a week or two or three or all 13. He’s also looking to give fans of HBO-type shows the thing they have been crying out for, a cord-cutting option. One of the big questions in the media industry is when and if we’ll be able to get HBO without having to pay for all the other dreck on cable. Netflix is trying to provide that option.

[Liebling is Creative Culturalist at Y&R New York. He advises clients on how to engage in culture in order to better understand consumer behavior.]

EU privacy taskforce plans to take action against Google before the summer

European privacy authorities approved a plan to come up with measures to curb Google's collection, combination, and storage of its users' personal information before the summer.

The data protection regulators have decided to continue their investigation into Google in close cooperation with each other and will take all actions necessary, the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL) said in a news release. The CNIL is the Data Protection Authority (DPA) leading the investigation. A taskforce led by CNIL will help to coordinate these actions.

31% of Kenya’s GDP is spent through mobile phones

Pundits like to talk about how developing countries can “leapfrog” rich countries by skipping certain stages of development—for example, by going straight to an economy based on renewable energy without first passing through a phase of messy fossil-fuel based industrialization—but it rarely happens. M-Pesa, the system of mobile payments first launched in Kenya, is an exception.

Begun in 2007 as a way to send people their microloans, M-Pesa has since become the country’s dominant method of sending remittances from workers in the city to relatives in Kenya’s rural areas. Safaricom, the mobile telecommunications company that launched M-Pesa, has 19 million customers, which is nearly every adult in Kenya. Of those, 15 million use M-Pesa, which processes 80 transactions a second and handles transactions responsible for 31% of the $33.62 billion GDP of Kenya.

Benton

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