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  2. July 2013

July 2013

Was Newspaper Decline Inevitable? Veterans Conclude That Yes, It Was

A broad study by a group of respected journalists into the disruption that the digital age has brought to print has led them to a surprising conclusion: the decline was unavoidable.

Former Time Inc. editor in chief John Huey, the New York Times' former digital chief Martin Nisenholtz and Paul Sagan, executive chairman of Akamai Technologies, have just completed a video project at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government interviewing 60-some members of the media about the digital disruption that has decimated newspapers across the country. Their conclusion after all these video interviews, offered up at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference? Advertising went away and there's nothing newspapers could have done about it.

California newspaper defies industry wisdom to stay alive – and prospers

Conventional media wisdom posits several ways for a newspaper to commit suicide. It can drive up costs by multiplying staff and pagination. It can prioritize print over digital. It can erect a hard paywall to seal itself from the internet. Or, if you are the Orange County Register, you can do all three.

The California daily did so almost exactly a year ago, prompting astonishment and morbid curiosity. How long would it last? In a crisis-stricken industry more accustomed to death by a thousand cuts, the Register, which dates back a century, at least promised a dramatic and original demise. But this week, as the paper prepares to celebrate the experiment's first anniversary, it appears to be thriving.

Spanish or English? The dilemma of the booming Hispanic TV market

Since the 1980s, Univision and Telemundo — based in Miami — have been the dominant players in U.S.-based Spanish-language broadcast, battling for the top positions (currently held by Univision.) And with the U.S. Hispanic population projected to double from 53.3 million in 2012 to 128.8 million in 2060, or one-in-three Americans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, advertising revenue is expected to far exceed the $6.3 billion currently spent on advertising to Hispanics.

The predicted burst has kicked up the stakes, pushing players like Time Warner and News Corp into the field with the introduction, respectively, of CNN Latino and MundoFox. Meanwhile, Univision and Telemundo have refocused their strategies to be sure they retain — and even grow — their market share. Both stalwart networks will continue to rely on telenovelas and live variety shows as programming staples. But the two networks are aiming at different targets in one key aspect: language.

Today's Vote on NSA Spying Is Vital, Whether It Succeeds or Not

Do you know what your Congressional representative thinks about NSA spying? You're about to find out.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote as soon as today on an amendment that would block the NSA's ability to collect records about every phone call made in the U.S. -- a significant, potentially history-altering effort to rein in the surveillance state built in secret by the executive branch. Rep. Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, is the congressman pushing the effort, which would be considered as part of a larger bill by the Senate if it passes. He says he is optimistic. The Obama Administration has urged Congress to scrap the amendment, releasing a statement that may be the least self-aware thing I've seen this year: "This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process," the White House stated, referring to a public vote on the House floor that would help end a secret policy approved by a secret court. Why does this vote matter so much? Whether it fails or succeeds, America will have every member of the House on record either supporting or opposing the surveillance state's collection of customer data on all phone calls.

What Verizon's Op-Eds Won't Tell You About America's Slow, Costly Internet Access

[Commentary] Recently, the incumbent communication companies in America arranged for the publication in The New York Times of two op-eds (in a single week) claiming that America was doing just fine when it comes to high-speed Internet access. But they are trying to confuse you. They are hoping that Americans don't notice that they're focusing on the wrong definition of high-speed Internet access and blurring two separate markets - mobile wireless and fixed connections.

First, the relevant market for everyone is (or should be) high-capacity, low-latency, symmetrical fiber connections to homes and businesses of at least 100Mbps. Second, mobile wireless access sold (at healthy margins) by Verizon and AT&T is a complementary product that isn't substitutable for a high-capacity, low-latency wire at home.

Many Americans are not rich enough to afford the total cost of satisfying their needs for voice and Internet connectivity as well as access to video (or other high-capacity applications) and mobility. And so they choose wireless as the option that satisfies some of their needs at a cost they can afford. But this situation, in which some Americans rely on smartphone access sold by wireless carriers because that's all they can afford, is merely amplifying and cementing existing inequalities in American society. It's a bug, not a feature. You can't cost-effectively enter a classroom virtually using a smartphone, or have a visit with your doctor online, or do many other things that require first-class, very-high-capacity, reasonably-priced access. This problem is about to get much worse as gigabit applications come online.

FTTH Council Calls on FCC to Create “Gigabit Communities Race to the Top” Program

The Fiber to the Home Council Americas (FTTH Council) challenged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to establish a Gigabit Communities Race to the Top program, which would demonstrate new models for communications investment and jumpstart the development of ultra-high speed applications so critical to economic growth and social interaction.

Modeled on the Obama Administration’s successful Race to the Top education initiative, the FTTH Council petition sets forth a competitive program of matching grants of up to $10 million for projects in Tier II and Tier III markets where communities working with service providers develop innovative proposals for bringing symmetric gigabit connections to community anchor institutions and their neighboring communities.

Elements of the Gigabit Race To the Top Program:

  • The FCC would hold annual competitions in which facilities and service providers, working with local governments and community anchor institutions like schools, hospitals and libraries would present proposals to deploy gigabit networks and provide services at discounted rates to anchor institutions and surrounding neighborhoods.
  • The facilities and service providers could be either private or public entities.
  • The Commission would select the most meritorious proposals and provide winning applicants with up to $10 Million in funds, to be matched by state and private sources, to support the proposals.
  • The program would be funded by unused support in the current Connect America Fund programs targeting areas serviced by price cap local exchange carriers and would be distributed each year for 5 years beginning in 2014.
  • Applications would have to describe in detail a proposed project to provide (symmetric) gigabit service to anchor community institutions and neighboring areas in a given area, including a description of which anchor institutions would be served, the nature of the institutions, what links between anchor institutions would be created, the existing and contemplated level of broadband services in the surrounding communities to be served and how the project would serve as a catalyst to drive new applications, additional network builds and community development.
  • Projects will be favored if they serve a broad range of anchor community institutions – and interactivity among those anchor institutions – as well as the surrounding neighborhoods. Projects that are selected should be transformational and drive urban and civic improvements and economic growth and innovation and job creation in a way existing programs have not.

FCC Reform: Return to the Rule of Law

[Commentary] Rep Greg Walden (R-OR) should be applauded for doggedly holding a Congressional hearing on the much needed review, reform, and reinventing of Federal Communications Commission procedure and process.

He is expected to introduce legislation similar to the FCC Process Reform Act and FCC Consolidated Reporting Act that passed the House of Representatives last year, only to die in the Senate. In the meantime, the FCC should not wait for legislation to pass to adopt some simple, common sense reforms of their own. In fact, first they just need to return to the “rule of law,” not the “rule of man” (With two female Commissioners, I suppose this will have to be the “Rule of Women” now!). Too often the personality of the agency leadership has resulted in expansion – broad expansion in some cases – of the specific legal authority granted by Congress to the FCC. The office of FCC Chairman has been expanded far beyond the letter of the law. It needs to be curtailed by self-control, aside from whether a new law is passed.

[Deborah Taylor Tate is a former FCC commissioner]

The End of the (Wire)Line

If you’re an American who lives in the middle of nowhere and you want phone and Internet service, you can pretty much have them, albeit in their least sexy form. That’s right, we’re talking about old-fashioned landlines for the phone and (shudder!) dial-up for the Internet. Hyper-wired, connected citizens have long since relegated those services to the dustbin of tech history. But for people living in remote areas (or some low-income neighborhoods), landlines and dial-up are still the lifeblood of telecommunications.

Take them away, and you’re sending people back to the Stone Age of telecommunications. But taking them away is effectively what big telecom companies — companies like AT&T to be specific — may well end up doing if they have their way. AT&T filed a petition last year with the Federal Communications Commission asking to get out from under regulations and lay its wireline services to rest. But the federal petition is but the most visible part of the strategy. AT&T has been playing a long game, flying under the radar at the state level. How? With the help of ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — of which AT&T appears to be a devoted member. (Not only does an AT&T representative sit on the group’s Private Enterprise Advisory Board, AT&T sponsored ALEC’s most recent conference, the Spring Task Force Summit in Oklahoma City.) Published on ALEC’s website are at least four model bills and statements echoing AT&T’s position on telecommunications regulations — briefly, that there should be little to none.

Made in America 2.0: behind Google and Apple's sudden patriotism

The Moto X purports to be the first smartphone assembled in the US. But Google and Motorola are hardly the only big-name brands in tech using patriotism to move product these days.

Apple CEO Tim Cook made headlines last December when he announced that Apple would be making a product in the US this year. That product turned out to be the bold, new, trashcan-shaped Mac Pro, first unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June. Clearly, something is driving some of the most important companies in consumer tech to promote their affiliations with the US more today than they have in decades. But what? "There’s no doubt that ‘Made in America’ advertising is effective," said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), a nonprofit trade group founded in 2007 to represent steelworkers and other US industrial laborers. "It’s not limited to tech gadgets." To his point, a recent survey by the Boston Consulting Group found that 80 percent of 5,000 consumers were willing to pay more for products made in America, including electronics. The same study found Chinese consumers were also willing to pay more for American-made products. Two other trends in the US are also making it into a more attractive electronics manufacturing hub: a depressed labor market and faltering worker wages.

E-rate 2.0

Placement 

<p>The E-rate program (more formally known as the <a href="http://www.usac.org/sl/">schools and libraries universal service support mechanism</a>) was established in 1997 and represents the federal government&rsquo;s largest education technology program. When Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, only 14 percent of classrooms had Internet; to date, the E-rate program has successfully connected virtually all U.S. schools and libraries (97% of U.S. classrooms) to the Internet.</p>

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