April 2014

Out of 1.2 trillion Google searches in 2012, Trayvon Martin was the ninth most searched event. But the unarmed black teen who was fatally shot in Florida may have never become a household name if it wasn’t for Twitter, Facebook and the blogs that kept his story in the news until it reached a national level.

Now black and Latino network neutrality advocates say it will be much harder, and maybe even impossible, to catapult stories like Martin’s to a national level if new Federal Communications Commission ‘fast lane’ rules are implemented.

Internet neutrality advocates (or activists who believe that all Internet traffic should be treated equally) say a similar media experience like Trayvon Martin’s would be harder to replicate if the FCC’s new rules are implemented.

“It’s really a freedom of speech issue and the right to speak freely and the FCC is basically turning control over to the Internet service providers so they can determine who gets to speak and who doesn’t, they’re the ones will end up determining if they speed or slow down your content,” said Joseph Torres, a senior director at Free Press. "The FCC chairman plans to deliver a gift for ISPs, who are among the most powerful and profitable corporations in the world, at the expense of muting the most vulnerable voices in our society," Torres said.

Frontier may be a supporter of the Federal Communications Commission's Connect America Fund phase II, but, like others, it's concerned that the regulator's proposal to raise the broadband speed obligations from 4 to 10 Mbps is not a realistic proposition unless it alters the funding model.

"Any proposal to raise the CAF Phase II minimum speed obligations of broadband used for CAF Phase II from 4 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload to 10 Mbps download without any increase in funding or other change in terms is not economically feasible," wrote Kathleen Abernathy, executive vice president of External Affairs for Frontier, in a recent FCC filing. "The FCC's own USF budget does not provide adequate funding for a 10 Mbps ubiquitous deployment."

Instead of requiring 10 Mbps, Frontier said the FCC could enable service providers to extend broadband services to rural markets without having to deliver 10 Mbps to every location. It added that while a large percentage could get 10 Mbps, others could get at least 6 Mbps, and the most remote customers could get up to 4 Mbps.

A Q&A with National Cable & Telecommunications Association President and CEO Michael Powell. He has said that the phrase “cable” in NCTA does not convey the “breadth of who we are and what we do.”

But Powell, a self-described “geek” and frustrated artist, recently told the story of how lawyers for the industry’s main trade association came to seek Patent and Trademark Office protection of a potential new moniker. Here’s a clue: He was clueless.

“There is an element of the cable brand I am troubled by,” he said. “I think it is incomplete. I think it has a certain meaning in the minds of consumers and a certain meaning in the minds of policymakers. And I think it underrepresents the breadth of what we are and what we do. We are not some old-fashioned cable industry. We are probably, now, the country’s most sophisticated full-service communications provider.”

For the most part, TV news targeting African Americans has been a bust. Two now defunct cable networks, Black Family Channel and New Urban Entertainment, tried it in the early 2000s, and the pioneering BET now limits itself to breaking news and occasional specials, eschewing regular newscasts. But despite some skepticism, the concept is showing new signs of life at both the local and national levels.

The idea for one of them, the Black Television News Channel, dates to 2008 when former-Rep JC Watts (R-OK), a founding partner in the venture, announced his intention to raise $20 million to build the operation. Watts’ partners include Bob Brillante, a cable industry veteran who founded the Florida News Channel, a regional 24-hour cable channel; former US House of Representatives Budget Director Steve Pruitt; and Frank Watson, a media management consultant.

Brillante says the demise of black-owned TV stations has fueled the need for black-targeted programming -- to say nothing of the potential money that can be made serving an audience that watches 37% more TV than other groups. According to Brillante, BTNC programming plans call for a nightly one-hour newscast featuring “culturally specific” content as well a business news show and a morning news show. Other slots will be filled with talk shows.

The key contract it wants to resurrect is with Comcast. It had agreed to air BTNC in seven of the country’s top 10 African American markets -- Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, Detroit, Miami and Baltimore.