June 2014

Web Browsing Habits of Teens Not as Dire as You’d Think

Think about the technology and Internet habits of teenagers and what comes to mind? Besides a incessant deluge of selfies and sexting that is? You might expect a few familiar suspects at the top of the list -- Facebook, YouTube, Instagram -- and you’d be right, but the landscape of the contemporary teen’s browsing habits aren’t quite as easy to put a finger on as you might expect.

At least according to a new survey by Niche, a site that helps students and families make decisions about prospective schools.

Among the most firm of their findings, it turns out that the death of Facebook has been widely exaggerated, they say.

“While some media outlets have reported teens tiring of Facebook in favor of whatever is the latest craze, Facebook still reigns number one in both total adoption and daily usage.”

61% of those who responded use the service every day, while 87% report having used it, most likely to share some phony viral nonsense I’m guessing. 55% report using YouTube every day, with 97% having at some point. 66% have used Instagram, while 51% use it daily.

Municipal Broadband Is No Utopia

[Commentary] Like most utopian dreams, the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency, or Utopia, hasn't panned out.

Utopia, a consortium of 11 municipalities to build a fiber-optic network, was initially financed in 2004 with a $185 million bond; it was supposed to be completed in three years and have a positive cash flow in five.

The project is a prime example of why governments should not be in the business of building or operating broadband networks -- and why the federal government should not be in the business of cheerleading for them.

Today Utopia has about 11,000 subscribers, less than one quarter of the 49,350 projected to be on board by September 2007. Its failure to attract the anticipated number of customers has caused a spectacular financial failure. Utopia has lost at least $3 million and as much as $13 million annually.

[Schatz is president of Citizens Against Government Waste, Van Tassell is vice president of the Utah Taxpayers Association]

The Supreme Court’s decision on software patents still doesn’t settle the bigger question

[Commentary] The Supreme Court's ruling on software patents dealt a blow to companies that want to patent abstract ideas -- a no-no under intellectual property law.

The unanimous opinion effectively raises the bar for what computer programs can be patented, helping to limit the number of "bad" patents entering the system and the number of lawsuits that can be filed by patent trolls.

But intellectual property experts are a little put out by the decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. Here's why: While the court struck down what was universally said to be a bad patent, it didn't do much to say what kinds of software should be patentable. In other words, the court decided the most basic conflict in the case, but more or less declined to offer guidance for other, future cases.

How to Think about Modern Media Mergers

Recent proposed mergers in the broadband space have brought attention to the competitive implications of these business deals.

Three broad observations should be kept in mind when evaluating broadband mergers and acquisitions:

Mergers and acquisitions can carry real gains for consumers by improving both the company and the dynamics of the relevant market;
The rapid development of the broadband industry demands a much higher threshold for evidence that should deter mergers; and
The broadband market is quickly evolving and as a result easily identified incumbents steadily face competitive pressures from countless new sources.

As past mergers show, mergers and acquisitions carry real gains for consumers by changing both the company and the dynamics of the market. Ultimately, a merged company will face more effective scrutiny from the market and consumers than from either the Department of Justice or the Federal Communications Commission. This is the essence of regulatory humility and indicative of the current market.

For TV Reruns, an Existential Crisis

The decline of Nielsen as being the workhorse of ratings it once was is one of the biggest threats facing cable channels. Cable channels had a low-risk but lucrative business model: fill much of the schedule with reruns of shows that were proven hits on broadcast networks -- CBS, NBC, Fox and ABC -- taking a lot of the guesswork out of programming.

But that formula is no longer reliable.

Audiences have fragmented so badly among myriad cable channels and online video outlets that broadcast networks are finding it harder to produce a hit. That means the pool of shows that can guarantee a strong audience in reruns for cable channels has shrunk drastically, driving up prices for what is available -- even when audiences aren't as strong.

Cutting down on reruns by investing more in original programming, meanwhile, can also be costly if those shows don't gain traction. That is why all the big cable networks are hoping for broadcasters to rediscover their mojo.

Further complicating matters for cable networks, viewers now have other ways to watch reruns, including streaming video services and video-on-demand. The serialized dramas that broadcasters are increasingly producing have proved extremely popular on Netflix, viewers often "binge watch," devouring multiple episodes at a time. Shows suited for binge-watching often don't work as well as traditional reruns for cable channels.

Cable is King but Streaming Stands Strong When it Comes to Americans' TV Viewing Habits

Do you still call it "watching TV" when you're not actually using a TV to do it? That's a question that may be coming up more and more today, given the increasing use of streaming as a viewership option.

While over three-fourths of US adults (77%) say they regularly watch television shows via either cable (55%) or satellite TV (23%), over four in ten say they regularly watch via streaming (43%) including two-thirds of millennials (67%). What's more, streaming seems to be slowly gaining ground on more traditional modes when it comes to the ways Americans most often watch television programs (though it's in no danger of overtaking them in the immediate future).

At 85%, the percentage of Americans saying they most often watch TV on, well, a TV (live feed, recorded or on demand), sans streaming, is down from 89% in 2012. Streaming, meanwhile, is up from 20% in 2012 to 23% today. This preferential shift is strongest when looking at millennials, among whom non-streaming TV preference has declined from 77% to 68% while streaming preference has grown from 41% to 47%. Nearly a quarter of Americans (23%) say they're watching more online/streaming television programming now than they were in 2013, while 37% say their online/streaming viewership is no different than last year and 7% say they're watching less this way now than a year ago.

Among those who regularly watch television shows via streaming, three-fourths (74%) use a computer to do so, while just over half (55%) use a television (whether via a set-top box, a game system or a television with integrated online capabilities). Nearly four in ten (37%) watch on tablets, including more than six in ten tablet owners (63%). Three in ten (30%) watch on smartphones, including just over four in ten smartphone owners (42%).

Judge says concerned about Apple, Google hiring settlement

A US judge said she had concerns about approving a $324.5 million settlement involving Apple, Google and two other tech companies in a lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to avoid poaching each other's workers.

Tech employees filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe Systems in 2011.

The case has been closely watched due to the potentially high damages award and the opportunity to peek into the world of Silicon Valley's elite. The four companies agreed to settle with the plaintiffs in April for a total of $324.5 million. The plaintiffs had planned to ask for about $3 billion in damages at trial, which could have tripled to $9 billion under antitrust law.

US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California must approve the deal.

Chinese Government Tightens Constraints on Press Freedom

China introduced new restrictions on what the government has called “critical” news articles and barred Chinese journalists from doing work outside their beats or regions, putting further restraints on reporters in one of the world’s most controlled news media environments.

Reporters in China must now seek permission from their employers before undertaking “critical reports” and are barred from setting up their own websites, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television announced in new rules. The state agency said on its website that the rules came after a series of cases involving misconduct by journalists, including extortion.

But journalists and rights activists said the rules could have a chilling effect on reporting in China, a country already ranked 173rd out of 179 countries on the press freedom index published by Reporters Without Borders.

Remarks of FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai On E-Rate Before The Federal Communications Bar Association

As you know, the E-Rate program is part of the Universal Service Fund. It provides about two billion dollars each year for schools and libraries to connect to the Internet.

E-Rate has had its share of successes. But the program is seventeen years old and badly in need of an overhaul. Indeed, there’s a broad consensus on the need to modernize the program.

First, parents across this country understand that we can’t prepare children for the world of tomorrow in a classroom of yesterday. Second, improving educational opportunities for our nation’s kids shouldn’t be a partisan or ideological issue. My proposal has five main elements. First, we should streamline the program.

Second, we should target next-generation technologies.

Third, we should allocate E-Rate funds more fairly and predictably.

Fourth, we should increase transparency and accountability.

And fifth, we should be fiscally responsible.

T-Mobile, bundles and the future of entertainment

T-Mobile threw another one of its flashy "Uncarrier" events again, announcing that it will not charge its customers for data they use when listening to streaming music from some of the industry's top services. The news came just hours after Amazon.com announced that its first smartphone, the Fire phone, would offer free integration with Amazon's own Prime Music service and Prime Video.

Both add more fuel to a trend we've seen coming for a while: The future of entertainment is in the bundle.

With its latest announcement, T-Mobile has gone even further, by making music essentially a part of its data plan. Under the new program, any data charges customers would have picked up by streaming Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker, Samsung's Milk streaming services are excused. T-Mobile will also extend the same deal to the upcoming Beatport app. The company said that, between those eight services, it believes it has covered over 80 percent of the streaming music market.

Benton

Search