National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith has renewed his contract through Dec 31, 2018, NAB Board chair Charles Warfield said. The announcement comes the day before the board and members celebrate Service to America awards for stations' public service efforts.
Smith has been in the post since 2009. He is a former two-term Republican senator from Oregon and has been leading NAB's efforts to secure a fair incentive auction process.
Magna Global issued a report predicting a major upswing of 8.3 percent for US television advertising revenue in 2014, after a dismal 2013 in which revenues were down 0.6 percent.
The World Cup, local political advertising, and the Olympics are among the factors contributing to the uptick, said Vincent Letang, Magna's EVP, director of global forecasting. Letang also predicted serious movement in the global mobile markets, among other trends, and one significant change: national TV advertising is now smaller than digital media.
"National TV benefited from the Olympics in the first quarter. Local TV will gain from political and health-related campaigns throughout the year. Hispanic TV will be boosted by the soccer World Cup," noted the report. Letang added that "there is really a two-year cycle to television."
"Elections make a huge difference for US television," he said. "Television is resilient to digital media and [is] still stealing market share from other traditional categories. People are moving money out of print and putting it in digital but still some in television."
Indeed, said Letang, digital media is projected to increase by 15.9 percent globally in 2014 -- but only because a comparatively weak increase in nonmobile viewing (where the majority of the money currently is) of 8 percent drags down an incredible 61 percent jump in global mobile ads.
Regarding the World Cup, Letang said the contest is "bigger than it's ever been because it's Brazil, so it's raising the interest of even casual viewers who wouldn't necessarily be soccer fans," Letang said. "It's not only about TV these days; it's about social and online video replays. It's about multiple viewings."
Sprint’s LTE rollout may be behind those of its nationwide competitors, but it appears to be getting close to completion.
Its 4G network now covers 225 million people, and it plans to hit the 250 million mark by mid-year. It kicked off a program that brings its 4G coverage to small markets and rural areas it never planned to target with 4G service.
Sprint announced roaming agreements with 12 regional and rural carriers as part of a LTE network sharing agreement with the Competitive Carrier Association and the NetAmerica Alliance. The idea is to create a common device portfolio and nationwide LTE footprint that Sprint and all its regional partners can share in.
[Commentary] In the ongoing air wars over net neutrality, personal attack and comedic fodder have sadly obscured an accurate portrayal of the issues now confronting the Federal Communications Commission in the wake of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit’s decision in Verizon v. FCC.
Instead of following the old adage of “when in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout,” perhaps we ought to take a breath and refocus serious attention on the task before the agency.
First, we ought to see that inflammatory attacks claiming that the FCC is about to “wreck” net neutrality are nothing but hyperbolic hot air. You can’t “wreck” rules that no longer exist.
Second, as parties seek to manufacture a continuing din of discontent, we ought to acknowledge what we are not fighting about. Though it’s seldom reported, it’s worth remembering that the cable industry has long supported an open Internet and, in fact, supported the 2010 Open Internet rules adopted by the FCC.
Allowing the net-neutrality conversation to be hijacked into a peering debate is a mistake that will only cloud the commission’s ability to move forward in the Open Internet proceeding. Netflix’s peering gambit is primarily about improving its own economics and says more about Netflix’s power than about any ISPs.
We should stay focused on the last-mile issues that gave rise to the Open Internet rules in the first place, and ensure a clear path forward to reinstate new rules in line with the court’s direction.
[Powell is president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association]
Condé Nast Entertainment has signed a first-look deal with Twentieth Century Fox Television for its scripted television projects.
Under the terms of the deal, which is the first of its kind for Condé Nast Entertainment, the company will develop and produce scripted series for both broadcast and cable. Broadcast series will be produced for Twentieth Century Fox Television, while cable series will be produced for Fox 21.
The partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Television is managed by Gina Marcheschi, vice president of scripted television for Condé Nast Entertainment.
Legislation to permanently bar states and cities from placing a tax on the Internet is moving forward in the House.
The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act, the panel announced. State and local governments are currently prohibited from enacted taxes on Internet access, but the 1998 law banning them is set to expire in 2014.
Unless new legislation goes forward, state legislatures and city councils could start eyeing Web surcharges in order to fill dwindling coffers. The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act would extend that ban indefinitely.
The bill currently has 214 cosponsors in the House, just four short of a majority. A companion bill in the Senate from Finance Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen John Thune (R-SD) has 50 cosponsors, spelling an easy path forward in both chambers.
Congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX) asked the National Security Agency to turn over all its metadata on the email accounts of former Internal Revenue Service Exempt Organizations division director Lois Lerner for the period between January 2009 and April 2011.
The request comes just hours after the Internal Revenue Service claimed it “lost” all of Lerner’s emails to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups during that period, in which she allegedly coordinated with the White House, House Democrats and political groups to harass and deny tax-exempt status to groups critical of the President.
The IRS blames a “computer glitch” for erasing the emails which could have implicated Agency employees in illegal activity.
“I have asked NSA Director Rogers to send me all metadata his agency has collected on Lois Lerner’s email accounts for the period which the House sought records,” said Rep Stockman. “The metadata will establish who Lerner contacted and when, which helps investigators determine the extent of illegal activity by the IRS.”
If you want to use the Internet and you don’t want the National Security Agency to see what you’re doing, you basically only need one tool: Tor, a network that anonymizes web traffic by bouncing it between servers.
The NSA has been working on ways to get around "the Tor problem" for years without much success. "It should hardly be surprising that our intelligence agencies seek ways to counteract targets’ use of technologies to hide their communications," the agency told BusinessWeek back in January. The NSA says Tor is now used by "terrorists, cybercriminals, [and] human traffickers," so you’d think the Pentagon might consider that investment a mistake. Not so.
The military has been working on a new generation of even bigger and better anonymity tools to supplement and replace Tor. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the Pentagon’s high-tech research lab, started working on anonymity roughly four years ago through the Safer Warfighter Communications program, a collection of tools designed to thwart blacklisting, redirection, and content filtering.
A few years ago Charter simplified their speed tiers, offering just 30 Mbps down, 4 Mbps up and 100 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up tiers. Now according to user comments in our forums, Charter is bumping 30 Mbps customers to 100 Mbps and 100 Mbps to 120 Mbps at no additional charge. So far the speed hike is focused on the St. Louis area, though additional markets should be coming.
"Effective Tuesday, June 10, 2014, existing eligible Residential Charter Internet customers in the St. Louis, Missouri, metro area will receive an automatic increase to their Internet speed for no additional cost," the notification states. "The St Louis market is the only Charter area to provide New Pricing and Packaging (NPP) customers 100 Mbps of download speed and upload speeds of 4 Mbps."
Based on what Charter is telling subscribers, 100 Mbps will be the new base tier (though most cable companies offer a slower "lite" tier if you threaten to quit), and the company's 120 Mbps Ultra tier will be the company's premium offering, providing faster speed as capacity allows. Users will need to reboot their modem for the new speeds to take effect.
When Google announced Project Loon on June 15, 2013, a lot of people were skeptical. But Google reports that since then, it has been able to extend balloon flight times and add mobile connectivity to the service.
As a result, Google’s expectations are flying even higher than the 60,000-foot strata where its balloons live. “This is the poster child for Google X,” says Astro Teller, who heads the division. “The balloons are delivering 10x more bandwidth, 10x steer-ability, and are staying up 10x as long. That’s the kind of progress that can only happen a few more times until we’re in a problematically good place.”
Since the first public test flights in New Zealand, Google’s balloons have clocked over a million and half kilometers.
Google made a different kind of advance with Loon when it added the capability to send data using the LTE spectrum -- making it possible for people to connect directly to the Internet with their mobile phones. (Loon’s original Wi-Fi connection required a base station and a special antenna.) Using LTE also helped Google boost the capacity of its connections. Recent Loon payloads are providing as much as 22 MB/sec to a ground antenna and 5 MB/sec to a handset.
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