June 2015

5 Things You Need To Know About the USA Freedom Act

[Commentary] The Freedom Act adds a higher burden of proof for agencies seeking to place a U.S. citizen, group or company under surveillance. The updated legislation will no longer require private firms to retain data such as subscriber phone records and more clearly defines the rationale required to allow surveillance activities. Here are some of the bigger changes between the Patriot Act and the Freedom Act that Forrester sees -- and what you need to be aware of:

The Freedom Act repeals one of the most contentious provisions of the Patriot Act.
Metadata now falls under the stewardship of the telecommunication companies - and the Federal Communications Commission.
Roving wiretaps become simpler to obtain.
US tech companies now have recourse to contest government requests.
New legal counsel will now plead for civil liberties before the FISA court.

[Ed Ferrara is a principal analyst at Forrester Research]

Post-auction coverage still concerns public TV broadcasters

Public broadcasters continue to press the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that the upcoming repacking of spectrum does not create “white areas” where over-the-air viewers would lose access to public television. The FCC is planning a voluntary broadcast spectrum auction, set for mid-2016, to sell bandwidth to cellular companies for use by mobile devices.

Television station executives must decide whether to opt out of the auction, sell off all or part of their spectrum, or move their signals to lesser-quality VHF channels. Public television representatives, led by Lonna Thompson of the Association of Public Television Stations, met with FCC officials May 26. Non-commercial executives told FCC staffers that repacking the spectrum following the auction could create “unprecedented” holes in public TV signal coverage, according to a filing by APTS. The public broadcasters noted that over-the-air television is used by almost 20 percent of the population, and possibly up to 30 percent of underserved minority populations, in several major markets.

Death Of Retrans By A Thousand Cuts

[Commentary] The recent Federal Communications Commission ruling that municipalities can no longer regulate the rates of local cable systems could have harmful consequences for broadcasters. It seems that under a certain interpretation, systems would be able to move broadcast channels out of basic cable tiers that have the nice attribute of reaching 100 percent of subscribers, a potent weapon come retransmission negotiating time. And that wasn't the first piece of broadcasters' retransmission clout that the Wheeler FCC whittled away. What's next?

Sports Fans Coalition Bulks Up

SackNFLTaxBreaks.com's Ryan Rudominer has been named chairman of the Sports Fans Coalition's Mid-Atlantic region. The NFL announced in April that it was dropping its tax-exempt status, which Sports Fans Coalition chairman David Goodfriend said at the time likely had something to do with pressure over the Washington Redskins name change controversy. "When you have 50 United States senators saying 'change the name of the Washington football team or we will take away your nonprofit status,' it becomes pretty clear that the nonprofit status was a lightning rod." "SackNFLTaxBreaks.org was launched on the eve of Super Bowl XLVIII by Rudominer and co-founder Lynda Woolard, a New Orleans Saints fan whose Change.org petition calling on Congress to 'Revoke the Tax-Exempt Status of the NFL' collected nearly half a million signatures," the coalition said in announcing Rudominer had joined the team.

“Our victory in pressuring the NFL to give up its nonprofit tax-exempt status is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ending taxpayer giveaways that benefit the most profitable sports leagues on the planet,” said Rudominer. Goodfriend said in May that broadcast access to college football could be the next battleground for the Sports Fans Coalition, whose pushback against the FCC’s sports blackout rules helped topple the FCC-provided government backstop to sports league-imposed TV blackouts.

Cable Ops Seek Pole Attachment Decision

The American Cable Association and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association are urging the Federal Communications Commission to act on a petition from NCTA and Comptel to insure the FCC effort to lower pole-attachment rates really does that in a Title II Internet service provider world. Telecommunications historically paid pay more for those attachments than cable operators. But in the interests of promoting broadband, the FCC in 2011 tried to harmonize the rates by lowering the telecommunication rate to the cable rate. That turned out not to have worked in practice "in all circumstances," said cable operators, and gave pole owners a cost-allocation alternative that allowed them to still charge a higher rate. They asked the FCC to fix that, but it has yet to act on the petition. Unless it is stayed by the court, reclassification goes into effect June 12 and cable broadband becomes a telecommunication service subject to those potentially higher rates. ACA and NCTA had urged the FCC to fix the problem before it took action on new net neutrality rules.

Cord-Bundlers Are the True Disruptors

[Commentary] The cord-cutter is frequently singled out as a culprit behind the rapidly shifting video ad market; the nemesis of TV’s established order. Insights teased in the trades by Nielsen in May, however, suggest the assumption that cord-cutters are siphoning subscribers (and by extension, audience) away from multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) may be overstated. For TV ad sellers though, would confirmation that cord-cutters are having a negligible impact on total audience availability be worthy of celebration?

The cutters and the cord-nevers (linear TV’s lost generation) are not the centers of influence in accelerating audience fragmentation. It’s the cord-bundlers -- the households stitching together a host of subscription video on demand services (like iTunes, Netflix or Hulu), in addition to their cable subscriptions -- that are proving the most disruptive. Indeed, cross-stream inventory management, yield optimization and campaign fulfillment are mission-critical core competencies for media owners seeking to reconstitute the value of cord-bundlers. It’s here that the promise of programmatic TV looms large.

[Randy Cook is vice president of programmatic TV, SpotXchange]

White House Wants Ideas for Open Government Plan

If you want a more open government, now is the time to put your ideas where your mouth is. The White House seeks ideas and feedback from the public, federal officials and other open government advocates as it develops a third Open Government National Action Plan to be released later in 2015. The announcement came in a White House blog post authored June 4 by Corinna Zarek, senior adviser for open government at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The government’s first and second iterations of open government NAPs were released in 2011 and 2013, and as Zarek notes, those initiatives will be fully implemented by the end of 2015. Given the object is a more open government, the process by which the White House will ideate for the third NAP is transparent and open, yet perhaps even more so than prior efforts.

AT&T, DirecTV executives meet with FCC about deal

Apparently, top executives from the two companies met with Federal Communications Commission staffers in Washington. At the meeting, which was held at FCC headquarters, the executives discussed some of the conditions that the government agency may impose on the deal. The conditions aren't said to be particularly onerous. The regulatory review of this acquisition has not been characterized by the kind of hostility and doubt that accompanied Comcast's bid for Time Warner Cable. Conventional wisdom in the industry is that it will be approved. But the review has taken a long time: AT&T and DirecTV announced their proposed combination back in May 2014. Since then, Comcast gave up on Time Warner Cable, citing the government's opposition, and a new cable provider, Charter, stepped forward to buy Time Warner Cable.

Life after Snowden: Journalists’ new moral responsibility

[Commentary] Journalism after Snowden? Two very big questions linger on—one about whether the very technologies Edward Snowden revealed are compatible with independent, inquiring reporting; and one crucial question about journalism itself, which could be boiled down to: “What is it supposed to be, or do?”

Journalists have a moral responsibility to absorb what Edward Snowden has been telling us. But how many have? My guess is a tiny minority of news reporters have taken the time and effort to read up on what forms of communication are (relatively) safe and how to send and receive encrypted emails. How many news organizations have secure drop boxes for sources wanting safely to submit documents? How many foreign correspondents have changed their habits in terms of the phones or computer equipment they travel with? Some have. My suspicion is that most haven’t. Which leads to the second, even more profound, question raised by the Snowden coverage—the essence, independence, and purpose of journalism itself.

[Alan Rusbridger was formerly the editor in chief of The Guardian and The Observer in London]

Board of Directors
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Monday, June 15, 2015 from 9:30 am – 3:00 pm and Tuesday, June 16, 2015 from 9:30 – 11:30am.
http://www.cpb.org/pressroom/release.php?prn=1209

On the draft agenda:

Day One (June 15)

Approval of Minutes
Chair’s and Directors’ Remarks
President’s Report to the Board
Legislative Update
Updates on Education; the TV CSG Policy Review; and Spectrum
Approval of Minutes (executive session)
Update on Interconnection (executive session)
Review and Approval of FY 2016 Operating Budget
Review and Approval of Goals and Objectives
Discussion of FY 2016 Business Plan
Update from PBS
Briefing on Net Neutrality
Discussion of Board Retreat

Day Two (June 16)

Update on Public Media Journalism
Future Agenda Items

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