June 2015

A Most Unvirtuous Circle

[Commentary] It’s shaping up as a great political year ahead -- if you are a billionaire with an axe to grind or a broadcast or cable operator. In recent years, special interests and ideologues of both the right and the left have dumped billions of dollars of unaccountable advertising onto the airwaves and cables that we rely on for our news and information. In fact, by most estimates, the majority of campaign money nowadays goes into advertising. It’s great for broadcast and cable. When I was a Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission and I would ask these industry executives how business was doing, they always had an extra-wide grin as we were entering a new election cycle. For many of them, these ads comprised their largest revenue stream. It’s a virtuous circle for them and the billionaires, but not so virtuous for the rest of us -- or for our democracy.

Media Executives Are Salivating Over Big Money Flooding the 2016 Election Cycle

At least one small slice of the American public looks forward to the non-stop, sleazy political advertisements set to inundate viewers during the 2016 elections: media executives and their investors. Peter Liguori, the chief executive of Tribune Company, said earlier in April that the 2016 Presidential campaign presents “enormous opportunity” for advertising sales. Liguori, whose company owns television stations, referenced Super PAC spending as a key factor for why he thinks Tribune Co. political advertising revenue will rocket from $115 million in 2012 to about $200 million for the 2016 campaign cycle.

Vince Sadusky, the chief executive of Media General, the parent company of 71 television stations across the country, told investors in February that his company is positioned to benefit from unlimited campaign spending, referencing decisions by the Supreme Court. “We are really looking forward to the 2016 elections with spending on the presidential race alone estimated to surpass $5 billion,” Sadusky said, according to a transcript of his remarks. In 2012, Les Moonves, president and chief executive of CBS, memorably said, “Super PACs may be bad for America, but they’re very good for CBS.” His views appear unchanged. In a February investor call, Moonves predicted “strong growth with the help of political spending,” particularly on television. He added dryly, “looking ahead, the 2016 presidential election is right around the corner and, thank God, the rancor has already begun.” In recent months, executives from media companies such as Nexstar Broadcasting, Gannett, and E.W. Scripps Co. have told investors that they are expecting a big jump in revenue from the 2016 political ad buys.

A US cyberattack on North Korea failed because North Korea has basically no Internet

Five years ago, the United States tried to sabotage North Korea's nuclear weapons program with a computer virus. The campaign relied on a variant of Stuxnet -- malware that disabled Iranian centrifuges, which was a joint project of the United States and Israel. The idea was to use a version of the virus that would be activated when it encountered Korean-language settings. But the campaign faltered -- it was "stymied", by North Korea's "utter secrecy, as well as the extreme isolation of its communications systems."

It turns out barely having an Internet infrastructure is a really good way to avoid the kind of "cyber-Pearl Harbor" US officials have been warning about for years. This isn't exactly a new idea: "North Korea’s hermit infrastructure creates a cyber-terrain that deters reconnaissance," an HP Security briefing from 2013 noted. "Today North Korea’s air-gapped networks and prioritization of resources for military use provide both a secure and structured base of operations for cyber operations and a secure means of communications." And while North Korea's defense gets a boost from its set-up, it also appears to value having offensive cyber capabilities.

Verizon Supports Efforts to Modernize Lifeline

Verizon supports efforts to reform, modernize and add accountability to the Lifeline program, and the bill introduced by Representative Matsui and Senators Murphy and Booker is an important contribution to those efforts. Among other things, the bill includes several accountability provisions that will help protect consumers who pay for the fund. We look forward to working with the sponsors and other interested stakeholders on ways to modernize the program.

Sports Not the Glue Holding TV Bundles Together

While ESPN is a key element of Sling TV’s core $20 per month over-the-top service for cord-cutters, sports may not necessarily be the tie that keeps the traditional pay TV bundle bound together, multiscreen specialist Clearleap found in a new consumer survey. Clearleap, in an online survey of 435 consumers age 18-49 conducted in January, found that only about a third (36.58 percent) of sports fans would pay $20 or less per month to stream sports without a cable subscription. A much larger group -- 51.34 percent -- said they wouldn’t pay for such a service at all. Just 8.05 percent said they’d be willing to pay between $21 to $49 per month, and 4.03 percent said they’d pay more than $50 per month.

“There isn’t a lot of evidence to support the notion that sports are keeping subscribers tied to the bundle,” Clearleap noted in the study. “Even those respondents who identified as sports fans weren’t overly tied to the bundle because they needed their sports fix – nearly half said they watch plenty of other shows that require a cable subscription.” The results of the survey “challenge many of the widely held assumptions about what’s keeping many consumers from cutting the cord,” Clearleap said.

Millennials and Political News

When it comes to where younger Americans get news about politics and government, social media look to be the local TV of the Millennial generation. About six-in-ten online Millennials (61 percent) report getting political news on Facebook in a given week, a much larger percentage than turn to any other news source, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. This stands in stark contrast to internet-using Baby Boomers, for whom local TV tops the list of sources for political news at nearly the same reach (60 percent). At the same time, Millennials’ relatively low reliance on local TV for political news (37 percent see news there in a given week) almost mirrors Baby Boomers’ comparatively low reliance on Facebook (39 percent). Gen Xers, who bridge the age gap between Millennials (ages 18-33 at the time of the 2014 survey) and Baby Boomers (ages 50-68), also bridge the gap between these news sources. Roughly half (51 percent) of online Gen Xers get political and government news on Facebook in a given week and about half (46 percent) do so on local TV.

Even looking just at members of each generation who are on Facebook, Millennials still stand out for seeing somewhat more political content on the site. Roughly a quarter (24 percent) of Millennials who use Facebook say at least half of the posts they see on the site relate to government and politics, higher than both Gen Xers (18 percent) and Baby Boomers (16 percent) who use the social networking site. This occurs even though Millennials express less interest in political news. Roughly a quarter of Millennials (26 percent) select politics and government as one of the three topics they are most interested in (out of a list of nine). That is lower than both Gen Xers (34 percent) and Baby Boomers (45 percent). Millennials also are less familiar with many of the 36 sources asked about in the survey, which range from USA Today to Rush Limbaugh to Slate.

A Manifesto On Diversity In Public Media

[Commentary] Stories have power and resonance and change the way we think and feel, and there is a hidden cabal that uses stories to shape us. They may not be specifically organized with evil intent, but they are, as Philip K. Dick might call them, an Adjustment Team; people whose job it is to set the world on the course they see fit.

The world is moving faster than the Adjustment Teams can do their work. Social media is rewriting all the rules, and time will be healed, but only if we join the fight. As media makers we are vital in that process, because we can tell the story, bring the context, and become the sound that chronicles the fury. The word "public" is our strongest asset. It means while other media outlets' focus is financial, ours is sacred. It's a calling; the purpose is to make this country a better place for all of its people. If we do away with the concept of a default human and embrace our humanity in all the forms it manifests, we can make this country what our forefathers dreamed but never actually achieved. We have the airwaves, an abundance of talented, smart people and a mission. All we need now is the will power to be who we were always meant to become.

[Al Letson is a poet, playwright, comic book writer, storyteller and public radio host]

Why Helping the Poor Pay for Broadband Is Good for Us All

[Commentary] The suggested Lifeline program updates would allow low-income households to use the same subsidy to help cover the cost of broadband -- meaning more families could afford Internet at home.The catch? The subsidy is just $9.25 per month. The proposal shows that federal regulators are finally beginning to acknowledge what many of us already know -- the Internet is a crucial gateway to economic opportunity. But broadband tends to be costly, even with discounted plans. Will such a seeming pittance be enough to make broadband affordable for families strapped for cash?

Advocates for bridging the so-called digital divide, it turns out, say it might be. Not only that, they say that expanding the Lifeline program to broadband could open up a whole new competitive marketplace for low-cost Internet access. Non-profits working to expand broadband adoption hope that if Chairman Wheeler’s proposal is approved, the FCC itself could encourage more providers to offer a subsidized rate to qualified low-income families, encouraging more competition with the current plans. Some say the government could even pay subsidies directly to broadband providers to get a better deal than low-income families could get on their own. “We’re building a nation of more consumers for broadband,” says Angela Siefer, the executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Allilance. “We’re actually creating new customers for them.”

Charter Charts Course in DC For Time Warner Cable Deal

Look for Charter to make a strong public interest pitch in Washington (DC) that it will bring a culture of no broadband caps and fast speeds to a combined Charter-Time Warner Cable deal. But you can also expect it to face pushback from the usual suspects -- anti-consolidation groups for whom bigger amounts to badder. With the announced deal, Charter wasn’t coming right out and saying the deal would create a stronger competitor to top cable operator Comcast, particularly in broadband, but that was clearly part of the argument it will make on Capitol Hill. As with the Comcast deal, the key for approval in Washington likely depends on whether the approximately 30 percent of high-speed broadband subscribers the new company says it will have is too much for a Federal Communications Commission and a Department of Justice currently focused on what they have called Internet service provider “gatekeepers.”

Charter will be pressing the points that Charter's baseline speed is 60 Mbps, more than double what the FCC has set as an aspirational target for advanced telecommunications. Another big selling point will be that Charter has no data caps, usage-based pricing or early termination fees. Charter will also stress that it has added 7,000 new positions over the past three years.

The Internet Pushes Individual Media Use to More Than 8 Hours A Day

Consumer Internet use will increase 12 percent globally in 2015, helping drive average individual media consumption to more than eight hours a day, according to a new Media Consumption Forecasts report from ZenithOptimedia. As that trend continues, in 2017 the Internet will account for 29 percent of the time people spend with media. The amount of time people spent using the Internet has nearly doubled since 2010, from a daily average of almost 60 minutes to one hour, 49 minutes today. Mobile technology is accelerating that trend, providing consumers new opportunities to consume media outside of home and work. While that growth has come at the expense of traditional media in the last five years -- ZO found that time allocated to traditional media dropped nearly 30 minutes to a daily average of 6 hours, 15 minutes -- television still dominates global media use. It's losing share, however, dropping from 42 percent of global media consumption in 2010 to 38 percent in 2014. It is expected to account for 35 percent by 2017.

Benton

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