September 2015

Web companies are fighting in court for the FCC’s net neutrality rules

A top Washington trade group for Internet companies such as Dropbox, Facebook and Netflix is now defending federal regulators in a major court battle over network neutrality, adding a legal brief to the flurry from both sides of the debate.

Arguing that the Federal Communications Commission acted legally when it rolled out strong new rules for broadband companies this year, the Internet Association said that the regulations help protect consumers from Internet providers who control access to the Web. The "friend-of-the-court" filing called for the FCC's net neutrality order to be fully upheld -- endorsing for the first time the legal approach the FCC used to implement its regulations. "Consumers and innovators will benefit from the Internet openness promoted by the FCC’s net neutrality Order," it reads.

Who’s behind those annoying political ads?

[Commentary] After a summer dominated by Donald Trump, the only thing we know for certain about the 2016 election is that tons of money, including hundreds of millions of dollars from anonymous donors, will be poured into contests for president, Congress, governorships and down-ballot offices. Most of it will be used to pay for political advertising. In this age of unprecedented dark money, reform might seem hopeless. Thankfully, it isn’t. True, Capitol Hill hasn’t accomplished much in recent years, but the Federal Communications Commission can require effective “sponsorship identification” (SID) rules thanks to a little-known section of the Communications Act (Section 317).

Imagine that: instead of being given the name of a nebulous political action committee at the end of each political or controversial issue commercial, voters might hear an on-air in the ad a list of the top four or five individual donors. The FCC exists to enforce the provisions of the Communications Act – all of them. It is time to act. The FCC can update its rules and put them into effect in plenty of time for the 2016 campaigns. But it needs to get on with this job right away.

[Minow served as chair of the Federal Communications Commission from 1961 to 1963. Copps served as FCC chair in 2009]

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler at NTCA Fall Conference

I want to dive into the things we need to be doing to make our universal service programs smarter and more effective -- and by we I mean both the Federal Communications Commission and the members of NTCA - The Rural Broadband Association. Let's start by looking at our Congressional mandates. Congress told us that universal service means access to "reasonably comparable service" at "reasonably comparable rates." We should unpack these two aspects of our mandate a little bit.

I'm circulating to my fellow Commissioners a public notice to remind everybody that this support should only be used for its intended purpose -- getting communications networks to rural America. We've seen examples in recent news of bad apples who abuse the fund for their own personal gain, and it is important that we take steps to ensure that those bad apples do not distract from the important work that you are doing to serve your communities.

An obscure battle over wireless airwaves comes to Trojan football

When the University of Southern California football team plays Stanford at the Coliseum, it won't be hard to find Trojan fans with their game face on, or even with the team's colors plastered all over their mugs. But a camera-toting squad from an advocacy group called WifiForward will be asking people at the stadium to show something else: their "What? No Wi-Fi?" face.

With its "Save Our Wi-Fi" campaign, WifiForward -- a coalition of giant Internet companies, device makers, cable TV operators and others that have invested heavily in Wi-Fi technology -- is trying to make a point to federal policymakers: that the advanced version of Wi-Fi needs more airwaves, and that the ones it's using today shouldn't be taken over by other technologies that hog the bandwidth. Among other potential threats, the group is concerned about a high-speed data technology called LTE-U, which uses 4G mobile data protocols to transmit over the same 5 Ghz spectrum that higher-speed versions of Wi-Fi use.

Cutting the Cord: Streaming video cuts into pay-TV subscriber base

For pay-TV providers, the song remains the same. Streaming-video services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Instant Video woo consumers and, as a result, some defect from their traditional pay-TV service. Still, more than 80 percent of US homes currently get pay-TV service from cable, satellite or telecommunication companies -- Leichtman Research estimates about 83 percent, while IHS Research says 82 percent.

That's reconfirmed by the 79 percent figure found in a new survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted for USA TODAY's "Cutting the Cord" column Sept. 1-7 by online market research company OnePoll and commissioned by RCA Antennas. Of those who do not have pay TV, more than one-third (36 percent) of those surveyed said they canceled their service in favor of pay-as-you-go streaming-video services.

When it comes to diversity in tech, look to small companies for leadership

[Commentary] Everyone looks to the big players – Google, Twitter, Facebook, Apple – to make progress on diversity in tech, but to the chagrin of many, their progress is disappointingly slow. When looking at the demographics of smaller, early-stage startups, most of them look like the big tech firms: overwhelmingly white, Asian and male.

However, some of Silicon Valley’s up-and-comers have decided to prioritize diversity from day one. Smaller companies can be more agile and are able to embrace new practices quickly – and many of them already are. If we’re really serious about fixing tech’s diversity problem, we need to make sure that their voices, their stories of leadership and innovation where diversity is more than an afterthought, are being shared too.

[Sarah Nahm is the founder and CEO of Lever]

Are relationships a missing link in media’s ongoing diversity problem?

Journalism is facing its own battle for hearts and minds. That’s what I took from my recent conversation with Joshunda Sanders, author of “How Racism and Sexism Killed Traditional Media: Why the Future of Journalism Depends on Women and People of Color.”

Sanders has worked as a freelancer, a reporter in newsrooms including the Austin American-Statesman, and as a researcher for the Maynard Institute. We discussed her book, the ubiquitous media diversity “problem,” and how quantitative solutions such as fellowship programs and internships alone haven’t solved it. Our conversation left me wondering whether personal relationships inside and out of the newsroom could be a missing link. “One of the main things that annoys me about the media diversity conversation is that it puts the onus on women and people of color to make the change,” she said. “It’s almost like you need a magical alignment of forces to come to your aid to become a Dean Baquet or Jill Abramson. It can’t just be that all the women or all the people of color who want to get to the top don’t have the skills or aren’t connected. It just can’t be that for the last 50 years.”

FCC Denies ASCAP Challenge to Pandora Decision

The Federal Communications Commission, in a vote on the item by the commissioners, has denied a music industry challenge to its decision to allow Pandora to exceed the 25 percent cap on foreign ownership of a broadcast station, at least for one radio station in South Dakota. It was on the noncontroversial item agenda along with almost a dozen others that were all voted at once.

In May, in a declaratory ruling in response to a petition from the online music site, which wants to buy a radio station, the FCC said: "[W]e find that it would serve the public interest to permit a widely dispersed group of shareholders to hold aggregate foreign ownership in Pandora Media in excess of the 25 percent benchmark. The FCC voted on an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) June 3, 2015, petition seeking reconsideration of the declaratory ruling. "[N]one of ASCAP’s arguments on the merits warrants reconsideration or review of the Bureau’s order," the commission concluded.

What’s behind the continuing wave of television mergers?

[Commentary] The recent deals in the local broadcast and cable industries have everything to do with scale and leverage in various contract negotiations. Besides the regular bonanza of political advertising, local television have been prospering as cable systems pay ever increasing retransmission fees. The bigger the station group the better deal it can strike.

Todd Schurz, CEO of the family-owned firm, said the company’s stations, most of them top-rated in their markets were too small a group -- and not just for retransmission. Scale also matters, he said, “in negotiations with distributors -- networks and programs and with vendors too. When we looked to the future, we concluded we are no longer the best owners.” With cord-cutting and digital streaming on the increase, cable may not be quite the license to print money it was five years ago. But it remains a very profitable business with a sweet business model -- both subscribers and advertisers willing to open their wallets.

Merger Muscle Might Help Networks Resist Netflix

With the sale of Cablevision Systems and the acquisition of Time Warner Cable by Charter Communications getting closer to completion, the chatter is getting louder that programmers will have to merge to maintain leverage against consolidated distributors. In a report, Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson Research points to another adversary stronger programmers would be better able to stand up to: Netflix.

“Cable networks consolidation could also lead to upside if the larger portfolios take a more thoughtful longer view on selling their content to subscription video on demand services,” Nathanson said. Smaller companies seem more likely to take the short-term earnings -- and resulting executive compensation -- that dealing with Netflix produces.

Benton

Search