Gerry Smith

Thousands of people in communities across the country are about to grapple with losing broadband service. Free services started to help low-income families during the pandemic and a pledge not to cut off service or charge late fees to customers struggling financially are ending June 30. If left unaddressed, this end threatens to unravel a precarious thread of the social safety net at a particularly difficult time for many American families.

Several of the internet discount programs from the Keep Americans Connected pledge are set to end in the coming weeks — a looming expiration that, if left unaddressed, threatens to unravel a precarious thread of the social safety net at a particularly difficult time for many American families. Angela Siefer, the executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, said that although the school year is winding down, the need for access to the web — and the challenge of affording it — have not gone away.

The news business is on pace for its worst job losses in a decade as about 3,000 people have been laid off or been offered buyouts in the first five months of 2019. The cuts have been widespread. Newspapers owned by Gannett and McClatchy, digital media companies like BuzzFeed and Vice Media, and the cable news channel CNN have all shed employees. The level of attrition is the highest since 2009, when the industry saw 7,914 job cuts in the first five months of that year in the wake of the financial crisis. 

A group of journalists protesting outside the offices of a New York City hedge fund recently shined a light on a little-known fact about the state of the local American newspaper: Behind the scenes, financial firms often hold all the cards. Investors like Alden Global Capital LLC and Fortress Investment Group LLC have acquired ownership stakes in newspapers that have struggled to adapt in an online world, from the Denver Post to the Providence Journal. Funds have brought their cost-cutting know-how to help restructure several newspaper chains in heavy debt after the 2008 financial crisis.

Apparently, Google users who subscribe to newspapers will find articles from those publications appearing higher in their search results, part of the company’s efforts to help media companies recruit and retain paying readers. will also begin sharing search data that show who’s most likely to buy a subscription, said the people, who asked to be anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Google executives plan to disclose specific details at an event in New York on March 20, according to the people. 

He’s derided them as “bot-infested badlands,” “dysfunctional and sometimes dystopian,” and platforms for “the fake, the faux and the fallacious.” On a recent earnings call, he called them “mephitic,” prompting his spokesman to tweet the definition: “foul smelling.” No media executive has more tirelessly criticized Google and Facebook -- and done so with such a colorful vocabulary -- than News Corp Chief Executive Officer Robert Thomson.

[Commentary] The internet is a set of pipes. It’s also a set of values. Whose? The people who consider it a great social equalizer, a playing field that has to be level? Or the ones who own the network and consider themselves best qualified to manage it? It’s a philosophical contest fought under the banner of “net neutrality,” a slogan that inspires rhetorical devotion but eludes precise definition. Broadly, it means everything on the internet should be equally accessible — that the internet should be a place where great ideas compete on equal terms with big money.

Targeted ads that seem to follow you everywhere online may soon be doing the same on your TV.  The Federal Communications Commission is poised to approve a new broadcast standard that will let broadcasters do something cable TV companies already do: harvest data about what you watch so advertisers can customize pitches. The prospect alarms privacy advocates, who say there are no rules setting boundaries for how broadcasters handle personal information. The FCC doesn’t mention privacy in the 109-page proposed rule that is scheduled for a vote by commissioners Nov 16.

When Hulu introduced a commercial-free option in 2015, NBC executives were frustrated. Despite owning a stake in Hulu, they could only watch even though they preferred that streaming-video provider stick with an advertising-supported model, apparently. For the past six years, the media giant has been barred from having any say over Hulu, which is also owned by Walt Disney Co., 21st Century Fox Inc. and Time Warner Inc. It’s one of dozens of restrictions that Comcast accepted to win approval to buy NBCUniversal, home of the NBC broadcast network, cable channels like USA and MSNBC, theme parks and a film studio. Now, Comcast and NBC can start to contemplate a world without government constraints. The last restrictions expire in September 2018. NBC is planning an online video service with shows from its own TV networks in the next 12 to 18 months, apparently.That sort of thing has been difficult for the media company to do up to now. “The handcuffs are off,” said Amy Yong, an analyst at Macquarie. “Now that the conditions are expiring, they’re more free to explore their options.”

Apparently, Verizon has been securing streaming rights from television network owners in preparation for the nationwide launch of a live online TV service. The telecommunications company plans to start selling a package with dozens of channels this summer. The live, over-the-internet TV service would be a first for Verizon -- separate from go90, a YouTube-like streaming-video service aimed at teens -- and also independent of its FiOS home TV offer, apparently. Verizon’s preparations highlight the growing pressure to provide a cheaper, smaller package of TV networks to viewers who are turned off by a glut of programming available on traditional cable packages. Dish Network Corp. introduced a similar service, Sling TV, two years ago, and AT&T’s DirecTV Now came out late in 2016.