TELEVISION
Making a Mess of Digital TV (CJR)
Redmond Company Leads Convergence Revolution (ZDNet)
INTERNET
Rethinking the Portal Concept (NYT)
Netscape Applies Open Source Idea to Custom
Page Service (CyberTimes)
Online Banking Threatens Old Guard (ChiTrib)
TELEPHONE REGULATION
FCC Audit Reports (FCC)
Audit Showing Baby Bells Can't Locate $5 Billion In Gear
Could Spur Rate Cuts (WSJ)
CENSORSHIP
Community Standards, Or Censors? (ChiTrib)
PRINT MEDIA
Independent Booksellers Plan to Open Online Store (NYT)
Publishers of Paperbacks Are Facing Sliding Sales (NYT)
Canada Proceeds With Law to Protect Magazine industry (NYT)
TELEVISION
MAKING A MESS OF DIGITAL TV
Issue: Digital Television
A look at the content and the making of Charting the Digital Broadcasting
Future www.benton.org/PIAC, the report from the President's Advisory
Committee on digital television. Grossman notes that the report was buried
by the blizzard of impeachment and the bombing of Iraq when it was delivered
to Vice President Gore. "A good thing, too," he writes. Grossman attacks the
document as too weak and a process that "shunted to the back of the bus" the
views of the majority of the Committee. "The broadcasters played hardball,"
one Committee member said, "and threatened to walk out if we voted to
recommend, as most of us wanted to, that digital TV be given major and
specific public interest obligations." Grossman sees some light in the
appendices of the report which he thinks should have been moved into the
main part of the document. He quotes extensively from the proposed voluntary
code for broadcasters and especially a draft TV news code which he believes
no TV station operating today meets the standards of. "Add all the advisory
committee's recommendations together, however, and they do not come close to
bringing a fair return to the American people for the multibillion-dollar
corporate windfall in publicly owned spectrum that Congress gave away for
digital TV."
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review (p.53), AUTHOR: Lawrence Grossman,
former president of NBC News and PBS]
http://www.cjr.org
REDMOND COMPANY LEADS CONVERGENCE REVOLUTION
Issue: Convergence/Television
Berst predicts that 1999 is the year of the long-awaited marriage of
television and the Internet. Here's what he sees: 1) Internet-enabled
televisions (NetTVs) will be the surprise hit of the 1999 Christmas season;
2) WebTV will garner its one-millionth customer this year; and 3) the AOL
Anywhere initiative will be extended to television (soon). When convergence
comes, Berst writes, you may start getting video through your phone line
instead of your cable wire and set-top boxes will probably run on Windows.
Stellar One makes set-top boxes with all these wonderful capabilities: Surf
the Internet over your TV (like Microsoft's WebTV), View video-on-demand
(like a better version of today's hotel-room systems), Pause, rewind or
fast-forward a program (like the digital VCRs from Replay and Tivo), Watch
"enhanced TV" -- TV with a wraparound Web page (like the new WebTV Plus) ,
Access email (like an Internet-equipped PC), and Shop from a video catalog
(like a high-end custom kiosk). Read more about Stellar One at
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_3183.html.
[SOURCE: ZDNet AnchorDesk, AUTHOR: Jesse Berst]
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_3182.html
INTERNET
RETHINKING THE PORTAL CONCEPT
Issue: Internet
As the stocks of the USA Networks and Lycos plummeted following the
announcement of their proposed merger, people began to question the whole
idea of portals ruling the Web. Some analysts say that the portals best days
might already be behind them. "Our biggest fear is becoming like TV
networks, a commodity," said George Bell, chief executive of Excite. Portals
like Excite are finding that generic advertising and bulked up content are
just not working anymore. As people begging to create more of their own
content, search engines are going to have to find new ways of profiting from
a more interactive Internet.
[SOURCE: New York Times (C5), AUTHOR: Denise Caruso]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/03/biztech/articles/15digi.html
NETSCAPE APPLIES OPEN SOURCE IDEA TO CUSTOM PAGE SERVICE
Issue: Internet Content
Today Netscape is expected to announce a restructuring of its personalized
My Netscape service. 'Til now, users of My Netscape could customize pages
with information from Netscape or its partners. Now, almost any website will
be able to contribute to the service. "Offering access to our content in the
My Netscape format is a no-brainer for us," said Jim Stafford, president of
the online division of the business magazine Red Herring. "Some of the other
sites make it very expensive to make your content available to their
audience." Red Herring will be one of the first sites that My Netscape users
will be able to add to their pages on Monday. Netscape will be somewhat
choosey: Pornography and other content deemed offensive will be forbidden. A
Netscape exec said, "We may loosen our restrictions as the program grows,
but for now we feel comfortable that we can restrict the amount of abusive
or pornographic content. We may decide to reverse that in the future." He
added: "By opening the site, we'll grow the size of the pie that the user
gets to see and the size of the pie that Netscape gets to see."
[SOURCE: CyberTimes, AUTHOR: Peter Wayner pwayner( at )nytimes.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/tech/indexcyber.html
ONLINE BANKING THREATENS OLD GUARD
Issue: E-commerce
Net.B( at )nk in Atlanta www.netbank.com and online-only banks in Indianapolis
www.firstin.com and Houston www.compubank.com have extremely low
overhead -- something traditional banks covet. This lets them offer
extremely high interest rates on checking accounts and other deposits.
Net.B( at )nk is seeing amazing growth and, unlike other Internet companies,
posting real profits. This year, some 9 million households are expected to
bank online and this number is expected to grow to more than 17 million by
2002. "Brokerage houses on-line have thrived because they've opened up a new
level of access to the market that didn't exist before. But you can't print
out money on a laser printer, so there's a limit to the value these banks
add to the banking relationship," said an industry analyst who doubts
Internet banks will revolutionize banking. The downside for consumers is
that online banks do not maintain their own ATM networks so online bank
customers must pay transaction fees when they use the machines.
[SOURCE: Chicago Tribune (Sec 4, p.1), AUTHOR: Melissa Wahl]
http://chicagotribune.com/textversion/article/0,1492,ART-24922,00.html
TELEPHONE REGULATION
FCC AUDIT REPORTS
Issue: Telephone Regulation
The Commission has completed its audits of the once-seven Regional Bell
Operating Companies' hard-wired central office equipment. The Commission
voted to release these audit reports and to release responses prepared by
each of the RBOCs. These files are available for downloading.
[SOURCE: FCC]
http://www.fcc.gov/ccb/asd/audits/
AUDIT SHOWING BABY BELLS CAN'T LOCATE $5 BILLION IN GEAR COULD SPUR RATE CUTS
Issue: Telephony/Regulation
An audit of the Baby Bells found that there is $5 billion in telecommunications
equipment that they had reported purchasing and now cannot be located.
The Federal Communication Commission has not decided if it will require the
Bells to write-off the loss or take other action against the companies like
lowering consumer rates since the cost of this equipment was considered in
setting telephone service rates.. Each of the local phone giants, including Bell
Atlantic and Southwestern Bell, cannot account for hundreds of millions of
dollars of equipment. Some FCC commissioners have doubts about the way the
audit was conducted and the conclusions drawn, says Yog Varma, top official
with the FCC's common carrier bureau. He said the FCC will solicit public
comments on how to respond to the results of the audit in April. Bob Rowe,
chairman of the telecommunications committee for the National Association of
Regulatory Utility Commissioners, says this may be an opportunity for state
regulators to reconsider how they set Bell rates. States oversee local,
in-state long distance calls, and by doing so, help the Bells recover three-
quarters of their costs. Gene Kimmelman of the Consumers Union, an advocacy
group, says Bell companies should lower their rates because they have been
inflating their books. The Bells say the 1997 audit methods were flawed. Bell
Atlantic says they sent the FCC comments explaining that they found 97% of the
equipment the auditors had reported lost. A Bell South attorney said their
rates would not be affected by the audit that found $430 million in equipment
missing from the company.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B5), AUTHOR: Kathy Chen]
http://wsj.com/
CENSORSHIP
COMMUNITY STANDARDS, OR CENSORS?
Issue: Censorship/First Amendment
[Editorial] An Illinois House committee has approved legislation that would
allow jurors in each county to decide if something is obscene based on the
standards of the county in which they live. "In other words, Illinois could
have 102 different standards of obscenity. And *that* would be obscene."
Similar legislation was considered in 1996 and 1997. The bill is opposed by
music and film distributors as well as the state's public libraries. The
editorial concedes that some may paint opposition to this bill as support
for pornography. "A vote against the bill is nothing of the kind. It is only
one thing: a vote to protect your freedom from censorship."
[SOURCE: Chicago Tribune (Sec 1, p.18), AUTHOR: Trib Editorial Board]
http://chicagotribune.com/textversion/article/0,1492,SAV-9903150035,00.html
PRINT MEDIA
INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS PLAN TO OPEN ONLINE STORE
Issue: Books/E-Commerce
The American Booksellers Association, the largest trade group of independent
bookstores, has plans to launch its own electronic bookstore sometime this
summer. Superstore chains and online bookstores are posing a major threat to
the survival of independents, which have seen a more than 10% drop in
market share since 1991. The association's proposed site, Book Sense, will
be a collaborative effort involving hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stores
that can be searched together. Individual stores, however, will be able to
have pages that reflect their own unique characters. "What we're really
trying to do is find different ways that we can do what our competitors are
doing," says Michael F. Hoynes, marketing officer for the ABA.
[SOURCE: New York Times (C1), AUTHOR: Doreen Carvajal]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/031599independent-bookstores.html
PUBLISHERS OF PAPERBACKS ARE FACING SLIDING SALES
Issue: Books/Print
Mass-marketed paperback book sales have been declining in the US since
1995 -- down 9% to 484 million copies a year. The Book Industry Study
Group projects a continued annual decline, while discounted hardcover sales and
"quality trade paperbacks" sales area increasing. The study reveals some
sources causing the decline: "the consolidation of the wholesale jobbers who
stocked mass-market paperbacks in the US's supermarkets and drugstores; sagging
public interest in such genres as westerns; the general aging of the industry's
biggest group of customers, and the declining popularity of mall stores that
attracted more impulse buyers than superstores." Carvajal reports publishers in
1939 called the introduction of paperbacks a revolution, and now are handling
the decline in sales by reducing the number of titles they carry and shipping
less copies. Laurence Kirshbaum, the chairman of Time Warner's trade publishing
group says that twenty-five years ago they would sell ten paperbacks for every
hard-cover sold. Now they sell two for every one. Publishers are left
speculating about reasons for the decline. Albert Greco, an associate professor
of business at Fordham University reports evidence that readers are turning to
videos over books. In 1997, for the first time consumers spent more money on
home videos than on books. Irwyn Applebaum, the publisher and president of
Bantam Books, says there are still enough readers to keep publishers in
business.
[SOURCE: New York Times (A1), AUTHOR: Doreen Carvajal]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/031599paperbacks-sales.html
CANADA PROCEEDS WITH LAW TO PROTECT MAGAZINE INDUSTRY
Issue: Magazines/International
Canada is on the verge of passing legislation that would make it illegal for
advertisers to buy space in Canadian versions of magazines published in
America. The Canadian government is attempting to protect its native
magazine industry which faces stiff competition from US publications that
can undercut advertising rates, while having little local content. The US
government has threatened to retaliate with the imposition of tariffs on a
variety of Canadian goods, if the bill is passed by the Canadian Senate.
[SOURCE: New York Times (C6), AUTHOR: Kalyani Vitiala]
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/canada-law-media.html
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