BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY NOVEMBER 24, 2008
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THE TRANSITION
Waxman's New Role Could Be Good News/Bad News for TV Industry
Obama testing ways to use Internet to govern
The Obama non-effect on tech
Where There's Bureaucracy, There's Bureaucracy
HEALTH & MEDIA
Health News Coverage in the US Media
Foundation Starts Health Policy News Service
For World's Sick, Care Via E-Mail
INTERNET/BROADBAND
American youth trail in Internet access
Google Seduces With Utility
MEDIA OWNERSHIP
What's Wrong With This Picture?
BROADCASTING/CABLE
DVR usage making big changes in television viewing
QUICKLY -- Verizon fires workers over Obama cell phone records breach
THE TRANSITION
WAXMAN'S NEW ROLE COULD BE GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS FOR TV INDUSTRY
[SOURCE: TVWeek, AUTHOR: Ira Teinowitz]
House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) hails from a district that represents the heart of Los Angeles' creative community: Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and Santa Monica. That could signal that the committee will be less apt to push indecency regulation and more receptive to copyright protection. Networks and media companies, however, may encounter challenges under a Waxman regime. The Democrat in the past has tried to curb drug and tobacco advertising. Marketers also could find their plans to develop targeted advertising in Chairman Waxman's sights, as consumer groups suggest he supports privacy restrictions that could affect media companies' use of customer information. For the television industry, though, the changing of the guard that brought President-elect Barack Obama to power introduces http://benton.org/node/19258
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OBAMA TESTING WAYS TO USE INTERNET TO GOVERN
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: Joe Garofoli]
During the campaign, the Obama team showed how new media tools can be used to win the White House. Now, the president-elect's advisers and allies are previewing how they intend to use the power of online organizing to govern. Analysts say Obama isn't just trying to make government more transparent by posting online videos of himself or his transition team's doings. He is attempting to organize his campaign supporters into a political force that he can tap in tough times - like when he needs to go around Congress and the mainstream media for direct citizen support.
http://benton.org/node/19257
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THE OBAMA NON-EFFECT ON TECH
[SOURCE: MarketWatch, AUTHOR: John Dvorak]
[Commentary] Make no mistake, Obama is not about tech, he's about communications, and while there is nothing wrong with this, don't expect a sudden governmental understanding of the complexities of the tech sector. This means we can expect an awkward approach to tech. We'll see a governmental interest in the superficial and trendy notions that percolate through the society promoted by public relations sources and those with a political agenda. Not all is lost. Most of the tech savvy companies can play the game and pay lip-service to today's memes such as "green-tech." The products that emerge from the tech industry are naturally "green" they just need to be labeled as such. Meanwhile, true tech efforts will be driven by entrepreneurship and invention, neither of which is likely to be helped much by this administration -- unless you are in the Internet or telephony space, that is.
http://benton.org/node/19256
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WHERE'S THERE'S BUREAUCRACY, THERE'S BUREAUCRACY
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Al Kamen]
The first wave of Obama transition staffers rolled into the government bureaucracy last week to investigate the states of play at various agencies. Best we can tell, things went reasonably smoothly, with perhaps a few exceptions, mostly having to do with security-clearance glitches. One Democratic official said there were some instances in which a "breakdown of communications" between the transition and the White House and an agency or two may have affected things. But a transition source involved in a "breakdown" called it a "massive screw-up."
http://benton.org/node/19255
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HEALTH & MEDIA
HEALTH NEWS COVERAGE IN THE US MEDIA
[SOURCE: Kaiser Family Foundation, Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR: ]
The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted this study of how the U.S. news media covered health issues over an 18-month period from January 2007 through June 2008. The study finds that news about health and health care made up less than four percent (3.6%) of all news content from January 2007 through June 2008. The study also examines the type of health coverage in the news, and finds that the largest proportion (42%) of the stories were about specific diseases or conditions. Thirty-one percent of health news focused on public health issues, including potential epidemics and contamination of food and drugs. The smallest category of stories focused on health policy or the health care system (27%) of all health news, or less than one percent (.9%) of all news content.
http://benton.org/node/19254
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FOUNDATION STARTS HEALTH POLICY NEWS SERVICE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Kevin Sack]
Seeking to fill a niche left by the decline of the traditional news media, the Kaiser Family Foundation is starting a news service to produce in-depth coverage of the policy and politics of health care, both for an independent Web site and in collaborations with mainstream news organizations. With a budget that is expected to reach $3 million to $4 million in two years, the project is one of the most ambitious in a wave of nonprofit online ventures that have emerged as newspapers and magazines cut jobs and newsgathering budgets. While it will be the largest and best-financed project of its kind, the Kaiser start-up service is only one of several by foundations and entrepreneurs aimed at providing serious coverage of health issues.
http://benton.org/node/19253
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FOR WORLD'S SICK, CARE VIA E-MAIL
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Kevin Sullivan]
The Swinfen Charitable Trust, a telemedicine charity, uses e-mail to link sick people in poor, remote or dangerous parts of the world with hundreds of medical specialists in some of the world's finest hospitals. Doctors in about 140 hospitals and clinics in 39 nations use the organization to seek help for patients requiring specialized care beyond their capabilities. Through the trust, they can be put in e-mail contact -- often within hours -- with one or more of the 400 specialists who work without pay as part of the trust's network. Doctors in distant areas, including Afghanistan, Antarctica and the Solomon Islands, e-mail photos, X-rays, test results and case notes. The information is reviewed by specialists, who respond by e-mail to help make diagnoses and recommend treatments. The only thing linking all the need and all the expertise is a desktop computer, an improbable global nerve center set amid a cherry orchard and wheat fields in the soft English hills about 75 miles southeast of London.
http://benton.org/node/19252
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
AMERICAN YOUTH TRAIL IN INTERNET ACCESS
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: David Lawsky]
Fewer young Americans have Internet access than their peers in the Czech Republic, Canada, Macao and Britain, a survey of 13 countries around the world showed. Among 12 to 14 year olds, 100 percent of British youth use the Internet, followed by Israel at 98 percent, the Czech Republic and Macao and 96 percent and Canada at 95 percent, according to the World Internet report by the Center for the Digital Future. By contrast, only 88 percent of Americans of the same age had access, trailed by Hungary and Singapore, where more than seven in 10 young people use the Internet. Separately, a bulletin by a software company showed mobile phone access to the Internet burgeoning outside the United States, especially in Southeast Asia. The Center report, issued annually in the United States and for the first time worldwide, said mobile phones are used for Internet access "by a very small percentage of users, with the exception of the United Kingdom." But that may be out of date. A monthly bulletin issued by Norwegian software maker Opera Software shows mobile phone Internet access exploding.
http://benton.org/node/19251
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GOOGLE SEDUCES WITH UTILITY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Carr]
[Commentary] You could credit Google, the largest ad seller in the world, with being a brilliant marketer and advertiser, but when was the last time you saw an ad, not served up by Google, but about Google? Not very often. That's largely because Google's Web platform, in all of its high-functioning glory, is its marketing. "The most powerful form of advertising is to be exceptional," said Ranjit Mathoda, an investor and technologist who blogs at Mathoda.com. "Google has created an ecosystem that perpetuates itself by being useful."
http://benton.org/node/19250
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MEDIA OWNERSHIP
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
[SOURCE: The Nation, AUTHOR: Mark crispin Miller]
[Commentary] For all their economic clout and cultural sway, the ten great multinationals profiled in our latest chart--AOL Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsmann, AT&T and Liberty Media--rule the cosmos only at the moment. The media cartel that keeps us fully entertained and permanently half-informed is always growing here and shriveling there, with certain of its members bulking up while others slowly fall apart or get digested whole. But while the players tend to come and go--always with a few exceptions--the overall Leviathan itself keeps getting bigger, louder, brighter, forever taking up more time and space, in every street, in countless homes, in every other head. The rise of the cartel has been a long time coming (and it still has some way to go). It represents the grand convergence of the previously disparate US culture industries--many of them vertically monopolized already--into one global superindustry providing most of our imaginary "content."
http://benton.org/node/19249
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BROADCASTING/CABLE
DVR USAGE MAKING BIG CHANGES IN TELEVISION VIEWING
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: David Bauder]
The promise inherent in digital video recorders — that viewers can be in control of their own TV schedules — is rapidly being fulfilled this fall, and the business is changing around it. Nearly 30% of the nation's TV homes have at least one. Nowhere is the impact more apparent than at the CW, where recording the shows and watching them later account for nearly 17% of the network's viewership over a one-week period. Two years ago, it was less than 5%, according to Nielsen Media Research. The time-shifting is more dramatic for individual shows. The CW even had a week where the audience of 18-to-34-year-old women for 90210 increased by a stunning 79% over the live broadcast. Viewing for ABC, CBS and NBC programs are all more than 10% time-shifted now, too. Fox's programming is only 8% time-shifted this fall, in large part because it has shown postseason baseball, which very few people watch later.
http://benton.org/node/19248
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QUICKLY
VERIZON FIRES WORKERS OVER OBAMA CELL PHONE RECORDS BREACH
[SOURCE: CNN, AUTHOR: ]
Verizon Wireless has fired employees connected to a breach of records from a cell phone used by President-elect Barack Obama this year. Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the employees probably had access to the dates and times of calls, the length of calls and the telephone numbers of those Obama spoke with.
http://benton.org/node/19247
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