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Augyst 4, 2008 (FCC Nominations Stalled)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY AUGUST 4, 2008
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POLICYMAKERS
Tate, Adelstein Stuck in Election-Year Limbo at FCC
ELECTIONS & MEDIA
Frustrations Lead McCain Campaign To Limit Reporters' Access
Election Year Rains Millions on Media Outlets
Media Outlets are Still Seeking a Campaign Bounce of Their Own
INTERNET/BROADBAND
FCC's Comcast Ruling Opens a Can of Worms
Free the Web -- From the FCC!
MA Governor to Sign $40 Broadband Bill Aimed at Spurring Investment
Music industry 'should embrace illegal websites'
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
FCC Tables Decisions On Two Airwaves Sales
Applications Spur Carriers to Relax Grip on Cellphones
QUICKLY
Newspapers Could Be Bargains, but Few Are Buying
Cloud Computing
Screen Actors Guild Is Divided Against Itself
21 Years Ago Today
POLICYMAKERS
TATE, ADELSTEIN STUCK IN ELECTION YEAR LIMBO AT FCC
[SOURCE: TVWeek, AUTHOR: Ira Teinowitz]
Chances for a Senate vote this year reconfirming two Federal Communications Commission members to new terms appear to be evaporating as Congress exits Washington for the August recess. The lack of action suggests one commissioner, Deborah Taylor Tate, will depart the FCC at year's end. President Bush's renominations of both Commissioner Tate, a Republican, and Democrat Jonathan Adelstein to new five-year terms have been awaiting Senate action since last year. Tate's term expired June 30, 2007, and was renominated by President Bush in June 2007. Without confirmation, she remains on the FCC until Congress formally adjourns for the year, probably in December. Commissioner Adelstein's term ended June 30, 2008; he will remain on the FCC through the end of 2009 if the Senate doesn't act. Several sources said the confirmation delay is tied to congressional Democrats' unhappiness with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and their desire to take control of the five-member commission if Sen Barack Obama wins the presidency. A new president could replace the Republican Martin as FCC chairman with one of the Commission's Democrats, with or without Tate's confirmation. The confirmation is being delayed because there is uncertainty about whether Chairman Martin will follow recent past practice and quit as a commissioner, as Michael Powell did in 2005. If Commissioner Tate were reconfirmed and Chairman Martin chose to complete his term, which ends June 30, 2011, Democrats would have the chairmanship, but Republicans would temporarily keep their 3-to-2 commission majority. Holding off on Tate's nomination assures Democrats of immediately getting an FCC majority.
http://benton.org/node/15802
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ELECTIONS & MEDIA
FRUSTRATIONS LEAD MCCAIN CAMPAIGN TO LIMIT REPORTERS' ACCESS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz]
[Commentary] The captain of the Straight Talk Express is having a bumpier ride with journalists than when he ran for president eight years ago. The popular image of the campaign -- Sen John McCain (R-AZ) bantering with national journalists in the back of his bus -- has, in reality, all but vanished. The traveling press is now routinely stiffed in favor of five-minute sit-downs with local reporters. At the same time, Sen McCain is having trouble making news, or at least news that advances his campaign's goals, and when he does it is often reacting to the media hurricane that surrounds Sen Barack Obama (D-IL). In 2000, when top news executives were clamoring for a chance to ride the fabled bus, McCain would spend hours talking to reporters who would write one story a day. "Now, with each bus trip, everyone's filing a blog report, every little thing is picked up and off it goes," says Slate correspondent John Dickerson. "It certainly takes him off message." Sen McCain is "pained" at all but ending the sessions, says spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush White House communications director, but "we have to find a balance. He won the primary essentially on a bus with the press. . . . He's intensely loyal to the back-and-forth with the press. It's who he is. It will always be part of our mix." It wasn't part of the mix last week. National correspondents traveling with the candidate did not get to ask McCain a question for four days, and grew angry when a media availability was scheduled for late afternoon Friday in Panama City, Fla. -- too late to do them much good and requiring extra flights for those who had planned to head home for the weekend.
http://benton.org/node/15801
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ELECTION YEAR RAINS MILLIONS ON MEDIA OUTLETS
[SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Evan Tracey]
[Commentary] While there are less than 100 days left to the election, there are still billions of dollars to be spent on ads. With the countdown to Election 2008 upon us, below is your viewing guide to all things political advertising -- from what we have seen to what we expect will keep us talking. The forces that have set the stage for this season's record-breaking ad spending can be traced back to elections from the past two decades. The Clinton 1996 stealth strategy was the precursor to the early-advertising strategies we see today. Fundraising increases and group tactics can be traced back to changes in the campaign finance laws in 2003. Heavy use of Internet fundraising began in the 2000 election. Joe Lieberman's primary loss in 2006 sparked incumbent insecurity. All of these forces have come together to create today's political environment of considerable ad spending and an ever-lengthening ad cycle.
http://benton.org/node/15800
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MEDIA OUTLETS ARE STILL SEEKING A CAMPAIGN BOUNCE OF THEIR OWN
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brian Stelter, Richard Perez-Pena]
Capitalizing on the interest in this year's election has been hot or miss for mainstream news media. Cable news ratings are up as are the views of their online video. But media companies are struggling to translate campaign coverage into repeat readers, viewers -- and revenue. Televised debates and magazine covers with candidates on the front cover over temporary bumps, but no long term gains. Broadcast television newscasts are still losing viewers. The Pew Internet and American Life Project estimates that 17 percent of Americans now learn about the campaign via the Internet on a typical day -- more than double the number that did back in 2004.
http://benton.org/node/15799
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
FCC'S COMCAST RULING OPENS A CAN OF WORMS
[SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Olga Kharif]
[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission's ruling against Comcast is not the end just the beginning of the so-called Network Neutrality debate about whether network providers have the right to manage Web traffic. The decision is likely to open a whole new can of worms. If the courts throw out the FCC decision, Congress may need to get involved in the net neutrality debate.
http://benton.org/node/15798
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FREE THE WEB -- FROM THE FCC!
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Gordon Crovitz]
[Commentary] There are a few holy articles among the Web faithful: The Internet is the most liberating force in generations, freeing people to use and share information however they like; the digital world has grown through innovation and risk-taking by entrepreneurs and companies; and government's role is to get out of the way and stay out. We have happily sung from this hymnal for years, but the gospel is breaking down on the issue of government involvement. Many Internet activists now want the federal government to regulate the Web. They do so in the hope of maintaining the open Web. But they should be careful what they wish for, lest they instead get micromanagement, tariffs and a Web clogged by politics. Government's role on the Web is to ensure more competition and more consumer choice, not less competition and diminished consumer choice by turning the Web into a regulated industry. The Internet has become one of the most powerful innovations of our time, in part because it hasn't been burdened by government intervention. Those of us who want to keep the Web free should remember that the best way to keep an industry free is simply to keep it free.
http://benton.org/node/15797
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IN MASSACHUSETTS, GOVERNOR TO SIGN $40 MILLION BILL AIMED AT SPURRING INVESTMENT
[SOURCE: BroadbandCensus.com, AUTHOR: Drew Clark]
At 10 a.m. this morning, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is scheduled to sign state-wide broadband legislation at the town hall of Goshen, about 12 miles northwest of Northhampton and in the Berkeshire Mountains. The law creates a $40 million Massachusetts broadband incentive fund, allowing the state to issue 30-year bonds to help bring broadband to unserved communities like Goshen. The funds will be administered by a quasi-public agency, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, which has been studying broadband in Massachusetts. Goshen is one of the 32 town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts - out of a total of 351 towns and cities - that have no commercial broadband providers, according to Sharon Gillett, Commissioner of the Department of Telecommunications and Cable. The 32 towns - all of which are in the western portion of Massachusetts, are "the one that we have defined as having no consumer-level provision of service," Gillett said in an interview. Gillett said that state defined "unserved" as meaning that they had no access to fiber-optic, cable modem, or digital subscriber line (DSL) service. The bill, which passed the Massachusetts House on June 30, cleared the Senate in July. Initially composed of $25 million, the House added $15 million to bill in an effort to allow underserved communities to tap into the funding. Once signed into legislation, the technology collaborative will have the authority to tap into the fund, and "issue requests to the private sector, to anyone who wants to co-invest with the commonwealth, in servicing" these areas, said Gillett. "The governor's initiative was always intended to stimulate private investment."
http://benton.org/node/15796
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MUSIC INDUSTRY 'SHOULD EMBRACE ILLEGAL WEBSITES'
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson]
The music industry should embrace illegal file-sharing websites, according to a study of Radiohead's last album release that found huge numbers of people downloaded it illegally even though the band allowed fans to pay little or nothing for it. "Rights-holders should be aware that these non-traditional venues are stubbornly entrenched, incredibly popular and will never go away," said Eric Garland, co-author of the study, which concluded there was strong brand loyalty to controversial "torrent" and peer-to-peer services. Radiohead's release of In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want basis last October generated enormous traffic to the band's own website and intense speculation about how much fans had paid. He urged record companies to study the outcome and accept that file-sharing sites were here to stay. "It's time to stop swimming against the tide of what people want," he said.
http://benton.org/node/15793
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
FCC TABLES DECISIONS ON TWO AIRWAVES SALES
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: ]
On Friday Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said the FCC will delay, until at least September, 1) setting the rules for a second auction of valuable radio spectrum and 2) an airwaves sale in which the winning bidders would have to offer free Internet.
http://benton.org/node/15791
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APPLICATIONS SPUR CARRIERS TO RELAX GRIP ON CELLPHONES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Laura Holson]
Consumers have long been frustrated with how much control carriers — AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and the like — have exerted over what they could download to their mobile phones. But in the last nine months, carriers, software developers and cellphone makers have embraced a new attitude of openness toward consumers. The industry, of course, has selfish reasons for promoting openness. Applications spur the use of higher-priced wireless data plans and the purchase of more expensive smartphones. "What is most important for us is to have a customer sign up for a plan," said Ralph de la Vega, who is in charge of AT&T's wireless unit. "We think we can have multiple ways to make money." Silicon Valley's venture capitalists are already salivating over the enthusiasm for cellphone applications. Their investments in this category rose 90 percent in the first half of 2008, to $383 million, from the second half of 2007.
http://benton.org/node/15795
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QUICKLY
NEWSPAPERS COULD BE BARGAINS, BUT FEW ARE BUYING
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Richard Perez-Pena]
Who wants to buy a newspaper? No, not just today's -- the whole company. While all publicly traded newspaper companies have seen their share prices fall in the last year -- drops of 50 to 70 percent are commonplace -- some have tumbled so far that any number of bargain hunters could snap up a controlling interest, despite the credit squeeze. But they haven't. The weak economy and tight credit market have slowed buying in all sorts of media, but the drop-off is especially pronounced in newspapers. Experts say the lack of interest reflects a sharp shift in the last year toward a more pessimistic long-term view of the industry. The loss of ads has accelerated, and few expect a rebound even when the economy recovers.
http://benton.org/node/15794
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CLOUD COMPUTING
[SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Rachael King, Allan Leinwand]
A host of providers including Amazon, Salesforce.com, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft are helping corporate clients use the Internet to tap into everything from extra server space to software that helps manage customer relationships. Assigning these computing tasks to some remote location—rather than, say, a desktop computer, handheld machine, or a company's own servers—is referred to collectively as cloud computing. In 10 years, which company will own the cloud computing space? By 2018, cloud computing will likely be evaluated based on three generic criteria: transactions, user experience, and presence. And as with any active market, it's a safe bet there will be plenty of companies that best showcase each of them.
http://benton.org/node/15790
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SCREEN ACTORS GUILD DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brooks Barnes]
The quest by the Screen Actors Guild for a sharply improved labor contract has a new plot line: mutiny. Infuriated by hard-line tactics used by SAG leaders in contract talks with Hollywood's largest studios — talks that broke down a month ago — a less militant collection of actors has started a campaign to take over the guild.
http://benton.org/node/15789
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21 YEARS AGO TODAY
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: ]
On August 4, 1987, the Federal Communications Commission voted to abolish the Fairness Doctrine, which required radio and television stations to present balanced coverage of controversial issues. Funny, 21 years ago. What started soon after?
http://benton.org/node/15792
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(sorry for the delay; problems with AT&T this morning)