August 2008

Martin Sets August Agenda for FCC

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin wants the agency to adopt rules on August 22 that would exempt small cable operators from certain obligations to carry local TV stations in both analog and digital formats. The relief is expected to cover cable systems with up to 2,500 subscribers that are owned by cable companies that serve no more than 10% of pay-TV subscribers nationally -- a test that theoretically includes just about every cable company except Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Chairman Martin has been working closely with the American Cable Association, a trade group for small cable companies, on new TV station carriage rules. The TV station carriage relief would extend to eligible cable operators that continue to distribute programming over analog and digital platforms. The FCC's new rules would relate to cable carriage of TV stations that demand carriage under their so-called must carry rights. Cable operators with systems eligible for FCC relief would be required to carry TV stations only in analog during the three-year exemption. The FCC tentative agenda also includes consideration of the following issues: cellphone roaming; a freeze on new wireless-microphone licenses in the 700-megahertz band; dialing 911; and universal service administration. Chairman Martin also said the text of the order approving the XM Satellite Radio-Sirius Satellite Radio merger could be out as early as Tuesday.

Was The FCC Comcast Investigation A Farce?

[Commentary] When did Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin turn into a consumer advocate? Bode note's Martin's political ambitions and wonders if he's trying to hold onto his past the time his political rabbi -- George Bush -- leaves office. "But I can't stop wondering if Martin's new found obsession with ISP "transparency" doesn't have a larger motive than just politics," Bode writes. While consumer advocates are cheering the FCC decision as a network neutrality victory, and pro-free-market types are lamenting Martin as the worst sort of socialist evil-doer, Comcast really won't see more than a wrist slap. Note the only real change is that Comcast may impose a 250GB monthly cap, and start charging users $15 for each 10 GB over the cap they travel. I'll repeat: the only real result of the investigation is bad press for Comcast and an industry push toward caps and metered usage. Who benefits? The best case scenario is that Martin is just pretending to champion network neutrality in order to further his political future. The worst case scenario is that Martin and AT&T are using the throttling investigation to begin warming consumers to an immensely unpopular pricing model. If the latter, expect the hard sell for metered pricing to drop this fall, with a heavy push coming from AT&T and their various policy mouthpieces.

What's a reasonable approach for managing broadband networks?

[Commentary] The recent attention to the Comcast-BitTorrent dispute and on Time Warner's recently launched trial of "consumption-based billing" raises the question: what is a reasonable approach for broadband networks to manage their Internet traffic? In Cerf's view, Internet traffic should be managed with an eye towards applications and protocols. For example, a broadband provider should be able to prioritize packets that call for low latency (the period of time it takes for a packet to travel from Point A to Point B), but such prioritization should be applied across the board to all low latency traffic, not just particular application providers. Broadband carriers should not be in the business of picking winners and losers in the market under the rubric of network management. Network management also should be narrowly tailored, with bandwidth constraints aimed essentially at times of actual congestion.

McCain and Obama Split News Coverage

For the first time since this general election campaign began in early June, Republican John McCain attracted virtually as much media attention as his Democratic rival last week. Barack Obama was a significant or dominant factor in 81% of the campaign stories compared with 78% for McCain, according to PEJ's Campaign Coverage Index for July 28-Aug. 3. Not only was that a high water for McCain in the general election season (his previous best was 62% from June 30-July 6). The virtual dead heat in the race for exposure between the two candidates also marked the first time his weekly coverage had even been within 10 percentage points of Obama's total.

Could Celebrity status hurt Obama?

[Commentary] The emergence of Barack Obama as a marketable celebrity brings a new dimension to the perennial discussion of media political bias. Usually, the reasons advanced for why the media lean this way or that fall into familiar patterns: Journalists themselves are liberal and swing coverage to reflect personal ideology; news organizations are owned by conservatives who want anti-corporate politicians marginalized; media try to mirror the prejudices of audiences and advertisers, which means supporting entrenched privilege -- such as being male or being white; media like to stir things up, so they tilt toward the sensational and the discordant. And so on. But one dimension of media behavior that doesn't get enough attention is the self-serving one: Media like what helps them prosper. If Obama draws bigger crowds, let's have more Obama coverage. But is celebrity-like coverage for a politician helpful? Probably not:

1) celebrity popularity is fickle;

2) celebrity appeal usually turns on personality attributes -- making supposed personality foibles pivotal to a candidate's appeal introduces a quirky and bizarre element into electoral calculation;

3) celebrities must keep it light: stardom is status without influence; and

4) the McCain attack comparing Obama to Paris Hilton is powerful as presidential candidates always avoid specifics if they can get by with rhetoric, but few have to live down the impression that they are.

Could upstart Obama's newfound stardom cost him the presidency? Now that's a plotline worthy of a world-class celebrity.

(Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University.)

Another TV duopoly is a bad idea in Miami

[Commentary] Will it be in the public interest if two Miami television stations that have for decades competing in local news are owned by the same company? The Federal Communications Commission has been approving TV duopolies willy-nilly (South Florida has three) over the last decade, mostly of the big-fish-eat-little-fish variety. And the FCC seems likely to approve the latest proposal from Post-Newsweek. The FCC buys into the argument, pushed hard by the National Association of Broadcasters, that consolidation enables local stations to create super-duper news operations. "We think it's a terrible idea," said Marvin Ammori of Free Press, a public interest watchdog. Ammori said "the weight of the evidence" shows that the 80 or so TV duopolies blessed by the FCC usually resulted in a net loss in local news coverage. Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, said, "Our concern is that they tend to save money by cutting back on reporters. You get fewer reporters on certain beats. You lose competition. You lose diversity in news coverage. Discourse is diminished. We're convinced it hurts the public interest." "We're unhappy with consolidation, in general, but the prospect of two network affiliates owned by one company in a major market is especially unsettling," said Andrew Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, yet another advocacy group worried that the FCC is putting industry wants ahead of the public interest. Schwartzman said, "Our experience is that duopolies have produced few if any palpable benefits for the public." But he predicted the FCC would again say yes.

Court OKs Cablevision's Network DVR

The U.S. Court of Appeals the 2nd Circuit, reversing a lower court, said Cablevision's remote digital video recorder (DVR) service did not directly infringe on the copyright interests of the Cartoon Network, Cable News Network and various Hollywood studios that sued the Long Island-based cable operator. The ruling will Cablevision to roll out its network-based DVR, lifting an injunction that barred Cablevision from using the technology pending appeal. Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge said, "This decision is a great victory for innovation, technological progress and consumers' rights."

Watchdogs File Brief In MySpace Case

The Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen and a group of 14 law professors filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief arguing that violating an Internet service's "terms of service" agreement isn't a criminal offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The brief submitted in United States v. Lori Drew explains the legal theory behind the government's indictment of Drew would effectively criminalize the actions of millions of Web users. The suburban St. Louis mother allegedly created a false profile on the popular social networking site MySpace, posing as a teenage boy, to engage a 13-year-old neighborhood girl, Megan Meier, in conversation. Drew's conversations with Meier were allegedly cruel and harassing and Meier hanged herself.

PTC Responds to Networks' Supreme Court Filings

The Parents Television Council said the broadcast medium remains uniquely pervasive and if broadcasters think they aren't, they should return their licenses and allow the spectrum to be auctioned "in the public interest." That came in response to broadcasters' argument in a brief to the Supreme Court Friday that the court should rethink the "uniquely pervasive" and "spectrum-scarcity" arguments for regulating broadcast content.

FCC Receives Comments on WiMax

Comments continued to be filed with the Federal Communications Commission over whether some top cable operators and Google should be able to team up with Sprint Nextel and Clearwire to provide a new WiMax-delivered broadband service. Free-market think tank The Free State Foundation weighed in Monday, saying that it will boost competition and adding that it should "eliminate" -- or at least reduce -- the calls for imposing network neutrality on broadband providers.

Benton

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