May 2009

Researchers urge crackdown on junk food TV ads

Junk food ads account for two-thirds of televised advertisements for food that are shown when children are likely to be watching, researchers into obesity said on Friday, based on a study of 11 countries. Germany and the United States led the way at 90 percent, with Britain and Australia the lowest at about 50 percent, the researchers said, urging governments to limit such marketing in order to combat obesity. "Internationally, children are exposed to high volumes of unhealthy food and beverage advertising on television," Bridget Kelly, a nutrition researcher at the Cancer Council NSW in Australia, and colleagues told the European Congress on Obesity in Amsterdam. "Limiting this food marketing is an important preventative strategy for childhood obesity."

It's Do-Over Time At The NAB

[Commentary] With broadcasting suffering through the worse economic times in its history and Washington threatening even more trouble, its principal lobby is suddenly without a leader. On Wednesday, David Rehr resigned as NAB president after being told that he no longer enjoyed the confidence of the board. The announcement brought to an abrupt end to Rehr's tumultuous three-plus years in the $800,000-a-year job. While the board scrambles to find a replacement, Janet McGregor, NAB's chief operating officer and CFO, who joined the NAB just last year, will run the place. McGregor might be an excellent administrator, but she is no lobbyist. She cannot do what the NAB president should be able to do — make things happen on Capitol Hill and at the FCC. That's unfortunate because things are getting a little dicey in Washington right now. Congress is weighing one measure that could seriously undermine the ability of TV stations to negotiate for retrans fees from cable operators and another that could force radio stations to pay hefty music royalties to record labels for the first time. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. Meanwhile, there are rumors that Michael Copps wants to make his mark as interim FCC chairman by rushing through new local programming requirements on TV stations before the Senate confirms Julius Genachowski as the new permanent chairman.

Civil Rights Groups Urge Radio Bill Delay

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law this week urged the House Judiciary Committee to delay any action on legislation that would end a longstanding royalty exemption for AM and FM radio until the panel holds a hearing to weigh the bill's impact on minority-owned broadcast radio stations. Noting "two significant voting rights cases" before the Supreme Court, the groups explained that "the chief remaining resource to ensure that African Americans can participate fully in the democratic process will be the continued engagement of minority radio broadcasters to drive turnout."

FCC Provides Rules For DTV Fill-Ins

The Federal Communications Commission has established a new class of translators that will help television stations fill in digital television coverage gaps in their current service gaps. The FCC's decision comes only a little over a month before the June 12 switch to digital, but the commission has been allowing translator applications to be submitted under temporary authority. The FCC will not make broadcasters pay in the secondary spectrum market for the fill-in spectrum, as the wireless industry had suggested.

Sirius XM sticks it to subscribers

How's the Sirius XM satellite radio monopoly working out for subscribers? Not so well. Now that Sirius XM is the only game in town, it's nudging up fees for subscribers. Nice! The one and only satellite radio company's boasts of its ever-increasing subscriber base are gone now, and the decline is significant. The number floating around the Internet is a loss of 400,000 subscribers. That still leaves 18.6 million, but there's no way of knowing how many of that number are full-price-paying subscribers. Could the subscriber losses be attributed to recent price hikes? The family plan package went from $6.99 to $8.99 a month and there's a monthly $2.99 fee to receive Sirius XM stations over the Internet. That service was previously free.

Gigi Sohn Says Give Remote DVR A Chance

A Q&A with Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn. Public Knowledge has supported Cablevision's position in legal wrangling over the cable operator's plans to roll out a headend-based digital video recorder service. The US Supreme Court is awaiting advice from the solicitor general on whether or not to hear content creators' (studios and programmers) appeal of an earlier ruling that found Cablevision's plan to provide DVR functionality in centralized servers does not violate copying and performance restrictions in copyright law. The studios say that fundamentally distorts copyright law. Cablevision, meanwhile, has yet to roll out the service. PK wants the last decision to stand, enabling Cablevision to roll out the "cool, consumer-friendly technology" and reinforcing fair-use rights established in the Sony Betamax case over video cassette recording.

Bad economy may be slowing RLEC line loss

Many rural carriers reported positive trends in access line loss in the first quarter, suggesting some stabilization in what has been a persistent problem for telecom carriers. And it's possible the bad economy may be helping to drive the improvement. Embarq, Frontier Communications and Iowa Telecom all reported seeing access line loss trends in the first quarter that were in some respects better than in any quarter last year, and they weren't the only ones citing good news in line counts lately. "A long line of RLECs...report[ed] improving access line trends over the course of the last couple quarters," Stifel Nicolaus analyst Bill King said. Some have suggested that the bad economy may actually be aiding access line trends because fewer people are changing addresses, which is a typical occasion for customer churn.

Families Invest In Broadband Rather than Food and Utility Bills

According to a recent research published by telecom service provider O2, families in UK are more likely cut down on their food bills and school uniforms rather than reducing their spending on Internet services. The Digital Families report also throws up interesting insights into the changing attitudes of families with an increasing number of families embracing technology in whole hearted manner. The report which incidentally surveyed 500 families across UK to base its study, found that nearly 40 percent of those surveyed were spending £3,000 per year on technology and gadgets. Nearly 67 per cent of those surveyed would prefer to spend on technology, rather than on family holidays and weekly shops which were preferred by a meagre 30 percent and 24 percent of surveyed families.

Republican Bill To Reform FCC Not A Bad Place To Start Discussions

[Commentary] Reps Joe Barton (R-TX) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) have introduced the FCC Reform Act which would:

1) Require the FCC to publish the proposed language of actual rules, provide 30 days for comment and 30 days for reply comments, and then another 30 days for consideration on the record, before adopting, eliminating or modifying any new rule.

2) Require that "members of the Commission have adequate time, prior to being required to decide an issue . . . to review the proposed Commission decision document, including any specific language that is proposed to be adopted, as, modified in, or deleted from a regulation." I presume this is before we get to the needed 90 days for public participation.

3) Set deadlines for things by category. e.g., how long will it take to do complaints.

4) Publish any item actually adopted within 30 days.

5) Whenever official items adopted aren't published in 30 days, send a letter to the Chair and ranking members of the House Commerce Committee and Telecom Subcommittee.

6) Any year the FCC screws up on these deadlines, it will publish a big "here's all the times we didn't get stuff out on time" report.

7) Publish a list of what's on circulation. If an item is on circulation more than 60 days, publish who has refused to vote.

8) For regular reports on industry statistics (like the various annual "state of competition reports"), publish the schedule for when these are supposed to come out and notify the Chair and Ranking members of Committee and Subcommittee when they are late.

The problems the Barton-Stearns bill tries to address are real and long-standing. Wherever we ultimately end up, this looks like a good place to start the discussion.

Paging Doctor Broadband

The house call isn't dead - it's just gone online. How doctors are using the Internet to take the hassle out of health care.

Benton

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