On Wednesday May 13, the Federal Communications Commission will consider: 1) the collection of regulatory fees for Fiscal Year 2009, 2) requirements of interconnected VoIP providers when discontinuing service, and 3) the interval for porting a customer's telephone number in response to wireline-to-wireline and intermodal port requests.
According to the recent Magna Online Video Forecast, the US market for online video will grow by 32% this year, rising from $531 million in 2008 to $699 million in 2009. Though these figures represent downward revisions from a previous forecast, these gains, says Magna, will likely outpace growth rates for most other emerging media platforms. The report says that as marketing budgets are reduced across industries, advertisers look to reach their consumers in a more targeted and cost-effective manner. In recent periods, the expanding availability of premium network and cable TV programming combined with increasing broadband penetration now covering 60% of US homes by Magna estimates, collectively led to a 24% increase in time with professionally produced online video during 2008, following a 50% rise during 2007, according to Accustream. Few large advertisers can achieve broad reaching objectives solely by using an online video-only campaign if there are any content preferences involved, concludes the report. As a point of reference, during 2008 490 billion person-hours of traditional television were consumed according to Nielsen. This equates to 244 times more consumption of professional content video than of online video. Even assuming last year's growth rate continues through 2012, traditional TV would still account for 98 times more consumption.
Technology research firm In-Stat forecasts that by 2013 the number of U.S. broadband households watching Web-to-TV content will grow to 24 million, generating $2.9 billion in revenue from streaming services. In-Stat points out that almost 30% of those ages 25 to 34 already use game consoles to view streaming video off the Internet. But in the coming years, Web-enabled televisions and set-top boxes will supplant game consoles as the main technologies for people to access Internet video on their TVs. "Consumers will have either an Ethernet jack on the back of their TVs to interconnect to the Web or through a Web-enabled set-top box," said In-Stat analyst Keith Nissen. "By 2011, Web-to-TV will be taking off because it will be very simple and convenient to do this."
For Emily Barr, it took all of about four minutes to decide she didn't want to be part of a groundbreaking -- and potentially risky -- Chicago television newsgathering collective that begins Monday. That is when NBC-owned WMAQ-Channel 5, Fox-owned WFLD-Channel 32, CBS-owned WBBM-Channel 2 and Tribune Co.-owned WGN-Channel 9 will start sharing eight pooled camera crews (two from each station). The crews will be dispatched to selected news events to shoot pool footage each station can use as it sees fit. So far as anyone involved can ascertain, this is the first time four "competing stations" in a major television market have joined forces in this fashion for daily news coverage. Barr, general manager at local news leader ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7, said she instinctively felt the new venture would strip WLS of some, if not all, of what the station most zealously seeks to safeguard: its image as an independent Chicago news operation.
Companies will soon be able to sponsor some PBS programs for as little as one week at a time, rather than a full year. Feeling the pinch of marketing budgets, public television stations are being forced to be more creative when they approach corporate underwriters. This week the Sponsorship Group for Public Television, a sales organization for the Boston station WGBH and other producers, said it would encourage companies to underwrite children's shows like "Arthur" and "Clifford" for as little as a single week or as many as 10 weeks this summer. Until now, the Sponsorship Group offered only full-year sponsorships. "We're trying to be more flexible," said Suzanne Zellner, the vice president for corporate sponsorships for WGBH. While PBS officials spurn the word advertising, critics say shorter sponsorship stints are another example of the creeping commercialization of public television. Susan Linn, the director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, an advocacy group, said that PBS had been moving toward a more commercial approach "for a long time," and said that changes to the sponsorship model were "undermining parents and harming children." She expressed concern that PBS would now be able to show seasonal ads for toys or PG-13 movies on the children's shows and drew parallels to commercial channels like Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network.
President Barack Obama's inaugural budget sets the stage for an expansion of the federal work force and for hundreds of new rules that would widen Washington's involvement in the workings of private business. If enacted by Congress, the budget initiatives will mark a clear end to the deregulatory philosophy of the Bush administration, signaling profound change for the nation's biggest businesses. For example, President Obama is asking for $13.3 billion of discretionary spending to run the Labor Department, up 3% from fiscal 2009. The $400 million increase would boost enforcement of workplace-safety and wage rules, and pay for more staffers to ensure that businesses comply with equal-employment rules for federal contractors.
Apparently, Microsoft will argue against a European Commission proposal that it promote competing browsers in its Windows operating system on the ground that such a move would strengthen its rival Google's dominance in the global search-advertising market. The company will make the argument at a June hearing in Brussels as part of an antitrust inquiry about the packaging of its Internet Explorer browser with Windows, which powers more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers. Microsoft will outline the damaging effects to the search-advertising industry of incorporating competing browsers — like Firefox from Mozilla or Chrome from Google — into Windows.
Google executives on Thursday mounted a concerted public defence of how the search company wields its wide-ranging power on the Internet amid signs of growing regulatory concern. The comments came as a Google lawyer confirmed for the first time that US regulators had shown their interest in possible competition issues raised by chief executive Eric Schmidt's position as a director on Apple's board. Speaking ahead of the company's annual shareholder meeting, Schmidt acknowledged the company had entered a new phase in which its dominance of the Internet search business would bring close scrutiny from regulators.
News Corp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch says the days of websites giving away content are numbered. Citing the success of his company's Wall Street Journal, Murdoch said that he saw no reason why its model couldn't be applied to more sites. "That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Journal's experience. We are now in the midst of an epochal debate over the value of content and it is clear to many newspapers that the current model is malfunctioning," he said.
FCC Open Meeting (July)
445 12th Street SW
Washington, DC 20554
July 2 2009 11:30 am ET
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-291828A1.doc
The Meeting will include a presentation on the status of the Commission's process for developing a National Broadband Plan and a presentation on the Digital Television transition.
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