August 2009

There's a new battle developing in the bitter war over the Performance Rights Act—proposed legislation that would require terrestrial radio stations to pay royalties to the artists whose songs they broadcast. The Federal Communications Commission has agreed to hear comments on reports that radio station owners are "targeting and threatening artists who have spoken out in favor of the PRA," with some going so far as refusing to play their music. The FCC is responding to a Petition for Declaratory Relief submitted by the MusicFIRST coalition, a group backed by the Recording Industry Association of America, SoundExchange, and various musicians' groups. In addition to accusing radio stations of "engaging in a pattern of threats and intimidation against artists to chill their speech," MusicFIRST says they are refusing to run the coalition's ads. All this is part of a coordinated campaign "designed to spread malicious and untruthful information—all in an effort to avoid royalty payment to artists," the group warns.

Sen Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has written Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski a letter, asking Chairman Genachowski to reaffirm his opposition to re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine. Chairman Genachowski has been clear during and after his confirmation process that he has no intention of resuscitating the long dead policy, by Sen Grassley is concerned because the chairman recently appointed Mark Lloyd to be the FCC's chief diversity officer. As a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, Lloyd co-authored a June 2007 paper, "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio," which suggests ways to balance conservative talk radio, including station ownership caps, more licensing oversight and allowing stations who do not want to meet public interest benchmarks to pay a fee to support public broadcasters.

Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA), the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wants more answers from the White House about its e-mail policies. In a letter to White House counsel Greg Craig, Rep Issa on Monday raised questions about the White House's request for supporters to forward "fishy claims" about healthcare. He says such a request could have a "chilling" effect on free speech and asked the president to ensure that the e-mails will be stored properly but not used for political purposes. "To help ease these concerns, please tell us what actions take place or have been discussed in regard to e-mails deemed 'fishy' and what safeguards the White House has put in place to insure [sic] no retributive steps are taken against those who express dissent," Rep Issa wrote.

Cable and broadcast networks are already facing eroding viewership, partly due to audiences surfing the web on their laptops and netbooks. Now the World Wide Web is extending its tendrils into the networks' home turf: The TV screen itself. A new wave of HD TVs -- some already in stores -- let the viewer connect the Internet directly to the TV set. Beyond serving as normal TVs, these sets are built to stream a host of Internet sites, including YouTube and Picasa, as well as video-on-demand services from Netflix, Blockbuster and Amazon. So new is this feature that some electronics stores aren't even aware of it yet. Yet Internet-enabled HDTVs are expected to quickly add an Internet wave for couch-based channel surfers. Market researcher the Yankee Group predicts 50 million people will have such sets by 2013. Another 30 million, it says, will have Web-connected Blu Ray players -- and 11 million will have purchased media adaptors, giving nearly 100 million people Web video on their TVs without hooking up a PC.