August 2009

The Message Is the Message

It's gotten to the point where one expects to see and hear from President Barack Obama every day. He's in the information business almost as much as the policy business. "This is president as content provider," says Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee chairman and adviser to George W. Bush. "It's like when Rosie O'Donnell had a show and a magazine and a blog." The president has taken a fair amount of heat for this full-saturation approach. Friends and critics alike have complained it cheapens his words, erodes his mystique, and, worst of all, smacks of desperation. Yet it's also clear that the public has a near-insatiable appetite for Obama-related content, from the trivial to the serious.

Reflecting on the DTV transition

[Commentary] A Q&A with Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro. He likens the DTV transition effort recently to "putting a man on the moon." "We first started this in the early 1980s as the next generation of television. (The CEA) along with broadcasters got together and talked about ways to (move to digital). We agreed on a joint effort and a whole bunch of things over time: It was going to be over a large geographic area, both urban and rural, and would meet the needs of over-the-air broadcasters. There were 20 proposals from companies, and eventually we created the Advanced Television (eventually called "digital TV") testing centers. Then General Instruments came in the late '80s/early '90s and had a digital way of doing it. That stopped everything. We said, "This is such a revolutionary thing. We have to look at this again." Eventually everything came around from that."

The DTV Transition Puts Corporate Profits Ahead of the Public Interest

[Commentary] The Clinton-era 1996 Telecommunications Act which mandated the change to digital television also stripped away most media ownership concentration limits and gave away huge swathes -- up to $90 billion worth -- of publicly owned digital broadcast spectrum to incumbent TV license holders. In return for giving up a single analog channel, each of these broadcasters received up to 10 digital channels in return. For free. Only one new public service requirement was added -- a modest increase in children's programming. To make matters worse, most digital subchannels run by the big network-affiliated stations air duplicative services such as sitcom reruns, old movies, weather, home shopping programs or cooking shows. That is, if they run anything at all. Despite recent failures such as their flawed coverage leading up to the invasion of Iraq, none of the commercial broadcasters have announced plans we're aware of to use the new channels to expand or improve their public affairs or news programming. Where are the digital channels for women and people of color, and the set asides to support independent programming by and for youth and other less advantaged groups, local C-SPANs and other experimental services? Where are the new public affairs programs designed to showcase the perspectives normally marginalized on commercial TV? Such diversity on the airwaves is needed now more than ever. People of color make up 34 percent of the U.S. population, but only around 3 percent of commercial full power TV license holders, with women holding just 5 percent. Glen Ford, editor of the online Black Agenda Report calls the DTV transition "the biggest squandering of public broadcast resources in the history of the United States." Steps should be taken to ensure that corporations are not the sole beneficiaries of the digital broadcasting age. The value of the broadcast spectrum that Congress simply handed over to the big corporate media ought to be recovered through appropriate means (taxes, license fees, etc.) and used to subsidize a democratically run, decentralized public media system, the sort of media that will provide a forum for the minority and dissident viewpoints sorely missing on mainstream TV.

Senators Hear Plea For Radio Performance Royalties

Pop percussionist and one-time Prince protege Sheila E was the latest artist to come to Capitol Hill Tuesday to plead with lawmakers for legislation requiring radio stations to pay royalties to performers. Sheryl Crow, Herbie Hancock, will.i.am and Dionne Warwick were among the other A-list musicians who have come to Washington seeking performance royalties from broadcast radio. "Radio is the only part of the music business where our work is used without permission or compensation," Sheila E told the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing. After the hearing, Sheila E said musicians who perform, but don't compose, the music have "made the songs come to life. I don't do it by myself." Broadcast radio stations now pay song royalties to songwriters and producers, but they don't pay performance fees for playing the artists' music. In contrast, cable, satellite, and Internet radio pay performance royalties. Both the House and the Senate have bills pending that would compel performance payments, but the legislation is a long way from becoming law. The House bill passed the House Judiciary Committee in May, but it is unclear when it will see a floor vote. Senate sponsors warned Tuesday that the bill will see further action and urged the National Association of Broadcasters to engage in negotiations.

Obama, throw a lifeline to black and Hispanic radio

[Commentary] Minority-owned and oriented radio stations are fast becoming an endangered species, with dire consequences for our diverse democracy. Radio stations -- which serve a vital and underappreciated role -- have been suffering economic body blow after body blow in the current financial crisis. First, banks and other lenders are becoming de facto owners of the nation's airwaves, driving out diversity of all kinds. Second, Arbitron, whose ratings determine where advertisers buy airtime, has initiated a new method of measuring audiences that we believe dramatically undercounts minority stations' listeners. Third, advertisers across the board are cutting back their buys on minority radio. That's especially true of the troubled auto industry, long a leading advertiser on black stations. Black and Hispanic radio stations must not be allowed to go extinct - but today, that's looking like a very real possibility. Minority radio stations aren't failing businesses begging for handouts; they're healthy enterprises, beset by a perfect storm of bad circumstances, that are in need of a lifeline. At a time when millions of African-Americans and Latinos need information and opportunities to get jobs and build businesses, let's not pull the plug on black and Hispanic radio.

[Pierre Sutton is the chairman of Inner City Broadcasting Corp.]

Google sells Radio Automation business

Google has sold its Radio Automation business to WideOrbit, a provider of business management software for media companies. Included in the sale were all the assets of Google's radio automation business, including Google Radio Automation, Maestro, and SS32. Radio automation helps broadcasters manage and program music, ads, and other content through customizable software. Maestro and SS32 are two specific automation systems used by many radio stations.

One in Three Internet Users Visited a Newspaper Site in June

A little more than one-third of all Internet users visited a newspaper Web site in the month of June -- some 70.3 million unique users, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Nielsen Online provided the data to the NAA and since the Web metrics firm vastly expanded its panels effective in June, the NAA is not providing figures for prior periods. Page views to newspaper Web sites totaled 3.5 billion in June. The monthly average time spent per total unique users was 2.7 million minutes or 38 minutes and 24 seconds per person. Nielsen defines "time per person" as the average time spent over the course of a month.

Department of Education accelerates $11.37 billion stimulus schedule

The second round of stimulus funding for Title I, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and the Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program, totaling $11.37 billion in all, will be made available to states by Sept. 1, about a month earlier than originally determined--and the quicker those dollars reach schools, the more jobs and educational technology programs might be saved. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the accelerated timeline on Aug. 3, saying the earlier release of funds will "help states and districts expedite stimulus spending." The first half of Title I, IDEA, and VR stimulus funding was made available to states beginning April 1. Education stakeholders said Duncan's announcement might be an attempt to urge states and school systems to use their stimulus funding quicker, because states have been slow to spend so far.

Vendors worry posting of contracts will expose proprietary data

Some vendors are concerned that the recent online publication of a contract proposal to overhaul the Recovery.gov Web site could set a precedent to publish other proposals, and they are urging the government to be cautious about disclosing corporate or national security information. The General Services Administration released on Friday what is typically un-published pricing information, and technical and management proposals for the winning bid to renovate the Web site that monitors Recovery Act spending.

Net attacks triple in 2 years

Cyberattacks on federal computer systems have increased by more than 250 percent over the last two years, according to data provided by the Homeland Security Department. But two of the fastest-growing categories of attacks are easily preventable. Civilian agencies reported 18,050 cyberattacks in 2008 to the Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), the DHS agency that tracks intrusions on civilian agency networks and coordinates reponses to those intrustions. That's only a fraction of the total number of attacks on federal systems last year; agencies can't monitor every intrusion onto their networks. But the data, provided to Federal Times in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, offer a fairly representative sample of the threats facing the federal government. Experts say a few fundamental management changes — centralized management of information technology systems, better education and training, and tougher access control — could prevent many of the most common attacks.

Benton

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