February 2010

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2010

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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
   White House press corps feels bypassed by Obama in favor of TV shows, YouTube
   Waldman: No FCC Bailouts in Store for Media
   Brennan: Google attacks heighten concern about national security

MEDIA AND ELECTIONS
   Digital Technology and Cleaner Politics
   'The View' gets political -- viewers love it

CONTENT
   ABC Affiliates Decry Migration of Sports to ESPN
   The Fight Over Who Sets Prices at the Online Mall
   Should TV Take Bite Out of Apple Playbook?
   Plentiful Content, So Cheap

PRIVACY
   Technology leading to more invasive marketing

STORIES FROM ABROAD
   5 reasons why the Internet shouldn't get the Nobel Peace Prize
   Iranians to shop online - whenever Internet cables aren't cut
   Broadcasting Is Lifeline In Haiti
   Digital Economy Bill bill could 'breach rights'
   Du, Etisalat to Share Infrastructure by July
   German government warns against using Microsoft Explorer
   Virgin to make some landline-to-mobile calls free
   Mobile operators to offer free helpline calls

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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS FEELS BYPASSED
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz]
[Commentary] Six months ago, network executives were complaining that the White House was costing them tens of millions of dollars by pressing them to carry presidential news conferences in prime time. Problem solved: President Obama hasn't held a full-scale news conference since July. Instead, he answered a dozen people's questions last week on YouTube, most of them easily finessed and -- extra bonus! -- no annoying follow-ups of the kind posed by real, live journalists. It would be hard -- impossible, actually -- to argue that Obama hasn't been accessible to the media, not with his constant television interviews. The man has even done color commentary at a Georgetown basketball game. But the decision to bypass the White House press corps is no accident.
benton.org/node/32015 | Washington Post
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NO FCC BAILOUTS IN STORE FOR MEDIA
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
A Q&A with Steven Waldman, a senior advisor to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski. He believes there is no harm in the decline and fall of broadcast outlets and newspapers, so long as there is something immediately set to replace their useful function of delivering news and civic information. While conceding that the world is not a theoretical construct, Waldman stands behind his point that the FCC is not out to rescue traditional media or to bury them. Instead, Waldman believes the responsibility comes with trying to figure out what, if anything, the government needs to do to preserve some of their traditional public-service functions in a world being deconstructed by new media. Waldman is charged with coming up with a report to the commission on the state and fate of the media in the midst of radical change. But the industry should also expect to see his policy advice-gleaned with the help of part-timers, current staffers, and "kibitzers"-show up in everything from the national broadband plan to the ownership rule review. That policy recommendation could include direct government subsidies, which he says are not incompatible with drawing a line in the sand between structural rules and meddling with content. An open Internet is key to the future of journalism, he says, particularly the new media that will play a big role in that future.
benton.org/node/32020 | Broadcasting&Cable | B&C - Editorial
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BRENNAN: GOOGLE ATTACKS HEIGHTEN CONCERN ABOUT NATIONAL SECURITY
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Silla Brush]
White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said Sunday that cyberattacks are a matter of national security and that the administration is increasingly concerned since an infiltration of Google's servers in China. Brennan said the risks range from private business concerns and intellectual property rights to government secrets.
benton.org/node/32008 | Hill, The
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MEDIA AND ELECTIONS

DIGITAL DISCLOSURE AND CAMPAIGN FINANCE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: L. Gordon Crovitz]
[Commentary] This is supposed to be an era of openness and full-on transparency, powered by the Internet. Disclosure is a virtue, made simple through technology. The old, top-down control over communications is over, a relic of predigital life. All true—except when it comes to politics. It says something about how analog Washington remains that congressmen and presidents of both parties thought they could dictate who could say what about them when they ran for election. This was part of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, aka McCain-Feingold. The law prohibited corporations—companies, unions or nonprofits—from "electioneering communications" within a month of a primary election or two months of a general election. In invalidating this provision of the law as a violation of free speech, the Supreme Court focused on how technology has made it easier to speak and be heard, making restraints on speech less defensible. The majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, decided at the end of last month, deserves close attention for its recognition of how the Internet and other digital advances redefine many issues, including campaign finance. The Supreme Court has not been known as the most digitally sophisticated branch of government. But the political branches of government can learn from the technology lesson the justices have just handed them, including that if they want real campaign-finance reform, disclosure is the way to go.
benton.org/node/32019 | Wall Street Journal
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THE VIEW GETS POLITICAL
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Matea Gold]
It was the morning after President Obama's first State of the Union, which typically wouldn't mean much for daytime television shows and their menu of celebrity interviews, cooking tips and fashion segments. But the hosts of the ABC gabfest "The View" had a different agenda: dissecting the president's highly anticipated address. There was a time when talking politics on daytime TV would have been verboten -- too polarizing for the lifestyle shows aimed at stay-at-home moms and other female viewers. But after the vivid partisan wrangling on "The View" during the 2008 presidential race became water-cooler fodder, producers realized they had hit a rich vein. Since then, the show has unflinchingly tackled political issues and, in the process, upended traditional ideas about what women want to watch.
benton.org/node/32014 | Los Angeles Times
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CONTENT

ABC AFFILIATES DECRY MIGRATION TO ESPN
[SOURCE: MediaWeek, AUTHOR: John Consoli]
ABC's affiliates are not only in a battle with the network over retransmission fees, but they are also boiling mad that corporate sibling ESPN is being handed live sports events they were initially supposed to carry. The most recent move came in January when ESPN announced it planned to take eight NASCAR races this fall off ABC for the coming season to run on ESPN. Even before that, though, ABC coughed up the Rose Bowl beginning in 2011 and golf's British Open in 2010 to ESPN, which is majority-owned by Walt Disney, the full owner of ABC. Station executives argued that losing live sports events will not only cost them significant ad revenue and take away a negotiating chip with media buyers, but will also hamper their ability to promote other programming to male audiences. The latter is particularly true among ABC's Southern affiliates, where Nascar viewing is passionate. ESPN has the ability to cherry-pick sports from (or occasionally move sports to) ABC, because in 2006 ESPN in effect took control of ABC Sports. All sports programming on ABC is now produced by "ESPN on ABC," as the onscreen logo reads.
benton.org/node/32012 | MediaWeek
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THE FIGHT OVER WHO SETS PRICES AT THE ONLINE MALL
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brad Stone]
Wary of the Internet's tendency to relentlessly drive down prices, major brands and manufacturers -- and now, book publishers -- are striking back, deploying a variety of tactics and tools to control how their products are presented and priced online. "You are seeing firms of all types test the waters" with strategies to control online pricing, said Christopher Sprigman, associate professor of intellectual property at the University of Virginia School of Law and a former antitrust lawyer at the Justice Department. "They feel they have more freedom to do it now." In many cases that freedom stems from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS. The ruling gave manufacturers considerably more leeway to dictate retail prices, once considered a violation of antitrust law, and it set a high legal hurdle for retailers to prove that this is bad for consumers. Ever since that decision, retailers say manufacturers have become increasingly aggressive with one tool in particular: forbidding retailers from advertising their products for anything less than a certain price. For offline retailers like Wal-Mart Stores and Best Buy, that means not dropping below those prices in the circulars and ads in newspapers. But online retailers have a greater burden. Manufacturers consider the product pages on sites like eBay and Amazon.com to be ads, and they complain whenever e-commerce sites set prices below the minimum price.
benton.org/node/32017 | New York Times
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SHOULD TV TAKE A BITE OUT OF APPLE PLAYBOOK?
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Martin Peers]
Is Apple's new e-book store a model for the television industry? It is clear the existing TV arrangement, under which cable operators sell packages of channels on behalf of media companies, is fraying. Fights between the two sides over subscription fees are escalating—another such dust-up looms this year when Time Warner Cable's distribution agreement with Walt Disney's channels, including ABC and ESPN, comes up for renewal. Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt noted last month that consumers were dissatisfied with the structure of cable-TV packages. He suggested operators and TV networks need to "offer a variety of packages, some of which might be slightly smaller." But a better approach might be for cable operators to get out of the business of packaging channels and simply sell access to their pipes, letting network owners market their programming directly to consumers. That is essentially how Apple's iPad bookstore will operate, as a storefront for book publishers to sell their books. Apple will take a 30% cut. It may be awhile before other media companies are as adventurous. Most generate big revenues from the fees they charge cable and satellite operators to carry their programming, including little-watched channels. A recent industry initiative to offer cable programming on the Internet is restricted to people who have a video subscription. But the current business model relies on forcing consumers to pay for large packages of channels, not all of which they necessarily want. Nielsen estimates households watched only 18 channels on average in 2008, out of the 130 they receive. SNL Kagan estimates monthly cable bills average $73, including premium channels.
benton.org/node/32016 | Wall Street Journal
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A PROFILE OF DEMAND MEDIA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Carr]
[Commentary] Demand Media has five times more video on YouTube than any other single source and over one million original articles floating around the Web with an endless array of how-to and what-the-heck instructionals on everything from how to make your own bobblehead doll to bobbing for apples. According to the company, its YouTube videos are streamed 2.5 million times daily. And in those five days it took me to write this column, the company published 20,000 new articles or videos about losing weight, learning new tricks on a skateboard or tips for job hunting. Demand, which has $355 million in backing, was co-founded in 2006 by Richard Rosenblatt, who was the head of Intermix, the birthplace of MySpace, and by Shawn Colo, who has a background in private equity investments. The company lives up to its name, with the hive mind of the Web serving as an assignment editor. Demand uses a three-part formula of search terms, potential ad results and what competitors are doing to feed an algorithm that, with a human assist, comes up with headlines that are full of clickable, salient language that serves as bait for readers and search ads. (News is expensive to produce and not really a part of the formula because the company is looking for durable content, so "How to avoid a tiger attack" will have more value than, say, "Tiger's not out of the woods, yet.") The topic is then fed into a central database where freelance writers sign up for the assignment. The articles they write are run through an automated plagiarism checker, an actual copy editor and posted on one of the company's sites like eHow or LiveStrong. Driven by search and video advertising, it's a good business, with more than $200 million in revenue in 2009 and a current value for the company that has been estimated from $1 billion to $2 billion in various reports.
benton.org/node/32018 | New York Times
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PRIVACY

INVASIVE MARKETING
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera]
Advertisers and retailers are increasingly using technologies to mine for consumers' demographical information, create super-personalized ads and zero in on people's shopping habits. Proponents say new technologies are getting products that consumers want into their hands faster and eliminating ads that don't speak to them. But privacy advocates are concerned no one's asking people if they want targeted ads or if they agree to be studied as they shop.
benton.org/node/32013 | San Francisco Chronicle
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

5 REASONS WHY THE INTERNET SHOULDN'T GET THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
[SOURCE: Foreign Policy, AUTHOR: Evgeny Morozov]
[Commentary] The Internet has been shortlisted as a candidate for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize (along with dissidents and human rights activists from Russia and China). Here are five reasons why the Nobel committee should not give the award to this quirky candidate: 1) It doesn't deserve it. 2) It could kill Internet activism in authoritarian states. 3) It would undermine the reputation of the Nobel Peace Prize. 4) It would stifle a very important and still unfolding debate about the Internet's broader impact on society. 5) It would convince world leaders that politics is secondary to technology.
benton.org/node/32011 | Foreign Policy
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IRANIANS TO SHOP ONLINE - WHENEVER INTERNET CABLES AREN'T CUT
[SOURCE: Foreign Policy, AUTHOR: Evgeny Morozov]
[Commentary] Two unrelated news stories coming out of Iran last week reveal inherent tensions in how authoritarian governments view the Internet. As the prospect of another wave of anti-government protests - scheduled for February 11 - looms large, it appears that the Iranian authorities decided not to take any risks with new models of Internet censorship. The cable cut in southern Iran has left roughly 30% of the country without access to the Internet. According to Bloomberg News, Moussavi's camp immediately accused Iranian authorities of deliberately obstructing Internet activities of the opposition (ironically, they did it via the Internet - through Moussavi's web-site). This seems like a plausible explanation even to my skeptical eyes: while cutting cables may be more expensive than conventional Internet filtering, but it's certainly more effective (no proxy server can go around cut cables!). But that's not all: the Guardian reports than an Iranian technology company - owned by the government - has launched the country's first online supermarket. The e-supermarket currently offers 2,500 grocery and household items at competitive prices and operates only in Tehran (also, it wouldn't work on Fridays, the Islamic day of rest). According to the Guardian, the site is launched by Rouyesh Technical Centre, a technology group linked to Jahad-e Daneshgahi, a quasi-state institution that has been heavily promoting a host of other technologies (including cloning) in Iran. The launch of the online supermarket prompted an interesting reaction from The Next Web blog: "You can't tweet or poke but you can buy fresh tomatoes!" This, I think, does a good job at summarizing the authoritarian approach to the Internet: let users drown in online consumerism and Internet entertainment but prevent them from getting involved in any unsanctioned political activities.
benton.org/node/32010 | Foreign Policy
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BROADCASTING IS LIFELINE IN HAITI
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Back from Haiti, Federal Communications Commission International Bureau Chief Mindel DeLaTorre said that there were about 25 representatives of the telecommunications industry in country helping assess the damage and meeting with Haitian officials. The FCC sent a team to Haiti not long after the quake to help get the communications system up and running. DeLaTorre said that the TV and radio stations in the country, still coping with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, were in particular need of help. "The earthquake affected all of Haits communications infrastructure, but the damage to radio and TV stations has been particularly debilitating because they are normally staffed 24/7 so the proportional loss of life and building and equipment damage was enormous," she wrote Friday evening in a blog posting. She talked of the importance of TV and radio as a point-to-multipoint lifeline: "A good thing about broadcasting is that it can reach so many people at once. Now more than ever, radio and TV is a critical source of information for the people of Haiti regarding location of food and water distribution, medical services, shelter, weather, etc."
benton.org/node/32009 | Multichannel News
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DIGITAL ECONOMY BILL COULD 'BREACH RIGHTS'
[SOURCE: BBC News, AUTHOR: ]
An influential group of Members of Parliament and peers have said the UK government's approach to illegal file-sharing could breach the rights of Internet users in the U.K. The Joint Select Committee on Human Rights said the government's Digital Economy Bill needed clarification. It said that technical measures - which include cutting off persistent pirates - were not "sufficiently specified". In addition, it said that it was concerned that the Bill could create "over-broad powers". "The Internet is constantly creating new challenges for policy-makers but that cannot justify ill-defined or sweeping legislative responses, especially when there is the possibility of restricting freedom of expression or the privacy of individual users," said Andrew Dismore MP and chair of the Committee.
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benton.org/node/32005 | BBC News
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DU, ETISALAT TO SHARE INFRASTRUCTURE BY JULY
[SOURCE: Khaleej Times, AUTHOR: ]
An United Arab Emirates telecommunication company, Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, or du, will invest over Dh2 billion (USD544 million) on network expansion and development this year, and offer the first set of services on shared infrastructure with dominant telecom operator Etisalat by July. Sharing of infrastructure has been identified as a key step towards lowering UAE's telecom and broadband tariffs, which are said to be the highest in the region. Analysts said a shared telecom infrastructure will enable both service providers, Etisalat and du, to focus on service development and innovation. It is expected that the shared infrastructure later this year will encourage greater competition and encourage greater quality of service, more consumer choice and more competitive prices.
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benton.org/node/32007 | Khaleej Times | TeleGeography
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GERMAN GOVERNMENT WARNS AGAINST USING MS EXPLORER
[SOURCE: BBC News, AUTHOR: Daniel Emery]
The German government has warned web users to find an alternative browser to Internet Explorer to protect security. The warning from the Federal Office for Information Security comes after Microsoft admitted IE was the weak link in recent attacks on Google's systems. Microsoft rejected the warning, saying that the risk to users was low and that the browsers' increased security setting would prevent any serious risk.
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benton.org/node/32006 | BBC News
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VIRGIN TO MAKE SOME LANDLINE-TO-MOBILE CALLS FREE
[SOURCE: ZDNet UK, AUTHOR: David Meyer]
Virgin Media is to be the first UK phone operator to let its customers make free calls from their landlines to some handsets. From 1 April, all Virgin's four million home phone customers will be able to call any Virgin Mobile handset without charge, mirroring the free mobile-to-landline calls that are included in the company's mobile tariffs. Virgin Media offers four branches of service to its customers: landline, mobile, broadband and television. According to the company, 10 percent of its landline customers subscribe to the 'quad-play' package of all four services.
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benton.org/node/32004 | ZDNet UK
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MOBILE OPERATORS TO OFFER FREE DWP HELPLINE CALLS
[SOURCE: ZDNet UK, AUTHOR: Kable]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) expects all UK mobile operators to end charges for calls to its 0800 helplines by the end of April. Vodafone, T-Mobile, O2, Orange, Virgin Mobile and Tesco Mobile have already agreed that by the end of January their customers will be able to call the DWP's 0800 benefits and pensions lines without charge. But work and pensions minister Jim Knight has confirmed that the department expects the "remaining 24 or so" mobile operators to join the agreement by April 2010. "With this agreement we have achieved a significant step towards making a reality of our policy of free calls to our 0800 claims lines for all our customers," he added in response to a parliamentary written question from Labour MP John Battle on 27 January. About 15 percent of the 60 million calls made each year to the DWP's 70 freephone helplines are from mobile phones. Several mobile operators normally charge more for calls to 0800 numbers than to standard geographic numbers. Knight said the department is also exploring the use of text messages as a way to cut callers' phone bills.
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benton.org/node/32003 | ZDNet UK
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