May 2010

The Real World Cup Prize? Broadcast Rights

In less than three weeks, 32 soccer teams from around the world will square off for the chance to lift the World Cup trophy in South Africa. Thirty-one of them will go home empty-handed. For television broadcasters preparing to cover the tournament, by some measures the world's biggest sporting event, the odds will be nearly as challenging.

The World Cup is expected to provide them with a welcome boost to viewership and advertising. But the soaring price of TV rights means that few will actually make money from the event. Several mainstream, free television channels have found the math so unfavorable that they have ceded broadcast rights to rivals, including pay-TV channels that have previously found it hard to break into the World Cup. In Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia, more of the tournament than ever before will be shown on premium cable or satellite channels, rather than over-the-air outlets.

Crystal-Clear, Maybe Mesmerizing

Fully half of the United States is now watching television in high definition, the fastest adoption of TV technology since the VCR hit store shelves in the 1980s.

With the adoption comes good news for networks and Hollywood studios: HD lures viewers to TV for longer periods of time. According to The Nielsen Company, high-definition households watch about 3 percent more prime-time programming than their standard-definition counterparts. The sudden growth in high-definition, or HD, viewing has happened with little fuss for consumers, who simply swapped out their TV sets and set-top-boxes. But behind the scenes, HD is nothing short of a revolutionary upgrade for the television business, involving hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in new cameras, studios and control rooms. It has even changed the way local anchors apply their makeup. But as HD adoption grows, it is apparent that there are still two kinds of TV production: one that enables viewers to see individual blades of grass on a baseball field, and one that is little changed since the 1960s when color television took off. Studio executives privately complain about local stations that cannot yet afford to receive high-definition broadcasts of shows. And producers say they cannot yet take full advantage of the wider, crystal-clear medium because so many viewers still have outdated TV sets.

Privacy Isn't Everything on the Web

[Commentary] The latest push to regulate the Internet wants to save people from what they say about themselves on social media sites. But with Facebook approaching 500 million users, the people have spoken.

Whatever our views about privacy used to be, social media sites have radically changed our expectations. Privacy advocates this month filed a complaint against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission, but would-be regulators need to recognize something unusual about privacy expectations on social media sites: The entire reason to use these sites is to trade privacy for other benefits. Some people give up information about themselves to find long-lost friends or to share pictures—there are some 48 billion photos on Facebook, making it the world's largest photo archive. Others use sites like Twitter to find links to news stories their friends find interesting or to see what colleagues think about the Senate finance-reform bill. The enormous popularity of these sites—more than 25% of people who browse the Web have been on Facebook during the past month—suggests a sharp break with how we used to understand privacy, as users are making different trade-offs now that technology lets us share information and decide with whom. Constantly updated access to networks of friends and colleagues provides enough benefits to overcome some privacy concerns.

From Facebook, answering privacy concerns with new settings

[Commentary] Six years ago, we built Facebook around a few simple ideas. People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more. If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that's more open and connected is a better world. These are still our core principles today.

Here are the principles under which Facebook operates:

You have control over how your information is shared.
We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want.
We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.
We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone.
We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.

Facebook has evolved from a simple dorm-room project to a global social network connecting millions of people. We will keep building, we will keep listening and we will continue to have a dialogue with everyone who cares enough about Facebook to share their ideas. And we will keep focused on achieving our mission of giving people the power to share and making the world more open and connected.

[Zuckerberg is founder and chief executive of Facebook.]

US is requiring companies to defend against identity theft

With identity fraud on the increase, the federal government is stepping up efforts to make sure businesses are on the alert — especially financial institutions and other companies that issue credit cards.

The government says that businesses have the responsibility of making sure thieves don't use stolen information to buy goods or open phony accounts. And to that end, the Federal Trade Commission wants businesses that might be targets of identity thieves to develop written plans to spot "red flags" that fraud could be involved and prevent it. Starting June 1, all businesses that extend credit to customers will have to develop plans to try to prevent identity theft.

FCC gives content industry more control over your TV

[Commentary] You may not have noticed it, but a division of the Federal Communications Commission made a decision earlier this month that could have a big impact on your TV viewing.

On the positive side, many pay-TV customers may soon be able to watch recently released movies from the comfort of their couch long before they are available on DVD. But many other consumers, especially those with older TVs, won't be able to watch those films at all. For the first time, the FCC will allow cable and satellite TV operators to switch off outputs on set-top boxes, making them unable to transmit video signals over older, generally analog ports. This limitation will affect more than just owners of older TVs. By shutting off those ports, pay-TV operators will make it impossible for consumers to record the first-run films on external media recorders to watch them later on other gadgets, or to use devices such as a Sling Box to watch them in places other than where their pay-TV set-top box resides.

How Blogs and Social Media Agendas Relate and Differ from the Traditional Press

News today is increasingly a shared, social experience. Half of Americans say they rely on the people around them to find out at least some of the news they need to know.

Some 44% of online news users get news at least a few times a week through emails, automatic updates or posts from social networking sites. In 2009, Twitter's monthly audience increased by 200%. While most original reporting still comes from traditional journalists, technology makes it increasingly possible for the actions of citizens to influence a story's total impact. What types of news stories do consumers share and discuss the most? What issues do they have less interest in? What is the interplay of the various new media platforms? And how do their agendas compare with that of the mainstream press? To answer these questions, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has gathered a year of data on the top news stories discussed and linked to on blogs and social media pages and seven months' worth on Twitter. Pew also have analyzed a year of the most viewed news-related videos on YouTube. Several clear trends emerge.

New Zealand's Telecom Eyes Structural Separation for High-Speed Broadband

Telecom Corp, New Zealand's biggest phone company, said it's considering splitting its network and retail assets into separate companies so it can participate in the nation's high-speed broadband network.

The government's proposed NZ$1.5 billion ($1 billion) investment in a fiber-optic network will "fundamentally change" the industry and Telecom needs to consider separating the assets to take part, Chief Executive Officer Paul Reynolds said. Telecom separated the operation of its networks and retail arm in 2008, two years after being instructed to do so by the former government. At the time, it opposed splitting them into separate companies, saying the structure now required for phone carriers wanting to participate in the new network would be too costly. Creating a separate network company is "kind of the nuclear solution that solves a whole bunch of issues all at once from a regulatory standpoint, but from a shareholder standpoint it may not be the right approach at all," said Paul Robertshawe, who helps oversee $2.4 billion at Tower Asset Management Ltd. in Wellington. "I hope they are considering more than this option."

Western China: The Internet is restored, but repression continues

[Commentary] On May 14, residents of East Turkestan rediscovered the Internet - not the Internet of unfettered access that is enjoyed the world over. But a lifting of the most draconian Internet restrictions ever seen so that people could finally access China's censored version.

For 10 months, starting from the July 2009 unrest in Urumchi, the Chinese government kept the people of East Turkestan isolated from the rest of the world with a comprehensive communications lockdown that not only blocked the Internet, but also affected telecommunications. During those 10 months, a great deal of information about the events of July 2009 was never allowed to surface, and the world was left with a Chinese government account that in no way can be considered impartial.

[Rebiya Kadeer is president of the World Uighur Congress.]

The Cloud aims for full coverage of London

The Cloud, Europe's largest wireless broadband network, is evaluating how to build a London-wide WiFi network in time for the Olympic Games after Boris Johnson, the capital's mayor, asked it to draw up a blueprint.

The group, together with the heads of UK mobile operators such as Vodafone, O2 and Virgin Mobile, meet Mr Johnson and the 2012 Olympic organizers once a quarter to consider how the industry can respond to the expected surge in mobile Internet during the Games.

Benton

Search