September 2012

Lazarus: NBC Broke Even on Olympics

Having tallied up all the advertising dollars that poured into its coffers during the 2012 London Summer Olympics, NBC announced it broke even on the Games.

Speaking at the Bloomberg Sports Business Summit in New York, Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBC Sports Group, said the Olympic credits and debits all balanced out rather nicely. “From a financial point of view the Games, on a discrete basis, were a break-even proposition for us,” Lazarus said, adding that the result was “far healthier…than we had planned on going in.” NBC approached the 17-day extravaganza anticipating a $200 million net loss. All told, the network booked north of $1 billion in ad inventory, atop which it sprinkled nearly $300 million in affiliate and digital revenue. Rights fees and production costs ate up approximately $1.28 billion. Lazarus suggested that it may be too soon to assess the long-term impact of the Summer Games, which drew 219.4 million total viewers, making it the most-watched event in U.S. television history.

Samsung Chips Said to Be Kept From New IPhone on Pricing

Samsung won’t supply memory chips for the first shipments of Apple’s new iPhone because of a disagreement about pricing, a person familiar with the matter said. Samsung’s displays also won’t be included in the initial batches of the new smartphone expected to be released next week, a second person familiar with the matter said. The Suwon, South Korea-based company will continue supplying the processor powering the device, the person said, declining to be identified because the information is confidential.

MPAA getting involved in Hollywood's dispute with China

For months, the Motion Picture Association of America has been a quiet player caught between the Hollywood studios it represents and the world's second-largest movie market, China. Now, for the first time, Hollywood's trade organization in Washington is speaking out about the growing tensions from China Film Group's recent moves to limit the box- office revenue of U.S. movies.

The state-owned company has blocked imported movies from the country for most of the summer in an attempt to drive down ticket sales for imported films, opened the animated movies "The Lorax" and "Ice Age: Continental Drift" and the superhero pictures "The Dark Knight Rises" and "The Amazing Spider-Man" on the same dates. Greg Frazier, the MPAA's chief policy officer, revealed that the Chinese problem has become so worrisome that he has been in touch with the Obama administration.

Nigeria: Telecom Towers Attacked

A series of attacks have damaged at least 31 cellphone towers operated by all the major providers in Nigeria, further straining communication in a country with nearly no landlines. While no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, the Islamist sect known as Boko Haram threatened mobile phone companies six months ago.

Subcommittee on Communications and Technology
House Commerce Committee
Thursday, September 13, 2012
10:15am
http://energycommerce.house.gov/hearing/creating-opportunities-through-i...

Witnesses

Mr. Mark Goldstein
Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues
U.S. Government Accountability Office

Dr. Preston Marshall
Deputy Director, Information Sciences Institute
University of Southern California
Information Sciences Institute

Mr. Karl Nebbia
Associate Administrator, Office of Spectrum Management
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
U.S. Department of Commerce

Mark Racek
Director, Spectrum Policy
Ericsson Inc.

Mr. Steve Sharkey
Chief Engineering and Technology Policy, Federal Regulatory
T-Mobile USA

Mr. Douglas Smith
President and CEO
Oceus Networks

Major General Robert Wheeler, USAF
Deputy Chief Information Officer for Command, Control, Communications and Computers (C4) and Information Infrastructure
U.S. Department of Defense

Read more about Creating Opportunities through Improved Government Spectrum Efficiency

Weekly Digest

Broadband Helps Move America Forward

The Price of Amazon’s 4G LTE Kindle Fire Tablet, Compared to New iPad

Amazon unveiled three new versions of its Kindle Fire tablet, with two of the three boasting a bigger screen than the original seven-inch Fire tablet, and one device built with 4G LTE capabilities and 32 gigabytes of onboard storage. Its price point? $499, officially putting it in iPad territory. Except that Amazon, in a Prime-like move, is offering a data plan of 250 megabytes per month through AT&T, with 20GB of cloud storage — for $50 a year. The e-commerce giant was quick to point out how this stacks up against the new iPad.

President Obama: Other Side Prepping Barrage of Negative Ads

On a conference call with supporters, President Barack Obama called on them to continue to work toward what he said would be "a really close election." "The other side is ready to release just a barrage of negative ads," he told them. "They are getting massive checks from wealthy donors. The good thing is I've got you."

Oracle-Google judge ends probe into paid bloggers

U.S. District Judge William Alsup, overseeing a major lawsuit over smartphone technology between Oracle Corp and Google, has quietly ended his examination of those companies' relationships with paid bloggers and other commentators.

He had shocked the legal and blogging communities on August 7 by demanding names of "print or Internet authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers" on the companies' payrolls. But in an order issued on September 4, after Oracle and Google had submitted lists of names, Judge Alsup said he would "take no further action regarding the subject of payments by the litigants to commentators and journalists." He also said no commentaries had influenced his rulings in the case, other than "any treatise or article" he cited expressly.

Nielsen Local TV Market Universe Loses 476,000 TV Households

Nielsen's Local Television Market Universe dropped from an estimated 114,649,310 TV homes in 2011-2012 to 114,173,690, a decrease of 475,620.

Nielsen reps were not available on short notice to explain the diminished U.S. TV universe. The top 38 TV markets held their position from last year's Local Television Market Universe Estimates. Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek, Oklahoma City and Anchorage were the biggest gainers, picking up three slots in market rank, while the most significant markets to drop in rank were Birmingham and Palm Springs (-3), and a bunch that slipped two spots, including Harrisburg-Lancaster-Lebanon-York, Albuquerque-Santa Fe and Roanoke-Lynchburg.

Benton

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