April 2014

What We All Pay for Sports

[Commentary] The average consumer in a major metropolitan market that has a number of pro sports teams is probably paying around $15 per month to get all of their sports programming.

That’s $180 per year. In more rural markets where there are not direct channels for baseball and basketball the bill is probably closer to $11 per month or $130 dollars per year. This is a heck of a deal for sports fans. Let’s face it, paying $180 to get a huge array of the sports is a great deal when you figure it would cost that much for two people to go to one pro football game.

But the problem is that not everybody is a sports fan. It’s been estimated through polls that maybe 40% of households are serious sports fans. If you do the math and if only the 40% of households that really want sports had to foot the bill that works out to $37.50 per month, or $450 per year, and that monthly number is climbing a few dollars every year.

That’s where the rubber hits the road, because polls also say that a majority of those households would not pay that bill on an unbundled basis if they were asked to pay their fair share. What nobody wants to talk about is that the wheels are slowly starting to come off the cable industry. A recent nationwide poll said that 21% of households were thinking of dropping their cable TV subscription. They won’t all do that, of course, but it is a very bad sign for the industry when that many people say they are thinking about it. We can certainly expect millions of households per year to ditch cable. The average cable bill nationwide is now over $90 per month and many households are deciding that they just can’t afford it.

FCC’s Wheeler defends broadcaster crackdown

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is defending a controversial move to limit broadcast companies’ ability to cooperate as merely an attempt to defend the laws on the book.

At a summit put on the by the American Cable Association, Chairman Wheeler accused broadcasters of carrying on a “charade” to skirt the rules. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out,” he told the supportive cable industry crowd.

“This concept of competition and diversity and localism was being undone by legal legerdemain,” he said. “It makes no sense to create a situation where you own a broadcast license, I want to get control of that license but I can’t because I own another station in town, and I’ll tell you what, I’m going to buy 90 percent of all of your assets... and you keep the license because that makes you the owner.”

Chairman Wheeler added: “What we were trying to do was say: ‘Look, this is harmful to competition. It is harmful to the marketplace of broadcast transactions. There is a set of rules, a set of concepts, that have been hallowed in communications law. We’re trying to stick to those concepts and say how do those apply in this world?”

ACA: Small Cable Companies Offer Communications Service to 14% of US Homes

Although most are not known outside their local -- primarily rural -- communities, small cable companies offer advanced communications services to 14% of US homes, according to a report issued from the American Cable Association.

The ACA advocates for more than 800 small cable company members, who have an average 36% market share in their serving areas according to the ACA. Understanding the role that ACA members play in offering video, data and voice services in rural areas is important at a time when policymakers are in the process of transforming today’s voice-focused Universal Service program to a Connect America Fund focused on broadband. Somewhat less than half (43%) of ACA members are small telecommunications companies that have cable operations. A slightly higher percentage (44%) is comprised of traditional cable operators, while 13% are municipalities or other types of organizations.

Turkish Court Overturns Countrywide Twitter Ban

The Turkish Constitutional Court ruled that a countrywide Twitter ban violated principles of free speech in Turkey, and ordered Turkey’s Telecommunications Directorate to cease the block on the microblogging service immediately.

Writers Guild, Hollywood Producers Agree on New 3-Year Contract

Apparently, the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood's TV and movies producers have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract covering feature films and primetime television.

The pact is subject to approval by the WGA West board and the WGA East council and would then be submitted to the membership for ratification. It would replace the current agreement between the writers and the Alliance for Motion Picture and Television Producers that expires on May 30.

Why Amazon wants to rule your television

Where's the next major battleground for technology companies? For all the talk of drones, wearables, homes of the future and flying Internet networks, the truth is that tech companies are still keenly interested in the consumer electronics device that's been a fixture in the American living room for decades: the television.

Speculation has been flying for years that Amazon will release a streaming video device -- similar to Apple's Apple TV or Google's Chromecast -- that brings online video content, and potentially Android-based games, to the largest screen in your house.

Why? Despite what you may think, the TV is still where people turn for the bulk of their screen time, and Amazon wants to be a main portal for all of your entertainment.

According to the data from the Nielsen published in February, Americans still spend an average of 185 hours per month with their televisions, as opposed to 34 hours and 21 minutes with their smartphones. And while mobile use is on a steady rise -- up an average of six hours from the same time in 2013 -- much of that time is spent accessing entertainment, with Americans reporting 15 percent of all their mobile time is devoted to that exact purpose.

Companies e-mail sensitive data to law enforcement

There’s a lack of rules governing the secure handling of law enforcement orders for data, industry experts say. Documents posted on Twitter by the Syrian Electronic Army, a collective of hackers and online activists supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, included correspondence between Microsoft’s government compliance team and various law enforcement agencies around the world.

The documents contained criminal subpoenas, e-mail addresses of targets and “access keys,” presumably passwords, to the user packages Microsoft makes available to law enforcement. Other documents suggest the hackers also were able to access the account information Microsoft provides to law enforcement agencies, which includes the target’s name, location, Internet Protocol or computer address used by the target to sign-up for an e-mail account or to log-in to his e-mail account.

Consumers are souring on Web, post-NSA, survey says

The National Security Agency has left more than a black mark on the reputations of tech companies: It is now hurting them financially.

Americans are less likely to bank and shop online because of lingering doubts over the NSA's digital-snooping activities. Almost half the more than 2,000 adult respondents (47%) to a recent Harris poll commissioned by security firm ESET said that they have changed their behavior and think more carefully about where they go, say and do online.

SEC defends email privacy practices

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) defended its practice of obtaining e-mails older than 180 days without a warrant.

SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White told the House Appropriations subcommittee on financial services that her agency protects people’s privacy when it uses subpoenas -- rather than warrants, which have a higher burden of proof -- to access emails.

Under the Electronic Privacy Communications Act, law enforcement officials do not need a warrant to access electronic communications that have been stored for more than three months. Attempts to update that law -- including from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Reps Kevin Yoder (R-KS), Tom Graves (R-GA) and Jared Polis (D-CO) -- have been largely supported by law enforcement agencies but have faced backlash from civil agencies, like the SEC.

Rep Yoder asked why law enforcement agencies need a warrant to access physical documents but not electronic communications.

“Paper documents versus the file folders contained in our email accounts all seem to ... have Fourth Amendment protections,” he said. As a civil agency, the SEC relies on subpoenas, not warrants, to obtain information for its investigations, SEC Chairwoman White said. She told Rep Yoder that the SEC’s investigatory practices have built-in privacy protections.

Rep Eshoo calls for ‘rebalancing’ video law

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Communications Subcommittee, wants to shift the balance of power between broadcasters and paid television companies like cable and satellite firms.

Rep Eshoo pushed for a “rebalancing” of the federal video laws to prevent broadcast companies like ABC, NBC and CBS from being able to black out local stations during disputes with cable and satellite companies, which pay to retransmit the channels.

“I think that there needs to be, obviously, a rebalancing of the law,” she said. “Much of the law was written to produce localism, but you see so many trends moving against that today.”

Consumers, she added, are getting “screwed and tattooed” in the arrangements allowed under current law, which can add up to billions of dollars but are “a racket.”

Benton

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