October 2014

Film deals reflect Netflix's growing clout

Netflix wants to shake up Hollywood. The company will finance the Weinstein Co.'s sequel to the 2000 film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," coming next summer to its streaming service and certain Imax screens. And Adam Sandler will star in and produce four feature films for the service. The movies -- produced through Sandler's Happy Madison Productions with Netflix -- would be available exclusively through the site, bypassing the traditional movie distribution process. The deals are serious gets for Netflix, signaling its growing clout in the entertainment business at a time when consumer habits are rapidly changing in the digital era.

SoftBank investing $250 million in Legendary Entertainment

SoftBank will invest $250 million in Legendary Entertainment, the Burbank production house and financier behind recent movies including "Godzilla" and "300: Rise of an Empire." The two companies will create a joint venture focused on making digital content for SoftBank's mobile and Internet services. The content will be targeted especially for audiences in the booming entertainment markets of India and China, where Legendary's movies often do big business.

After controversial study, Facebook is changing the way it does research

Facebook is changing the way it does research after facing a widespread backlash for a study that manipulated news feeds to gauge emotional effect.

Facebook does research in fields including artificial intelligence, user experience and social science. Its new rules for research cover internal work and research that might be published. They include clearer guidelines and an enhanced review process before research can begin; a new review panel that consists of senior subject-area researchers and people from its engineering, research, legal, privacy and policy teams; better training for researchers; and a dedicated research website that will be updated regularly. The new policies are being instituted following a controversial Facebook study published in June that revealed the company had tinkered with users' emotions.

Value of US sports broadcast rights up 18.7%

Lucrative broadcast deals such as the National Football League’s new $1.5 billion-a-year contract with DirecTV will surpass sales of sponsorships and merchandise this year and contribute most to revenue growth in the North American sports industry, according to consultancy PwC. The value of rights to air live matches on television, radio and digital devices will jump 18.7 percent this year to $14.8 billion from $12.5 billion in 2013, becoming the second-biggest segment of the $60.6bn sports sector after ticket revenue, the consultancy said.

MMTC Names Kim Keenan New President

The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council named Kim M. Keenan as president and CEO, succeeding MMTC’s co-founder and president of 28 years, David Honig.

A top litigator and civil rights attorney, Keenan is a past president of the 100,000 member District of Columbia Bar, as well as the National Bar Association, the nation's oldest and largest association of lawyers of color in the world. Keenan was general counsel and secretary of the NAACP. Previously, she was the principal of her own law firm and served in the litigation practices of two nationally recognized law firms for more than 18 years.

Marriott to Pay $600K to Resolve Wi-Fi-Blocking Investigation

Marriott International and its subsidiary, Marriott Hotel Services, will pay $600,000 to resolve a Federal Communications Commission investigation into whether Marriott intentionally interfered with and disabled Wi-Fi networks established by consumers in the conference facilities of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, in violation of Section 333 of the Communications Act.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau’s investigation revealed that Marriott employees had used containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system at the Gaylord Opryland to prevent individuals from connecting to the Internet via their own personal Wi-Fi networks, while at the same time charging consumers, small businesses, and exhibitors as much as $1,000 per device to access Marriott’s Wi-Fi network.

FCC Extends Time to File Replies on Comcast-TWC Merger to 10/29/14

The Federal Communications Commission has extended -- until October 29, 2014 -- the deadline for filing Replies and Responses and Oppositions concerning Comcast’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable. In addition, the FCC is stopping the informal 180-day transaction clock in this proceeding until October 29, 2014 or until FCC staff has determined that the parties’ responses to the FCC’s information requests are complete, whichever is later.

Evolution in the Cellular Service

On October 2, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Wheeler circulated a draft Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that puts forth major changes to modernize and streamline the FCC’s rules and application processes for Cellular Service licensees. This reform would fulfill a recommendation in the Staff Report on FCC Process Reform by reducing regulatory burdens and fostering the deployment of new generations of Cellular Service across the country.

The draft Report and Order would transition the site-based Cellular Service to a geographic-based licensing regime. This shift would bring the Cellular Service into greater harmony with other mobile services, including PCS, 700 MHz and AWS. Under this approach, the FCC would eliminate or revise a large number of filing requirements, reduce licensee filing burdens by more than 60%, and eliminate barriers to the timely deployment of advanced services to the public. In the Further Notice, the FCC would propose and seek comment on additional issues relating to Cellular Service reform, including technical changes that could foster the deployment of wider-band technologies, such as LTE.

Accelerating Broadband, Part II

[Commentary] A couple months ago, the Federal Communications Commission unanimously adopted an order streamlining the rules for tower marking and lighting. That was the first in a series of FCC Wireless Bureau items designed to remove regulatory obstacles to clear the way for more efficient broadband deployment. The Bureau is now moving forward with an even more ambitious effort to rationalize the rules around tower siting and approvals.

Reform in this area is not a simple exercise of cutting through regulatory red tape. The item circulated by the Bureau is expected to contain a series of straight-forward and sensible reforms consistent with programmatic requirements that will expedite environmental and historic preservation review of new and modified wireless facilities. We also believe the item will provide much needed clarification of certain federal statutes that were enacted to streamline state and local review of wireless infrastructure proposals. We believe that the draft item will propose much needed modernization of FCC regulations that will allow for more efficient and timely small cell deployments. Similarly, we anticipate that the item will permit the collocation of new antennae without additional approvals in certain limited circumstances, for example on rooftops where a visible antenna already exists or within close proximity to an existing antenna array. And we expect the item to clarify certain statutory definitions that create new opportunities for efficient infrastructure builds.

Measuring Mobility: More Than Just Speed

The measure of mobility expected by consumers has changed.

Mobile broadband networks -- and especially 4G LTE -- have transformed the wireless experience and consumer expectations. We expect the same quality, performance, consistent reliability and coverage for our data-intensive smart phones as we did when making, what today seems, just a simple wireless phone call. The mobile customer experience -- and satisfaction -- is based on the ability to connect our device to the content we want when and where we want it, thanks to a wireless network that provides consistent reliability and coverage. That’s also why competitive claims and “testing” of very narrow measures, such as wireless upload and download speeds, do not tell the entire story. Verizon Wireless promises customers a set of standards -- outstanding network performance, quality, consistent reliability and the largest 4G LTE in the US.

Benton

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