November 2016

OWNERSHIP

GANNETT ABANDONS EFFORT TO BUY NEWSPAPER PUBLISHER TRONC
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Leslie Picker, Sydney Ember]
After six months of pursuit, the Gannett Company said that it was withdrawing its offer to acquire the owner of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, a deal that would have extended Gannett’s national footprint and furthered consolidation in the newspaper industry. Gannett, the publisher of USA Today, had made several efforts to acquire the former Tribune Publishing Company, now known as Tronc. The first two were rejected during the spring. Gannett said that the acquisition was an attractive opportunity but “in the end the terms were not acceptable.” Tronc shares plunged nearly 20 percent on the morning of Nov 1 on the news. Gannett shares were up 1.3 percent in early morning trading.
benton.org/headlines/gannett-abandons-effort-buy-newspaper-publisher-tronc | New York Times | Los Angeles Times | Washington Post
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FCC'S OWNERSHIP RULES REMAIN STUCK IN 1975
[SOURCE: National Association of Broadcasters, AUTHOR: Jerianne Timmerman]
In its long-delayed 2010 and 2014 ownership review order, which was finally published in the Federal Register Nov 1, the Federal Communications Commission again asserted that “non-broadcast video programming distributors” are not meaningful competitors in local TV markets, virtually ignoring a host of 20th and 21st century technologies (including cable, satellite, mobile devices and the Internet) to retain its local TV ownership restriction. In an even more impressive imitation of an ostrich with its head in the sand, the FCC yet again retained the prohibition on the common ownership or operation of a daily newspaper and a radio or TV station in the same market. In maintaining a ban adopted in 1975, the FCC essentially concluded that little or nothing of import has changed in the news industry and the marketplace position of print newspapers and broadcast stations for the past 41 years – a nonsensical position on its face. In fact, the FCC appears stuck in a time warp, as merely stating the terms of the print newspaper rule reveals its arbitrariness in 2016. It prohibits common ownership of a broadcast outlet and a newspaper published four or more days per week in the dominant language in the market and circulated generally in the community of publication. The very notion of a rule hinging on a newspaper being printed and circulated shows its analog-era ancestry. It borders on the absurd to contend that the viewpoint diversity concerns supposedly sufficient to ban the common ownership of a station and a newspaper publishing a print edition four days a week magically disappear when the newspaper publishes online every day but publishes in print only three days a week. And this rule is still maintained by the agency that spent millions of taxpayer dollars and countless person hours on producing the National Broadband Plan.
benton.org/headlines/lets-do-time-warp-again-fccs-ownership-rules-remain-stuck-1975 | National Association of Broadcasters
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AT&T/TIME WARNER

ATT-TIME WARNER AND ZERO RATINGS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Shalini Ramachandran, Ryan Knutson, John McKinnon]
AT&T’s practice of exempting its streaming video services from data-usage caps is rankling competitors and shaping up as a major issue for regulators set to weigh the company’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner. When AT&T rolls out its $35-a-month DirecTV Now online TV service, its wireless subscribers will be able to stream as much as they want without it counting toward their monthly data caps. But if the same customers binge on outside services like Netflix or Hulu, those bits will add up—potentially leading to surcharges. Streaming services are likely to press regulators to scrutinize the practice—known as “zero rating”—in their review of the AT&T-Time Warner deal, people familiar with the matter said. TV networks that have streaming apps, like CBS and ESPN, also may have a stake in the matter. Several companies are likely to argue that AT&T’s DirecTV Now approach is anticompetitive, and will push for conditions on the merger, the people say. Some Federal Communications Commission staffers already view AT&T’s DirecTV Now exemption as an example of improper zero-rating, people familiar with the situation said, because it disadvantages AT&T’s streaming rivals. The agency is considering how to address zero-rating and whether to raise it as a merger issue, the people said. Other options the agency is weighing include industrywide guidelines on zero-rating.
benton.org/headlines/att-time-warner-deal-stokes-debate-over-zero-rating | Wall Street Journal
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WARREN VS ATT/TIME WARNER
[SOURCE: Fortune, AUTHOR: Stephen Gandel]
Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) says that Time Warner should be blocked from using Washington’s so-called revolving door to push through its controversial deal with AT&T. The media giant has hired lawyer Christine Varney -- a partner at Cravath, Swaine and Moore -- to make the case to the government that AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner would not kill competition. Varney is one of the nation’s top antitrust lawyers working for corporate America. But six years ago, Varney was the government’s head antitrust cop, leading the Obama administration’s effort to crack down on deals that could result in higher prices. Now, she is one of the attorneys who’s being paid big bucks to try to get the AT&T-Time Warner merger approved. “Americans have had it with regulators like Varney, who talk a good game about holding the bad guys accountable while counting down the days until they can collect a fat paycheck from the corporations they were supposed to regulate,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren tells Fortune. “The revolving door is out of control. If we want to hold corporate lawbreakers accountable, we can’t ask their friends to do it.”
benton.org/headlines/heres-elizabeth-warrens-big-gripe-att-time-warner-deal | Fortune
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ATT-TIME WARNER DEAL COULD BE A NET NEUTRALITY NIGHTMARE, SEN WYDEN WARNS
[SOURCE: Vice, AUTHOR: Sam Gustin]
AT&T’s proposed $85 billion buyout of Time Warner could make a mockery of US open Internet protections if the combined company decides to exploit a loophole in federal regulations in order to favor its own content at the expense of rivals. That was the blunt warning issued by Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) in a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler. Sen Wyden is particularly concerned that AT&T could use the controversial practice of “zero-rating” to favor Time Warner programming, thereby undermining the FCC’s policy protecting network neutrality. Zero-rating refers to a variety of practices that broadband companies use to exempt certain Internet content and services from data caps, effectively favoring those services by providing consumers with an economic rationale to use them instead of rival offerings. “I am deeply concerned that if AT&T acquires Time Warner's content, the new mega-company will have incentives to prioritize its own content over content created by small business, independent artists or by its rivals,” Sen Wyden wrote.
benton.org/headlines/att-time-warner-deal-could-be-net-neutrality-nightmare-senator-wyden-warns | Vice | read the letter
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ELECTIONS 2016

BROADBAND SUBSIDIES
[SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute, AUTHOR: Mark Jamison]
[Commentary] Do more subsidies actually finish a job and provide a net benefit? Apparently not. Customers’ spending habits are telling us they have other priorities. Furthermore, people advocating more subsidies for broadband tend to ignore how inefficient the subsidy programs are and exaggerate the benefits of subsidized broadband. Clinton proposes to grow subsidies currently provided under the Department of Commerce’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) and the Federal Communications Commission’s E-rate program, to grow the FCC’s Lifeline program, continue the Rural Utilities Service program for broadband, and to provide broadband grants to governments. Economist Hal Singer (not Clinton) suggests an income-based subsidy of $4.3 billion annually to induce 20 million customers currently unwilling to pay the full price for broadband to buy it. What happens if these proposals are put in place? If past experience is a guide, Clinton’s ideas will mean more failed and uncompleted projects, political favoritism, and little if any positive impact. The flaw in her plan and Singer’s plan for Lifeline-like subsidies is illustrated by the FCC’s current Lifeline program.
[Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida and serves as its director of telecommunications studies.]
benton.org/headlines/why-secretary-clintons-broadband-subsidies-will-fail | American Enterprise Institute
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UNION OF POLITICS AND NEWS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jim Rutenberg]
The decision by ABC News to hire George Stephanopoulos in 1996 tripped alarms throughout American journalism. “Government-to-press switcheroos do not bode well for news objectivity,” The Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg wrote at the time. In The New York Times Magazine, Max Frankel called Stephanopoulos’s move another step in “the progressive collapse of the walls that traditionally separated news from propaganda,” which had been erected “to guard against all kinds of partisan contamination.” Network news executives brushed it off as sanctimony from graybeards who didn’t get it. Their hiring of political operatives — who were becoming telegenic stars in their own right — continued apace. It took 20 years, but the warnings have come true — the contamination has spread and the patient is looking sickly. But the moment will be wasted if it does not prompt the networks to reset the boundaries between their newsrooms and their paid political operatives, if not end these arrangements altogether.
benton.org/headlines/union-politics-and-news-ends-both-contaminated | New York Times
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PG-13 REPORTERS COVERING AN R-RATED ELECTION
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Alexandra Alter]
Scholastic has been providing child-friendly election coverage to teachers and classrooms for nearly a century, starting with the 1924 race between Calvin Coolidge and John W. Davis. It introduced its children’s press corps program in 2000, and for the last five presidential elections, Scholastic has sent precocious young political reporters to cover rallies, debates and stump speeches around the country. 2016's press corps includes children in 22 states and the District of Columbia. The children cover their local areas, and their reports appear on the Scholastic News website and occasionally in its classroom magazines, which reach about 25 million students. Many of the young reporters say it is exhilarating to witness history unfolding before their eyes. But this election has presented challenges, as the race has devolved into one of the most vicious contests in the nation’s history. Even the most grizzled, jaded campaign veterans have been shocked by the barrage of insults and controversies that have defined this year’s race. Kaitlin Clark, 12, of New Hampshire, said that when she was in a news media pen at a rally for Donald Trump. “You could feel that the crowd didn’t really want us there,” she said.
benton.org/headlines/pg-13-reporters-covering-r-rated-election | New York Times
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

TRIBE PROTESTING DAKOTA PIPELINE IS READY TO DEFEND ITS WIRELESS NETWORK
[SOURCE: Vice, AUTHOR: Paul Spencer]
Fred McLaughlin speaks with a melancholy tinge in his voice. It’s not just caused by his drawn out North Dakotan accent. McLaughlin feels certain that eminent domain practices, which have cleared the path for the Dakota Access Pipeline, are setting up another future showdown. From his back porch on Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation, located near the southern border with South Dakota, McLaughlin can see people arriving to protest against oil being piped under the Missouri River, a source of water for the tribe and 18 million other Americans. But as general manager of Standing Rock Telecom, the tribe-owned local wireless service provider, McLaughlin worries that federal and private entities are coming for the tribe’s cellular spectrum next. He mapped out this scenario for me while the sun set on the majestic North Dakota plains, closing out a tense day where fellow Native Americans were confronted by the National Guard, private security and militarized police from six states. “It’s a spectacular benefit to have our own telecoms company, and everyone can see this and validate it. It’s a point of pride,” he said. “We as tribal nations have never given up our airspace.” Standing Rock Telecom owns 17 towers and provides month-to-month contracts for 1,600 subscribers (and growing). The strong signal it provides to the reservation, which stretches from Sioux County, North Dakota, to Corson County, South Dakota, covers 3,500 square miles and has played a crucial part in disseminating grassroots media coverage of the pipeline protests.
benton.org/headlines/tribe-protesting-dakota-pipeline-ready-defend-its-wireless-network | Vice
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ACCESSIBILITY

WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sara Randazzo]
The disability lawsuits started hitting the Pittsburgh federal courthouse in July, all claiming corporations’ websites violated the law by not being accessible to the blind. The first round came against household names such as Foot Locker, Toys “R” Us, Brooks Brothers Group, and the National Basketball Association. Later suits targeted lesser-known retailers including Family Video Movie Club and Rue21. All told, about 40 nearly identical cases have landed in front of the same federal judge, Arthur Schwab, all brought by one local law firm, Carlson Lynch Sweet Kilpela & Carpenter LLP. Nationwide, more than 240 businesses have been sued in federal court since the start of 2015, concerning allegedly inaccessible websites, according to law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP. Most settle quickly, for between $10,000 and $75,000, lawyers involved say, with the money typically going toward plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees and expenses.
benton.org/headlines/companies-face-lawsuits-over-website-accessibility-blind-users | Wall Street Journal
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Analysis

November 2016

Republicans and Russian hackers have made Hillary Clinton the most transparent candidate in history

Sinclair’s Smith to Step Down as CEO, Assumes New Role

Mobile web browsing overtakes desktop for the first time

Google searches for early voting hit an all time high

Op-ed: Is the Internet the New Sex Education?

Comedy: Jon Stewart Shows How To Win A Twitter War With Donald Trump

Facebook blocks insurance company’s plan to base premiums on your posts

Smashing the Silicon Valley patriarchy: anti-Lean In strategy puts onus on men

November 2, 2016 (Game 7, that is all)

Why Secretary Clinton’s broadband subsidies will fail