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November 2016

When you want cable Internet—but Charter wants $9,000 first

Before Charter purchased Time Warner Cable (TWC) in May of 2016, the company promised New York state regulators that it would bring broadband to 145,000 unserved and underserved homes and businesses by 2020. The condition helped Charter win government approval of the merger. Christian Babcock of Schuylerville (NY) is one of the state’s unserved residents, but he has no idea if his home will be included in the required buildout to 145,000 locations.

Before the merger, TWC told Babcock he’d have to pay thousands of dollars up front to subsidize construction needed to serve his home. Even now, the Charter-owned TWC is demanding more than $9,000 in exchange for service. That's the price to cover Charter's construction; Babcock would have to pay that plus the usual monthly service fees. Making the situation even more frustrating, Charter wouldn’t have to extend the TWC network very far to reach the house owned by Babcock and his wife. One nearby house has Charter service already, Babcock says. But even just getting an accurate explanation of the costs has been a hassle.

Parents Television Council to California: Keep Off (TV) Grass

The Parents Television Council—which is based in Los Angeles—is calling on voters in California to oppose a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana use. But PTC's focus is on the provision allowing that use to be advertised on broadcast and cable TV, as well as other outlets.

Proposition 64 does require that the audience composition of the media where the ads can be placed average more than two-thirds over 21 years old, says PTC, but it says the wording will effectively allow the ads on "almost any TV program" at “almost any time of day." "Our nation rightly prohibits the marketing of tobacco products on television so as to protect children, and the marketing of marijuana should be held to no lesser of a standard," said PTC president Tim Winter. "Marijuana should not be advertised to children, and this measure opens the floodgates that would be impossible to close.” The relevant ad language in Proposition 64 is: “Any advertising or marketing placed in broadcast, cable, radio, print and digital communications shall only be displayed where at least 71.6 percent of the audience is reasonably expected to be 21 years of age or older, as determined by reliable, up-to-date audience composition data." There has been some dispute about whether or not marijuana can be advertised.

Could Facebook actually be good for you?

People who are well liked on Facebook may also be healthier, according to a study that linked people’s activity on the social network to their lifespans. This could be another blow against the increasingly unstable position that digital media is inherently dangerous. The study looked at the association between the Facebook use of 12 million people between the ages of 27 and 71 and their longevity, using records from the California Department of Public Health. Led by William Hobbs — who at the time was a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego — the researchers found that Facebook activity that indicated a rich offline social life tracked with improved longevity. They published their results Oct 31 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Specifically, they found that people who received a lot of friend requests tended to live longer, but there was little association between longevity and sending friend requests. Posting photos was also linked with reduced mortality in the study. And moderate levels of online-only behavior like sending messages also appears to track with a longer life. The study supports previous research that associated a robust, real-world social network with improved health. The study, however, covered just one state and one social network. And it looked at correlation, not causation. “We cannot say that spurring users to post more photos on Facebook will increase user longevity,” the authors write in the paper. In fact, it’s just as likely that the association goes the reverse direction: these findings could mean that healthier people have the energy and time for richer offline social lives that bleed into their online lives.

Gannett Abandons Effort to Buy Newspaper Publisher Tronc

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.

Here's Elizabeth Warren's Big Gripe With the AT&T-Time Warner Deal

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.”

Let's not rush to judgment on AT&T-Time Warner merger

[Commentary] Rather than give the Department of Justice — and, assuming jurisdictional issues are resolved, perhaps even the Federal Communications Commission— an opportunity to look dispassionately at the facts of AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, law and economics of the transaction, some consumer groups are going for the political jugular. But then again, who can blame them?

As FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has actively encouraged such conduct by steadfastly choosing to ignore substance and view every major policy initiative from network neutrality to set-top boxes to municipal broadband through a political lens, this playbook appears to be quite successful. Still, ignorant sophistry is no excuse for ill-formed policymaking. Let's just hope that the new administration — regardless of party — rejects the politicized approach to telecom policy favored by the Obama Administration and returns to first principles: an honest, rigorous and dispassionate review of the transaction.

[Spiwak is the president of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies]

Comcast Sets DOCSIS 3.1 Expansion, Launches 1-Gig in Detroit

Comcast is preparing to launch 1-Gig (downstream) broadband service using DOCSIS 3.1 in several new markets in early 2017. Comcast has consumer trials underway in Nashville, Chicago and Atlanta, and has already announced that Detroit and Miami will be soon added to that list. Comcast announced Nov 1 that it has launched 1-Gig service via D3.1 in Detroit, with a base price of $139.95 per month while also testing “promotional base pricing” of $70 per month with a three-year service contract. Comcast also said it still plans to launch D3.1 in Miami before the end of 2016.

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