December 2016

TRANSITION

COMMISSIONER ROSENWORCEL NOMINATION FAILS
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Todd Shields]
The US Senate adjourned without confirming Jessica Rosenworcel for a second term on the Federal Communications Commission, forcing her out of office and setting up the agency for a partisan deadlock as the Republican administration of Donald J. Trump begins. Without other changes, the Democrat’s departure would leave the FCC hindered, with two Republicans and two Democrats on the five-member panel, until the Senate can confirm a Republican to gain a majority. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Wheeler, 70, can stay with the commission until 2018 and he hasn’t said when he may leave. In the most recent transfer of power, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, left on Obama’s inauguration day although he had more than two years remaining in his term. Lawmakers had been working on Rosenworcel's confirmation for more than a year. Retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said her confirmation was supposed to be part of an agreement struck in 2015 to jointly confirm both a Republican and a Democrat at the same time. Michael O’Rielly received confirmation, but Rosenworcel did not.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-set-possible-partisan-stalemate-after-commissioner-rosenworcel-nomination-fails | Bloomberg | The Hill | Vice | Multichannel News
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

ASHBURY SENIOR COMMUNITY COMPUTER CENTER
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Angela Siefer]
The Ashbury Senior Community Computer Center (ASC3) is a community-based organization which provides technology training and low-cost home internet service. ASC3 serves four Cleveland neighborhoods (Glenville, Forest Hills, South Collinwood and East Cleveland) -- and anyone else who requests their services. These neighborhoods are economically-diverse and family-oriented with a strong representation of older, African-American adults and Case Western Reserve University students. The draw of important churches in these neighborhoods brings in traffic from elsewhere in Cleveland. All four neighborhoods have low home broadband adoption rates. Wanda Davis and her family wanted to strengthen their community. They had two family businesses they needed to close, but they owned the property and realized there was an opportunity to create a community center. Ms. Davis said, “As we closed the hardware store and deli, wanted to make sure what we left was long standing and supportive of the community. The purpose has always been about impact.”
[Siefer is the Director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance]
https://www.benton.org/blog/innovators-digital-inclusion-ashbury-senior-...
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SEN CAPITO: BROADBAND SHOULD BE KEY TRUMP INFRASTRUCTURE PRIORITY
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
In a letter to President-elect Donald Trump, Sen Shelley Capito (R-WV) asked that broadband deployment be a "core component" of Trump's infrastructure plan. Sen Capito pointed out that as many as 74% of the residents of her state lack what she called "proper access" to broadband services. “West Virginia needs to grow and diversify its overall economy, and Internet access is fundamental to that transition," she said. "It is essential that all communities have access to Internet platforms that will help them connect and compete on a global scale. Small, rural communities across my state lack this fundamental infrastructure – and lack access to vital opportunities as a result." Sen Capito suggested that deregulation and increased accountability were the way to go, including "reducing barriers to investment in infrastructure, streamlining the regulatory environment for wireless providers, encouraging public-private partnerships, and ensuring accountability on behalf of the taxpayer for federally funded projects."
benton.org/headlines/sen-capito-r-wv-broadband-should-be-key-trump-infrastructure-priority | Broadcasting&Cable
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HOW THE INTERNET KEEPS POOR PEOPLE IN POOR NEIGHBORHOODS
[SOURCE: Vox, AUTHOR: Alvin Change]
Every time you “like” something on Facebook or search something on Google, these companies learn a little bit more about you — and provide a slightly more personalized experience based on that. And people of different races and classes have different needs and constraints, so we all use the Internet differently. In turn, we get an even more personalized experience. Those personalized experiences impact whether or not we get real-world opportunities — like the chance to move to a better neighborhood. This story could very well have been about job listings or college advertisements, but it seems apt to talk about how algorithms have sorted us online and, in turn, real life. “When the nature of the discrimination comes about through personalization, it's hard to know you're being discriminated against,” said Michael Tschantz, a Carnegie Mellon researcher. This could affect a wide swath of marginalized people, but the group that is especially vulnerable to housing discrimination is black Americans. Racist policies of our past created two divergent Americas: largely middle-class neighborhoods for white people and lower-class neighborhoods for black people. And the civil rights movement did little to help black families overcome this discrimination and get out of poor neighborhoods.
benton.org/headlines/how-internet-keeps-poor-people-poor-neighborhoods | Vox
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GOOGLE INKS DEAL WITH CUBA TO SPEEDUP INTERNET SERVICE
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Alan Gomez]
Google announced that it signed a new deal with Cuba's state-run telecommunications company to speed up Internet service for Cubans using YouTube and other Google products. The move, however, will affect only a small percentage of Cubans since the vast majority of communist country's 11 million residents do not have access to the Internet. Google has been making small inroads into Cuba over the past two years as the United States works to re-establish diplomatic relations with its Cold War foe. On Dec 12, Google CEO Eric Schmidt signed the latest deal in Havana with Mayra Arevich Marin, president of State Enterprise of Telecommunications of Cuba, the government-run communications company known as ETECSA that handles all Internet and phone services in Cuba. The deal will provide Google's "Global Cache" service to the island, which reduces the amount of time it takes high-bandwidth content to load by storing data on servers on the island.Google previously made available some of its other products on the island nation, including its Google Chrome Web browser and Google Play music service.
benton.org/headlines/google-inks-deal-cuba-speed-internet-service | USAToday | Reuters
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Charlie Savage]
The President’s Daily Brief (PDB) is a summary of high-level intelligence and analysis about global hot spots and national security threats written by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. While the intelligence community produces many reports and assessments, the PDB is written specifically for the president and his top advisers. Its origins trace back to a daily intelligence summary given to President Harry Truman starting in 1946, according to the C.I.A. Its current form began with CIA briefings for President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The intelligence community tailors the PDB to each president’s interests and style of absorbing information. At times, the briefing has included a “deep dive” into a specific question that a president may have asked or information that briefers believed he needed to know, such as the early August 2001 briefing President Bush received at his Texas ranch reporting that Osama Bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush received a supplement called the “threat matrix,” which listed more detailed intelligence about potential terrorist plans. Under President Obama, the brief has taken on some new topics and different forms, including a periodic update on cyberthreats against the United States. The P.D.B.’s form has also evolved. For example, President Bush preferred oral briefings to accompany the document, while President Obama has preferred to read the briefing on a secure tablet computer that lets him page through, underlining specific details.
benton.org/headlines/what-presidents-daily-brief | New York Times
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BROADCASTING BOARD OF GOVERNORS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] For years, members of Congress have fumed about what they regard as ineffective U.S. public diplomacy, including the failure of broadcasting operations such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to match the reach and apparent influence of networks such as Russia’s RT and Qatar’s al Jazeera. A frequent and arguably fair focus of criticism has been the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the body created to supervise government-funded media outlets while serving as a firewall between them and the political administration of the day. A radical change to that system is now coming — and it looks like one that Vladimir Putin and Qatar’s emir might well admire. An amendment quietly inserted into the annual National Defense Authorization Act by Republican House leaders would abolish the broadcasting board and place VOA, RFE/RL and other international news and information operations under the direct control of a chief executive appointed by the president. The new executive would hire and fire senior media personnel and manage their budgets. The damage to US interests could be considerable.
benton.org/headlines/big-change-us-broadcasting-coming-and-its-one-putin-might-admire | Washington Post
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OWNERSHIP

GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK ARE THE REAL MONOPOLIES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jonathan Taplan]
[Commentary] Alphabet (the parent company of Google) and Facebook are among the 10 largest companies in the world. Alphabet alone has a market capitalization of around $550 billion. AT&T and Time Warner combined would be about $300 billion. Alphabet has an 83 percent share of the mobile search market in the United States and just under 63 percent of the US mobile phone operating systems market. AT&T has a 32 percent market share in mobile phones and 26 percent in pay TV. The combined AT&T-Time Warner will have $8 billion in cash but $171 billion of net debt, according to the research company MoffettNathanson. Compare that to Alphabet’s balance sheet, with total cash of $76 billion and total debt of about $3.94 billion. In the first quarter of 2016, 85 cents of every new dollar spent in online advertising will go to Google or Facebook, according to Brian Nowak, an analyst with Morgan Stanley. Google and Facebook can achieve huge net profit margins because they dominate the content made available on the web while making very little of it themselves. Instead, they both have built their advertising businesses as “free riders” on content made by others, some of it from Time Warner. The rise of these digital giants is directly connected to the fall of the creative industries of our country.
[Taplin is the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”]
benton.org/headlines/forget-att-real-monopolies-are-google-and-facebook | New York Times
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CBS AND VIACOM'S PARENT COMPANY DOESN'T WANT THEM TO MERGE, AFTER ALL
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
The parent company of CBS and Viacom is urging the two companies not to merge, reversing course on a major proposal that had been portrayed as a potential boon to both companies. In a letter to the boards of CBS and Viacom on Dec 12, National Amusements — a privately held entertainment firm that owns controlling shares of both subsidiaries — said that now was “not the right time” to merge the companies. Pointing to recent changes in Viacom's management, NAI said it was convinced that the struggling cable and film company boasted “forward-looking thinking” and had a compelling strategic plan. Since 2014, Viacom's stock has fallen roughly 60 percent, while shares of CBS are at about the same level they were two years ago. “CBS continues to perform exceptionally well under Les Moonves,” NAI's letter read, “and we have every reason to believe that momentum will continue on a stand-alone basis.”
benton.org/headlines/cbs-and-viacoms-parent-company-doesnt-want-them-merge-after-all | Washington Post | Vox
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Analysis

December 2016

Connect Iowa Connects With Governor to Expand Iowa Broadband

Rick Perry, Ex-Governor of Texas, Is Trump’s Pick as Energy Secretary

Sen Al Franken Faces President-elect Donald Trump and the Next Four Years

Op-Ed: In 2017, media companies will finally realize they are being disrupted by the very platforms that distribute their content

What the entire internet looked like in September 1973

December 13, 2016 (Rosenworcel Nomination Fails)

Innovators in Digital Inclusion: Ashbury Senior Community Computer Center

What Is the President’s Daily Brief?

Donald Trump Says His Company Will Do ‘No New Deals’ During His Term

Veterans Groups Urge Trump to Keep Obama’s VA Secretary