You’re reading the Benton Foundation’s Weekly Round-up, a recap of the biggest (or most overlooked) telecommunications stories of the week. The round-up is delivered via e-mail each Friday.
Round-Up for the Week of January 22-26, 2018
At his annual World Economic Forum dinner, financier and philanthropist George Soros flagged a brand new threat—the unchecked power of Google and Facebook, which Soros feels now have “monolithic power” that they’re using to manipulate and deceive consumers. The net result could be totalitarian control, Soros said. [Transcript follows]
Sinclair Broadcast Group representatives met with Federal Communications Commission officials to suss out what the agency will consider in reviewing broadcaster ownership of more than one top-rated TV station in a local market.
I posit that the Federal Communications Commission needs to reconsider the ineffective and burdensome requirements currently imposed on our nation’s broadcasters to air a certain amount of educational and informational children’s programming on a weekly basis, colloquially referred to as Kid Vid. While Kid Vid rules (minus the reporting requirements) apply to noncommercial educational stations like PBS, such programming is tied to the mission of these stations and PBS does not need a mandate to continue providing such content. In fact, children’s programming on PBS is only expected to inc
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