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NEWS FROM THE FCC
FCC Lacks Multicast Muscle, Says McDowell
Airwaves Auction May Raise $20 Billion
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Charges of Dirty Tricks on Web Feed Speculation in the Blogosphere
Bloggers Drive Inquiry on How Altered Images Saw Print
Sprint Will Build an Intel-Backed Network
A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749
Chinese Tech Buffs Slake Thirst for U.S. TV Shows
MEDIA OWNERSHIP
Big Media on Campus
QUICKLY -- Comcast, Ebay Talk Net Neutrality; Another Court Loss for
EchoStar; Court Denies Verizon's Maryland Injunction Request; Cable,
Telcos Debate in Pennsylvania
NEWS FROM THE FCC
FCC LACKS MULTICAST MUSCLE, SAYS MCDOWELL
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
New FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell put something of an exclamation
point on his regulatory independence in a briefing with reporters
Tuesday, including making it clear he does not think the FCC has the
authority to mandate multicast must-carry without clearer direction
from Congress. Commissioner McDowell said he saw two principal issues
on the FCC agenda, "threading the needle" of the third circuit remand
of media ownership rules, and revamping the universal service fund,
which underwrites telecommunications deployment to rural and
underserved areas via contributions from industry. Commissioner
McDowell, who was sworn in June 1, said he was open to separating the
omnibus FCC ownership review into smaller bites rather than "one big
kidney stone to pass." He also said he wanted to take a wait-and-see
approach to the issue of cable a la carte, saying consumer demand
may force a private sector solution. As to multicast must-carry,
which like a la carte has been pushed by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin,
an engaging and at-ease McDowell said he did not believe Congress had
given the FCC authority to mandate it, saying if Congress wanted to
give it that express authority it could. McDowell called "network
neutrality" a Rorschach term (those ink blotches psychologist ask
patients to interpret), that depends on where you stand. Where he
stands, he said, is in support of the FCC's four neutrality
principles and concerned with balancing the need for network
management with the threat of abuse. He said it would be tough for
the government to apply a prophylactic for a problem that does not
yet exist, suggesting that the FCC did not want to be the French
goalie, referring to a World Cup soccer shootout in which that
goalie, as with most goalies in such shootouts, kept guessing left
when the ball went right, or vice versa. Commissioner McDowell said
that if a franchise reform bill does not pass, the FCC has the
authority to step in and take action itself.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6360473?display=Breaking+News
* McDowell Sees FCC Role in Cable Franchising
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6360712.html?display=Breaking+News
* TW/Bell South Merger Could Face 2-2 FCC
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: ]
New Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, formerly with
independent telecom association Comptel, could be recused from the
AT&T/Bell South merger review, but it hasn't happened yet. If
McDowell can't cast a vote, that will leave the FCC with a 2-2
commission, as it had during the marathon 404-day review of the
Comcast/Time Warner/Adelphia deal. McDowell told reporters Monday
there was a one-year period during which he had to steer clear of
proceedings in which Comptel filed, and that if/once it did weigh in,
he would have to step away. Comptel filed a formal petition to deny
the merger June 5, according to the group, only four days after he
was sworn in.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6360751?display=Breaking+News
AIRWAVES AUCTION MAY RAISE $20 BILLION
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Jim Puzzanghera]
The wireless future goes on sale today when the federal government
puts a huge swath of radio-wave spectrum on the auction block. With
the use of cellular telephones and other wireless gadgets booming,
the invisible bands of spectrum that serve as the nation's data
highways are getting overloaded. Putting valuable frequencies now
used by the Pentagon and other agencies to commercial use is expected
to help cellular phone carriers as well as cable and satellite TV
providers expand their services. One of the largest spectrum auctions
ever, the sale could bring as much as $20 billion into federal
coffers that could be used to offset the nation's budget deficit. The
sale, which combined with another auction planned for early 2008,
would nearly double the amount of bandwidth available for advanced
wireless devices in the United States. It also promises to jump start
the spectrum land-rush for the next generation of wireless services.
Known as 3G, for third generation, the technology can enable
cellphones to access e-mail, music and video content at high speeds.
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-spectrum9aug09,1,4885...
(requires registration)
* US wireless sale draws a new crowd
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&story...
INTERNET/BROADBAND
CHARGES OF DIRTY TRICKS ON WEB FEED SPECULATION IN THE BLOGOSPHERE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Michael Cooper & John Markoff]
You may not be reading it here first, but challenger Ned Lamont beat
three-term incumbent Sen Joe Lieberman in yesterday's Connecticut
Democratic primary election. When Sen Lieberman's campaign Web site
crashed in the hours leading up to the election, it was hard not to
read some deeper meaning into the problem. Was it a sign that Sen
Lieberman was clumsy when it came to marshaling the technology that
his opponents had used so well against him? Or had some shadowy,
sinister bloggertypes who were championing his challenger hacked into
the site and shut it down, as the Lieberman campaign charged? The
Lieberman campaign said that "we believe that this is the result of a
coordinated attack by our political opponents." The Lamont campaign
responded that "if Senator Lieberman's Web site was indeed hacked, we
had absolutely no part in it, denounce the action, and urge whoever
is responsible cease and desist immediately." Either way, the Web
battles that marked Primary Day made for a fitting coda to a campaign
that played out nearly as much on the Internet as it did on the
stump. Even before Mr. Lamont entered the primary race that he would
eventually win, the anger directed at Senator Lieberman over his
support for the Iraq war and the Bush administration had found a
focal point, and a forum, on the Web, among the bloggers and
activists who call themselves Netroots.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/nyregion/09blogs.html
(requires registration)
* Lamont Relied On Net Roots -- And Grass Roots
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR200608...
BLOGGERS DRIVE INQUIRY ON HOW ALTERED IMAGES SAW PRINT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Katharine Seelye & Julie Bosman]
As of yesterday afternoon, Adnan Hajj was the most-searched term on
the Technorati Web site, which tracks what is being discussed in the
blogosphere. And a rendering of his work was one of the most viewed
videos on YouTube. Mr. Hajj, a Lebanese photographer based in the
Middle East, may not be familiar to many newspaper readers. But
thanks to the swift justice of the Internet, he has been charged,
tried and convicted of improperly altering photographs he took for
Reuters. The pictures ran on the Reuters news service on Saturday,
and were discovered almost instantly by bloggers to have been
manipulated. Reuters then announced on Sunday that it had fired the
freelancer. Executives said yesterday that they were still
investigating why they had not discovered the manipulation before the
pictures were disseminated to newspapers. The matter has created an
uproar on the Internet, where many bloggers see an anti-Israel bias
in Mr. Hajj's manipulations, which made the damage from Israeli
strikes into Beirut appear worse than the original pictures had.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09photo.html
(requires registration)
* Blogger Takes Aim At News Media and Makes a Direct Hit
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR200608...
SPRINT WILL BUILD AN INTEL-BACKED NETWORK
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: John Markoff & Ken Belson]
Intel won a major victory yesterday in its decade-long campaign to
create a mobile Internet based on an array of new data services.
Sprint Nextel, the nation's third-largest cellular carrier with 51.7
million subscribers, said it would use WiMax, a technology promoted
by Intel, in building a high-speed wireless data network with
connection speeds about five times those currently available. Sprint
said it would spend up to $3 billion over two years on the network,
which will be able to support new mobile services like full-motion
video and interactive gambling when it goes into operation in 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09chip.html
(requires registration)
* Sprint Nextel to Build $2.5 Billion Wireless Network
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR200608...
A FACE IS EXPOSED FOR AOL SUBSCRIBER NO 4417749
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Michael Barbaro & Tom Zeller]
America Online's detailed records of searches conducted by 657,000
other Americans, copies of which continue to circulate online,
underscore how much people unintentionally reveal about themselves
when they use search engines -- and how risky it can be for companies
like AOL, Google and Yahoo to compile such data.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?ref=todayspaper
(requires registration)
* AOL's data sketch sometimes scary picture of personalities searching Net
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20060809/maney09.art.htm
CHINESE TECH BUFFS SLAKE THIRST FOR US TV SHOWS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Howard French]
Volunteers across China spend night after night creating Chinese
subtitles for American sitcoms and dramas for a mushrooming audience
of Chinese viewers who download them from the Internet free through
services like BitTorrent. Their ambition is to make American popular
culture available in near-real time free to Chinese audiences,
dodging Chinese censors and American copyright lawyers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/world/asia/09china.html
(requires registration)
MEDIA OWNERSHIP
BIG MEDIA ON CAMPUS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Emily Steel emily.steel( at )wsj.com ]
It's not breaking news that the newspaper industry is losing the
attention of young readers. But one sector of the industry is defying
the trend: college papers. Hip, local, relevant and generated by
students themselves, college newspapers have held steady readership
in recent years while newspapers in general have seen theirs shrink.
Big advertisers are going on campus to reach these young readers.
Ford Motor Co., Microsoft Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., and
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have all placed recent ads in college
newspapers. Now, media giants are jumping in. Last week, Gannett's
Tallahassee Democrat acquired Florida State University's FSView &
Florida Flambeau, one of the nation's few for-profit college
newspapers. The same day, Viacom's MTV, which already runs a network
targeted at college campuses called mtvU, agreed to buy Y2M: Youth
Media & Marketing Networks, a company that hosts the Web sites for
450 campus papers. MTV executives hope the deal will give mtvU
credibility in the college community, providing its advertisers with
easy access to college students.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115509164245730752.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
(requires subscription)
QUICKLY
COMCAST, EBAY TAKE THEIR NEUTRAL CORNERS
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John M. Higgins]
As Senate Commerce Committee Republican Chairman Ted Stevens
continues to try to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a threatened
Democrat veto -- over the issue of network neutrality -- and bring a
communications reform bill to the floor, David Cohen, EVP of Comcast
Corp., and Meg Whitman, President/CEO of online auction site, eBay,
have become electronic pen pals of a sort, swapping e-mails over the
issue, though on opposite ends of the spectrum.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6360701.html?display=Breaking...
ANOTHER COURT LOSS FOR ECHOSTAR
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
EchoStar Communications suffered a court loss Monday regarding its
ability to provide out-of-market feeds of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox
programming to about 1.2 million customers around the country, an
EchoStar official said Monday. EchoStar asked the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 11th Circuit to stay a key ruling while the case was
on appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court refused the
request Monday. The case returns to federal district court in south
Florida Aug. 15, an EchoStar official said.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6360281.html?display=Breaking+News
COURT DENIES VERIZON'S MARYLAND INJUNCTION REQUEST
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Linda Haugsted]
A federal court judge rejected a request by Verizon Communications'
Maryland division for a preliminary injunction to block
implementation of franchising rules for Montgomery County, Md. Judge
Marvin Garbis also directed Verizon to work with a mediator to
resolve issues arising out of the county's attempts to issue a
franchise with terms comparable to incumbent video competitors.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6360759.html?display=Breaking+News
CABLE, TELCOS DEBATE IN PENNSYLVANIA
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Linda Haugsted]
The latest battle over cable regulation had its first skirmish in
Pennsylvania, with telephone companies arguing that local franchising
is a barrier to entry and cable countering that telcos can compete
now and need no governmental assistance. Cable executives noted that
regulations were changed in 1996 that allow telcos to provide video
services. Under those rules, Verizon Communications negotiated 23
franchise agreements around the state.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6360417.html?display=Breaking+News
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That's a White Sox winner! way to go, Paulie.
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Communications-related Headlines is a free online news summary
service provided by the Benton Foundation (www.benton.org). Posted
Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important
industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events.
While the summaries are factually accurate, their often informal tone
does not always represent the tone of the original articles.
Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang headlines( at )benton.org -- we
welcome your comments.
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