BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2012
A look at next week’s agenda http://benton.org/calendar/2012-09-09--P1W/
ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
Broadband Helps Move America Forward - analysis
#DNC2012 Night 3: Obama’s speech sets records
Republicans shuffle advertising priorities
President Obama: Other Side Prepping Barrage of Negative Ads [links to web]
Bill Clinton Draws More Viewers Than N.F.L. Opener [links to web]
Clinton Speech Perks Up Cable Ratings in DNC's Second Night [links to web]
Analyst: Political Advertising to Boost TV Coffers by 23%
Lowest Unit Charge Season
Coverage of the candidates is increasingly negative [links to web]
More TV Viewers Tune Into DNC [links to web]
Silicon Valley stars are a no-show in Charlotte [links to web]
FEC Lets Donors Max Out on Text Donations [links to web]
Obama and Romney silent on 'the media' [links to web]
2012 Republican and Democratic National Conventions: Being there beats online [links to web]
Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder and Web advocate
CONTENT
Simon & Schuster, Hachette E-Book Accord Wins Approval
Oracle-Google judge ends probe into paid bloggers
How Google Builds Its Maps -- and What It Means for the Future of Everything [links to web]
If You Want Customers To Fork Over Private Data, Give Them Something Irresistible In Return - op-ed [links to web]
Apple Wants to Build Its Own Pandora. Why? [links to web]
Fox to Offer Digital Movies Closer to Theatrical Release [links to web]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
FCC moves to auction airwaves by 2014
House Communications Subcommittee Schedules Government Spectrum Hearing
The Price of Amazon’s 4G LTE Kindle Fire Tablet, Compared to New iPad [links to web]
So who is winning in the mobile ad business? [links to web]
TELEVISION
Nielsen Local TV Market Universe Loses 476,000 TV Households
FIOS TV exec: Cord cutting is growing and changing the TV biz
TV Nets Spend Billions Promoting Lineups [links to web]
Lazarus: NBC Broke Even on Olympics [links to web]
INTERNET/BROADBAND
White House circulating draft of executive order on cybersecurity
Internet capacity has doubled in 77 Tbps in two years [links to web]
Frontier Communications Deploys Faster Broadband Speeds in Appalachian Ohio - press release [links to web]
USDA marks successful partnerships with two utilities - press release [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
Facebook Closes Its Acquisition of Instagram [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
What Will Happen If the Feds Get Warrantless Access to Phone Location Data - analysis
FBI vs. Google: The Legal Fight to Unlock Phones
House Panel to Question Chinese Telecom Firms [links to web]
HEALTH
GAO Fills Vacancy on Health Information Technology Policy Committee - press release [links to web]
EDUCATION
More US Universities Enter the E-Textbook Fray [links to web]
Big Data for Education: Data Mining, Data Analytics, and Web Dashboards - research [links to web]
OBITUARIES
Art Modell helped pioneer big TV deals for NFL [links to web]
Joe South, Singer and Writer of Hit Songs – and radio pirate? [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
South Korea probes Samsung over Apple antitrust complaints
Samsung Chips Said to Be Kept From New IPhone on Pricing [links to web]
MPAA getting involved in Hollywood's dispute with China [links to web]
Nigeria: Telecom Towers Attacked [links to web]
Publishers Back African Literacy Effort With E-Books
ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
BROADBAND IN DEM PLATFORM
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
[Commentary] Last week we took a quick look at the GOP’s 2012 platform. This week, we look at Internet-related planks of Moving America Forward, the Democratic Party’s 2012 platform adopted at its national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. The policies are largely a continuation of promises made by Barack Obama during his 2008 campaign and initiatives launched during his administration.
http://benton.org/node/133826
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TWEETING THE SPEECH
[SOURCE: Twitter, AUTHOR: ]
Today’s highly-anticipated event in Charlotte was the single biggest day of both conventions. President Barack Obama’s (@BarackObama) acceptance speech at #DNC2012 set a new record for political moments on Twitter, with 52,756 Tweets per minute coming just after its conclusion. The Democratic National Convention has driven an incredible amount of Twitter conversation since the very first day— through the close of the official proceedings, we have seen more than 9.5 million Tweets sent about the events in Charlotte. Just the final day of the convention delivered roughly 4 million Tweets— approximately equal to the total number from the entire Republican National Convention. Many of today’s 4 million Tweets were sent during the President’s acceptance speech. @barackobama delivered a great collection of tweetable lines this evening, and Twitter responded accordingly. His five top peaks in Tweets per minute were actually all higher than any other moment for a speaker in either convention. The moments in his speech that elicited the biggest Twitter reactions were:
-43,646: “I'm no longer just the candidate, I'm the President”
-39,002: “I will never turn medicare into a voucher”
-38,597: Discussing Medicare
-37,694: “We don’t think government can solve all our problems…”
-34,572: Quips about the Olympics and “Cold War mind warp”
benton.org/node/133911 | Twitter | Politico | Financial Times
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GOP NARROWS AD BUYS
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Anna Fifield]
The number of battleground states in the US election is shrinking, with Mitt Romney and outside groups backing the Republican presidential candidate shunning large investments in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which they had once hoped to win, in favor of other states where they are more competitive. The decision to not invest heavily in ads in those states could enable the Republicans to devote more resources to must-win Ohio and Florida, intensifying the battle over the states that will probably determine the outcome of November’s poll. Crossroads GPS, a conservative political group that supports Romney, said it was not running ads in Pennsylvania and in Michigan, where Romney was born but where his stance on the auto industry bailout has been unpopular. The President carried both states in 2008 and they still favor him now. According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, President Obama is leading Romney in Pennsylvania and Michigan by 7.7 percentage points and 2.4 points respectively. The Romney campaign had hoped to make inroads in both states. But campaign officials now say they are turning their focus to New Hampshire and Wisconsin, Ryan’s home state.
benton.org/node/133910 | Financial Times
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POLITICAL ADS TO BOOST TV BY 23%
[SOURCE: AdWeek, AUTHOR: Katy Bachman]
With just 61 days to go before Election Day, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker is raising her estimates for political ad spending from $4.9 billion to $5.2 billion. She upped her forecast based on television spending in August, which surged 77 percent on local TV to more than $171 million, compared to July. Local, network and cable TV are set to bring in $3.37 billion this election, boosting television revenue by more than 23 percent compared to last year. Local TV, at 54 percent, has the largest share of the three segments and is estimated to come in at $2.8 billion. Although spending has been accelerating, the real squeeze on commercial inventory, especially in key states and markets, is getting close. "The most crucial time is now," Ryvicker wrote. "While advertising picked up toward the end of second quarter, history would tell us that roughly 75 percent of total political dollars are spent within the last 7-8 weeks leading up to a general election." Ryvicker's analysis also shows that there are some shifts in spending in the past month. Though Cleveland ($35.2 million), Washington, D.C. ($32.6 million), Tampa, Fla. ($29 million), Las Vegas ($28 million) and Orlando, Fla. ($23.2 million) have been the top markets in absolute dollars this year to date, Washington showed the biggest change in the past month. More than $20 million was spent in the nation's capital from July 1 to Aug. 26.
benton.org/node/133846 | AdWeek
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LOWEST UNIT CHARGE SEASON
[SOURCE: CommLawCenter, AUTHOR: Scott Flick]
In what seems to be the longest presidential campaign in history, September 7th marks the beginning of the final stretch. That's the first day of Lowest Unit Charge Season, the 60-day period before the November 6th, 2012 general election. During that time (which also occurs in the 45 days before a primary election), broadcast stations may charge no more than their lowest rate for each particular class of ad time purchased for a "use" by a legally qualified candidate. Of course, while the concept sounds simple enough, its implementation at stations with dozens of different classes of ad time has proven to be a biennial headache for broadcasters. However, particularly for stations in political swing states, it can be a fairly profitable headache, and well worth the regulatory aspirin needed to get through it.
benton.org/node/133845 | CommLawCenter
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ALEXIS OHANIAN
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Hayley Tsukayama]
Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has accomplished what virtually no one else in Washington is doing these days: bringing the political parties together on a controversial issue. Democrats and Republicans have stepped up their support this year of Ohanian’s cause of keeping the Web free of government intervention. During their conventions, both sides touted a platform plank affirming Internet freedom. And last week, President Obama stopped by Reddit for a surprise question-and-answer session, saying he would “fight hard to make sure the Internet remains the open forum for everybody.” “Republicans want to keep the open Internet safe from big government. Democrats want to keep it safe from big corporations. I say we agree to agree and move ahead,” Ohanian said in an interview. “It was so successful because we literally had the Tea Party next to the MoveOn.org guys at these meetings. They don’t often hang out together.”
benton.org/node/133907 | Washington Post
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CONTENT
E-BOOK SETTLEMENT APPROVED
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Bob Van Voris]
A price-fixing settlement between the U.S. government and electronic-book publishers Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group Inc. and HarperCollins Publishers LLC was approved by a judge in New York. The Justice Department in April sued the three publishers along with Apple, Pearson’s Penguin Group and MacMillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH. The government claimed the defendants conspired to fix the price for e-books in violation of U.S. antitrust law. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote agreed with the government that the settlement is in the public interest.
benton.org/node/133849 | Bloomberg | New York Times
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PROBE OF PAID BLOGGERS ENDS
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Jonathan Stempel]
U.S. District Judge William Alsup, overseeing a major lawsuit over smartphone technology between Oracle Corp and Google, has quietly ended his examination of those companies' relationships with paid bloggers and other commentators. He had shocked the legal and blogging communities on August 7 by demanding names of "print or Internet authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers" on the companies' payrolls. But in an order issued on September 4, after Oracle and Google had submitted lists of names, Judge Alsup said he would "take no further action regarding the subject of payments by the litigants to commentators and journalists." He also said no commentaries had influenced his rulings in the case, other than "any treatise or article" he cited expressly.
benton.org/node/133876 | Reuters
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
INCENTIVE AUCTIONS TIMELINE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
The Federal Communications Commission is moving aggressively to auction television stations' airwave licenses to cellular service providers by 2014. According to FCC officials, Chairman Julius Genachowski will circulate an order on September 7 with the other commissioners that will outline how the agency could craft the multibillion dollar auctions and will seek feedback from companies and the public. Congress authorized the auctions as part of tax cut extension legislation earlier this year but left the details of the implementation to the FCC. The commission's proposed timeline is similar to the one sought by the wireless industry, which called for the auctions to be held by mid-2014. The FCC will vote on moving ahead with the proposal at its meeting later this month.
benton.org/node/133904 | Hill, The | B&C | GigaOm
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GOVERNMENT SPECTRUM HEARING
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The House Commerce Committee's Communications Subcommittee will hold a hearing Sept. 13, "Creating Opportunities through Improved Government Spectrum Efficiency," on freeing up government spectrum. The Obama Administration is in the process of encouraging government agencies to find spectrum to either relinquish or share as part of its goal to get wireless broadband to 98% of the population within five years. "The subcommittee will continue to examine how both federal agencies and commercial wireless carriers might benefit from more efficient government use of spectrum," said Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR). "As the single largest spectrum user, the federal government could save taxpayers money and make more frequencies available to meet American consumers' growing demand for mobile broadband services, while improving its own capabilities."
benton.org/node/133902 | Broadcasting&Cable
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TELEVISION
LESS TV HOUSEHOLDS
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Michael Malone]
Nielsen's Local Television Market Universe dropped from an estimated 114,649,310 TV homes in 2011-2012 to 114,173,690, a decrease of 475,620. Nielsen reps were not available on short notice to explain the diminished U.S. TV universe. The top 38 TV markets held their position from last year's Local Television Market Universe Estimates. Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek, Oklahoma City and Anchorage were the biggest gainers, picking up three slots in market rank, while the most significant markets to drop in rank were Birmingham and Palm Springs (-3), and a bunch that slipped two spots, including Harrisburg-Lancaster-Lebanon-York, Albuquerque-Santa Fe and Roanoke-Lynchburg.
benton.org/node/133875 | Broadcasting&Cable
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CORD CUTTING AND VERIZON
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Janko Roettgers]
Many cable TV operators still argue that cord cutting doesn’t exist, but Verizon’s FIOS TV director Maitreyi Krishnaswamy thinks it’s real, and growing. But that’s not all: Krishnaswamy is also arguing that it might change the industry by putting pressure on studios. Cord cutting isn’t just about some people not paying for TV anymore, but also about enabling new and innovative business models, including unbundled subscriptions to individual channels. And Verizon is apparently ready to take the plunge as soon as the wave is big enough.
benton.org/node/133872 | GigaOm
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
CYBERSECURITY ORDER
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Jennifer Martinez]
The White House is circulating a draft of an executive order aimed at protecting the country from cyberattacks. The draft proposal, which has been sent to relevant federal agencies for feedback, is a clear sign that the Administration is resolved to take action on cybersecurity even as Congress remains gridlocked on legislation that would address the threat. The draft executive order would establish a voluntary program where companies operating critical infrastructure would elect to meet cybersecurity best practices and standards crafted, in part, by the government, according to two people familiar with the document. The draft has undergone multiple revisions and is brief, spanning no more than five pages. It is still being worked on and is subject to change, the people familiar with the draft stressed. It's also unclear whether the final product will get the president's approval to move forward. A new draft of the executive order is expected to be shared with agencies next week.
benton.org/node/133905 | Hill, The
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
PHONE LOCATION DATA
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Christopher Mims]
If Uncle Sam wins a recent court argument, every law-enforcement agency in the country will be able to track your every move. More importantly, access to location data as comprehensive as that available to cell-phone carriers could allow law enforcement to determine everything from your complete social network and your health status to how likely it is that you'll repay a loan. The case at hand does not suggest that the Obama administration is attempting to gain this level of insight into the lives of every American citizen, but it's telling that the prosecutors seem ignorant of the power of the data they're requesting. To understand how important location data is, especially of the variety gathered by smartphones, it's important to understand what academics have already accomplished with this data.
benton.org/node/133866 | Atlantic, The
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UNLOCKING PHONES
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Julia Angwin]
A legal battle is brewing between technology companies and the US government over whether law-enforcement agents have the right to obtain passwords to crack into smartphones of suspects. Google earlier this year refused to unlock an alleged pimp's cellphone powered by its Android software -- even after the Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a search warrant. Google's unusual and controversial challenge to the search warrant indicates how murky the legal standards are for new technologies such as smartphones. Under the Supreme Court's so-called Third Party Doctrine, government agents can often obtain data stored with third parties without obtaining a search warrant. But that standard doesn't take into account data as sensitive as a password—which can be the key to unlocking a larger trove of information such as emails, texts, calls and address lists. Asking a third party for a password "is awfully new and aggressive," said Paul Ohm, associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School and former federal prosecutor. "Generally, we don't like the FBI to have access to our keys even with a warrant."
benton.org/node/133899 | Wall Street Journal
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
SOUTH KOREA PROBES SAMSUNG
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Miyoung Kim]
South Korean regulators are investigating complaints filed by Apple Inc that Samsung Electronics Co is abusing its dominant position in wireless technology, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said. The FTC is investigating whether Samsung is unfairly competing in the market by abusing its dominance in wireless technology patents. Apple filed its complaints earlier this year, said an FTC official, who is not authorized to talk to the media. Samsung pledged in 1998 to license its 3G patents to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Samsung said it has at all times met its obligations to the fair licensing of its telecoms standards-related patents.
benton.org/node/133837 | Reuters
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AFRICAN LITERACY EFFORT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Nick Wingfield]
Years ago, David Risher, a former Amazon executive, came up with the unlikely plan of distributing Kindles to children in the developing world to help increase literacy. Why take a fragile piece of technology that requires charging and Internet connections to places where infrastructure can be sparse, especially when there’s an inexpensive, low-tech alternative in print books? But Risher has gradually found acceptance for the nonprofit he founded to take e-books to Africa, Worldreader. Now he’s getting a significant boost from book publishers that could help expand its reach. Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Egmont UK, Rosetta Books, Hardie Grant Egmont and Ripley Publishing have all agreed to donate e-books to Worldreader, allowing the nonprofit to triple the size of its digital library to more than 900 books. About 500 of those titles are African textbooks and storybooks, while another 425 originate from publishers in the United States, Britain and elsewhere. All of them are free for the roughly 1,000 children in Ghana and Kenya to whom Worldreader has handed out Kindles. Worldreader says it has distributed more than 200,000 e-books into the hands of children in its program.
benton.org/node/133839 | New York Times
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