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With the financial market ripe for deals, Time Warner is one of several large media companies looking to sell or restructure their print divisions.
Investors have been selling their stakes in media companies for some time as print revenue declined over the past decade. But the quickening pace of deals in recent months indicates that a new order is emerging in the media world — one in which shareholders demand greater focus from companies with hands in too many unrelated jars. Companies are moving to quarantine their more profitable units from the fallout of print advertising's decline. And vulnerable print businesses increasingly are left to survive on their own merits, with a hope that their executives, no longer distracted by other divisions, will provide more resources and navigate the digital transformation with stepped-up vigor.
Shakeout in old media picks up pace
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said Mandiant’s bombshell report of cyber spying by the Chinese government is “essentially correct.”
"I read the Mandiant report. I've also read other reports, classified out of Intelligence, and I think the Mandiant report, which is now unclassified, it's public, is essentially correct," said Chairman Feinstein. She is "very concerned" about cyber espionage and urged the Chinese government to acknowledge the program. "I think China has to face up to it. I think our government needs to sit down with China forthwith, present the evidence to China, ask China for its investigation, and press, press, press," she said. "This is going to no good end unless there is some agreement between our two nations and the world community for an agreement which is enforceable. One of these days there is going to be a huge cyberattack somewhere, and we must prevent that from happening."
Senate Intel chairwoman: Report on China's cyber war unit ‘essentially correct’
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals heard the case of Comcast vs. the Federal Communications Commission, challenging the FCC's first-ever finding in favor of a program carriage complaint and its imposition of a carriage remedy.
While the judges usually wield a gavel, in this case is was more like a hammer, with the FCC mostly on the receiving end. Between the serious First Amendment issues with the FCC's carriage remedy expressed by Judge Brett Kavanaugh and the contract issues on which Judge Harry Edwards focused, the FCC appeared to have an uphill fight to keep its decision from being remanded back. Following the hearing, sources on both sides of the case expressed that sentiment following lengthy questioning that saw FCC and Tennis Channel lawyers. In a 3-2 party line vote, the FCC in July 2012 upheld an FCC judge's ruling that Comcast discriminated against Tennis Channel by carrying it in a sports tier, while carrying its co-owned Golf Channel and Versus (now NBC Sports Network) on a more widely viewed basic tier. Comcast appealed the decision to the FCC, then the court.
FCC Roughed Up in DC Circuit FCC's Authority to Regulate Cable TV Competition Under Attack (Hollywood Reporter)
Every Tuesday, the Nielsen company publishes a popularity ranking of broadcast television programs that has served as the industry's report card dating back to when most people had only three networks to choose from. And every week, that list gets less and less meaningful.
With DVRs, video on demand, game consoles and streaming services, tablets and smartphones, the way people watch television is changing and the industry is struggling to keep on top of it all. Even the idea of "watching television" is in flux. Are you "watching TV" when you stream an episode of "Downton Abbey" on a tablet? Nielsen, which has long had a virtual monopoly on the audience statistics that drive a multi-billion dollar industry, last week took an important step toward accounting for some of the changes. Starting in September, Nielsen will begin measuring viewership through broadband devices like game consoles for the first time. Right now those numbers go uncounted. "The ratings are a very one-dimensional look at what is happening," said Alan Wurtzel, top research executive at NBC Universal, "and we now live in a very multi-dimensional world."
Harder and Harder to Measure TV Viewing
The latest and greatest in mobile technology is on display this week at the Mobile World Congress. But so are the applications of that technology. Health care, education, urban planning and other social sectors stand to benefit from mobile technology and a report from the GSMA and PricewaterhouseCoopers gives a snapshot of how mobile technology could save money, increase opportunities and enhance health and safety in the coming years.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, one million lives could be saved over the next five years with mobile health initiatives that help patients stick to their treatment plans and access information, as well as aid workers in monitoring the available of medication and follow treatment guidelines, according to the report. In developed countries, mobile health can also lead to positive outcomes. In 2017, the report says, mobile health could cut health care costs in developed countries by more than $400 billion.
Here are four ways mobile health could help cut costs:
- Mobile care for sudden health incidents
- Remote patient home monitoring
- Mobile access to electronic health records
- SMS reminders for scheduling appointments (and taking medication)
4 ways mobile health could save $400 Billion in health costs
AT&T would like everything you own to connect to its network, and it wants all those connected possessions to show up on your monthly wireless bill. It's not as audacious as it sounds.
Smartphones and tablets are hardly the only wirelessly connected gizmos anymore. Everything from medicine to door locks to dog collars are connected to wireless networks nowadays. Even cars have essentially become smartphones on wheels. AT&T says this new "Internet of Everything" presents a path for the company to become far more ingrained in its customers lives. And with its new Mobile Share plans that give you one data bucket for all your connected gizmos, AT&T expects to profit. Customers will have to pay AT&T for all the new gadgets they'll be connecting and all the new services the company will be providing.
AT&T wants to bill you for everything
[Commentary] Recent regulatory battles highlight the downside of hurried spectrum refarming, meaning the rush to enable cutting-edge wireless broadband services can cause interference issues if done shortsightedly, negatively impacting not only existing services but sometimes even the new ones.
On Feb. 20, the Federal Communications Commission initiated a rulemaking proceeding aimed at opening up an additional 195 MHz in the 5 GHz band, with the use of spectrum-sharing technologies being eyed as one way to make the spectrum available to private as well as federal entities. But the FCC's push to expand 5 GHz availability for Wi-Fi use could have the unintended consequence of derailing new connected car technologies designed to prevent accidents. That's because part of the 5 GHz band being proposed for Wi-Fi use was designated about nine years ago for use by vehicle-safety applications, into which large automakers, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and others have invested hundreds of millions of dollars.
FCC becoming a leader in unintended consequences
In two years, citizens of the Triangle’s seven-county metro area might be able to download a movie faster, pitch telecommuting from home to their bosses or start a new business. The reason? The Raleigh-Durham area could have new ultra-high-speed bandwidth capabilities. The only question is: Will North Carolina grasp the opportunity to be a leader?
Marc Hoit, vice chancellor for Information Technology at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and an active member of the North Carolina branch of Gig.U called the NC Next Generation Networks (NC NGN, pronounced “NC Engine”), said increased bandwidth could reinvigorate the Triangle’s economy, and add to the already rich digital landscape the universities have created. “I’ve been working with the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce and Cary’s chamber to see about the interest, and the interest has been overwhelming,” Hoit said. “They believe this is a strategic piece for economic development for the region.” Hoit said 18 months ago the 37 universities, of which Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, NCSU and Wake Forest are included, sent out requests for information about increasing bandwidth. Every major national cable and broadband provider answered the request. On Feb.1, requests for proposals went out with an April 1 deadline. Hoit said he’s sure that many providers will be offering plans.
Gig.U tries to bring more bandwidth to 7-county Raleigh-Durham metro area
In “Reinventing Society in the Wake of Big Data,” M.I.T. Media Lab computational social scientist Alex Pentland argued that the most important data that is becoming available on a vast new scale is information about people’s behavior.
For example, he cites location data from cellphones and evermore consumption data as people increasingly use credit cards for even the smallest purchases. He distinguishes this behavioral data from less-telling data — about people’s beliefs like Facebook communications or Google searches. The fine-grained behavioral data, according to Mr. Pentland, opens the way to changing how we think about society and how a society is governed. Adam Smith and Karl Marx, he explains, thought about markets and classes, respectively. “But those are aggregates,” he said. “They’re averages.” Yet now, Mr. Pentland says, it becomes possible to track social phenomena down to the individual level and the social and economic connections among individuals. The ability to monitor these “micro-patterns,” Mr. Pentland said, means “we’re entering a new era of social physics.”
The Promise and Peril of the ‘Data-Driven Society’
France is considering a proposal to tax the collection of personal data on the Internet.
Google and Facebook know that John Doe “likes” wine, is shopping for a Volkswagen and often e-mails Jane Doe. The new idea would require the companies to pay for gathering that information. Nicolas Colin, one of the authors of a report in which the idea of taxing data collection was floated in January, said the immediate goal would be to promote sound practices for data collection and protection. While the report does not specify how much revenue the tax would yield, Mr. Colin said it would probably be minimal. Like other European countries, France has been frustrated by its inability to raise significant tax revenue from the billions of dollars in sales and profits that Internet companies, many of them American, generate in Europe every year. And despite so-called austerity measures, budget deficits remain large. “Every government needs revenues,” Mr. Colin, a government auditor and technology entrepreneur, said in an interview. “If they can’t get them from the most profitable companies, then they have to get them from the rest of us — individual taxpayers and smaller, struggling companies.”
French Tax Proposal Zeroes In on Web Giants’ Data Harvest