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Amazon has enabled something that on the surface sounds great for kids: A child-centered service that runs alongside a family's Kindle Prime membership and gives kids aged 3 to 8 unlimited access to Prime content on a Kindle Fire tablet. But even in this enlightened digital age there's a clear question whether unlimited content is more than kids can handle.
How Amazon's All-You-Can-Scroll Kindle Content Is Bad For Kids
[Commentary] An issue that has been simmering in Washington has finally boiled up to the surface. And, no, we’re not talking about the fiscal cliff. This issue is media ownership in the U,S. As longtime Headlines readers know, this has been a recurring, major issue, especially in the last ten years or so. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to wrap up a review of its ownership rules as is required by law every four years. This particular review began in 2010 and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski hoped to complete the proceeding by the end of 2012, but that ain’t gonna happen.
They Want to do What Now? The FCC’s Media Ownership Proposal
A half-million Facebook users have told the social network they do not want the company to change its privacy policy. Sounds impressive, right? Well, the only way that crowd will get its way and the status quo remain intact is if an additional 300 million people vote thumbs down before Dec 10. Odds of that happening? About zero.
But the really interesting change is that Facebook is proposing to end this system of direct voting, which was implemented in early 2009 after a major privacy flap. The problem was that more than 30 percent of all Facebook users had to vote against a proposal for it to be binding. In the last vote, in June, the no’s outweighed the yeses by a ratio of six to one, but the total votes were less than one half of 1 percent of the users. That made the vote simply advisory. And so Facebook went ahead and implemented the changes anyway.
Facebook Likely to End Experiment With Democracy
When The Wall Street Journal broke the news that The Washington Post was likely to start charging for online content sometime next year, it should not have come as a surprise, but it did.
The shock had something to do with the certainty that Donald Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Company, has always displayed on the subject. He has long had serious reservations about putting the work of his company’s journalists behind a wall. But now The Post is contemplating a model in which the homepage and section fronts will be free, but the rest will require a subscription, which is a pretty nifty way to allow for snacking while hoping that people stick around to eat. So what changed? Everything and nothing. The Post, give or take elections, is still a regional business. But the newspaper has been working the cost side of the ledger relentlessly and reaching diminishing returns. New revenue had to become part of the picture at some point.
Pay Wall Push: Why Newspapers Are Hopping Over the Picket Fence
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has granted Verizon and MetrocPCS' request for two more weeks beyond its previous Dec. 6 deadline to file reply briefs in their challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's open Internet order, as well as a few more words to make their case. The court extended the deadline for the briefs to Dec. 21 and replies to those replies on Jan. 4, with final briefs Jan. 18. The court has yet to schedule oral argument.
DC Federal Appeals Court Extends Comment Deadline in Network Neutrality Challenge
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has temporarily suspended the EAGLE-Net Alliance's broadband build-out, to schools and libraries, which is being partially underwritten by stimulus funding under NTIA's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP).
"Yesterday, EAGLE-Net Alliance (ENA) was instructed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to temporarily suspend current construction activity while we provide them additional information about our project," the alliance said. "We take this very seriously and are working closely with the NTIA to provide this information in order to resume construction as quickly as possible." But ENA suggested it was not a big deal anyway. "Although construction has been temporarily postponed, it was already winding down for the 2012 build schedule. Our non-construction related operations will not be affected." “NTIA has suspended the project and required EAGLE-Net to stop work in order to address concerns about its adherence to environmental and cultural resources requirements," said Anthony Wilhelm, who heads up the BTOP broadband stimulus funding program. "Our expectation is that ENA will resolve these issues so that the project can quickly resume and continue to deliver broadband benefits to communities statewide."
NTIA Suspends EAGLE-Net Broadband Construction
[Commentary] The word I'm getting out of the Washington is that the Federal Communications Commission may prohibit the formation of new virtual duopolies through joint sales agreements and give broadcasters two years to unwind existing ones. That's the wrong way to go. It should be relaxing the rules to allow more combos or at the very least grandfathering the existing ones.
The foes of media consolidation are correct in saying the duopolies reduce the number of independent voices, but those voices are fading away anyway. The could take the advice that Sinclair General Counsel Barry Faber gave when he visited the FCC this week: just punt. In a new and separate proceeding, the FCC could build its own database of duopolies and virtual duopolies and do a serious analysis of their impact on broadcasters and their viewers. But if the FCC is determined to crack down on the virtual duopolies, it should at the very least grandfather the existing combos and avoid a major disruption in the industry and the likely devaluation of publicly traded, duopoly-heavy groups like Nexstar and Sinclair.
FCC Moving the Wrong Way on JSAs
Sprint Nextel has approached Dish Network about a partnership that would allow the satellite-TV company to offer mobile-phone service over the carrier’s network, two people familiar with the matter said.
Under the potential arrangement, discussed in recent months, Sprint would get access to Dish’s mobile airwaves, which aren’t currently being used, the people said. The companies could then share revenue from customers who sign up for a Dish wireless service, or Dish may pay Sprint a fee to use the network, according to one of the people, who asked not to be named because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly. The deal would vault Dish into the mobile-phone market without it having to build its own network, letting the company offer wireless service to its 14 million satellite-TV customers. Dish, which publicly expressed interest in such partnerships, said it won’t make a decision on the matter until a regulatory ruling on its airwaves that may come as soon as next week.
Sprint Is Said to Suggest Dish Partnership
T-Mobile’s decision to end phone subsidies is upending the established business and device distribution models of the U.S. wireless industry, separating the handset from the service.
It’s a model that’s thrived in Europe and other countries, but it’s one that’s failed to gain traction in the U.S. except in the prepaid market, namely because U.S. consumers like getting even the most sophisticated high-end phones on the cheap. In T-Mobile’s Value Plan customers pay the full cost of their device, either up front or in installments, or bring their own compatible handsets. In exchange, T-Mobile will offer them cheaper rates, in many cases $20 a month cheaper than it would charge for a subsidized phone plan. Do the math: that’s $480 in savings over two years, which in many cases is much more than the up-front discounts operators are offering on subsidized phones (For instance, a Samsung Galaxy S III subsidy on T-Mobile is $350 including rebate). Given that T-Mobile’s subsidized rates are already much cheaper than its major competitors, the savings from T-Mobile’s Value Plans are compounded. The repercussions of T-Mobile’s strategy will be felt far beyond the point-of-sale and monthly bill, though.
If successful, T-Mobile’s elimination of subsidies could have a huge impact throughout the U.S. mobile ecosystem, changing how we value our devices and our relationships with our carriers and handset manufacturers.
- The rise of phone financing
- Greater portability of handsets between carriers
- Less carrier control
- A larger selection of devices
- Huawei and ZTE could become household names
- The development of a vibrant phone resale market
How T-Mobile’s smartphone pricing could change the US wireless industry
In a recent “Ask Me Anything” interview with Reddit users, the Washington bureau chief for the New York Times had some refreshingly reasonable things to say about how the web has helped improve journalism, and how the practice of journalism will survive even if newspapers don’t.
NYT editor: Journalism pre-dates newspapers and will outlast newspapers