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Jeff Shell, president of NBCUniversal International, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to be chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Shell has been head of NBCU International since 2011, having previously been president of Comcast Programming Group from 2005 to 2011, when Comcast combined with NBCU in a joint venture. Shell has an extensive U.S. broadcasting background, including stints at Gemstar TV Guide International and Fox Cable Networks Group, where he headed entertainment and sports programming.

From White House release:
Jeffrey Shell is President of NBCUniversal International, a position he has held since 2011. He previously served as President of Comcast Programming Group from 2005 to 2011, overseeing Comcast's group of networks. Prior to joining Comcast, Mr. Shell held a number of positions, including CEO of Gemstar TV Guide International and President of the FOX Cable Networks Group. As President of the FOX Cable Networks, he oversaw the operations of FOX’s entertainment and sports cable programming businesses. He currently serves on the board of the National Constitution Center. Mr. Shell received a B.S. in Economics and Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.


President Nominates NBCU International Chief Jeff Shell to Head BBG President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts (White House)
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Britain's government says a new research institute partly funded by the country's eavesdropping spy agency will ask mathematicians and computer scientists to join the fight against cyber threats. The Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ — Britain's equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency — said that a new 3.8-million-pound ($6.1-million) program would fund a research institute at University College London.


UK spy agency asks academics to tackle cyber risks
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The clamor for sport’s live broadcast rights in the UK is increasing. Live sport is attracting bigger TV audiences – and increasing advertising revenues, in turn. This is enriching sports teams and players.


Competition heats up for sports TV rights BT turns defense into attack (FT-BT and rugby)
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With people increasingly getting their news on the go, the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute surveyed mobile media users on their attitudes towards news sites. The good news for journalists is, mobile users, like consumers overall, place a high value on news that's produced by the professionals (63 percent). They have a higher preference for news that interests them (48.3 percent versus 44.1 percent of consumers overall). Attitudes towards advertising also differ slightly, with mobile media users less likely to consider ads to be of value. When it comes to the future of mobile news, consumers are divided, but mobile users are more likely to believe they'll rely on their devices for all their news in the next 10 years.


Data Points: News Division
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President Barack Obama may have his ad strategy to thank for his post-Democratic National Convention 6 percentage point bounce. Both parties avoided a heavy ad schedule during the convention weeks. But Obama and the PACs favoring him aired more than twice the number of ads aired by GOP challenger Mitt Romney and the pro-Romney PACs.

Now, a new analysis is tying that heavier ad schedule to Obama's bounce in the polls. According to the Wesleyan Media Project's analysis of Kantar Media Campaign Media Analysis Group data between Aug. 26 and Sept. 8, Obama and his allies aired 40,000 ads. During the same time, Romney and his allies aired 18,000 ads on broadcast and national cable. That added up to $21.1 million spent by the pro-Obama camp, versus $12.9 million spent by the Romney side.


Study: Obama Bounce Tied to Ad Strategy
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According to written testimony for a Sept. 13 House hearing on government spectrum use, T-Mobile will tell the House Communications Subcommittee the Federal Communications Commission incentive auctions for reclaimed broadcast spectrum combined with earlier fixed microwave spectrum freed up for mobile still "are simply not enough" to meet demand, even combined with what they say are their ongoing efforts to use the spectrum they have more efficiently. The company also says that for the most part, freed-up government spectrum should be turned over to commercial users on an exclusive, or near-exclusive, basis, rather than shared. A National Telecommunications and Information Administration report identifying 95 MHz of government spectrum for possible reclamation said sharing needed to be part of the solution to the spectrum crunch.


T-Mobile: Broadcast Spectrum Will Be Insufficient
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Hoping to counter the lobbying heft of major retailers such as Wal-Mart and Lowes, hundreds of small online businesses are launching a new coalition to oppose legislation that would require online retailers to collect sales taxes from their out-of-state customers. The WE R HERE coalition, which stands for Web Enabled Retailers Helping Expand Retail Employment, argues that proposed legislation to require online retailers to collect sales taxes from out-of-state customers would impose a huge burden on small online businesses by requiring them to comply with the tax rules of thousands of jurisdictions.

"There is no technology that can make having to report to [thousands] of tax jurisdictions easy. That will stop innovation in its tracks," Joe Cortese, owner of the New Hampshire-based online coin and stamp seller Noblespirit, said during a webcast to announce the coalition's launch. The coalition is being led by former TechAmerica CEO Phil Bond, a former Commerce Department official during the Bush administration who has worked for other tech groups. Among the coalition's most prominent members is eBay, which has been critical of Internet sales-tax legislation. Many of the group's other members are small sellers that offer their products through eBay's online marketplace.


Coalition Launched to Oppose Net Sales Tax Legislation
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After months of negotiations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) appear to have come to an impasse over how to move Internet gambling legislation.

Sens Kyl and Reid have been working on draft legislation that would allow for the legalization of online poker while tightening restrictions on other forms of Internet gambling. Sen Reid has been pushing Sen Kyl and Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV), a key backer of the legislation, to help round up GOP support for the draft bill to help overcome a likely filibuster in the Senate. But after Sen Reid set a Sept 10 deadline for gathering the necessary votes to move the legislation before the Senate recesses for the elections, Sens Kyl and Heller are now saying they believe the House needs to act first before the Senate takes up the issue. “By far the best strategy is to start a bill in the House … and have Reid and Heller who are supportive of the poker exemption … to do that in the Senate, then send it back to the House,” said Sen Kyl who was was the Senate author of a 2006 law that barred banks and others from processing payments for online gambling bets.


Online Gambling Bill Stalled by Tactical Spat

The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) released a national poll showing that media portrayals of Latinos and immigrants are fueling rampant negative stereotypes among the general population that are diminishing perceptions of these groups throughout the United States. After viewing just one minute of media content, poll respondents changed the way they view Latinos. When asked if Latinos were intelligent, those who consumed negative news and entertainment pieces were much more likely to rate Latinos as unintelligent, while those who consumed positive pieces were much more likely to rate Latinos as intelligent. The poll found there is a common misperception that Latinos and undocumented immigrants are one in the same, with 17% of survey respondents actually believing that the majority of U.S. Latinos are undocumented.

The poll also found that:

  • People exposed to negative entertainment or news narratives about Latinos and/or immigrants hold the most unfavorable and hostile views about both groups.
  • Negative portrayals of Latinos and immigrants are pervasive in news and entertainment media. Consequently, non-Latinos commonly believe that many media-promoted negative stereotypes about these groups are true.
  • Conservative talk radio and Fox News audiences are less likely to be personally familiar with Latinos yet more likely to hold anti-immigrant and anti-Latino views. Without direct experience with Latinos, media takes on a larger role in establishing these opinions and attitudes.
  • Even those most disposed to positive opinions about Latinos have less favorable opinions when exposed to negative entertainment or news narratives.
  • In discussing those in this country without documentation, the term commonly employed by some media outlets, “illegal aliens,” elicits much more negatives feelings than the term “undocumented immigrants.”
  • Non-Latinos report seeing Latinos in stereotypically negative or subordinate roles (gardeners, maids, dropouts, and criminals) in television and film.

Tomorrow the NHMC will file letters with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), sharing this new poll data and renewing unanswered requests that NHMC made back in 2009 for the agencies to study the impacts of hate speech in media.


Negative Media Portrayals are Fueling Stereotypes about Immigrants and Latinos
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Online peer pressure has a strong influence on getting out the vote, according to a new study released by researchers at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD). About one third of a million more people showed up to vote in the United States during the 2010 midterm elections because of a single Facebook message posted on Election Day. The study is good news both for Facebook, an increasingly indispensable political tool, and for the many political campaigns now using the popular social network to connect with supporters. The study is a strong indication that online support, measured on Facebook as “likes,” and engagement, measured as the number of people “talking about” a branded page, has measurable offline consequences. The study, published in the interdisciplinary scientific journal Nature, is based on an experiment involving a nonpartisan, pro-voting Facebook post viewed by 60 million users on Election Day in Nov. 2010.


Study: Facebook increases voter turnout Study: Facebook drove turnout in 2010 (Politico)