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BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2012 (Happy Birthday, CJTK)

The CPB Board of Directors meet in Washington today http://benton.org/calendar/2012-09-10/

AGENDA
   FCC Announces Tentative Agenda For September Open Meeting
   FCC kick-starts auction plan, but airwaves won’t hit your smartphone for years

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
   A Nationwide, Broadband, Interoperable Public Safety Network in the 700 MHz Band - public notice

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   Got broadband? Access now extends to 94 percent of Americans.
   FCC backpedals from Internet tax
   In One City, Signing Up for Internet Becomes a Civic Cause
   No free lunch at Amazon - editorial
   Google Struggles to Unseat Amazon as the Web’s Most Popular Mall [links to web]

ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
   Swing-State Stations Are Election Winners
   Fall’s Must-See TV: Obama-Romney Debates

CONTENT
   E-book settlement has publishing world in turmoil
   Amazon to Allow Kindle Fire Users to Pay to Block Ads [links to web]
   Amateur Mapmakers Redraw Boundaries, Working Online [links to web]

JOURNALISM
   Innovation in Journalism Goes Begging for Support - analysis
   Times-Picayune Is Singing the Blues to Angry Readers
   On Campus, an Experiment to Save Local News
   If News is so Important, Why Isn’t RTDNA - editorial [links to web]

STORIES FROM ABROAD
   News Corp. Makes Offer For Consolidated Media

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AGENDA

FCC ANNOUNCES TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR SEPTEMBER OPEN MEETING
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the following items will be on the tentative agenda for the next open meeting scheduled for Friday, September 28, 2012
Comprehensive Review of Licensing and Operating Rules for Satellite Services: Advancing the Commission’s regulatory reform efforts, the Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to update, streamline, or eliminate earth and space station licensing requirements, reducing regulatory burdens on licensees and accelerating delivery of new satellite services to consumers.
Expanding the Economic and Innovation Opportunities of Spectrum through Incentive Auctions: The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to implement an incentive auction of broadcast television spectrum.
A Review of Policies Regarding Mobile Spectrum Holdings: The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that initiates a review of its policies governing mobile spectrum holdings.
benton.org/node/134004 | Federal Communications Commission | Chairman Genachowski | B&C | Wall Street Journal | FT
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YEARS UNTIL SPECTRUM AVAILABLE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cecilia Kang]
There is a long regulatory process ahead at the Federal Communications Commission to get the auction up and running and then make those airwaves available to winners. Understanding the marathon ahead, trade groups from the consumer electronics industry, rural carriers and tech organizations praised the FCC’s proposal, which is expected to be finalized as an order in mid-2013. Guggenheim analyst Paul Gallant made some key projections:
1) The FCC will probably succeed in getting broadcasters to voluntarily sell spectrum. “The FCC will have some flexibility on repacking that can help carve out enough spectrum,” Gallant wrote. “We are more than optimistic than most that the FCC will indeed assemble the hoped-for 60-80 MHz of spectrum to auction to wireless operators.”
2) But it will be years before any airwaves will be used to run your future smartphone, experts say.
benton.org/node/134002 | Washington Post
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EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

PUBLIC SAFETY NETWORK
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: ]
In this Report and Order, the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (Bureau) acts to implement clear directives of Congress set forth in the Public Safety Spectrum Act. The Bureau reallocates the D Block for “public safety services” and deletes FCC rules that are plainly inconsistent with this revised allocation. It also deletes the FCC rules establishing, providing license authority with respect to, and governing operations under the Public Safety Broadband License in the existing public safety broadband spectrum. The Bureau replaces these with rules implementing the clear mandate of the Public Safety Spectrum Act to grant a license for this spectrum and the D Block to FirstNet. The rule changes adopted by the Bureau in this order are strictly limited to aspects of that mandate that leave no room for agency discretion, and thus fall within the Bureau’s delegated authority and are consistent with the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. By eliminating any confusion or uncertainty about the new regulatory framework applicable to the public safety broadband network, the FCC action facilitates the transition of this spectrum to FirstNet, the prospective licensee established by the Act.
benton.org/node/134000 | Federal Communications Commission
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

BROADBAND ACCESS
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: ]
The steady expansion of the broadband Internet infrastructure has come about as a result of both government backing and private investment, according to the Broadband Progress Report by the Federal Communications Commission. Access to the Internet via broadband has now spread to 94 percent of Americans, a jump of two percentage points over last year and a huge leap from the 15 percent who had such access just a decade ago. Of course, that still leaves 6 percent of the populace – some 19 million people – without. The 19 million who have no broadband access includes one-fourth of people living in rural counties and one-third of people living on tribal lands, areas where infrastructure is often nonexistent. That's 7 million fewer than last year. Closing the “last mile” of connectivity – the end of the line where the Internet is physically impossible to access due to lack of infrastructure – is expensive, and there is little financial incentive for telecommunication companies to do it.
benton.org/node/133984 | Christian Science Monitor, The
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INTERNET AND USF
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
The Federal Communications Commission is rapidly backpedalling from a proposal to tax broadband Internet service after a public outcry over the issue. Democrats and Republicans at the agency are now blaming each other for pushing the idea in the first place. Neil Grace, a spokesman for Chairman Julius Genachowski, said the commission only made the proposal “following the urging of Republican Commissioners and members of Congress." Robert McDowell, the only Republican on the commission when the proposal was floated earlier this year, flatly rejected that he ever supported the idea. "I have never suggested taxing broadband Internet access," he said.
benton.org/node/133983 | Hill, The
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GOOGLE FIBER
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: John Eligon]
With Google’s promise last year to wire homes, schools, libraries and other public institutions in Kansas City with the nation’s fastest Internet connection, community leaders on the long forlorn, predominantly black east side were excited, seeing a potentially uplifting force. They anticipated new educational opportunities for their children and an incentive for developers to build in their communities. But in July, Google announced a process in which only those areas where enough residents preregistered and paid a $10 deposit would get the service, Google Fiber. While nearly all of the affluent, mostly white neighborhoods here quickly got enough registrants, a broad swath of black communities lagged. The deadline to sign up was midnight Sunday. The specter that many blacks in this city might not get access to this technology has inflamed the long racial divide here, stoking concern that it could deepen. “This is just one more example of people that are lower income, sometimes not higher educated people, being left behind,” said Margaret May, the executive director of the neighborhood council in Ivanhoe, where the poverty rate was more than 46 percent in 2009. “It makes me very sad.
benton.org/node/133998 | New York Times
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NO FREE LUNCH AT AMAZON
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] To everyone planning to spend the entire weekend on their smartphones, their laptops, their tablets or their various other electronic gadgets in order to shop at Amazon before Sept. 15, when the mammoth online retailer starts collecting sales tax on California purchases: You do know, don't you, that you already have to pay sales tax on your online purchases? Yes, it's officially called a "use tax" rather than a sales tax because Amazon is an out-of-state company. But that's only a technicality. You owe the same tax, whether it's called a sales tax and your online seller calculates it for you (and adds it to your bill), or it's a use tax that you have to add up yourself and send in to the Board of Equalization (right away) or the Franchise Tax Board (on your state income tax return at the end of the year). So even if you hurry up and buy all your stuff now, before Amazon begins adding the tax to your bill, you still have to pay it. You've had to pay it all along. Retail sales didn't magically become tax-free when they moved from Main Street or the mall to the Internet.
benton.org/node/133987 | Los Angeles Times
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA

SWING-STATE STATIONS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Amy Schatz, Suzanne Vranica]
The stretch run for the November elections has begun, and local television stations in swing states are already assured they will come out winners. Ad rates in most contested areas are sharply higher, compared with last year, while states firmly in the red or blue camp generally aren't seeing as much change. Political parties and outside groups will pay an extra-heavy tab in October and early November because of heated competition for limited commercial slots. Wells Fargo media analyst Marci Ryvicker raised her estimate on all political ad spending to $5.2 billion, up $300 million from a previous forecast, after spending in August on political ads on local TV stations jumped 77% from July. That compares to $4.2 billion in 2008, the last presidential election year.
benton.org/node/133990 | Wall Street Journal
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THE DEBATES
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Donna Cassata]
Finally, the fall season offers the matchup sure to attract the biggest audience of the campaign: President Barack Obama going one-on-one with Republican Mitt Romney in three prime-time debates. Typically the top political draw in the final sprint to Election Day, the debates assume outsized importance this year with the race a dead heat. The candidates will have their sound bites and rhetoric down cold so any slip or inadvertent move — remember President George H.W. Bush's exasperated glance at his watch or Democrat Al Gore's repeated sighing? — could roil the campaign for days and linger in voters' mind until Nov. 6. No wonder Romney spent days this past week at the Vermont estate of former Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey for debate practice sessions; Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, played the role of Obama. The president has had one practice session with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' stand-in for Romney, and is certain to have several more before the first debate Oct. 3 in Denver.
benton.org/node/133981 | Associated Press
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CONTENT

E-BOOK SETTLEMENT
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Dawn Chmielewski, Carolyn Kellogg]
Publishing insiders worry that a decisive court ruling benefiting retailer Amazon will undermine an industry already struggling with the transition to e-books. A federal court approved a settlement between the Justice Department and three of the country's largest publishers, who were accused of colluding to fix prices for e-books. Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers and Simon & Schuster were alleged to have conspired with Apple Inc. to control the price of e-books sold online as part of a larger effort to end Amazon's online dominance. The two elements of wrongdoing alleged in the case — publishing competitors conspiring to limit competition in the e-book market, and fixing the retail price — are a sign of an industry grappling with disruptive change. "Here is an example of what I would call a desperate last stand by publishers to protect themselves against a paradigm shift in publishing — and they failed," said Jonathan Kirsch, a Los Angeles-based author and publishing attorney. "By putting the legal approval on this settlement, the district court has pushed us over a certain kind of cliff. In terms of the real-life experiences of publishers, authors and readers, this will represent a fundamental change in how books are published and sold," Kirsch said.
benton.org/node/133986 | Los Angeles Times
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JOURNALISM

INNOVATION IN JOURNALISM
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Carr]
[Commentary] Journalism has a shortage of many things: capital, advertisers and, in some instances, readers. But certainly its most precious commodity is innovation. Again and again, the business struggles to get out of the rut that put it on a road to ruin in the first place. Setting aside the issue of whether foundations should finance profit-making organizations, it is worth noting that many promising journalistic operations have foundered on the regulatory shoals of the Internal Revenue Service, with its bizarre standards for deciding whether an organization qualifies for nonprofit status. A broader question lurks as well. Shouldn’t financing meant for journalistic innovation go to the green shoots and not be used to fertilize giant dead-tree media?
benton.org/node/133995 | New York Times
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TIMES-PICAYUNE READERS ANGRY
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Keach Hagey]
As the chief architect of the plan to turn New Orleans into the biggest city in America without a daily newspaper, Ricky Mathews spent the summer having to "take the licks," as he put it in his Mississippi twang, of a ferocious community blowback. But that blowback, he believes, is largely based on the widespread misconception that the Times-Picayune is doing fine financially. In fact, he says, the decision to slash the New Orleans Times-Picayune's print publication to three days a week from seven was driven by falling print ad revenue that threatened to put the paper into the red. Print ad sales fell 23% in 2009, 10% in 2010, 7% in 2011 and 10% so far in 2012.
benton.org/node/133989 | Wall Street Journal
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MERCER UNIVERSITY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Christine Haughney]
This fall, Mercer University, a 179-year-old former Baptist school, is starting an ambitious $5.6 million project to try to save local journalism by inviting both the Macon newspaper and a Georgia Public Radio station onto its campus. Reporters and editors for the 186-year-old paper The Telegraph and the radio station will work out of the campus’s new journalism center, alongside students whom the university expects will do legwork for newspaper and public radio reports, with guidance from their professors and working journalists. It’s a plan born in part of desperation. Like many newspapers, The Telegraph has lost circulation and advertising revenue in the last decade, and the public radio station was forced to trim down to one staff member during the recession.
benton.org/node/133993 | New York Times
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

CONSOLIDATED MEDIA BID
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Gavin Lower]
News Corp. bid 1.94 billion Australian dollars (US$2.01 billion) for Australia's Consolidated Media Holdings Ltd., as the media company sought to boost its presence in the nation's pay-television market. Consolidated Media said that News Corp., owner of The Wall Street Journal, had bid A$3.45 a share for the company, lower than its nonbinding proposal of A$3.50 a share in June and only slightly above the A$3.42 at which the shares traded before the bid was announced. The media-investment company's shares closed down 0.6% at A$3.42 in Sydney, while News Corp. gained 1.5% to A$23.86. News Corp. and Consolidated Media each owns 25% of Foxtel, Australia's largest pay-TV company, and 50% of the Fox Sports channel. Australian telecommunications company Telstra Corp. owns the rest of Foxtel.
benton.org/node/133979 | Wall Street Journal
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