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Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), announced the appointment of Christopher Boone, Director of Outpatient Quality and Health IT for the American Heart Association, to fill a vacancy on the Health Information Technology (HIT) Policy Committee. Boone will fill one of three committee positions held by advocates for patients or consumers.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 established the HIT Policy Committee and gave the Comptroller General responsibility for appointing 13 of its 20 members. The HIT Policy Committee makes recommendations to the National Coordinator for Health IT on the development and adoption of a nationwide health information infrastructure, including standards for the exchange of patient medical information.
Christopher Boone is Director, Outpatient Quality and Health IT for the American Heart Association, based in Dallas, Texas. Boone is responsible for planning and implementing outpatient quality and health IT initiatives, including oversight of The Guideline Advantage, an outpatient quality improvement program and clinical registry program formed as a national tri-agency partnership with the American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association. Mr. Boone previously worked at a number of health care institutions and consulting firms, including Cook Children’s Healthcare System, Texas Health Resources, UT Southwestern Medical Center, and Deloitte Consulting. Boone serves as co-chair of the National Council on Heart Technology, a special committee for the e-Health Initiative that was formed to examine the use of health IT in caring for patients with heart disease.
GAO Fills Vacancy on Health Information Technology Policy Committee
Agriculture Under Secretary for Rural Development Dallas Tonsager visited two rural utilities to help launch broadband services and to commemorate a major funding milestone and longstanding partnership with USDA.
Tonsager was on hand to help power up Consolidated Electric Cooperative’s Enlite Fiber Optic Network, which is bringing broadband service to a multi-county region in rural areas of the state. CEC is an electric distribution cooperative that provides electricity to about 16,000 members (homes and businesses) in eight counties in north central Ohio. The nearly 200 mile fiber “ring” connects customers in all or parts of Delaware, Franklin, Licking, Knox, Morrow and Richland counties to the rest of the world. In 2010, CEC received a $1 million grant and a $1.39 million loan from USDA’s Rural Utilities Service for smart grid technology and broadband services based on an open-connectivity, fiber optic backbone network. A Rural Development Technical Assistance Grant in the amount of $200,000 followed in 2011. The availability of increased broadband speed is expected to foster economic development, create jobs and modernize connectivity for area businesses, hospitals schools, and government facilities.
USDA marks successful partnerships with two utilities
Art Modell, who died on September 6, will be best remembered (angrily by many) as the man who moved the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, where they became the Ravens. But Modell, who owned the Browns and Ravens for more than four decades, also played a key role in making the National Football League a television powerhouse.
Prior to buying the Browns in 1961, Modell had worked in television. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle tapped Modell to oversee the league's broadcast committee, which basically made him the point person in negotiations with the TV networks. In wasn't long after that the price tag for football started to go up. CBS made the first big NFL deal, buying the rights for just over $14 million a season. As the sport grew in popularity, so did the license fees, and it wasn't long before the league started selling to multiple networks, which drove the cost higher. The last deal Modell oversaw was the 1990 package for a then-record $3.6 billion. Rights fees for the NFL have continued to soar, and the league is expected to take in $6 billion from television this season. Interestingly, in recent years Modell was worried that the price tag was getting too high and that there would be negative implications for both the league and the fans.
Art Modell helped pioneer big TV deals for NFL
Joe South, a singer-songwriter who wove confrontational lyrics into bouncy pop hits of the late 1960s and early ’70s, including “Games People Play,” “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” and “(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden,” died on at home in Flowery Branch (GA), north of Atlanta. He was 72.
South loved music and technology from an early age. His father gave him a guitar when he was 11, and he was performing on local radio by the age of 12. He built small radio stations of his own with limited signal range, partly so he could play his songs. “He would even put it in his car and ride around so that the FCC and anybody else couldn’t track him down,” said Butch Lowery, referring to the Federal Communications Commission. Lowery’s father, Bill, ran a radio station and eventually became South’s publisher and manager.
Joe South, Singer and Writer of Hit Songs
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.
Simon & Schuster, Hachette E-Book Accord Wins Approval Judge Approves E-Book Pricing Settlement Between Government and Publishers (New York Times)
Facebook and Instagram announced that the much-talked-about acquisition had closed. The Federal Trade Commission, which had been scrutinizing and reviewing the deal since it was announced in April, approved it last month. At one time, the cash-and-stock deal was worth $1 billion. Although the deal’s closure was made public, Facebook said that the deal closed a few days earlier, on August 31. Facebook’s stock on the day it closed was $18.06, which means the deal would be worth $715 million. Instagram also revealed a milestone, surpassing five billion photos shared through the service.
Facebook Closes Its Acquisition of Instagram
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.
Analyst: Political Advertising to Boost TV Coffers by 23%
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 , 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.
Lowest Unit Charge Season
If watching coverage of the presidential race leaves you with a touch of nausea, there's good reason: The portrayals of the candidates in the news has never been more negative, finds a recent study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Likely reasons for this is that while newsrooms are shrinking (and along with them, independent reporting), the mud-slinging campaigns themselves are making up a growing source of the narrative that's presented in the press. The report confirms the echo-chamber nature of cable news, but finds that newspapers, battered as their business model may be, are still churning out even-handed coverage of the candidates.
Coverage of the candidates is increasingly negative
Early-round TV presidential cable news ratings have given the Democratic National Convention slightly higher marks among TV viewers than the Republican National Convention.
During a three-hour prime-time block on the three main cable news networks the total viewership was at 8.8 million viewers versus 7.6 million for the first night of the RNC coverage. Generally, viewers moved along party lines when it came to their cable news network preference. The first night of DNC coverage gave MSNBC -- which typically grabs more Democrat viewers -- a Nielsen preliminary 3.3 million viewer total; CNN was at 3.0 million and Fox News Channel was at 2.5 million. Looking at the key news advertising sales viewer group, adults 25-54, MSNBC had 1.1 million; CNN, 1 million; and Fox News, 554,000.
More TV Viewers Tune Into DNC