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China and the U.S. were the two largest sources of Internet-attack traffic in the first quarter of 2012, increasing to account for 16 percent and 11 percent respectively, according to Akamai Technologies.
Attack traffic from China increased three percentage points compared to the last quarter of 2011 and attacks from the U.S. increased one percentage point in the same period, Akamai said in its First Quarter, 2012 State of the Internet report. Russia ranks third in the top ten and generated 7 percent of all attack traffic, a slight increase compared to last year's results. Over the past four years the U.S. has been responsible for as little as 6.9 percent of attack traffic and as much as 22.9 percent, Akamai said. The highest concentration of attack traffic generated from China was observed in the third quarter of 2008 when the country was responsible for 26.9 percent of attack traffic, it added.
Internet attacks from China and US increased in first quarter of 2012, report says
Vodafone and Telefónica will next week move a step closer to completing a deal to pool their network infrastructure in the UK, although they must convince regulators that combining these assets will not add up to anything like a merger.
The concern for regulators is that fewer separate networks would mean a risk of reducing differentiation in network quality, some analysts warn. The other two mobile operators in the UK – Everything Everywhere and Three – already share masts. This would mean, says one senior telecoms executive, that there could be fewer groups at the infrastructure level in the mobile market than there would be in the fixed-line market in the UK. They are expected to submit their plans to the Office of Fair Trading early next week. Those close to the process say that the OFT interest is routine, and that their submission is a move to guarantee a regulatory timetable. Analysts, however, warned that the deal to merge basic broadcast networks could be scrutinized carefully by the regulators.
Scrutiny for Vodafone and Telefónica deal
Spain’s government is facing mounting criticism for political interference in the country’s main state broadcaster after a string of high-profile departures of journalists considered critical of the ruling Popular party in recent months. Several of the broadcaster’s most prominent news journalists have left on acrimonious terms, following a move by the government of Mariano Rajoy earlier this year reversing a law making key appointments at the state Radio y Televisión Española network subject to approval by a two-thirds majority in parliament.
Madrid accused of media interference
[Commentary] Blacks and Hispanics constitute only 1.5 percent and 4.7 percent respectively of the Silicon Valley’s computer workers—even lower than the national averages of 7.1 percent and 5.3 percent. The Silicon Valley elite -- like the children at elite prep schools rarely get to interact with minorities, so stereotypes get propagated, which only serves to make the problem worse. Venture capitalists invest in people who fit the “patterns” of successful entrepreneurs that they know, and hiring managers bring in more of the same types of people they have seen achieve success — in other words: people like them.
Mitch Kapor established a program called SMASH—the Summer Math and Science Honors Academy at UC Berkeley. SMASH focused on providing project-based learning and integrating science and math into contemporary issues rather than an intensive curriculum oriented towards standardized tests. SMASH provides full funding for high-achieving, low-income high school students of color to spend time on campus for five weeks during the summers after their 9th, 10th and 11th grade years. They are immersed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), conduct experiments and participate in group discussions. They are taught by leading scholars and provided access to the most advanced research equipment. Then they are provided with year-round academic support including SAT prep, college counseling, and other support to ensure their academic success. The results speak for themselves: 100 percent of SMASH graduates have been accepted to competitive four-year colleges, and the overwhelming majority persist as STEM majors. Kids from under-performing public schools who are eligible for free lunches have often never heard of MIT or Middlebury or Morehouse, but those are campuses now populated with SMASH alumni.
Smashing Silicon Valley’s biases
Yes, Mitt Romney really said this:
“You know, in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad,” Romney said on the radio. “They were embarrassed. Today, they just blast ahead. You know, the various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they’re wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on running them.”
I sympathize with Romney’s plight. I’ve said that the Priorities USA ad suggesting Bain is to blame for the steelworker’s wife goes too far. I agree that the Obama ad labeling him as an “outsourcer in chief” was false. It was unfair and misleading of Dems to quote Romney this way: “I like being able to fire people.”
And yet it remains puzzling that Romney would go here. After all, fact checkers have called out his ads as wrong, inaccurate, misleading or false again and again and again and again and again and again and again. If Romney pulled any of those ads, I’m not aware of it.
Romney: Campaigns shouldn’t run ads that fact-checkers say are false
President Barack Obama will be at the Republican National Convention in Tampa later this month — on local TV, that is. Obama’s team plunked down more than $181,000 in ad time on Tampa-area network affiliates for the last week of August, to ensure that the President isn't completely out the spotlight when Mitt Romney is crowned as the GOP standard-bearer.
Obama for America will air more than 160 spots on shows as varied as "Dr. Phil," "Undercover Boss" and "Bachelor Pad,” including $73,720 for 49 spots on the Tampa CBS affiliate, $54,500 for 75 spots on the ABC affiliate and $53,750 for 42 spots on the NBC affiliate, according to public disclosures posted this week to the Federal Communications Commission’s website. The Obama ad buys are set all day and into the night, from spending up to $4,500 per ad on "America’s Got Talent" to spots on “Rachael Ray,” a cooking show, and the fantasy show "Grimm" — all in addition to morning and evening news buys. The content of the ads is not known.
President Obama to blanket Tampa airwaves for convention
The mobile payments industry is still very much like the Wild West — there’s little law and order, and plenty of gunslingers itching to strike gold. But a new committee could finally civilize the mobile payments wild lands. The trade group Electronic Transactions Association announced the Mobile Payments Committee, a task force that includes representatives from all four of the major U.S. carriers, as well as others developing mobile payments solutions.
Chaired by Jackie Moran, Verizon’s executive director of federal relations, the committee will serve as a way to develop policy and business strategy for the mobile payments industry. Among the issues the committee is tackling, it will help participants figure out the complex business relationships necessary to make mobile payment options interoperable; help legislators and regulators understand how to develop mobile payments public policy; and educate consumers and merchants about the benefits of mobile payments.
The Mobile Payments Committee: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile unite for the future of payments Mobile payment committee holds promise for more cooperation (GigaOm)
Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, where contributors earn rewards in kind, are often likened to fundraisers for public broadcasting. "99% Invisible" flips this logic on its head. The quirky, design-oriented public-radio show has raised $160,000 through Kickstarter to produce the next season. Other public-radio types are taking notice.
Roman Mars, who produces and hosts "99% Invisible", turned to crowdfunding as an experiment to gauge the audience's interest in a third series of the program, which runs 4.5 minutes on broadcast radio (with a separately edited longer podcast version available) and considers topics such as audio poetry of sounds made by escalators, the origins of the use of cavemen in GEICO ads and reasons for the limited supply of Trappist beer. Mars, who runs the show on top of his part-time involvement with the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), a non-profit that helps stations share programs, wondered if it had enough of a following to bypass the footwork necessary to secure regular underwriters (firms and individuals who receive short sponsor messages during broadcasts) and to raise extra revenue to hire additional help. Should the Kickstarter drive have flopped, Mars says he would have been winding the show down. Its roaring success means Mars is able not only to make more episodes, but think beyond the third season and into new related projects, such as a book. He is not, however, planning to tap Kickstarter again. Since the show will have proved its viability and popularity, underwriters should be knocking on Mars's door.
A public-private partnership
[Commentary] The incumbent telecom providers are acting like a bunch of irrational adolescents who won't let go after it's clear that the game is over and the stadium has cleared out. Their convoluted, customer-hostile, and reality-distorting arguments are starting to get old. I'm tired of seeing them spend money on lobbyists and spin instead of innovative business services.
For example, AT&T, Comcast, and a state lobbying group in Georgia are requesting that the state's public service commission require rural telcos to raise their rates. Apparently, little Chickamauga Telephone Co. doesn't charge enough. Next thing you know, they'll be begging regulators to require non-incumbents to make data speeds slower. Instead of continuing their adolescent attempts to bend reality, the incumbent telecoms should start joining the innovators and the folks who actually own the assets that broadband travels upon to create something new and great. Because if they don't, someone else will.
Cable And Telephone Companies Distort Reality
With our history so closely tied to advertising and broadcasting and our mission focused on enhancing democracy, the Benton Foundation has always had an eye on the impact of media on elections. So we take a moment this week to reflect on advertising and the 2012 elections.
Television advertising buys are typically the single largest expenditure of a presidential campaign. Back in March, a study by the research firm Borrell Associates projected that election spending in 2012 will reach $9.8 billion (compared to about $7 billion in 2008). The figures include 13,000 statewide, congressional and municipal races, as well as the presidential election. Spending by political action committees (PACs), national political party committees, and “ super PACs” is projected to be $4.76 billion, or 48% of all spending. Super PACs were created after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, in which it determined that spending by corporations and unions can't be restricted.
The vast majority of political ad buys flows to local, broadcast television stations. In the wake of the Citizens United ruling, the Federal Communications Commission, which licenses and regulates U.S. television broadcast stations, updated its existing broadcast television disclosure procedures to move the stations’ public files from paper to the Internet. The decision requires television stations to post their public files online in a central, FCC-hosted online database rather than maintaining paper files locally at their main studios. The rule modernizes the filing process, making it easier for consumers to access information about their broadcast services without having to travel to the station’s main studio. Since August 2, 2012 broadcasters affiliated with the top four national TV networks in the top 50 television markets (Designated Market Areas or DMAs) have been required to upload their political files to the FCC’s website. (Other stations have until July 1, 2014 to begin sharing the political files online.)
Arguing for the new rule back in April, former FCC Commissioner Copps wrote here, “If a special interest group masquerading itself as “Citizens for Purple Mountain Majesties and Amber Waves of Grain” is in reality the mouthpiece of a company refusing to clean up a toxic dump or an industry pouring sludge into the Great Lakes, don’t we as citizens need to know that? Don’t we have a right to know that? Identifying the true sponsors of these ads—liberal as well as conservative, Democratic as well as Republican—ought to be high on democracy’s 2012 agenda.”
AdWeek’s Katy Bachman wrote, “Public interest groups are practically salivating that starting August 2, television stations will have to begin posting online their political disclosure files containing information about who is spending what in the 2012 election. And they're organizing to take full advantage of the more easily-available information.” The files are available now for public review. http://stations.fcc.gov “But don't get too excited,” Bachman warns, “The files that will be available will be in PDF form, meaning it will take a lot of work to make some real sense of the spending.”
Bachman’s take, however, downplays the impact the FCC’s new rules could have moving forward. Of the $1.1 billion in broadcast TV ad spending and $200 million in local cable ad spend that Kantar Media's CMAG now expects to see in the presidential race, we're nowhere close to the halfway mark, writes Kantar’s Elizabeth Wilner in AdAge She predicts $1.3 billion in presidential advertising alone will be squeezed into just 67 DMAs.
And we’re already seeing the disclosures generate articles in local markets:
- In Cincinnati, The Enquirer’s Angela Travillian visited local stations to get their pre-August 2 data from the stations current paper files. In the process, Travillian found that WLWT (Channel 5) and WCPO (Channel 9) were not including all of the required information in their files. Specifically, they didn’t include the “class of time” purchased. (1) Looking at all orders from all stations for the entire year, slightly more than 47 percent were either missing this information or it was inconsistent. For ads that haven’t aired yet but for which time already has been purchased, nearly 40 percent of the orders don’t list the class of time clearly if at all.
- In Washington (DC), City Paper’s Will Sommer looked at online files to find that Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS Super PAC is the only Super PAC ad purchaser disclosed so far in the forms and it has spent $995,152.50 on ads in the Washington area in August. That number doesn't include the entire month, since the buys only go through August 21, nor any ad buys at Fox 5, which has created a folder for Crossroads but hasn't uploaded any forms yet. NBC affiliate WRC-TV is receiving the most money from Crossroads, making a net $480,675 between July 30 and August 21. The stations are also making big ad sales to the official presidential campaigns. Barack Obama's campaign paid $209,100 for ads on WJLA, while Mitt Romney's campaign paid the station $203,235. Romney outspent Obama at NBC 4, buying $174,675 of ads compared to Obama's $127,500. Romney's campaign spent $170,295.50 on ads at CBS affiliate WUSA 9 for August ads. The CBS affiliate has, for some reason, disclosed Obama campaign ad buys through Election Day—the president's campaign is committed to spending at least $657,709 through November.
- Obama’s team plunked down more than $181,000 in ad time on Tampa-area network affiliates for the last week of August, to ensure that the President isn't completely out the spotlight when Mitt Romney is crowned as the GOP standard-bearer. Obama for America will air more than 160 spots on shows as varied as "Dr. Phil," "Undercover Boss" and "Bachelor Pad,” including $73,720 for 49 spots on the Tampa CBS affiliate, $54,500 for 75 spots on the ABC affiliate and $53,750 for 42 spots on the NBC affiliate, according to public disclosures posted this week to the Federal Communications Commission’s website. The Obama ad buys are set all day and into the night, from spending up to $4,500 per ad on "America’s Got Talent" to spots on “Rachael Ray,” a cooking show, and the fantasy show "Grimm" — all in addition to morning and evening news buys. The content of the ads is not known.
Wilner highlights some big dates ahead in election advertising:
- The National Football League’s season kicks off on September 5. The game that night between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants will likely be the start of presidential advertisers' blitz of major sporting events. Why? Football Night in America offers the greatest live audience in 2012 advertising, second only to the Olympics. There will be no hotter ad slot this fall than during the Monday Night matchup between Philadelphia at New Orleans on Nov. 5.
- September 7 is 60 days from Election day meaning lowest unit rate kicks in. Overnight, the ad rates paid by President Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and other 2012 candidates will shrink considerably in comparison to what group advertisers pay (as well as many non-political advertisers, which may be why stations fought so hard to block the FCC's new online disclosure requirement).
Of course, as noted above, not just candidates are buying political ads during this cycle. “Super PACs” are also trying to make a big impact on the election. For example, campaign strategist Karl Rove’s American Crossroads launched a new wave of Senate ads totaling over $7 million in TV time. The ads target Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota and Virginia. The price tag is about $7.2 million. Those five states are at the top of the GOP's takeover list for the 2012 cycle, and Republicans will have to win most of them to take control of the Senate.
But new research from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and The Washington Post finds that the public is hearing little about increased spending by outside groups in the 2012 election. Just 25% have heard a lot about outside spending by groups not associated with the candidates or campaigns, while three-quarters are hearing a little (36%) or nothing at all (39%) about this. In fact, the term “super PAC” itself is not widely known: Just 40% can correctly identify the term, nearly half (46%) don’t know what it refers to, while 14% give incorrect responses.
This week, the Wall Street Journal raised an interesting question – will more TV ads really make a difference this year? Just 8% of registered voters remain undecided, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released in July. Some political strategists say it will be a challenge for any candidate or PAC this fall to break through the clutter since so many political ads are running. "It's fair to say Ohio voters have about reached the saturation level by early August," said Scott Reed, campaign manager for former GOP Sen. Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, who spent the weekend in Ohio. "There's just an incredible amount of noise going on."
But strategists say no candidate can simply withdraw from the battle on the airwaves. If campaigns believed TV ads were no longer effective, "you wouldn't run television ads," said Stuart Stevens, a top strategist for Romney's campaign. The Romney campaign plans to use television spots this fall to let "people know more about Gov. Romney, more about the direction he'll take the country, more about the choice" between Romney and Obama, he said. "There's a great deal of last-minute Christmas shopping," Stevens said, drawing a comparison to undecided voters. The Obama campaign has put a lot of money into ads this summer aimed at casting Mr. Romney in a negative light. The campaign is in part betting that its message will take better hold now than later, when the ad environment becomes more crowded. "Ultimately we are betting that an investment in the largest grass roots campaign in history fueled by our supporters working their networks will counter the special interest noise that will have saturated the air by Election Day," said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.
Cable subscribers in Hawaii may be seeing a glimpse of our political TV future: an entire channel devoted to one candidate. LL12 is devoting very minute of every day to one topic: Linda Lingle, a Republican running for the United States Senate. Lingle has created her own cable station. It provides viewers with a feast of Lingle speeches, Lingle advertisements and Lingle endorsements, as well as video issue papers, televised forums and testimonials delivered in 10 of the languages spoken on these islands. Lingle says that if she wins the general election, she intends to hold on to the station as a way to communicate with constituents.
By every indication, LL12 is a first-of-its-kind venture in campaign advertising in this country, reflecting the continued push by candidates to break through the rising clatter of political advertising. It is also taking advantage of the fact that one cable company, Oceanic Time Warner Cable, covers about 95 percent of the market in Honolulu, making the project a little easier to pull off. But the effort is also evidence of the extent to which Republicans are prepared to pour money into even what Lingle described as an uphill fight to be elected to the Senate. The Democratic primary is between Representative Mazie K. Hirono and Ed Case, a former member of Congress. The July poll showed that both Democrats enjoyed double-digit leads over Lingle among likely voters.
In 1937, near the peak of radio’s “Golden Age,” William Benton argued, "If the great universities do not develop radio broadcasting in the cause of education, it will, perhaps, be permanently left in the hands of the manufacturers of face powder, coffee and soap, with occasional interruptions by the politicians." Although we leave the full implications of that quote for another day, we see that for the next 12 weeks at least that those “occasional interruptions by the politicians” will be more frequent than ever. We invite you to follow along with us the developments in Media and Elections and Election 2012 and we’ll see you in the Headlines.
Notes
1. Each station has different classes of time. Generally, a P-1 level order is the most expensive and least likely to be bumped in the event of a scheduling conflict.
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