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NCTA: MCDOWELL TELLS RURAL PROVIDERS, 'GO WIRELESS'
[SOURCE: TelephonyOnline, AUTHOR: Tim McElligott]
In his first formal presentation to an industry association, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell gave the following advice to members of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association at the group’s annual meeting: Take advantage of the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction to arm yourself for the future. Warning the rural industry that it is “on a collision course with disaster†primarily due to a broken Universal Service Fund structure, Commissioner McDowell said that while he and others are working to fix the USF and address other important issues such as inter-carrier compensation, competition that will pave the path to the future. “I believe in free markets and that government should only step in where the free market fails. And in rural America, it did,†Commissioner McDowell said, adding that it was right that the government stepped in and established systems such as USF. He said goals for reform should include slowing the growth of the fund, broadening the base of contributors, reducing the contribution burden for all if possible, ensuring competitive neutrality and eliminating fraud and abuse. Commissioner McDowell said that the fund can't afford to finance broadband connectivity under the current structure. “But there is hope, and it’s happening right now,†he said. “Significantly more Americans are adopting broadband every day.â€
http://telephonyonline.com/home/news/ntca_mcdowell_usf_020607/
NTCA: McDowell tells rural providers, ‘Go wireless’
DIGITAL TV: WHY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS SCREWING IT UP
[SOURCE: TVPredictions.com, AUTHOR: Phillip Swann]
[Commentary] On February 17, 2009, the United States will switch from analog to Digital TV signals. At that time, if you don't have a Digital TV or a set-top converter box, you will not be able to watch television. At this point, I have to predict that millions of Americans indeed will be unable to get TV signals on that fateful day because they either didn't buy a new set or they didn't understand the need for a converter box. Why? Over and over again, the federal government has demonstrated that it has no clue how it will persuade consumers to switch to Digital TV. Even worse, there's evidence that federal officials are not taking the issue seriously enough to get the job done. If the government doesn't get serious -- and soon -- one of two things will happen: 1. Fearful that their constituents will storm the gates when they suddenly can't watch TV on February 17, 2009, Congress will be forced to extend the deadline another year or two. 2. The deadline will stay in place -- and millions of consumers will lose their TV signals. The first option would be messy. The second one could be nasty.
http://www.tvpredictions.com/dtvfeds020607.htm
Digital TV: Why the Federal Government Is Screwing It Up
LOCALISM THE KEY TO STATION SURVIVAL
[SOURCE: tvnewsday, AUTHOR: Arthur Greenwald]
Call it “Localism 2.0†It’s what TV stations need to focus on to grow their business in the new media age. Barry Diller, CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp and chairman of Expedia said the television business is going through revolutionary change, but he’s confident the basic model of telling stories will persist. An infinite number of people can generate user-generated content, he said, but, in most cases, only your closest friends may care. However, he said, there’s a relative handful of people who can create stories “that are so compelling that a great many people want to watch them.†Diller said that he does not think that the audience is fragmenting, but that it’s migrating to new choices. Overall, he stressed, the audience is building.
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2007/02/07/daily.12/
Localism the Key to Station Survival
LOCAL TV’S ONLINE REVENUES UP 41% IN 2006
[SOURCE: tvnewsday, AUTHOR: ]
The growth in local television’s online advertising hit 41% in 2006 and the outlook for 2007 projects local online advertising to grow by as much as 55% across local markets, according to a new survey released by TVB. During 2006, local television stations sharpened their focus on the Internet, increasing their online ad revenues to $399 million. By the end of 2007, the report predicts, that figure could hit $618 million. The survey shows that many stations are using the Web as a publishing platform, taking aim at their newspaper and yellow pages rivals by offering classified and directory advertising and have gained nearly a point of share in the past year (“no small feat in the high-growth environment of local online advertising,†the report says). Several stations captured more than 15 percent of all locally spent online advertising in 2006. The survey showed that a total of seven categories comprised half of all online ad categories, and in particular, real estate, health, high-tech and automotive dominated. The report recommends that local broadcasters: 1) rethink the mass-media mentality with an eye toward viewing the Internet as a mass of niches; 2) hire a dedicated sales force; 3) give strong consideration to launching a real estate section; and 4) consider spin-off sites that may not be branded to the station. "[W]hat was once viewed as cotton candy now seems to be a vital nutritional supplement to broadcasters’ health."
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2007/02/07/daily.13/
* For more see http://www.tvb.org
MOST US ADVERTISERS NOW SPENDING ON NEW MEDIA: SURVEY
[SOURCE: Reuters]
Nearly 90 percent of all U.S. companies polled in a new study will use part of their marketing budgets to advertise in new media like video games or virtual communities. The survey by the American Advertising Federation underscores the shift in advertising spending away from television, magazines and, particularly, newspapers, which have suffered badly from declining circulation as more media choices have become available. More than 12 percent of respondents said they would spend as much as 40 percent of their budget on experimentation and new media, according to the survey released this week. About half of the respondents picked newspapers as the media category most in need of innovation, and indeed publishers have pressed to strengthen their online presence with more content like blogs and video.
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&story...
BASEBALL'S PROPOSED PARTNERSHIP WITH DIRECTV WOULD SHUT OUT MANY FANS
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Michael McCarthy]
Baseball fans potentially affected by Major League Baseball's proposal to move its pay-per-view package exclusively to DirecTV are voicing their frustration and unhappiness about the plan. Past Extra Innings customers who don't have, can't get or won't get DirecTV are crying foul. They note many housing developments and apartment complexes ban satellite TV dishes. Potential DirecTV customers also need a clear view of the Southern sky. If their view is blocked by trees or buildings, they can't receive the DirecTV signal. "It's terrible. People like me are going to be penalized," says David MacGill, an 81-year-old retiree from Indianapolis. He says he has gotten Extra Innings through his cable operator because his community doesn't allow dishes. If the deal goes through, current or potential Extra Innings customers have a fallback option: watching the games via MLB.com's broadband service at $79 a year. Approximately 29 million U.S. homes have high-speed Internet connections, says the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. (Pitchers and catchers report in five days.)
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2007-02-08-directv_x.htm?csp=34
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2007-02-08-directv_x.htm?csp=34
GOOGLE AND CABLE FIRMS WARN OF RISKS FROM WEB TV
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Lucas van Grinsven]
New Internet TV services such as Joost and YouTube may bring the global network to its knees, Internet companies said on Wednesday, adding they are already investing heavily just to keep data flowing. Google, which acquired online video sharing site YouTube last year, said the Internet was not designed for TV. It even issued a warning to companies that think they can start distributing mainstream TV shows and movies on a global scale at broadcast quality over the public Internet. "The Web infrastructure, and even Google's (infrastructure) doesn't scale. It's not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect," Vincent Dureau, Google's head of TV technology, said at the Cable Europe Congress. Google instead offered to work together with cable operators to combine its technology for searching for video and TV footage and its tailored advertising with the cable networks' high-quality delivery of shows. One cable chief executive, Duco Sickinghe from Belgian operator Telenet, said it was "the best news of the day" to hear that Google could not scale for video. Research group Gartner estimates that 60 percent of the Internet traffic that is uploaded from computers is peer-to-peer traffic, mostly from consumers swapping films and TV shows through select user groups and BitTorrent. (The research found that 39% of Internet traffic is spam so just 1% of traffic was found to be "productive work.")
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID...
VERISIGN MOVES TO ADDRESS AN INTERNET SECURITY PROBLEM
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: John Markoff]
To keep up with the growing strains put on the Internet by both legitimate users and online attackers, a Silicon Valley company is undertaking a $100 million expansion of a crucial part of the system that speeds Web users to their destinations. The company, VeriSign, is a leader in networking infrastructure and manages registration for the .com and .net Internet domains. It is among the stewards of an international system of computer servers running programs that translate domain names like google.com or wikipedia.org into numeric addresses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/technology/08net.html
(requires registration)
* VeriSign to spend over $100M on upgrade
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/16648562.htm
VeriSign Moves to Address an Internet Security Problem
CAN APPLE CONVINCE RECORDING INDUSTRY?
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Jefferson Graham]
Record labels have consistently rebuffed calls by digital music executives to sell songs online without copy-protection restrictions. But now that the CEO of the predominant online music retailer has joined the chorus, will labels pay attention? "Apple is the fourth-largest music retailer," says Phil Leigh, an analyst at Inside Digital Media. "The labels have to listen. Jobs carries a lot of weight." According to the NPD Group, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target are the top three music retailers, followed by Apple, then Amazon. But Ted Cohen, a former top executive at record label EMI, says DRM is justified, because "we need to protect content." If Jobs is truly serious about taking off restrictions, Cohen says, he should sell Apple software without restrictions on how many people can use it, and sell Disney and Pixar movies on iTunes without copy restrictions. Jobs is Disney's biggest shareholder, and the former CEO of Pixar. "Prove you're serious and take a bold stance," says Cohen. "Otherwise, I find it all a bit disingenuous."
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20070208/2b_drm08.art.htm
* Fans, labels are split on unlocked music plan
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-music8feb08,1,6406795...
* Music industry group fires back at Apple
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/16646518.htm
* A lock on the market
[Commentary] DRM systems hurt the people who actually pay for music by making the tracks they download harder to use. The record labels (and the Hollywood studios too) should stop trying to use DRM to give people less than what they're used to getting when they buy songs and concentrate instead on developing compelling new ways to discover and enjoy music.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-jobs08feb08,1,428...
WORKING PAST INTERNET FILE-SHARING FRUSTRATING
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Les Ottolenghi, Intent MediaWorks]
[Commentary] Once media-hungry consumers get a taste of free music, video and games through file sharing, there's no turning back. File sharing offers consumers the complete package: rich media delivered directly to their computers, phones and e-mail addresses at no charge. Why would anyone want to return to a linear distribution system that requires more effort, more money and more limitations? The future of music is peer-to-peer file sharing. Consumers have opted out of the old system, which they found cumbersome, slow and expensive. They will never return.
http://news.com.com/Working+past+Internet+file-sharing+frustration/2010-...
SENATOR TO PROPOSE SURVEILLANCE OF ILLEGAL IMAGES
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh]
A forthcoming bill in the U.S. Senate lays the groundwork for a national database of illegal images that Internet service providers would use to automatically flag and report suspicious content to police. The proposal, which Sen. John McCain is planning to introduce on Wednesday, also would require ISPs and perhaps some Web sites to alert the government of any illegal images of real or "cartoon" minors. Failure to do would be punished by criminal penalties including fines of up to $300,000.
http://news.com.com/Senator+to+propose+surveillance+of+illegal+images/21...
GOP REVIVES ISP-TRACKING LEGISLATION
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com 2/6, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh]
All Internet service providers would need to track their customers' online activities to aid police in future investigations under legislation introduced Tuesday as part of a Republican "law and order agenda." Employees of any Internet provider who fail to store that information face fines and prison terms of up to one year, the bill says. The U.S. Justice Department could order the companies to store those records forever.
http://news.com.com/GOP+revives+ISP-tracking+legislation/2100-1028_3-615...
BILL WOULD EXTEND CAMPAIGN SPEECH IDs
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Reps David Price (D-NC) and Michael Castle (R-Delaware) have introduced a bill that would extend the "stand by your ad" provisions in campaign speech law to the Internet and automated campaign phone calls. The provision, which applies to radio and TV, is the one that requires that tag line: "I am [candidates name here] and I approve this advertisement" --or something similar--to be placed on TV and radio spots for political candidates. Meredith McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center applauded the introduction of the bill, which is titled the Responsible Campaign Communications Act of 2007.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6414525.html?display=Breaking...
COALITION OF MEDIA FIRMS SUBMITS SPECS TO FCC FOR "WHITE SPACE" UNLICENSED DEVICE
[SOURCE: Lasar's Letter on the FCC, AUTHOR: Matthew Lasar]
Representatives of six corporations met with the Federal Communications Commission this week to discuss a "cognitive radio" that will pick up broadband signals from "white space" -- unused TV spectrum. The reps say that the radio, part of a new generation of proposed "unlicensed devices," will not only match the success of Wi-Fi, but surpass it. "Unlicensed devices operating in the TV band will offer longer transmission ranges using the same power, less risk of signal attenuation or harmful interference, and less power consumption at the same range than Wi-Fi," the six companies told the FCC. This "coalition," as they call themselves, consists of Dell, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, and Philips. They sent the FCC a statement in support of the fledgling technology on January 31st, then followed up on Monday, February 5th with the specs for a Microsoft built machine, to be tested by the agency's Office of Engineering and Technology (OET).
http://www.lasarletter.net/drupal/node/330
Coalition submits specs for "white space" unlicensed device