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USF REFORM HITS HOUSE
[SOURCE: EarthWebNews]
Reps Lee Terry (R-NE) and Rick Boucher (D-VA) introduced legislation last week to extend Universal Service Fund (USF) contributions to Voice over IP and broadband services. Currently, local and long distance telephone companies, wireless providers, paging firms and pay phone companies are obligated to contribute to the fund, which subsidizes phone service in under-served or rural areas. The USF, through the E-rate program, also funds Internet connections in schools and libraries. Payments into the fund are collected through consumers' telephone bills. The Universal Service Reform Act of 2006 would remove VoIP and broadband's exemption from USF contributions. The representatives said their bill would encourage the deployment of broadband, especially in rural areas, by allowing recipients to use universal service support to deploy broadband within their service areas. The legislation also requires recipients of universal service support to deploy broadband with a download speed of at least 1 megabit per second within 5 years of enactment.
http://news.earthweb.com/bus-news/article.php/3596281
* To learn more about the bill, see http://www.benton.org/index.php?q=node/849
USF Reform Hits House
SENATORS CAST WARY EYE ON LUCENT-ALCATEL DEAL
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Jeremy Pelofsky and Susan Cornwell]
The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency body that examines foreign acquisitions of American companies, must review and clear the Alcatel-Lucent merger. A number of US senators are already expressing some concerns about the deal. However, it is unclear whether the concerns about security and job losses ultimately will force the telecommunications equipment companies to make any changes to their $14.1 billion merger.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID...
COMCAST BASEBALL COVERAGE GETS HILL HEARING
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) has scheduled a hearing Friday, April 7, "Why Most Nats Fans Can't See their Team on TV," on TV coverage, or lack of it, of Washington Nationals Baseball games. Areas of the Washington suburbs served by Comcast can only see a handful of games because the cable company will not carry the Mid Atlantic Sports Network (MASN). Comcast had bid on the rights to the Nationals -- the relocated Montreal Expos -- but lost out to MASN.
Comcast has, in turn, refused to carry the network on cable systems serving nearly two million subscribers in the network's territory. Cox has recently struck a deal to carry the games in Fairfax, another big suburb. The Baltimore Orioles, which own MASN, turned to the FCC for help and want to make the dispute an issue in regulators' review of Comcast's planned purchase of parts of Adelphia Communications, which the FCC is still reviewing. MASN is also moving the Orioles games off of Comcast's own regional sports network to MASN starting next year.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6322078?display=Breaking+News
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6322078?display=Breaking%20News
KEVIN MARTIN DIALS UP BROADBAND SPIN
[SOURCE: CJR Daily, AUTHOR: Paul McLeary]
[Commentary] Despite FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's commentary earlier this week, between 2000 to 2003 the United States actually fell from 4th to 13th place in global rankings of broadband Internet usage per capita. Currently, the majority of American households can access only a broadband service that is "among the slowest, most expensive, and least reliable in the developed world," as Thomas Bleha wrote in the May/June 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs. What's worse, despite all the high-minded rhetoric coming from Martin and the Bush administration, the United States still has no national initiative to upgrade Internet service to bring it up to the level of most other developed nations. How much has the lack of focus by the FCC cost American business? A 2001 study conducted by an economist at the Brookings Institution "estimated that 'widespread' adoption of basic broadband in the United States could add $500 billion to the U.S. economy and produce 1.2 million new jobs." In 2004, another Brookings economist stated that "as much as $1 trillion might be lost over the next decade due to present constraints on broadband development." That is the real state of domestic broadband and high-speed Internet service. Regulators have made a decision to allow local telephone monopolies to impede competition; as a result, while more Americans are signing up for high-speed access, they're not getting anything close to what they could be getting. And it's going to take more than spin for American broadband to catch up with the rest of the world.
http://www.cjrdaily.org/the_audit/kevin_martin_dials_up_broadban.php
Kevin Martin Dials Up Broadband Spin
MAP MAPS OUT CABLE RE-REG
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Saying the cable business has become sufficiently dominant that the FCC needs to step in, media consolidation critic Media Access Project (MAP) has proposed a laundry list of "fixes." MAP et. al. (including the Benton Foundation) were responding to the FCC's request for input on whether the FCC has met the 70/70 test for cable dominance, which would then free the FCC, by statute, to promulgate regulations to ensure diversity of programming. They say the test -- 70% cable penetration with 70% of those taking cable -- has been met and that means the FCC can do a host of things that promote program diversity which they argue has suffered under a consolidated cable industry. But while the cable industry reads the law narrowly and says the test applies only to regulations regarding the pricing of leased-access channels, MAP argues that, instead, it was a way to give the FCC broad re-regulatory powers if it turned out that the leased-access set-aside was not insuring program diversity. Saying that competition is diminishing and diversity suffering, MAP wants the FCC to: 1) strengthen leased access provisions and boost and public, educational and government (PEG) channels; 2) mandate open broadband access; 3) impose a cap on cable ownership; 4) and eliminate the so-called terrestrial loophole that does not require cable operators to give competitors access to programming that is not delivered by satellite.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6321754.html?display=Breaking...
* MAP's comments are available online at http://www.mediaaccess.org/Section612Comments.pdf
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6321754.html?display=Breaking%20News
NO NEED FOR NEW LEASE ACCESS, SAYS NCTA
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association says there is already plenty of multichannel video competition so there is no need for the FCC to take any regulatory steps to promote program diversity. NCTA filed comments Monday on whether the so-called 70/70 test had been met and what the FCC might need to do if it had. The test is tied to leased-access provisions that require the FCC to set aside 10-15% of cable channels for lease to independent programmers. According to statute, when cable is available to 70% of U.S. households, and 70% of those households are cable subscribers, the wired medium will have become sufficiently dominant that the FCC is allowed to come up with new regulations to "promote diversity of information sources." NCTA says that, although the first threshhold has been met, the second hasn't and will likely never be as the increasing competition that the FCC itself acknowledges continues to siphon off market share. Telco SBC in its filing argued that both tests had been met and the FCC should step in to spur competition. In comments in the same proceeding, the Center for Digital Democracy, Catholic Bishops and the Benton Foundation argued that the same marketplace developments have led to new avenues for diverse programming, the Web, video-on-demand and IPTV, and that it was time to clarify what access obligations should apply to all those new services.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6321633?display=Breaking+News
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6321633?display=Breaking%20News
WHY JOHNNY CAN'T BE BOTHERED
[SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, AUTHOR: Thomas Geoghegan and James Warren]
[Commentary] The crisis in America, where ironically we have the world's highest rate of bachelor's degrees, is that if people don't read papers, they generally won't vote. The crisis of the press here is a crisis of democracy too. The single best indicator of whether someone votes is whether he reads a paper, according to political scientist Martin P. Wattenberg in his book, "Where Have All the Voters Gone?" But the converse is also true. Whether one votes is a much better indicator than a college degree as to whether one is reading a daily paper. The reaction between these two trends, a decline in voting and the decline in the reading of dailies, is what scientists call autocatalytic. One drives the other in a downward spiral. The under-30 young read far less, and vote far less--and according to their teachers, have fewer opinions. Not reading, not having political sentiments, they aren't especially capable of voting intelligently anyway. What can we do now? Teach our kids to read.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0604040221apr04,0,1714048...
Why Johnny can't be bothered
DO NEW FREE DAILIES MEAN SUN IS SETTING FOR PAID NEWSPAPERS?
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Joseph T. Hallinan joseph.hallinan@wsj.com]
When the Baltimore Examiner, America's newest daily newspaper, hits 250,000 stoops and driveways today, it will boast a bigger circulation than the 169-year-old Baltimore Sun. Of course, no one is sure what that quarter-million papers will really mean to advertisers because they will be delivered unsolicited and at no charge. But as newspapers struggle to woo advertisers and keep readers in the Internet age, the Examiner stands out as arguably the boldest experiment yet in America's deepening flirtation with free daily newspapers. "Can a mature subscription-based daily paper -- even one as respected as the Sun -- be vulnerable to an upstart that's giving news away?" says Thomas Kunkel, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. "It really and truly is a very interesting and open question." Free commuter papers -- some started by established publishers such as Tribune Co. and Washington Post Co. -- have spread to Boston, Chicago, New York and Washington. And the Examiner's Denver-based parent, privately held Clarity Media Group, has launched breezy, tabloids similar to Baltimore's in San Francisco and Washington.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114420238830617334.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
(requires subscription)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114420238830617334.html?mod=todays_us_marketplac…
ALL THE PROPAGANDA THAT'S FIT TO PRINT
[SOURCE: Miami Herald 4/3, AUTHOR: Edward Wasserman edward_wasserman@hotmail.com]
[Commentary] The Bush administration has recovered from its initial qualms over secretly paying to plant pro-U.S. stories in the fledgling Iraqi press. An internal Pentagon review has now concluded that those efforts, part of a wider propaganda push using a U.S. outfit called the Lincoln Group and costing as much as $100 million over five years, don't violate law or policy. That conclusion is a turnabout. At first, after The Los Angeles Times exposed the program in December, the administration had a brief bout with principle. Having paid off journalists for favorable columns and secretly financed bogus news releases supporting administration policies at home, we have the U.S. government using tax dollars to hobble precisely the independent expression that our troops are supposed to be fighting to make possible abroad.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14249052.htm
All the propaganda that's fit to print
UNBUNDLED MEDIA CONTENT POSES A CHALLENGE
[SOURCE: Oxford Analytica]
Media content is increasingly becoming "unbundled" from its physical distribution medium, such as CDs. This "disruptive" technology has led to different pricing models and lowered barriers to entry for content authors, creating a challenging business environment for publishers and media companies. Historically, information and entertainment content were captive to their physical distribution medium or distribution time. Given the technology of the past, consumers were forced to purchase and access content using the physical medium or schedule dictated by the content distributor. This resulted in "appointment-based" consumption. Today, this old model of consumption is vanishing, due to changes in three significant areas: 1) unit pricing, 2) on-demand access and 3) digital delivery. Businesses, particularly traditional media companies and publishers, face several key challenges in the face of this technological change.
http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2006/03/31/media-content-tech-cx_0...
Unbundled Media Content Poses A Challenge