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THINK THE INTERNET WILL REPLACE TV? THINK AGAIN
[SOURCE: Blog Maverick, AUTHOR: Mark Cuban]
[Commentary] Cuban quotes Craig Moffet of Bernstein Research to counter anyone who believes that the Internet as alternative to TV is just around the corner, or will happen this decade for that matter. Moffet recently testified before the Senate Commerce Committee saying, "despite a great deal of arm waving from 'visionaries,' our telecommunications infrastructure is woefully unprepared for widespread delivery of advanced services, especially video, over the Internet. Downloading a single half hour TV show on the web consumes more bandwidth than does receiving 200 emails a day for a full year. Downloading a single high definition movie consumes more bandwidth than does the downloading of 35,000 web pages; it’s the equivalent of downloading 2,300 songs over Apple’s iTunes web site. Today’s networks simply aren't scaled for that. In a series of recent research reports, The Dumb pipe Paradox, I tried to address the expectation that the telcos are rapidly rushing in to meet this need and to provide competition for cable incumbents. In fact, by their own best estimates, they'll be able to reach no more than 40% or so of American households with fiber over the next seven years. In 60% of the country, there are simply no new networks on the horizon, and the existing infrastructure from the telcos ­ DSL running at speeds of just 1.5Mbs or so ­ simply won't be adequate to be considered 'broadband' in five years or so."
http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000173073592

NEW FCC RULES WOULD REGULATE PAID WEB ADS
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: ]
The Federal Election Commission proposed new rules Friday that would leave almost all Internet political activity unregulated. The proposal would, however, require paid advertisements for federal candidates on the Internet to be paid for with money regulated by federal campaign law. In a summary of the proposal, the FEC said the rules "are intended to ensure that political committees properly finance and disclose their Internet communications, without impeding individual citizens from using the Internet to speak freely regarding candidates and elections." The revised definition includes paid Internet advertising placed on another person's web site, but does not encompass any other form of Internet communications.
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/technology/index.ssf?/base/washington-0/11...

* Election commission takes light touch with Net regs
http://news.com.com/Election+commission+takes+light+touch+with+Net+regs/...

SURVEY OFFERS A 'SNEAK PEAK' INTO NET SURFERS' BRAINS
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Edward C. Baig]
Nielsen Norman Group is releasing a study today on how people read web pages. As more business shifts to the Internet, the study findings show companies still have much to learn about how best to present an online image. Findings include: 1) Individuals read Web pages in an “F” pattern. They're more inclined to read longer sentences at the top of a page and less and less as they scroll down. That makes the first two words of a sentence very important. “People are extremely good at screening out things and focusing in on a small number of salient page elements,” says Jakob Nielsen, a principal at the firm. 2) Surfers connect well with images of people looking directly at them. It helps if the person in the photo is attractive, but not too good looking. Photos of people who are clearly professional models are a turnoff. “The person has to be approachable,” Pernice Coyne says. 3) Images in the middle of a page can present an obstacle course. 4) People respond to pictures that provide useful information, not just decoration. 5) Consumers will peek at ads in search engines as a “secondary thing,” Nielsen says, since they usually have specific product targets in mind.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20060327/web_use27.art.htm

OUT OF THIN AIR
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, AUTHOR: Daniel Schulman]
Starting in the early 1990s, translators, or repeaters as they’re sometimes known, began to take on a new purpose. For noncommercial broadcasters, whom the FCC allows to feed certain repeaters via satellite, they have proved a low-cost way (no staff, minimal equipment and overhead) to rapidly establish a broad radio presence. A translator setup typically runs between $4,000 and $10,000 (not including the cost of leasing space on a radio tower, on which the device’s antenna is situated), and, with a satellite uplink, a broadcaster can beam its programming to any number of translators simultaneously. Evangelical Christian organizations in particular have seized on this model as a means of spreading the gospel. And they have prospered. The Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association is an organization that was recently in the news when it spearheaded a campaign to stop Ford, the automobile manufacturer, from advertising its products in gay and lesbian magazines. Wildmon first learned of the FCC’s decision to allow noncommercial broadcasters to beam programming via satellite to translators in the late 1980s. He immediately grasped how this could benefit his organization’s broadcast ambitions and, by extension, advance the group’s conservative agenda. Within four years, between 1993 and 1997, the American Family Association was broadcasting on 156 stations in twenty-seven states. Its broadcast arm, American Family Radio, boasts on its Web site that translators allowed the organization to build “more stations in a shorter period of time than any other broadcaster in the history of broadcasting.” Relying heavily on translators, Christian organizations such as the Educational Media Foundation and Calvary Satellite Network International (CSN) have enjoyed equally impressive growth. “You can do this dirt-cheap and the fact is you avoid any ownership limits,” said Harold Feld, the senior vice president of the Media Access Project, a nonprofit, public-interest law firm that specializes in telecommunications. The FCC has long been warned that this loophole could be exploited to create national radio networks, according to Feld, but the Commission has dismissed those concerns as “speculative and alarmist.” He added, “The sad truth is that the agency is not very imaginative about these sorts of things.” But even now that the practice has moved well beyond the realm of imagination, with broadcasters employing hundreds of translators to forge nationwide footprints, the FCC, seemingly unperturbed, has taken no action to discourage it.
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/2/Schulman.asp?printerfriendly=yes