Postings on media issues from Benton.org (most recent at top)

August 2005

(August 31) WI-FI WITH ITS OWN ZIP CODE As towns across the country launch wireless broadband networks to bring affordable Web access to their residents, companies from tiny RedMoon to heavyweights such as Hewlett-Packard are jockeying to become their partners. Their motivation: Getting in on the ground floor of a potentially fast-growing business while creating an alternative to the Bells and cable outfits that control most of the country's broadband pipes. The muni wireless business is still in its infancy. But with 300 cities launching or soon to launch Wi-Fi networks, the market could yield roughly $200 million in revenues a year, according to market tracker Yankee Research. The rush to build muni wireless zones has got the Bell and cable companies plenty worried. They have mounted lobbying campaigns in 14 states to bar local jurisdictions from creating their own networks, but have failed in all but one. In Congress, the issue will likely get ironed out as part of an impending overhaul of the 1996 telecom law. To fend off the Bell and cable lobbies, many cities are opting for outsiders to own their Wi-Fi network. The new competition already may be having an effect: Verizon Communication just dropped its DSL pricing to $14.95 a month. Cities, meantime, see these networks as a necessity of the Information Age. "Just as with the roads of old, if broadband bypasses you, you become a ghost town," says Dianah L. Neff, Philadelphia's chief information officer. As more and more burgs rush to get connected, Techdom senses a potentially lucrative business in the making. [SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Catherine Yang & Ben Elgin] http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_36/b3949053_mz011.htm

STUDY: MOST KIDS PLAY VIDEO GAMES DAILY; WEB ADS GAINING IMPORTANCE According to a recent study from Netherlands-based marketing agency JuniorSeniorResearch, video games have become a central part of the lives of today's children. The study polled 4,000 kids up to the age of 15-years-old (both boys and girls) and discovered that 61 percent play video games on a daily basis. Although much of the industry concentrates its marketing on the coveted 18 to 35 male demographic, this study also shed some light on some advertising trends for the younger crowd. Among children, advertising doesn't appear to be as important as word of mouth. The study found that 32 percent of children learned about new games through their friends. Younger children tended to get more information from friends and family members than from advertising. But practically every child (92 percent) has seen an ad for a game, with television being the predominant format at 63 percent. The Internet, however, is seen as a growing medium for advertising to children. More than 15 percent of children said they view video game ads on the Internet, while only 11 percent said they see them in print media. [SOURCE: BusinessWeek] http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2005/id20050829_928076.htm

BROADCAST NETWORKS BUY INTO SEARCH KEY WORDS Facing fragmented audiences and a plethora of media choices, marketing chiefs at the broadcast networks need to find ever more inventive ways to entice viewers, and this season they're turning to key words -- that is, online search terms. For instance, for Prison Break a sponsored link on Google.com leads Web surfers to a promotional site about the fall series. The site is supported by advertising. Search terms can be bought for 2 cents and up (depending on how fierce the bidding is) per click and can be bid on by anyone, even a broadcaster's competitors. [SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Claire Atkinson] http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=45920

UK SEEKS TO BAN VIOLENT ONLINE PORN The UK government is seeking to outlaw the possession of violent pornography obtained over the Internet. The Home Office on Tuesday announced a proposal to ban "extreme pornography" and discussed what changes in the law are necessary to prevent people downloading images of sexual abuse. [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Dan Ilett] http://news.com.com/U.K.+seeks+to+ban+violent+online+porn/2100-1028_3-5844564.html?tag=nefd.top

(August 30) CABLE NETS A BIGGER SHARE Projections for summer season television viewing ratings have cable winning a 61% share to broadcast's 32%. Broadcast’s showing marks an all-time low for the medium, its largest decline since 1997. This will be the fifth summer in a row that cable has outdelivered broadcast in primetime. [SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Linda Moss] http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6252109.html (requires subscription) * Summer Migration: Viewers Turn to Cable http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/business/29drill.html

INTELSAT SETS DEAL TO BUY PANAMSAT FOR $3.2 BILLION Intelsat will acquire PanAmSat for $3.2 billion, bidding to create the world's largest commercial-satellite fleet with unparalleled influence over new offerings such as high-definition television and Internet access. With its global reach, 53-satellite fleet and ability to manage in-orbit satellites to cope with malfunctions and minimize outlays for additional launches, the merged company would have unparalleled influence over the satellite-communications sector. The nearest competitor would be SES Global SA of Luxembourg, which has been the industry leader and trendsetter in terms of major acquisitions and joint ventures. Consolidation has been building among satellite operators for years, as they struggle amid weak demand to pare the costs of launching and operating spacecraft designed to beam television programs, voice traffic and all sorts of government and corporate data. But even more powerful forces have prodded major shifts in strategy and management: Seeking to leverage the ability of satellite firms to generate cash, a long list of well-known private equity firms pumped about $9 billion into the sector in recent years. They also have taken advantage of generous capital markets to unveil a series of initial public offerings, special dividends and merger plans to notch significant profits. The Federal Communications Commission and the government's antitrust authorities will review the deal. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Dennis K. Berman dennis.berman@wsj.com and Andy Pasztor andy.pasztor@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112528363497425318,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription) See more coverage: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/28/AR2005082801185.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/business/29deal.html

MEDIA EXECUTIVES COURT CHINA, BUT STILL RUN INTO OBSTACLES The long-held optimism of Western media companies about venturing into the Chinese market has suffered several setbacks recently. At the beginning of the month, as part of an effort to tighten control over cultural products, China's Propaganda Department, the Ministry of Culture and four other regulators published new rules that further restricted what foreign filmmakers and television companies can do in China. Last week, the News Corporation's plan for a new television channel to be co-owned with a Chinese company was quashed by the government. The question facing Western media companies is how long the newly tightened restrictions will hold. Pessimists in media organizations worry whether the latest crackdown reflects a longer-term shift under a more cautious Chinese president, Hu Jintao. Optimists suggest that the recent moves are just the latest in a long series of episodic, sometimes short-lived efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to preserve social control. Over the longer term, access to the China media is crucial to American companies like Time Warner and Walt Disney, in addition to Viacom and the News Corporation. Growth at these giant conglomerates has slowed and their stock prices have been under pressure. If they can export their feature films, cable and TV programs, or even co-produce new shows with Chinese companies, the returns could be substantial. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Geraldine Fabrikant] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/business/worldbusiness/29china.html (requires registration)

CDT OFFERS RECOMMENDATIONS ON BROADCAST FLAG As Congress considers mandating a "broadcast flag" regime to protect digital television signals from piracy, the Center for Democracy and Technology is urging lawmakers to ensure that such a law does not interfere with the rights of individuals to use digital content, or of inventors to develop new technologies. To that end, CDT has drafted a report outlining key considerations for Congress. Though it is unclear whether Congress will move on legislation this year, pressure to enact a law has increased since a federal court struck down broadcast flag rules written by the Federal Communications Commission. CDT is not endorsing a flag regime, but believes if one is passed, it must include appropriate limitations and safeguards. [SOURCE: Center for Democracy and Technology] http://www.cdt.org/copyright/20050822BroadcastFlag.pdf http://www.cdt.org/copyright/20020825broadcastflagletter.pdf * Digital Group Changes Its Stance On 'Broadcast Flag' http://www.njtelecomupdate.com/lenya/telco/live/tb-NKRO1124989543658.html

INTERACTIVE ADS: BEYOND WATERCOOLER BUZZ Given the rate of digital-TV deployment -- particularly digital video recorders, video-on-demand and broadband video options that allow consumers to time-shift or bypass ads -- advertisers believe they must shape the future of interactive TV themselves. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Joe Mandese] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6252123?display=Advertising&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

(August 19) KICK THE INTERNET INTO HIGH SPEED [Commentary] The Internet is becoming everyone's eyes and ears on the world. That's why the issue of who controls the pipeline that delivers Internet service is so important. Clearly, when consumers are free to choose among many competitors, prices drop and quality rises. The decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this month to allow phone companies the right to deny other Internet service providers (ISPs) such as AOL and Earthlink the use of their phone lines did create regulatory parity for cable and teleco broadband providers. But when independent ISPs are only "renting" bandwidth at terms favorable to the cable or phone company, how competitive can they really be? The FCC also put forth a kind of "declaration of rights" for Internet users. It said anyone should be able to run any legal Internet application, and anyone should have access to any legal Internet site. That means, in essence, that those who own the pipes don't get to decide what information goes through them. It's an especially important right if consumers have only two choices of service providers. But the FCC has no authority to enforce its declaration. Congress should pass legislation to put teeth into the sentiment. President Bush has urged that high-speed Internet service be made available to all Americans by 2007. To help do that, the FCC and Congress must think beyond the cable and phone industries and clear the way for broad Internet competition. [SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0819/p08s02-comv.html See also -- * What would Joe Consumer say? Even the most Panglossian optimist would find it hard to speak well of the Federal Communications Commission's sellout to the regional phone monopolies. http://news.com.com/What+would+Joe+Consumer+say/2010-1071_3-5838835.html?tag=nefd.ac

EXPECT A NET PHONE EVOLUTION, NOT REVOLUTION [Commentary] Common wisdom suggested that you could save boatloads of money by stuffing long distance voice traffic onto the Internet and that exploding Internet growth would simply roll over the traditional Pubic Switched Telephone Network. Yup, voice traffic was moving to packets, simple as that. However, in spite of the ongoing hype, Net telephony, also known as voice over Internet Protocol, remains an early work in progress. Yes, VoIP is growing significantly, justifying the zillions of pundit forecasts and platitudes--but if IP telephony were a book, we'd probably be at Chapter 4 in the telecom equivalent of "War and Peace." [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Jon Oltsik, Enterprise Strategy Group] http://news.com.com/Expect+a+Net+phone+evolution%2C+not+revolution/2010-1071_3-5837269.html?tag=nefd.ac

TO BEAT UP RIVALS, TV NETWORKS DO THE LINEUP SHUFFLE How modern audiences find TV programs to watch is a debate roiling the broadcast networks as they struggle to adapt to a rapidly changing entertainment landscape. One camp says that shows attract audiences the same way they did when TV was in its infancy -- by habit. It's why Viacom Inc.'s CBS has aired "Survivor" in the same spot for the past five seasons, and why General Electric Co.'s NBC is trying to break its recent history of serial schedule-shuffling. But Fox and Time Warner Inc.'s WB network, among others, say habit isn't as crucial as it used to be. Digital video recorders and on-demand services give viewers the power to watch a show whenever they want. Schedulers -- whose high-stakes decisions can make or break a star, show or corporate boss -- are also experimenting with such drastic departures from tradition as limiting repeats and abandoning the September-to-May season. Fox's strategy: aggressively shuffle shows, even ones that are working where they are, to achieve ratings advantages and to inflict damage on rivals' lineups. It's a technique that risks alienating viewers, not to mention annoying producers and studios. But Fox says using the schedule to block and tackle has gained a new urgency as the network ratings race has grown tighter. Indeed, the ratings gaps between the Big Four networks shrunk to just tenths of a point at the end of the 2004-2005 season, or about 250,000 viewers. This season, says a Fox executive, "hundredths of ratings points will matter." [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Brooks Barnes brooks.barnes@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112440880283317244,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription)

SUMMER'S FLOPS SPUR MOVIE STUDIOS TO REASSESS TV ADS As a long and disappointing summer movie season comes to an end, Hollywood marketers are realizing that network-television advertising, long the lifeblood of their movie campaigns, may not pack the punch it once did. Network TV has been part of Hollywood's sales formula for many years, as studios desperate to launch expensive blockbusters blitzed the national airwaves in an effort to reach the broadest possible audience. But many studio executives now are calling that formula into question, having watched this summer as it failed to pay off amid a string of box-office laggards. The diminishing effectiveness of such ads is to some symptomatic of a broader problem in Hollywood. Audiences have caught on to the studios' tactics for making an "event" out of every new movie and so can't be counted on to turn out in droves just because they were confronted with a hail of come-ons during Thursday night prime time. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Kate Kelly kate.kelly@wsj.com and Brian Steinberg brian.steinberg@wsj.com ] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112440894618617254,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription) See also -- * Theater Owners Fired Up Over Iger's Comments Already faced with dwindling summer ticket sales, the nation's theater owners took a swipe at Walt Disney Co.'s incoming chief executive Thursday for suggesting that the health of the film industry may require the simultaneous release of movies in theaters and on DVDs. John Fithian, president of the National Assn. of Theatre Owners, said this scenario -- raised by new Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger during a call with analysts last week -- would only further damage theater owners, who have been confronting one of their toughest summers in years. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Claudia Eller] http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-iger19aug19,1,4000313.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business (requires registration)

MOVIES, SHMOVIES -- TV's TAKING OVER LA Some 132,000 workers are riding the biggest boom ever in Los Angeles television production, one that is rapidly turning Tinseltown into a TV town. While Hollywood's nomadic film business has gravitated toward cheaper U.S. and foreign locales, television production has become the bedrock of the Los Angeles entertainment economy. Producers are responding to a demand for original programs from broadcast networks and a mushrooming number of cable channels. Reruns are being shunned in favor of fresh shows that continue to earn money for years when shown again or sold on DVD. With its production infrastructure and proximity to talent, Los Angeles is the location of choice. Stars working on a regular series prefer to stay close to home, and producers want to be near writers who may be needed for quick rewrites. Television's role as the driving job creator in Hollywood will be underscored today when local film officials release a study showing a near-tripling in onlocation TV activity over the last decade. According to the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., roughly 100 of the 134 scripted and reality series in prime time are shot in Los Angeles. Thirty-one of 71 prime-time cable programs surveyed are shot here as well. By contrast, film shooting in Los Angeles peaked in 1996, falling 38% since then. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Richard Verrier] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-tvjobs19aug19,1,7430034.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage (requires registration)

CANADIAN BROADCASTING WITHOUT THE CANADIANS? About 5,300 members of the Canadian Media Guild have been locked out by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in a dispute over the number of jobs that can be filled by contract employees, rather than permanent workers. Since the lockout began Monday, the CBC has replaced all its English-language services, including two radio networks, a television network, cable channels, Web sites and local stations with a mix of reruns, elegiac classical music and sometimes less-than-relevant foreign programming. Unlike public broadcasting in the United States, the government-owned CBC has many programs that attract significant, sometimes market-leading, audiences. News and sports programming, particularly hockey, on CBC Television are important advertising outlets for many leading companies that are now reassessing where to spend their money. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Ian Austen] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/19/business/media/19tele.html (requires registration)

ALL CHAVEZ, ALL THE TIME [Commentary] The best hope for success for Telesur, the new satellite TV network funded by the Venezuelan government, may be for some official opposition from the United States. It is a hope the U.S. appears ready to fulfill. The stated goal of Telesur, which also receives support from Cuba, Uruguay and Argentina, is to provide audiences in Latin America an alternative to U.S. and European networks such as CNN, Univision, Telemundo and the state-sponsored Spanish Television Network. Telesur executives say the network will broadcast news, opinion, features and investigative reports from a Latin American perspective. A more enigmatic goal of the news operation, according to its mission statement, is to promote "the political and economic integration of the region." But whether Telesur emerges as a credible news organization or becomes a propaganda outfit, it has already generated a childish reaction in Congress. Last month, Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) proposed an amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2005 to "carry out broadcasting to Venezuela for at least 30 minutes per day of balanced, objective and comprehensive television news programming." The House passed it by a voice vote. There is still a chance the Senate could kill it. It is true that freedom of the press is under pressure in Venezuela after the passage of two ominous laws against free speech. Journalists are concerned about a censorship law that contains 78 vague provisions to sanction TV stations for broadcasting indecent content. There's even more worry about a new law that increases prison sentences and fines for people who offend the president or other government officials "by word or in writing." Yet the Venezuelan media is vibrant. There are three major daily newspapers and four TV networks in Caracas, all of which report the news and criticize government decisions as they see fit. So far, no journalist has been jailed for violating the new laws. Congress shouldn't respond to this latest provocation from Chavez. Instead, it should let market forces work to counter any propaganda. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-telesur19aug19,1,7202428.story?coll=la-news-comment (requires registration)

MEDIA'S QUEST FOR DIVERSITY FADES [Commentary] A report this year by the American Society of Newspaper Editors found a total of 34 more journalists of color working at U.S. newspapers than five years ago. A study released in June by the John and James L. Knight Foundation found that 73 percent of the nation's 200 largest newspapers employ fewer minorities than they did at some year between 1990 and 2004, suggesting the industry's diversity initiatives have peaked. Whether you blame "diversity fatigue" or simple inattention, it is obvious that modern media are slipping in their quest to reflect the diversity of America's population. Why does any of this matter? Because TV anchors and other journalists are more than the face of any given news division. They directly affect what gets on the air. [SOURCE: St Petersburg Times Floridian , AUTHOR: Eric Deggans] http://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/18/Floridian/Media_s_quest_for_div.shtml * Study: Diverse Newsroom Better Indicator of Coverage Than Diverse Population A recent study commissioned by an organization of minority journalists concluded that newsrooms with larger numbers of Asian American staffers did a better job of covering Asian American communities and issues than less-diverse newsrooms. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001017779

WHAT'S NEXT? WEB MAP TRACKS DEMAND FOR MAJOR NEWS A news mapping service introduced on Thursday by Akamai Technologies promises to give unprecedented insight into the relative hunger that millions of Internet users have to learn of breaking events minute-by-minute. Akamai, which helps speed delivery of 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic over its network, is looking to count the sum of page requests across 100 major news sites it serves to rank interest in major events on a scale never seen before. The Akamai Net News Index provides a map of six global regions and measures the current appetite for news relative to average daily demand in terms of millions of visitors to news sites per minute, per week, within each geographic region. Spikes in traffic can reveal the next wave of news demand. [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Eric Auchard] http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-08-18T144318Z_01_MAR852980_RTRIDST_0_NET-AKAMAI-DC.XML

FREE SPEECH GOING, GOING ... A look at corporate efforts to curb free speech. SLAPP suits (for "strategic lawsuits against public participation") are a serious menace to free speech. The latest example is a real prize: The Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, has already spent $10 million defending itself against a lawsuit filed by Isuzu Motors Ltd. because, eight years earlier, Consumer Reports rated the Isuzu Trooper "not acceptable" for safety reasons. And the case has not yet reached trial. And that is the real menace of SLAPP suits. It's not that corporations win them, but that they cost critics so much money that the critics are silenced -- and so is everyone else who even thinks about raising some question about a corporate product or practice. [SOURCE: AlterNet, AUTHOR: Molly Ivins] http://www.alternet.org/story/24293/

GIFTED STUDENTS CONNECT ONLINE WITH COLLEGES For many of today's gifted students, honors programs at their own schools aren't challenging enough anymore. They are signing up for online courses offered by such colleges as Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Missouri. These online courses offer classes mainly in advanced math and English, but subjects such as history, philosophy and anatomy also are offered. Programs are available for students of all ages, kindergarten through 12th grade, and some courses for high-school students follow college freshmen curricula. Not only do these classes bring in extra revenue, but for universities competing for the nation's brightest students, online programs are a useful tool for identifying and attracting them. Colleges keep track of students in their online programs and later mail them brochures highlighting their undergraduate programs. Participating may even give students a leg up in gaining admission to popular colleges. Increasingly, high school counselors, especially in rural schools where resources for gifted students often are limited, have begun combing through student records and encouraging top performers to apply for online courses. Some counselors go so far as to submit grades directly to universities, which regularly host regional "talent searches" where students are invited to take standardized tests to see if they qualify for the courses. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Neil Parmar neil.parmar@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112441510387517433,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

INDIA BYPASSES THE WIRES TO BRING WI-FI TO ITS REMOTE RESIDENTS Relying on a signal transmitted from a tower in the center of the district, the Indian village of Palakkode is at the forefront of efforts to use wireless technology to cover the last mile -- or in many cases, the last several miles -- separating rural villages from landline networks. The technology is making universal Internet access an attainable goal in several developing countries, including India. The country aims to spread "village knowledge centers" to the country's 600,000 villages within two years. [SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Jacob Leibenluft] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0819/p07s01-wosc.html

NASHVILLE PUBLIC TV TESTS METROCAST Nashville Public Television will test a new emergency alert system dubbed NPT MetroCast with Nashville's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) next month. The public broadcaster will set aside part of its spectrum for the exercise and the OEM will use the spectrum to deliver video, audio and text alerts, and information to first-responders in the field. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Ken Kerschbaumer] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA635938?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

PROJECT AIMS TO CREATE 3D TELEVISION BY 2020 Here's another great reason for US broadcasters to hold on to valuable analog TV spectrum: smell-o-vision. Japan (who else?) is bringing together researchers from the government, technology companies and academia to create a television that would allow people to view high-definition images in 3D from any angle, in addition to being able to touch and smell the objects being projected upwards from a screen parallel to the floor. The future TV is part of a larger national project under which Japan aims to promote "universal communication," a concept whereby information is shared smoothly and intelligently regardless of location or language. Imagine watching a football match on a TV that not only shows the players in three dimensions but also lets you experience the smells of the stadium and maybe even pat a goalscorer on the back. Imagine how this'll change the nature of indecency complaints! [SOURCE: Reuters] http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2005-08-19T114549Z_01_DIT929965_RTRIDST_0_TECH-JAPAN-TV-DC.XML

(August 18) A NEW MEDIA ORDER The 2005 edition of investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson's annual Communications Industry Forecast was released earlier this week and it concludes that the industry has effectively reached a "new order" that shifts power to consumers from advertisers, and to new media from traditional media. The report estimates that new media accounted for 16.7 percent of all advertising spending last year--up from only 10.3 percent in the report's baseline year, 1999. Ad spending in the new media -- which VSS defines as cable and satellite television, satellite radio, business-to-business e-media, consumer Internet, movie screens, and video games -- is growing at double-digit rates, while traditional media are rising only at single-digits. As a result, VSS projects that new media will account for 26.3 percent of all ad spending by 2009 -- an estimate some new media pundits might find conservative, given the rapid shifts in digital technologies. VSS says the forces driving change are clear: the expansion of digital media technologies, the shift toward consumer control of media--especially media supported primarily by consumer spending--and a shift toward greater return on investment in marketing that is driving advertisers to use greater shares of new media. [SOURCE: MediaPost, AUTHOR: Joe Mandese] http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=33180&Nid=14968&p=229680

FAIR? BALANCED? A STUDY FINDS IT DOES NOT MATTER A new study by Stefano DellaVigna of the University of California, Berkeley and Ethan Kaplan of the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University finds that the advent of the Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's cable television network, has had no detectable effect on which party people voted for, or whether they voted at all. Because Fox News started just before the presidential election in 1996 and was hardly available at the time of that election, a major question is whether the introduction of Fox in a community raised the likelihood that residents voted for George W. Bush over Al Gore in the 2000 election, as compared with the share who voted for Bob Dole over Bill Clinton in the (pre-Fox) 1996 election. Disregarding third-party candidates, Professors DellaVigna and Kaplan found that towns that offered Fox by 2000 increased their vote share for the Republican presidential candidate by 6 percentage points (to 54 percent, from 48 percent) from 1996 to 2000, while those that did not offer Fox increased theirs by an even larger 7 percentage points (to 54 percent, from 47 percent). Why was Fox inconsequential to voter behavior? One possibility is that people search for television shows with a political orientation that matches their own. In this scenario, Fox would have been preaching to the converted. This, however, was not the case: Fox's viewers were about equally likely to identify themselves as Democrats as Republicans, according to a poll by the Pew in 2000. Professors DellaVigna and Kaplan offer two more promising explanations. First, watching Fox could have confirmed both Democratic and Republican viewers' inclinations, an effect known as confirmatory bias in psychology. The professors' preferred explanation is that the public manages to "filter" biased media reports. Fox's format, for example, might alert the audience to take the views expressed with more than the usual grain of salt. Audiences may also filter biases from other networks' shows. The tendency for people to regard television news and political commentary as entertainment probably makes filtering easier. Fox's influence might also have been diluted because there were already many other ways to get political information. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Alan B. Krueger] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/business/media/18scene.html (requires registration)

CAPTIONERS BUSY AS BROADCASTERS COPE WITH NEW FCC RULES There are 28 million deaf or hard of hearing people in the U.S., according to the National Assn. of the Deaf, which joined other advocacy groups in petitioning the FCC to improve closed captioning rules and beef up enforcement. In July the FCC said it would seek comment on its closed captioning rules, especially the need for standards on the technical capability of captioning, such as transcription accuracy. The Commission also said it would ask about the need for more procedures to prevent or remedy technical problems. A notice of inquiry hasn't been listed in the Federal Register yet, so there's no indication of when comments and replies are due. A Jan. 1, 2006 deadline is nearing for non-exempt new programming to be captioned in the top 25 markets. As a result, caption providers have seen their business grow. "Our business has naturally been growing by 50% to 75%," said Jay Feinberg, dir.- mktg. services at the National Captioning Institute. But broadcasters said closed captioning rules are burdensome and confusing. In June alone, the FCC denied at least 12 bids for exemption from compliance. Petitioners claimed captioning would be an undue financial burden. Local stations typically pay $100 per hour for closed captioning, Feinberg said. And real-time captioning has an inherent delay. Typically, broadcasters send caption providers programs they want captioned, such as soap operas or daytime shows. But for emergency coverage, there can be a lag of 15 to 30 min. before captioning begins, Feinberg said. [SOURCE: Communications Daily, AUTHOR: Tania Panczyk-Collins] (Not available online)

RADIO FREE AMERICA Low-power radio stations are the most local form of community radio and are often run by volunteers producing their own unique shows. Broadcasting at 100 watts or less, stations usually only have a radius of about 3.5 miles. These tiny stations will never be able to compete with giants like Clear Channel, but that's precisely the point. By positioning itself as a local media supplement rather than a full-blown competitor, Low-Power FM, or LPFM, has been able to gain support from grass-roots organizers and legislators alike. [SOURCE: American Prospect, AUTHOR: Alyson Zureick] http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10144

VOD SOFTWARE TO INCLUDE NIELSEN CODES Nielsen took a technological step forward Wednesday in its march to measure video-on-demand viewership, announcing a collaboration with software company Anystream. Nielsen "watermarking" technology will be built in to Anystream's Agility software, allowing cable operators, content providers and distributors to encode audio cues into VOD programming. The programming can then be tracked by the ratings company's "active/passive" meters, which detect the audio codes. Nielsen will measure the viewership of VOD programming in a seven-day window after the programming airs on traditional television. By the end of next year, Nielsen plans to measure VOD viewership of movies, pay-per-view events and older TV shows. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Joel Meyer] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA635703?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

CALIFORNIA CONSIDERS TAX BREAKS FOR FILMING For the first time since a handful of immigrant New Yorkers moved west to Hollywood seeking cheap land for their movie studios, so many motion pictures are being made outside California that state leaders are poised to enact subsidies to keep productions from leaving. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Halbfinger] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/movies/18runa.html (requires registration)

(August 17) TELECOMS' QUEST FOR CUSTOMERS FOLLOWS PATH TO INTERNET TV With cable TV companies angling to take away phone customers, the telecom industry is responding by spending billions of dollars to outfit their networks with the latest in video technology. Their chief weapon is an infant, unproven technology with a geeky name: Internet Protocol TV, or IPTV for short. The beauty of IPTV? Phone companies can use their existing networks, outfitted with new gear, to offer a rich assortment of advanced video services. The range is practically unlimited, from "live" TV such as pay-per-view to high-definition programming, video conferencing, gaming and distance learning. The rush to embrace IPTV is global. Dozens of telephone companies, from industry giants such as Bell Canada to state-owned carriers such as Swisscom of Switzerland, are moving rapidly to deploy the new technology. All share a common goal: to fortify their competitive flanks. With cable operators moving quickly to add VoIP -- short for Voice Over Internet Protocol -- telephone companies need a counterpunch. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Leslie Cauley] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20050817/iptvcov.art.htm * How does this thing work? The toughest hurdle for people using Pioneer's IPTV service has nothing to do with technology, the Internet or even IP, short for Internet Protocol. It's the remote control. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20050817/pioneerside.art.htm * SBC's $4 billion investment into IPTV 'not much money for us to burn' http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20050817/sbcside.art.htm

SAN FRANCISCO MOVES FORWARD ON Wi-Fi PLAN The city of San Francisco wants ideas for making the entire 49-square mile city a free - or at least cheap - Wi-Fi zone. Taking a step toward bridging the so-called digital divide between the tech-savvy and people who can't afford computers, the city government on Tuesday issued guidelines for a plan to "ensure universal, affordable wireless broadband access for all San Franciscans." The invitation, extended to nonprofit groups and businesses that could eventually bid on the project, puts San Francisco among a handful of major U.S. cities tackling the technological and political challenges of offering Internet service to its residents on such a wide scale. [SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Lisa Leff] http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/12399473.htm

FCC Order Builds Momentum For Wireless Auction The FCC made some tweaks to the rules governing the largest-ever auction of cellular radio frequencies, which is set for June 2006. The order, unanimously approved at the FCC's Aug. 5 meeting, made minor revisions in the size of the frequency parcels to be auctioned for advanced wireless services. For example, the FCC decided to slice the 90 megahertz of spectrum into six chunks instead of five. The changes dictate that there will be 1,122 licenses available in the auction, instead of 946, potentially allowing smaller carriers entry to the market. The agency was urged to make the move by the Rural Communications Association, a group of cellular carriers, and T-Mobile USA, the smallest of the country's four nationwide wireless companies. [SOURCE: Technology Daily, AUTHOR: Drew Clark] http://www.njtelecomupdate.com/lenya/telco/live/tb-LIWX1124224076060.html

MARS ORBITER TAKES BROADBAND TO SPACE NASA launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter last Friday, in part to lay the foundation for an Internet in outer space. Besides conducting basic science research, NASA officials say, the orbiter will become part of a high-speed telecommunications link between Earth and the Red Planet. After the orbiter approaches Mars in 2006, it will join the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey to create a three-node network, which could become a component of the InterPlanetary Internet. The InterPlanetary Internet is NASA's solution to the speed-of-light delay in data transmission that has hung up space communications, NASA scientists say. [SOURCE: Federal Computer Week, AUTHOR: Aliya Sternstein] http://www.fcw.com/article89922-08-15-05-Print Also see, from April 2004 *

PRESIDENT REVISES BROADBAND GOAL Combining two popular recent proposals, President Bush urged Congress to adopt as a national goal broadband access on Mars by 2020. "Look," the President said, "we're already planning on sending scientists, astronauts and Al Gore to Mars; they will need information flowing across cables and telephone lines in a fast way. We can help. That's what broadband technology is. It means we'll open the interplanetary highways of knowledge -- new interplanetary highways of knowledge." The President added later in the day that broadband access on Mars should not be taxed. http://lists.benton.org/lists/arc/headlines/2004-04/msg00000.html

THE BOOK ON GOOGLE [Commentary] Google's goal is to organize all the world's information. It has run into several hurdles along the way, however, as copyright holders objected to their works being duplicated in the Google database without payment or permission. According to Google, users who search for a word or phrase will receive links to custom-made Web pages, each of which offers three short excerpts from a book that contains the item being sought. The pages will also offer ways to order the book or to search for it in a library nearby. If this is in fact what Google does, it would be a boon not just for publishers but also for readers. The project amounts to a 21st century card catalog, helping people find relevant books online with the kind of precision that Internet users have come to expect. To make this service a reality, though, Google is skating dangerously close to the line between fair use and piracy. Google should show more respect for publishers' rights -- and publishers should not make the mistake of using the strictures of copyright law to tie their own hands. Building a guide to the contents of books is hardly the same as making bootlegged copies or plagiarizing. It's a monumental and costly task, and publishers have given no reason to believe they can do it for themselves. Unless their works are as well integrated with the Net as other forms of information and entertainment, they may be left waiting on the shelves for an audience that no longer bothers to walk through the stacks. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-google17aug17,1,733864.story?coll=la-news-comment (requires registration)

THE BIRTH OF MURDOCH.COM News Corp is trying to make its mark on the Internet. The media giant spent $580 million to acquire Intermix/MySpace.com and recently announced the acquisition of Scout, a leading college sports site. Once the Intermix deal closes, News Corp. Web sites will have an aggregate 50 million unique visitors a month, the sixth-largest audience on the Web. "There is no greater priority for the company today than to meaningfully and profitably expand its Internet presence and to properly position ourselves from the explosion in broadband usage that we're now starting to see," Rupert Murdoch recently told investors. The world is changing and Murdoch is ready to change with it. The younger viewers at the core of the company's audience are drifting away from TV, spending more time online. They're using the Web to socialize and communicate, downloading songs, listening to Internet radio and podcasts, and playing online games. It won't be long before they turn to the Web for longer-form video and TV, thanks to the rise of broadband. About 35% of the U.S. population has broadband, which is getting faster and cheaper every year. And advertising dollars are shifting from TV and print to the Web. Worldwide, online advertising is expected to soar 50% this year, to $13 billion, from $9.6 billion in 2004, according to Ken Marlin, managing partner of Marlin & Associates, an investment bank and advisor to media companies. Most TV and print categories are growing at single-digit rates. "Murdoch has shown a remarkable ability to adjust and adapt his company to the moment. He's a smart guy. He's got to be looking around, saying, 'There's an opportunity to be a major player on the Web, and it's closing,'" Marlin said. News Corp. wants to merge the content of a big media company with its own portal. It won't be easy. Time Warner still struggles to make its AOL deal work. But Murdoch may just succeed, just as he succeeded in upending the TV business in the 80s and 90s. [SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Steve Rosenbush] http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2005/tc20050816_5029_tc024.htm

'SPEAR PHISHING' TESTS EDUCATE PEOPLE ABOUT ONLINE SCAMS Hackers are increasingly exploiting the weakest link in computer security -- humans. Most computer users have become savvy enough to avoid obvious attempts at what security experts call "phishing" -- phony email messages, often purportedly from financial institutions, that ask for personal information such as account or Social Security numbers. But many are still succumbing to a new wave of more sophisticated attacks, dubbed "spear phishing," that are targeted at specific companies and government agencies. In such exploits, attackers create email messages that are designed to look like they came from the recipient's company or organization, such as an information-technology or a human-resources department. More than 35 million of these targeted email messages to steal critical data and personal information were launched in the first half of the year, according to a report this month from IBM. And use of these scams is soaring: The number of such email messages sent rose more than 1,000% from January to June. To fight computer crime, the good guys are masquerading as bad guys pretending to be good guys. Some computer-security experts say the bogus phishing exercises can help "inoculate" users against falling for real phishing scams, much like vaccines use a broken version of a real disease to provide immunization. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: David Bank david.bank@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112424042313615131,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

DUELING HACKERS HIT FIRMS' COMPUTERS Rival computer hackers exploited a newly disclosed flaw in Microsoft's Windows operating system to attack dozens of companies in what security experts said was an Internet-crime turf war. Among the companies hit hard by fast-spreading computer worms were a number of media outlets, including Time Warner's CNN unit, New York Times Co. and ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co. Computers crashed at Kraft Foods yesterday afternoon and United Parcel Service reported that a "very small" number of computers in various locations were affected by a worm. The worms, small computer programs with instructions for replicating themselves, clogged computer networks as they sought out new machines to infect. Some companies reported that their computers sought to continually restart themselves. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: David Bank at david.bank@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112423554861414993,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription) * Media Outlets Hurt by Internet Worm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/16/AR2005081601700.html

VOTE ON .XXX PUSHED BACK A MONTH A final decision on the fate of the highly controversial .xxx domain, which was intended to be reserved for online pornography, will not happen until September. The board of directors of the nonprofit group that oversees domain names said on Tuesday that it would delay a vote until its next meeting on Sept. 15. That decision follows last-minute opposition to the creation of .xxx from the Bush administration and other national governments. The vote was originally supposed to take place on Tuesday. The move by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was expected after ICM Registry, the Florida company that plans to operate .xxx, agreed on Monday to a month's delay, saying the additional time would permit it to assuage concerns about the creation of a virtual red-light district. [SOURCE: CNET|News.com, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh] http://news.com.com/Vote+on+.xxx+pushed+back+a+month/2100-1028_3-5835702.html?tag=nefd.top

LOCAL INFO WEBSITES MAY WIDEN UK'S RICH-POOR GAP The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is warning that websites offering information on the social make-up of neighborhoods could increase the divide between the richest and poorest places in Britain. "Until recently these segmentation processes have been largely invisible to the public, but with the emergence of [Internet-based neighborhood information systems] it is entirely possible that people will start using them to sort themselves out into neighborhoods where their neighbors are less diverse and more like themselves," said Professor Roger Burrows, who led the research team from the Universities of York and Durham. [SOURCE: Reuters] http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-08-17T003835Z_01_MOL702193_RTRIDST_0_NET-BRITAIN-IBNIS-DC.XML

FEWER COMMERCIALS ON THE HORIZON? Consumers are increasingly frustrated by all the commercials they have to sit through when listening to the radio or watching TV and the ads they have to wade through when reading a magazine or newspaper. And that's led many people to less-cluttered media -- mostly cable television, satellite radio and the Internet. Clear Channel has responded by saying it'll sell less ad time in the hopes of gaining higher rates since ad time will be scarcer. But analysts think people may be drawn to new media because of content, not less commercials. [SOURCE: CNN|Money, AUTHOR: Paul R. La Monica] http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/15/news/fortune500/advertising/index.htm

LANDSCAPE CHANGING FOR BROADCAST LICENSING In a marketplace being driven by empowered consumers, whose demands and habits already are altering industry economics, how much leverage will broadcasters and cable networks continue to have to command cash retransmission fees and carriage for new program services? And what will that do, in turn, to their established business relations with program producers and advertisers? How much economic disruption will occur as a result of the deterioration of allegiances that used to assure financial security for broadcast networks and their TV station affiliates, between broadcast and cable operations owned by the same media conglomerate, between program networks and advertisers, and programers and consumers? What new content production and distribution options will offset the weakening traditional financial metrics with, perhaps, more lucrative and reliable revenue streams? Over the next five years, we will begin to know the answers as many of the licensing agreements with major distributors held by News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group and Viacom's CBS Corp. expire and are renegotiated according to a new set of economic and technology considerations. [SOURCE: Hollywood Reporter, AUTHOR: Diane Mermigas] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/columns/mermigas_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001015279

(August 16) JAPAN'S CELLPHONE GIANT TRIES EXPANSION INTO CREDIT CARDS Within the next year or two NTT DoCoMo, the largest Japanese mobile-phone company, plans to introduce phones with an embedded DoCoMo credit card. The goal: to turn Japan into a credit-happy nation like America -- and to build a lucrative new profit center for the company. DoCoMo's vision could point the way for cellphone companies around the globe. The Tokyo company has 49 million customers in Japan, more than half the market, and a market capitalization of more than $80 billion. It led the industry in offering commercially viable Internet and email service over cellphones, and also pioneered downloadable ringtones. U.S. cellphone companies are counting on data services such as email and Internet access to drive growth for the next few years. But DoCoMo's experience suggests that strategy can only work for so long. Given the Japanese company's record as a trendsetter, it wouldn't be surprising if U.S. companies also end up trying to turn their products into something more than communications devices. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Ginny Parker Woods ginny.parker@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112413723322613635,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription)

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, PUT YOUR CELL ON ICE A movement is underway to turn the ubiquitous cellphone into a source of information for paramedics and other emergency personnel who respond to accidents, crimes and disasters. A British paramedic came up with the idea of asking cellphone users to add an entry into their cellular phone book called ICE for “in case of emergency.” Accompanying that acronym would be the name and phone numbers of the person who should be called if something has happened to the owner of the phone. The ICE campaign was launched in Britain in April, but people really started paying attention after the London terrorist bombings in July. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR:] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20050816/bl_bottomstrip16.art.htm

KIDS' CELLPHONES: WHAT NEXT? [Commentary] New mobile phones are aimed at 8-to-12-year-olds, the "tween" generation. Some child advocates worry kiddie phones are just one more screen for children to stare into and become lost, instead of enjoying face-to-face companionship. Parents have a tricky path to walk between being responsible guardians and submitting to marketing ploys that play on their fears. When, if ever, they provide children with cellphones, they need to remember that no electronic tether can substitute for a relationship of trust with their child. [SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0816/p08s02-comv.html

FINANCIER PROPOSES SPINOFF FOR TIME WARNER Billionaire financier Carl C. Icahn said yesterday that he plans to meet with the chief executive of Time Warner to try to pressure the company to spin off its cable-television assets, a move that Icahn believes will boost the media company's stock. Time Warner's cable and high-speed Internet operations make up less than a quarter of the company's total $42 billion annual revenue. Without the cable operations, Time Warner's empire would still include Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., New Line Cinema, America Online and a publishing operation. Icahn has a long history of bending companies to his will, either through shareholder activism or by buying up large stakes in companies. James C. Goss, a media analyst with investment bank Barrington Research Associates Inc., noted that Icahn and his group control about $2.2 billion worth of Time Warner shares -- a small fraction of the company's $85.4 billion market value -- so it is unclear how much influence Icahn can wield. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Yuki Noguchi] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/15/AR2005081501481.html (requires registration) * Icahn calls on Time Warner to dump cable systems http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20050816/1b_icahn_16.art.htm

COPY-PROTECTION GEAR SNEAKS INTO PRODUCTS Controversial copy-protection technology is quietly being added to e-books, CDs, DVDs and other products. Companies have been trying to add copy protection to digital music files, DVDs and other products for at least five years. The Recording Industry Association of America says piracy is one reason record sales tumbled 10% from 2000 to 2004. Yet early anti-piracy efforts flopped. Some early CDs with copy protection - known in the industry as digital rights management (DRM) - wouldn't always play properly. Now the kinks are getting worked out. Critics say DRM prevents legitimate uses, such as backing-up a DVD. “There's basically no benefit from the consumer's point of view,” says lawyer Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group. But tech analysts say DRM is here to stay. Content makers want it, and consumer complaints are waning as it becomes less cumbersome. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Michelle Kessler] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20050816/1b_drm_16.art.htm

NEWS CORP IN TALKS TO BUY BLINKX Apparently, News Corp. is eyeing an acquisition of closely held Web search provider Blinkx. Based in San Francisco, Blinkx is best known for providing searches of video files on the Web. It competes with Internet search leaders Google and Yahoo in that upstart category. Media companies have been scooping up Internet names in a bid to profit from the online advertising boom, fueled in part by the popularity of Web search ads from Google and Yahoo. [SOURCE: Reuters] http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-08-15T181417Z_01_KNE565659_RTRIDST_0_NET-BLINKX-NEWSCORP-DC.XML

BUSH ADMINISTRATION OBJECTS TO .XXX DOMAINS The Bush administration is objecting to the creation of a .xxx domain, saying it has concerns about a virtual red-light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography. Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, has asked for a hold to be placed on the contract to run the new top-level domain until the .xxx suffix can receive further scrutiny. The domain was scheduled to receive final approval today. [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh] http://news.com.com/Bush+administration+objects+to+.xxx+domains/2100-1028_3-5833764.html?tag=nefd.top

BLOGGING TO BE FREE [Commentary] In addition to bringing the word to other bloggers and to the wired in general, the blogosphere has become one of the primary cues of standard media. If something gets big in the blogosphere, it later will be covered in the newspapers and TV. The electronic tricks of the human rights trade provide amplification. Software like Adam Globus-Hoenich's ActivePetition software allows our supporters to swamp an unlimited number of recipients with personalized messages. Newspapers, even individual Web sites, are relatively easy to shut down. But what can't be shut down is a self-perpetuating system like the blogosphere. What our experience has shown is not that a single organization, the Committee to Protect Bloggers, is a threat to tyrants, but that blogging itself is. Blogging's culture of sharing, quoting and linking has created a radical redundancy for powerful ideas. Blogging is so decentralized that the complete suppression of dissent is becoming increasingly impractical. Will that lead to a messianic age of liberty and justice for all? I think that's unlikely. But there are 14 million other bloggers out there, and they've all got their opinions. [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Curt Hopkins, Committee to Protect Bloggers] http://news.com.com/Blogging+to+be+free/2010-1071_3-5833728.html?tag=nefd.ac

WASH POST' CUTS TIES TO PENTAGON EVENT AFTER PROTESTS The Washington Post announced that it will cease its co-sponsorship of the Pentagon-organized Freedom Walk next month. The paper's involvement had drawn heat from within and outside the paper, with a guild committee calling for the link to end. The newspaper told the Department of Defense that it was pulling back on its offer of free ads for the event--a march up the mall ending with a concert by pro-war country singer Clint Black. "As it appears that this event could become politicized, The Post has decided to honor the Washington area victims of 9/11 by making a contribution directly to the Pentagon Memorial Fund," said Eric Grant, a Post spokesman. "It is The Post's practice to avoid activities that might lead readers to question the objectivity of The Post's news coverage." [SOURCE: Editor&Publisher] http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001015384

GENERATION GAP EXISTS BETWEEN KIDS, PARENTS OVER BACK-TO-SCHOOL TECHNOLOGY Back-to-school time means parents are eyeing new gear to make students more productive -- computers, cell phones, handheld computers or graphing calculators. Kids, however, have their own ideas; they are looking to use technology to express themselves -- high on the wish list is a music player/iPod. [SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News] http://www.rednova.com/news/technology/207407/generation_gap_exists_between_kids_parents_over_backtoschool_technology/

ONLINE TUTORING PART OF GROWING TREND Once a dot-com pipe dream, online education is now maturing into a viable market. More than 2.6 million students in the United States were expected to study online through courses and tutoring last fall, up from 1.9 million in 2003, according to the Sloan Consortium, an online research group. What's fueling the growth? An increase in the number of non-traditional students who don't have a lot of time to look for on-campus resources, a more competitive educational landscape in which colleges and schools are trying harder to attract students with additional services and students' greater familiarity with the Internet. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Mark Chediak] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/15/AR2005081501265.html (requires registration)

REALITY'S PEN Reality shows offer a glimpse of real life, unmediated by script-writers or story boards. Right? Wrong, says Daniel Petrie, Jr., president of the Writers Guild of America, west. According to Petrie, reality show editors serve the same function as traditional writers, piecing together story arcs out of hundreds of hours of raw tape. And thus, they should be recognized under the same union rules that govern traditional TV contracts. [SOURCE: OntheMedia] http://www.onthemedia.org/stream/ram.py?file=otm/otm081205h.mp3

(August 15) TV SEEN FOLLOWING NET MODEL Amid a battle to rule the living room of the future, cable television and phone companies are ripping a page from playbooks written by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. to help navigate through the thousands of shows made possible by next-generation TV. Rather than passively flipping through a conventional electronic program guide much in the same way they would a print TV Guide, viewers are more likely to actively search for programs as they would on a Web site. These search capabilities become more important as pay television services fill up advanced services such as video-on-demand and digital video recorders (DVR) with more programming. Borrowing ideas from the Internet is tinged with irony at a time when the very archetypes for how to improve TV -- Google and Yahoo -- are both planting stakes in the entertainment market. Yahoo, run by former Hollywood veteran Terry Semel, has refashioned itself as an entertainment company. Google has vowed to one day sell access to video. All told, TV's shift could have broad implications in the $65 billion U.S. TV advertising market. Broadcast television networks that base their advertising rates on the programming schedule, are already bracing for the impact of DVRs. The programming schedule business model could well disappear if viewers stopped channel surfing for shows. [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Kenneth Li] http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2005-08-12T043842Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-212424-1.xml

EVENING NEWS LOOKS LONG-TERM While the demise of the nightly news has been predicted for many years, the money is actually not bad for the No. 1 and No. 2 newscasts, says a network executive, but “it's awfully hard to be No. 3.” Today, that distinction falls to CBS. Perhaps the network might make more money by dropping its evening newscast and giving that precious time back to its owned-and-operated stations for an extra half-hour of local news. The evening newscasts still command a sizable audience, and all of them are at least marginally profitable. Furthermore, they help support the bigger moneymakers in the morning. Says Heyward, “Evening news is not only viable, but critical to the mix.” The evening newscasts are far from the institutions they were before the age of cable TV and the Internet. In the 1960s and '70s, the newscasts, along with a handful of major newspapers, had the ability to set the nation's news agenda. No more. According to Nielsen Media, back in the '70s, 35% of all households tuned into Walter Cronkite or John Chancellor on an average night. A decade ago, the evening news' share was still 24%. Today, just 18% watch. But while the audience has plunged, revenues have not. Despite the shrinking audience, broadcast networks each year generally coax more money out of advertisers for the viewers who do tune in. And despite the rise of the morning shows, evening-news shows account for an even higher portion of broadcast news revenues than in 1999. That's because prime time newsmagazines -- once a thriving billion dollar business -- have largely been displaced by reality shows. So the evening news now generates around 22% of broadcast-news revenues, up from 19% in 1999. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John M. Higgins] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA634736?display=News&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

CABLE IS UP LATE, PLOTTING TV TALK SHOWS' DEMISE Although the networks still attract far more viewers between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m., their primacy is slowly being eroded — with potentially worrisome results. Cable steadily nibbled away at broadcasters' share of the lucrative prime-time audience over the last 10 years. Yet late night remains one of the few times of the day when big networks keep a commanding lead (another is 7 to 9 a.m.). If the trend continues and viewers keep fleeing to cable after 11 p.m., analysts say, advertiser dollars will follow. It could represent a cultural change as well. Young viewers, TV veterans say, are increasingly migrating to cable because the programming isn't subject to content restrictions from the Federal Communications Commission and is often spicier -- if not necessarily raunchier -- than that found on traditional networks. During its late-night block, Comedy Central allows profanity it doesn't permit during other times of day. The 11 p.m. "Daily Show," for example, ran a clip of columnist Robert Novak's recent on-air tirade on CNN — and didn't bother to bleep the expletive he uttered before storming off the set. The message in all this seems clear: As in so many other arenas, the old media paradigms are crumbling. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Scott Collins] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-latenite15aug15,1,83113.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage (requires registration)

REMOVE THE BARRIERS TO MINORITIES IN MEDIA [Commentary] There has been notable progress for racial and ethnic minorities in the United States in the media since the 1960s. Back then the Kerner Commission was right on target when it charged that “important segments of the media failed to report . . . on the underlying problems of race relations. They have not communicated to the majority of their audience - which is white - a sense of the degradation, misery, and hopelessness of life in the ghetto.” Many of that commission’s recommendations of expanded coverage, integration of the news staffs, and training and recruitment of black journalists were implemented in the years immediately after the riots. But as the FCC understood during the Carter administration, the voice of minority groups in the media is limited by the severe under-representation of minorities among broadcast licensees. Not only do owners tend to hire employees who come from their same ethnic group, they also tend to serve those audiences they are most familiar with. A recent American Society of Newspaper Editors study found that minorities made up 13.42 percent of employees at daily papers in 2004, as compared to 12.95 in 2003. And according to the latest RTNDA/Ball State University Annual Survey, minorities comprised 21.2 percent of local television news staffs in 2004, compared with 21.8 percent in 2003. But the local radio minority workforce fell to 7.9 percent in 2004 from 11.8 percent in 2003. The percentage of minorities in radio dropped in large part because of the significant consolidation in the radio industry and the decimation of local radio newsrooms even among black owners. Americans will never be able to speak clearly and honestly with each other if one group of Americans continues to control 98 percent of the federal licenses to the most dominant form of local communication. Ethnic media will not be empowered to speak to and for the communities it serves if the FCC does not take seriously its obligation to remove the barriers that block minority participation in the communications industry. How long do we have to wait for the FCC to act? [SOURCE: Center for American Progress, AUTHOR: Mark Lloyd] http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=959321

CABLE, CONSUMER GROUPS CLASH ANEW After a protracted, multiyear struggle on Capitol Hill, Congress passed a law in late 1992 that required the Federal Communications Commission to cap the size of cable companies and ensure cable carriage of channels not owned by cable operators. As a result of court setbacks and bureaucratic inaction, valid FCC rules have been in effect for just a few months during the entire 13-year period, an era characterized by a series of cable-operator mergers that the federal government refused to block. But cable ownership is back on the FCC agenda. With a deregulatory mindset, former FCC chairman Michael Powell declined to push for new rules. Powell successor Kevin Martin, who took office in March, has different ideas, announcing in May that the agency would attempt to put new rules on the books and defend them in court. Federal law requires the FCC to set “reasonable limits” on the number of subscribers served by a single cable company. It also calls for a cap on the number of channels an operator may fill with its own programming. Furious that the FCC has let a top-heavy cable industry emerge, Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America and Free Press in joint comments called for rules that would assign greater value to urban than to rural subscribers, apparently in an effort to break up markets and regions dominated by a single cable company -- for example, Comcast in Philadelphia or Time Warner in Los Angeles, after its merger with Adelphia Communications. “Setting a meaningful horizontal limit on the national reach of cable operators based on an advertising market weighted measure of subscribers would be a major step in the right direction,” said the consumer groups, adding that their formula would require Comcast to sell 4 million subscribers and back away from the Adelphia deal. The Media Access Project, a public-interest law firm that helped defeat Powell’s effort to relax broadcast-ownership rules, is planning to ask the FCC to cap one cable company at 25% of all U.S. pay-TV subscribers. That cap would force Comcast, at 29% after the Adelphia merger, to sell systems. MAP attorney Harold Feld said that because he believes the FCC would never force Comcast to sell, MAP would not ask for retroactive enforcement. “Given the commission’s reluctance to order divestitures, we don't think divestitures are likely,” Feld said. [SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn] http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA634624.html?display=Policy (requires subscription)

RADIO DAZE Payola or no, the industry will still be in the hands of just a few players, dominated by product churned out by Sony BMG and its three major competitors -- EMI Group, Vivendi's Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group -- and programmed by giants like Clear Channel Communications and Viacom's Infinity unit. But radio does need to change its habits, and not because the industry may be violating vague, often puzzling laws written four decades ago. Radio needs to change the way it programs itself because its audience is tuning out. Listenership has been dropping since 2003. And after posting double-digit growth rates for most of the 1990s, radio ad sales have slowed to a barely perceptible crawl: Last year advertising revenue climbed just 2%, to $21.4 billion. If it wants to, though, the business could help itself, simply by doing a better job of finding out what listeners want. It can start by turning to the Internet. The Web can provide radio program directors, and the record labels who try to persuade them to play their music, with all sorts of useful data, if they're willing to use it. [SOURCE: Forbes.com, AUTHOR: Peter Kafka] http://www.forbes.com/2005/08/09/radio-programming-music-cx_pk_0809radio_print.html

WEB ACCESS MAY BE AS CLOSE AS AN ELECTRICAL OUTLET Broadband over Power Lines (BPL), with investments from big-name companies including Google and IBM, is beginning to move beyond small trial projects to deploying systems for large communities. Highly regulated power companies, which operate as local monopolies, generally take a conservative approach to new ventures, especially those outside their core mission. What is winning them over has been the possibility of using BPL to improve efficiency. With BPL, utilities can quickly identify where outages have taken place, read meters remotely, and conduct preventive maintenance, such as replacing a transformer before it fails, by monitoring unusual "noise" on the system. While BPL faces strong competition in urban and suburban areas already served by cable and phone companies, underserved rural communities could benefit. But don't include single homes miles from any others. An Internet signal degrades as it travels long distances over a power line. The signal needs to be boosted along the way. Running service to a single home is too costly, but service to clusters of perhaps 50 homes or more is feasible. [SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Gregory M. Lamb] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0815/p13s01-stct.html

WHAT YOU CAN'T SAY WILL HURT YOU [Commentary] The United States has a long and unfortunate history of overreacting to the fears and anxieties of wartime and excessively restricting the freedom of speech. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Geoffrey R. Stone, University of Chicago] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/opinion/15stone.html (requires registration)

(August 12) COMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES RANKLE CUSTOMERS Even as technology races to new heights in the communications industry, the mundane matter of customer service keeps dragging consumers back to earth. Such companies now rate near or at the bottom in some customer satisfaction surveys, even as the government moves to loosen oversight and deregulate the industry. a series of mergers and regulatory decisions in the industry could worsen problems by concentrating power in the hands of fewer, bigger companies, consumer advocates say. Two recent decisions -- one last week by the Federal Communications Commission and another by the Supreme Court in June -- could reduce competition because phone and cable companies will no longer be required to lease their lines to rival Internet service providers. "They're not really afraid of losing your business. You have nowhere else to go," Gene Kimmelman, director of Consumers Union, said of the industry's big players. "Mergers are definitely going to make it worse, reducing the competitive threat even more." [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Yuki Noguchi] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081102101.html (requires registration)

FORGET DEREGULATION Media Life asked media planners and buyers "What's your opinion of media deregulation?" Three-quarters of respondents agree with the statement: "It's absurd. I don't want one huge conglomerate to own everything. It's not fair to the little guys and it really hurts me as a buyer/planner." But media people also worry that further consolidation will have the effect of hurting the quality of the entertainment product in which they play their clients' ads. The question: "What does media deregulation mean for the quality of entertainment? Will it suffer?" Eighty percent think so, agreeing with the statement: "Yes. With less competition, of course there will be fewer innovations and less critical thinking. You can already see it on TV and radio." Just 20 percent disagree. Many readers think the entire deregulation issue has become tainted by politics. We asked readers: "If you could give new FCC chairman Kevin Martin one piece of advice as he wades into deregulation, what would it be?" "Leave politics at home. Remember the original intention of the FCC and that the airwaves belong to the people," advises one respondent. "Stop catering to the big corporations and think about what's right for the American public--which is his job, after all," writes another. And if Martin should choose to move ahead with deregulation, he should put some real thought into how it ought to be done. Obviously, past efforts failed, and readers believe it was because they seemed arbitrary, based on numbers rather than solid reasoning. One reader advises Martin: "Research the answer to the question: If this passes, what will the consequences be to the country economically in 10 years?" [SOURCE: Media Life, AUTHOR: Toni Fitzgerald] http://www.medialifemagazine.com/News2005/aug05/aug8/4_thurs/news4thursday.html

CELLPHONE LINES DRAW SCRUTINY The use of cellphones to detonate bombs in Iraq is prompting debate about the merits of shutting down entire wireless networks to head off terrorist attacks. While authorities in the U.S. apparently have yet to ask a wireless carrier to shut down its entire network, government officials, trying to head off possible cellphone-enabled attacks in New York, last month turned off equipment that permits cellular service in four tunnels in Manhattan after four bombs went off in London. Two regional government agencies -- the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls communications in the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which controls the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and the Queens Midtown Tunnel -- authorized the shutdown. The service shutdown triggered a clash between the needs of law enforcement and those of consumers. The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, a Washington group that represents cellphone companies, says carriers are working with government officials to determine a national standard for requesting network shutdowns. Cellular carriers have no way to determine the authenticity of a request to turn off their networks and are hoping for a standardized process. Some civil libertarians and technology experts are outraged at the notion of the government cutting off communication to prevent a perceived threat. Cellphones transmit vital information in times of emergencies, they say. "This is as idiotic as it gets," said Bruce Schneier, author of the book, "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World." "Have people forgotten how cellphones saved lives on 9/11? Not just the fourth plane, but people talking to people in the Twin Towers." Shutdowns are an example of what Mr. Schneier, a computer-security expert, calls "movie plot security," which involves imagining a scenario rather than focusing on broad threats. And it is futile if a terrorist uses another kind of common detonator such as a kitchen timer. Afterall, he says, calling a cellphone is one of many ways to set off a bomb. "Communication," Mr. Schneier says, "benefits the defenders far more than it benefits the attackers." [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Dionne Searcey dionne.searcey@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112380930561111579,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription)

ANTIWAR ACTIVISTS DECRY MEDIA'S ROLE IN PROMOTING PENTAGON EVENT Organizers of next month's planned antiwar demonstrations yesterday criticized media organizations, including The Washington Post, for co-sponsoring with the Department of Defense an event to remember the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and to support the troops in Iraq. The Defense Department-sponsored Freedom Walk will proceed from the Pentagon to the Mall near the Reflecting Pool on the morning of Sept. 11. Country music star Clint Black is donating his time to perform a concert after the walk that will be broadcast to troops overseas. DC media outlets The Washington Post, WTOP radio, WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8 are donating public service announcements in advance of the event. Non-media co-sponsors include Lockheed Martin, Subway and the Washington Convention and Tourism Corp. On Sept. 24, nearly two weeks after the walk, critics of the war will gather in Washington for three days of demonstrations, including a concert, a march and other events. Yesterday, some of those critics said media support for the Pentagon event undercuts their credibility in covering the controversial war as well as reporting on antiwar efforts. "No common person will see this as not taking sides in this war," said Adam Eidinger, a promoter of the antiwar concert being called Operation Ceasefire. "This is clearly support for the war because it's being organized by the U.S. military." "With The Washington Post and other media outlets supporting this, they are in effect putting their opinions behind the Bush administration," said Caneisha Mills, a national organizer with the antiwar group International ANSWER and a student at Howard University. Representatives of the media organizations drew a distinction between supporting the troops and supporting the war policy. They also said the sponsorships emanated from the corporate sides of their companies, not the newsroom. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: David Montgomery] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081101980.html (requires registration)

THE NEW ERNIE PYLES Since the 1850s, when a London Times reporter was sent to chronicle the Crimean War, journalists have generally provided the most immediate first-hand depictions of major conflicts. But in Iraq, service members themselves are delivering real-time dispatches -- in their own words -- often to an audience of thousands through postings to their blogs. At least 200 active-duty soldiers currently keep blogs. Only about a dozen blogs were in existence two years ago when the U.S. invaded Iraq, according to "The Mudville Gazette" ( http://www.mudvillegazette.com ), a clearinghouse of information on military blogging administered by an Army veteran who goes by the screen name Greyhawk. Written in the casual, sometimes profane language of the barracks, the entries give readers an unfiltered perspective on combat largely unavailable elsewhere. But they are also drawing new scrutiny and regulation from commanders concerned they could compromise security. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Jonathan Finer] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081102168.html (requires registration) * Who was Ernie Pyle? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Pyle

UK MEDIA LAW KEEPS NEWS ON BOMB SUSPECTS OUT OF PRESS Stories about the men suspected of trying to blow up the London subway and a bus on July 21 filled Britain's daily newspapers and television networks for more than two weeks. Dramatic photos showed two suspects surrendering with their hands in the air to armed police. But earlier this week, the coverage all but disappeared. As soon as the suspects appeared in court on Monday, charged with conspiracy to murder and other crimes, the news media are prohibited by British law from reporting information that might prevent their fair trials. That means until their trials begin in a year or more, virtually nothing about them can appear in London's 12 daily newspapers and other media beyond such basic facts as their names, ages and the charges against them. The legal restrictions are designed to ensure potential jurors don't read, watch or hear any reports that might influence their view of a case. Defense lawyers and the government say such measures are especially important because Britain's newspapers are notoriously intrusive and aggressive but often inaccurate and sensationalistic. The media rules, however, are posing increasing problems. The proliferation of the Internet and other alternative media is limiting the British government's ability to restrict information since Britons can read online coverage by foreign newspapers and independent bloggers. In theory, foreign news media are subject to the same restrictions on print editions that are sold on British newsstands and on their Web sites, which can be read in the U.K. But no foreign news outlet has ever been prosecuted under the law. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Mary Jacoby mary.jacoby@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112379603783011253,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

CABLE CAN'T GET BEYOND THE PALE [Commentary] The pathological cable news obsession with young, attractive white women who unfortunately vanish continues unabated. Yes, the nation is still transfixed by Damsels in Distress -- only now it's gotten worse: The media are suddenly obsessed with their own obsession. Does the whole Damsels thing result from a lack of diversity in television newsrooms? Maybe in part, but I don't think that can be the only answer. Television newsrooms are generally more diverse than newspaper staffs, so if lack of diversity were the only reason, you'd expect newspapers to be leading the Damsels charge. But newspapers aren't opening ad hoc bureaus in Aruba; cable networks are. That leaves one other possibility: Cable television executives, producers and anchors have decided that viewers will stay glued to the set to hear endlessly about young, photogenic, missing women -- but only if they're white. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Eugene Robinson] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081101759.html (requires registration)

NIELSEN STUDY TO GAUGE PLACEMENTS Nielsen Media Research and Nielsen Entertainment are conducting a research study that will assess the factors that affect the effectiveness of product placements. The study will analyze the relationship viewers have with a specific program, as well as their familiarity with the brand and product category featured as related to the effectiveness of the placements. The study's initial participants will include CBS, UPN, The Weather Channel, Discovery Communications Inc., Magna Global, MediaCom, OMD, PHD, Sprint and Zenith Optimedia. [SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Linda Moss] http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA634272.html?display=Breaking+News (requires subscription) * Nielsen Drills Down Into Plugs http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA634188?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

MARKETERS WRESTLE WITH HARD-TO-CONTROL WEB CONTENT Is it safe to advertise in places on the Internet that are essentially run by consumers and cannot be controlled? How can they protect themselves and their good names when blog and chat-room users are liable to say and post anything? It's not just pornography or off-color language that worries them. What if consumers got angry about something involving a marketer's brand, and their remarks got linked to across the Internet? Maybe advertising in such open spaces is not worth the risk. [SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Kris Oser] http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=45778

(August 11) A BUOYED MURDOCH BLOCKS A MAJOR INVESTOR Rupert Murdoch gave the cold shoulder to his largest shareholder, John C Malone, yesterday by extending a poison pill that blocks Mr Malone's Liberty Media Corporation from buying more shares of Mr Murdoch's News Corporation. The shareholder rights plan, or poison pill, was put in place for a period of one year last November, but was extended by the News Corporation's board for two more years. Mr Murdoch indicated talks with Mr Malone about swapping assets for the shares or entering into some kind of standstill arrangement had stalled. Mr Malone built an 18 percent voting stake in the News Corporation last year, to Mr Murdoch's surprise, while professing friendly intentions to Mr Murdoch, a sometime business partner. In a conference call last week, M. Malone said he did not expect to sell the shares any time soon and hoped the company's strategy would be focused "a little more on shareholder returns and less on empire building." Mr Murdoch controls 29.5 percent of the company's voting stock. The analyst Richard Greenfield of Fulcrum Global Partners applauded Mr Murdoch's tactics. "You've seen today where the leverage rests - with Murdoch, not with Malone," Mr Greenfield said. "You own this stock for Rupert's vision. Any threats to that vision should be protected by the company." In the conference call, Mr Murdoch emphasized the company was serious about competing on the Internet. After spending $580 million to acquire Intermix Media and its popular social networking site Myspace.com, Mr Murdoch said the company could spend double that and possibly up to $2 billion to buy Internet assets to complement what the company would build internally. The company also last week acquired the sports Web business Scout Media for $60 million, and Mr. Murdoch said the company is "in very advanced negotiations to buy a controlling interest in what we think is a wonderful search engine." [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Richard Siklos] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/11/business/media/11news.html (requires registration) * News Corp. Extends Its Poison Pill http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112368437408109776,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one * News Corp's Murdoch: No Bigger Priority Than Internet http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20050810-000911-1846

HOLLYWOOD, RADIO FINALLY PART WAVES For some, Friday will mark a dark day in Hollywood -- and a reminder of how much the radio business has changed. Microphones at the last radio station in Hollywood will go dead as announcers and newscasters complete their final on-air shift at the historic Columbia Square broadcast center. The relocation of Los Angeles' first radio station, KNX-AM (1070), to new studios in Wilshire Boulevard's Miracle Mile area will end an 85-year tradition of radio broadcasting in the place that bills itself as the world's center of entertainment. Over the years, Hollywood has been home to 68 radio stations and nine television stations. In the last few years, five television stations have left. And when Columbia Square is shut down next year, two more -- KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KCAL-TV Channel 9 -- will move to new headquarters being built in Studio City. That will leave just two television stations, KTLA-TV Channel 5 and KCET-TV Channel 28, in Tinseltown. "I never thought I'd see the day when there are no radio broadcasts out of Hollywood," said KNX assistant news director Ronnie Bradford, who joined the station in 1968. "This is a company town -- movies, television and radio." Many believe that the loss of radio has to do with corporate economics. The dozens of radio and TV stations, once independently owned, are now part of big corporate chains. These companies, like Infinity and Clear Channel, save money by consolidating engineering and administrative jobs under one roof. The radio and TV buildings in Hollywood are old, making it hard to conform with the latest technology. Infinity owns seven radio stations, including KROQ-FM (106.7) and KRTH-FM (101), while Clear Channel owns 10, such as KIIS-FM (102.7) and KFI-AM (640). [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Bob Pool] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-hollywood11aug11,1,644230.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage (requires registration)

THE MOVIES ARE RATED R, BUT NOT ON THE BILLBOARDS In a season when raunchy sex comedies were supposed to defy conventional Hollywood marketing wisdom by wearing their R-ratings proudly, they instead appear to be test cases as studios exploit a loophole in the movie industry's self-regulating ratings system, which is intended to give parents the information they need to make decisions about what their children see. (The ratings system has been refined in recent years amid pressure from Congress and parents' groups, but they were focused on violence, not sex.) Outdoor advertisements for many movies now include fine print saying that the movie has yet to be rated. Nell Minow (daughter of the famous former FCC chairman Newt), who writes parent-oriented film reviews for Yahoo! as the Movie Mom, said she believed the studios were "intentionally and maliciously exploiting a loophole" in the ratings system. "They would get it in on time if they wanted to," she said. "The sweet spot for an R-rated comedy is the 15-to-17-year-old range," she said. "Not having a rating means that a 15-year-old is getting more interested in the movie than if it already said, 'This is not permissible for you.' It's that most vulnerable audience that's most intrigued. I don't think it's parents being fooled, I think it's the under-age audience that's being titillated by the prospect of seeing the movie." [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Halbfinger] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/11/movies/11raun.html (requires registration)

TEXT MESSAGES SENT BY CELLPHONE FINALLY CATCH ON IN US Some 55 million cellphone users in the U.S. use text messaging for everything from chatting and dating to business and spiritual counseling. Once mostly a fad among teens in the U.S., text messaging is growing in popularity among American adults. They are finding it to be less intrusive than voice calling, especially in public spaces. It also can be more private than email, since an office colleague or family member can more readily see a message typed on a computer screen. Some 4.7 billion text messages were sent in the U.S. last December, the latest figures available, compared with 2.1 billion a year earlier and 253 million in December 2001, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association. Revenue from text messaging is projected to grow to $4.3 billion in 2006 from $2.5 billion in 2004, says Forrester Research. Still, the U.S. remains a laggard in "texting" compared with many other regions of the world. CTIA estimates that in 2004, U.S. cellphone users sent 203 text messages on average, or 37 billion in total, while in China, cellphone users exchanged 651 per user, or 218 billion in total, according to the Chinese information industry ministry. About 71% of European cellphone users send text messages, more than twice the percentage in the U.S., says Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester. A survey earlier this year by technology consulting firm Yankee Group of 5,200 adults found that 33% of Americans between 25 and 34 text-message regularly, up from 24% in 2004. The rate of text messaging by people between 35 and 44 remained about 25% in both years, while usage by 18- to 24-year-olds grew to 62% from 52%. As more older consumers join in, text messaging will be a major driver of overall data revenue for cellphone carriers over the next five years, says Linda Barrabee, a Yankee Group analyst. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Li Yuan li.yuan@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112372600885810565,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

CRACKING DOWN ON 'MOBILE VIEWING' DVDs and driving increasingly don't mix. While many states have long banned drivers from watching television in their cars, a growing number are expanding such laws to prohibit drivers from viewing DVD players, laptop screens and other video entertainment. Meanwhile, a number of states that never had driving-and-viewing laws are working on adding them. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jennifer Saranow jennifer.saranow@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112372578791610559,00.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal (requires subscription)

NCAA WANTS MEDIA TO DROP INDIAN NAMES National Collegiate Athletic Association spokesman Bob Williams confirmed Wednesday that the NCAA will encourage broadcast and cable outlets that carry its college sports championships not to use Indian-related team names, including Braves, Indians, Savages, which the NCAA has concluded are "hostile and abusive." [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA634090?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

CDT SUPPORTS CHALLENGES TO FBI RECORDS DEMANDS CDT and other privacy groups joined a brief written by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, supporting on appeal the decision of a lower federal court that National Security Letters (NSLs) are unconstitutional. NSLs are secret demands for Internet and telephone communications logs that are issued by the FBI without prior judicial approval. Brief on National Security Letters: http://www.cdt.org/security/20050805nslbrief.pdf

WEB INCREASINGLY CLUTTERED BY SITES FULL OF PAID LINKS [Commentary] Search-related advertising is fueling a new wave of Web sites that seem to have as much appeal as a cheesy Hollywood set. That's because many are created to look good to search engines, much as fake scenery fools TV cameras. Everywhere I turn online these days I stumble over junky sites that do little more than clutter up the search results at Google and Yahoo. The search engine ad industry appears to have touched off a moneymaking frenzy only slightly less intense than the original dot-com boom. But I can't help but think that this new wave is generating too many useless link directories designed to provide no value to site visitors, while making money the same way Google and Yahoo do, by showing links to sites that pay each time someone clicks on them. Many redistribute text ads sold by Google and Yahoo, which makes the Web feel like a hall of mirrors. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Leslie Walker walkerl@washpost.com] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081001985.html (requires registration)

FALL MEDIA READING LIST What's the most useful book on media you've read and why? See answers from real live media people (if there is such a thing) at the URL below. [SOURCE: MediaBistro, AUTHOR: David Hirschman ] http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a5011.asp

BRING BACK HOME RULE -- THE STATE OF TELECOM 100 YEARS AGO & TODAY [Commentary] I was recently speaking with the CEO of one of the major US wireless providers about the place of non-incumbents in creating telecommunication infrastructure. After a beer or two we ended up discussing telecommunications history (one of my favorite subjects) and I promised to send along some background information on one of the most exciting periods -- back at the turn of the last century -- 1894 (when the Bell system's patents on the telephone expired) through the early 1900s. I think this information would prove extremely useful to current policy debate (especially given the current state and national debates to limit municipal broadband) -- so I've decided to put it out there publicly to see how other folks might utilize it. If nothing else, it provides a cautionary tale for those seeking to limit consumer's choices. Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Starr wrote a book called, "The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications." Chapter 6 focuses on "Telephone, Cable, and Wireless." It's definitely worth the read; however, for those on the go, here's some choice excerpts concerning the Home Rule Movement. After 1893 there was an explosion of interest in wire-line communications. Starr writes: From 1894 until 1907 (and continuing in lesser degree for another decade), the market broke open with a surge of independent commercial and nonprofit cooperative telephone enterprises. This opening, more than any other development, propelled the popular takeoff of the telephone in America, expanding its geographical range and allowing consumers to push its evolution in directions the Bell System had not planned." More at the URL below... [SOURCE: Sascha Meinrath] http://www.saschameinrath.com/node/175 http://www.freepress.net

FCC LAUNCHES PAYOLA INVESTIGATION FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has launched an investigation into payola. The move was prompted by a settlement between Sony/BMG and New York State over payments to stations for playing Sony/BMG artists, but Chairman Martin said it could extend beyond those companies. "The FCC has longstanding rules prohibiting payola," the Chairman said in a statement. "These rules serve the important purpose of ensuring that the listening public knows when someone is seeking to influence them. Broadcasters must comply with these rules. The Commission will not tolerate non-compliance. While payola may not be a widespread practice in the broadcasting industry, to the extent it is going on, it must stop." The move was praised by Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein who has made examining payola and plugola on radio and TV a priority. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA633231?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers) * U.S. to Revisit Payola Inquiry http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-fcc9aug09,1,548728.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business

MEDIA NO MORE [Commentary] We are headed into the post-media age. When you think about it, media are the artificial inventions of their means of distribution: Books begat authors; fast and cheap presses enabled reporters and press barons; TV bore anchors. But there is nothing to say that these media are preordained as the best methods of sharing knowledge and getting things done in society. They were the convenient ways. Emphasis on the past tense. The natural means of interaction and of sharing information is, of course, conversation, through the ability to ask and answer questions, to impart and collect knowledge. I'm not one to make allusions to primitive life as if that describes the natural state of man, but I will in this case: When you listened to the tribe storyteller, you could remix before passing on; when you heard from the town crier, you could stick your head out the window and ask for details; when you set the price of a good or service, you got to haggle with the seller. This is why Socrates said that education is a conversation, and why Luther said that prayer is a conversation, and why Cluetrain says that markets are conversations, and why I say that news is a conversation. That is the natural order of things. Media changed that. Media made society one-way. But now the Internet drains the one-way pipes of media and pours us all in the same pond together. The Internet enables conversation. [SOURCE: BuzzMachine, AUTHOR: Jeff Jarvis] http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2005/08/08/media-no-more/

THE DIGGING LIFE 16 years ago, TV producer Charles Lewis left "60 Minutes" to found the Center for Public Integrity. In the years since, the Center has become the largest non-profit investigative journalism organization in the world, uncovering some of last decade's most important political stories. [SOURCE: On the Media] http://www.onthemedia.org/stream/ram.py?file=otm/otm080505c.mp3 CREATION OF MEDIA It's often been observed that technological innovations are the primary force driving the evolution of the mass media. But make your way through the 402 pages Paul Starr's book The Creation of the Media, and that notion will be left in dust - along with many other common assumptions. In the book, Starr argues that the government has played a much more fundamental role in the growth of the American media than is commonly thought. [SOURCE: On the Media] http://www.onthemedia.org/stream/ram.py?file=otm/otm080505e.mp3

WORDWATCH: ECHO CHAMBER A free forum of ideas suggests a back-and-forth exchange between individuals with various perspectives. But what happens when people are sequestered to separate discursive spaces on the basis of their ideas? As we're seeing all over the Internet these days, debate breaks down, and in its place we find simply a multiplicity of "echo chambers." University of Chicago professor Cass Sunstein talks about the metaphorical reverberations of the phrase. [SOURCE: On the Media] http://www.onthemedia.org/stream/ram.py?file=otm/otm080505e.mp3

TAKING THE VIOLENCE OUT OF VIDEOGAMES: WHAT PARENTS CAN DO BEFORE KIDS PLAY Research shows that videogames have become an important component of kids' play and socialization. One study of Japanese kindergartners found that children who played videogames together developed better social skills. A recent survey by Harvard researchers of more than 1,200 7th and 8th graders found that only about 1% of children studied had never played videogames. Until more is known, videogame researchers say parents can adopt some practical approaches to limiting children's exposure to game violence. 1) Move the games to a high-traffic area so you can see what and when your kids are playing. 2) Look beyond the rating system. Parents can learn more about the game-rating system at www.esrb.com, but ratings offer only general descriptions of the type of content. 3) Look at bestseller lists. Parents can see what children are playing by looking at such Web sites as Amazon.com and gamespot.com that post lists of the most popular games. 4) Treat games like other media. While there isn't any conclusive research about how much video playing is too much, researchers say parents should think about a child's entire media diet of television, movies, books and videogame playing, and set reasonable limits to encourage other types of play and family interaction. 5) Play the games yourself. Parents who do take the time to learn about the games children play will be surprised at how much skill it requires -- and how much children enjoy watching their parents struggle to play. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Tara Parker-Pope tara.parker-pope@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112354118842908054,00.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal (requires subscription)

DOT-COMS ARE SO 90S; IN SILICON VALLEY, DOING GOOD IS THE NEW THING Ten years after the Aug. 9, 1995, initial public offering of Netscape set off the Internet boom and five years after the bust, venture capitalists are leading a push to remake Silicon Valley as a center for a new form of social entrepreneurship and venture philanthropy, a place where you can make good money by doing good. While plenty of people here still are out to make fast bucks, there also has been a surge in investments aimed at solving some of the world's most formidable problems. Venture capitalists chastened by the bursting of the bubble say they want to make a mark that lasts beyond the next quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ariana Eunjung Cha] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/08/AR2005080801486.html?referrer=emailarticlepg (requires registration)

IN TELEVISION TODAY, THE STUDIO AUDIENCE CAN'T JUST SIT THERE More on the state of shill-o-vision. From daytime to prime time, television is asking studio audiences to play a bigger part in selling programs to viewers. Just sitting there laughing and heeding flashing "Applause" signs is no longer enough. Nor is having an engaging host -- partly because there are an awful lot of engaging hosts out there. Rob Dauber, co-executive producer of Martha Stewart's new daytime "how-to" show, sees this new emphasis on the audience as an extension of popular reality shows. Viewers like to see ordinary folks acting spontaneously. "Seeing someone like you on a show makes you want to watch," says Susan Lyne, chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. "On a subliminal level, it suggests the show is for you." [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Brooks Barnes brooks.barnes@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112319944041705585,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription)

MEASURING THE BLOGOSPHERE Earlier this week, Technorati, a Web site that indexes blogs, released its semiannual "State of the Blogosphere" report. It records a steady, and astonishing, growth. Nearly 80,000 new blogs are created every day, and there are some 14.2 million in existence already, 55 percent of which remain active. Some 900,000 new blog postings are added every day - a steady increase marked by extraordinary spikes in new postings after incidents like the London bombing. The blogosphere - that is, the virtual realm of blogdom as a whole - doubles in size every five and a half months. If the blogosphere continues to expand at this rate, every person who has Internet access will be a blogger before long, if not an actual reader of blogs. ("The point at issue is not whether Maine and Texas may now talk to one another, but rather whether they have anything significant to say.") [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/opinion/05fri4.html (requires registration)

DARKNETS RISING TO EXPAND FILE SHARING Fresh from its victory in the Supreme Court Grokster case, Hollywood faces a new Internet threat -- the rise of ``darknets,'' or private, encrypted networks that allow the anonymous exchange of music, movies and other digital files. The entertainment industry has dismissed these hidden networks as a risk because they lack the massive reach of a file-swapping service like Kazaa, which has been downloaded 378 million times and enables the exchange of billions of songs, movies and software. But a new search technique, unveiled at a hacker's convention in Las Vegas last week, could dramatically expand the reach of these darknets beyond small groups of trusted friends to potentially millions of people. [SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Dawn C. Chmielewski] http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/12309492.htm

OUT OF NECESSITY AND IN STYLE, IRAQIS CONNECT TO CELLULAR AGE Banned during Saddam Hussein's reign and introduced only last year, cellphones are an obsession in this country. Iraqis give them nicknames and spend inordinate amounts of money on the latest models, accessories and ring tones. Cellphones have become an indispensable part of everyday life, crucial for families negotiating commutes to school and work amid bombings and bloodshed. They also have a status function. In Iraq, they are a fashion symbol nonpareil. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Louise Roug] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-cellphones5aug05,1,131492.story?coll=la-news-a_section (requires registration)

IF WE BUY IT, IT WILL COME [Commentary] Sometimes the only way to find out if a technology works is to try it. And the only way to see if it is profitable is to try to sell it. Using file-sharing software, you can now download high definition television clips to your computer. Interested? [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-cuban5aug05,1,342948.story?coll=la-news-comment (requires registration)

MORE PEOPLE TURN TO THE WEB TO WATCH TV For two decades, media company executives and advertisers have been talking about creating fully interactive television that would allow viewers to watch exactly what they want, when they want it. It looks like that future may well be by way of the computer, as big media and Internet companies develop new Web-based video programming and advertising that is truly under the command of the viewer. As Americans grow more comfortable watching programs online, Internet programming is beginning to combine the interactivity and immediacy of the Web with the alluring engagement of television. Investing in new Internet video programming is a way to cash in on the demands of advertisers who want to put their commercials on computer screens, where new viewers are watching. And on many Web sites, viewers can't skip the video commercials, the way they can when using TiVo and other video recorders. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Saul Hansell] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/01/technology/01video.html (requires registration)

CAN ANYONE ANSWER VODAFONE? On July 27, France Telecom said that it would pay $7.7 billion to acquire an 80% stake in Amena, the No. 3 wireless operator in Spain, from telco Grupo Auna. The deal reflects widespread consolidation in the European wireless sector, where companies are racing to keep up with giant Vodafone Group. With 165 million subscribers, Vodafone is the largest player by far. That has put particular pressure on rivals in Europe. With its enormous scale, Vodafone has been able to cut costs and pass savings along to customers. Big national cellular carriers in Europe have no choice but to create a platform that can rival Vodafone. More deals are on the way. The big consolidators are likely to be France Telecom and Telefonica Moviles. With the acquisition of wireless carrier Orange behind it, France Telecom is already gaining power. Telefonica especially needs to find a way to reverse a decline in operating profit margins. Deutsche Telekom, which appears to be angling to grow its T-Mobile brand in Eastern Europe and the U.S., looks to be playing a different game. But the biggest consolidator on the Continent may yet be Vodafone, though. With a market cap of $167 billion, the company has the means to control its own destiny. And should it ever decide to sell its 45% stake in U.S. giant Verizon Wireless to its partner Verizon Communications, the deal would put tens of billions of dollars into its war chest. Its position as a strong No. 2 in many markets around the world puts it at the top of the heap overall, exerting unrivaled influence in the market. To catch up, the big players in Europe's wireless market must find a way to break down the national borders that have defined their businesses for so long. [SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Steve Rosenbush] http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2005/tc20050728_7414_tc024.htm

AT NEWS CORP, A BITTER BATTLE OVER INHERITANCE SPLITS FAMILY The Murdoch family controls nearly 30% of News Corp., one of the world's biggest media conglomerates. Its far-flung properties include the New York Post and Times of London newspapers, the Fox broadcast TV network, Fox News Channel, control of satellite-TV services such as BSkyB in the United Kingdom, Sky Italia and DirecTV in the U.S., as well as the 20th Century Fox film studio. For the first time in 50 years, Rupert Murdoch's control has come under threat. Liberty Media Corp., controlled by media titan John Malone, disclosed late last year it had boosted its voting stake in News Corp. to 18%, fewer than a dozen percentage points below the Murdoch family's 29.5% stake. Last week, Lachlan Murdoch, who was once seen as his father's heir apparent, said in a written statement last week he will relocate to Australia, which he considers home, with his wife and young baby. He will retain a seat on News Corp.'s board. In a written statement Friday, Mr. Murdoch, 74, said he was "saddened" by his son's decision. The departure is the most public sign of a rift between Rupert Murdoch's adult children and his third wife and mother of his two toddler children. The battle will decide who gets control of the media empire after Mr. Murdoch. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Martin Peers martin.peers@wsj.com, Julia Angwin julia.angwin@wsj.com and John Lippman john.lippman@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112263384067799790,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription) * Behind Murdoch Rift, a Media Dynasty Unhappy in Its Own Way http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/01/business/media/01murdoch.html * James Murdoch Begins to Cast His Own Shadow From BSkyB The resignation of his older brother, Lachlan, from News Corp. executive roles last week leaves James Murdoch as the leading family candidate to take control of the media giant when Rupert Murdoch steps down or dies. Still, people familiar with News Corp. caution that it could be many years before Rupert Murdoch will want turn over the reins, and family dynamics could easily change before then. In the near term, News Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin appears best poised to take the top spot should the elder Mr. Murdoch step down. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112285255424901006,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

YOU CAN'T AVOID THE COMMERCIALS Beware: Television more and more is shill-o-vision, where commercial breaks still come and go but the commercials never end. Foiling ad-aversive TiVo users, TV honchos burn with gold-rush fever as they stake out a zap-proof advertising gold mine: the programming itself. In 2004, the value of television product placements (a product or brand name inserted for marketing purposes into entertainment fare) increased by 46.4 percent over the year before, to $1.88 billion. Not that "advertainment" is limited to television. Video games, novels, movies, pop songs, music videos, Broadway plays -- every nook and cranny of the culture, it seems, comes preinstalled with product plugs. Or soon will. But TV is a little different. Its broadcast channels are carried on public airwaves and regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, which lately has been taking a new look at embedded advertising -- and its potential for catching the audience off-guard. "I think product placements can be deceptive, because most viewers don't realize they're really advertisements," says FCC Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein. "That's why there's a law that requires disclosure. The question is: How well are we enforcing it?" [SOURCE: Associated Press] http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/28/apontv.productplacement.ap/ See also: * Payola: The Next Big Storm? [Commentary] Like the “perfect storm” that led to the strongest indecency crackdown in FCC history, recent events could produce a wave of aggressive FCC enforcement of payola and related sponsorship-identification rules. Broadcasters ought to take protective action, and the FCC needs to be careful not to interfere with broadcasters' editorial discretion and First Amendment rights. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: David H. Solomon] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA631113?display=Opinion&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

INDEPENDENT MEDIA DEVELOPMENT ABROAD: CHALLENGES EXIST IN IMPLEMENTING US EFFORTS AND MEASURING RESULTS Independent media development led by the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) supports the national security goal of developing sustainable democracies around the world. Independent media institutions play a role in supporting commerce, improving public health efforts, reducing corruption, and providing civic education. According to the Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press 2005 survey, despite important gains in some countries, the overall level of press freedom worldwide continued to worsen in 2004. GAO was asked to examine 1) U.S. government funding for independent media development overseas; 2) the extent to which U.S. agencies measure performance toward achieving results; and 3) the challenges the United States faces in achieving results. The Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development obligated at least $40 million in fiscal year 2004 for the development of independent media, including activities such as journalism and business management training and support for legal and regulatory frameworks. About 60 percent of the fiscal year 2004 USAID and State obligations we identified supported independent media development projects in Europe and Eurasia. However, precise funding levels are difficult to identify due to a lack of agency-wide budget codes to track media development obligations, differing definitions of independent media development, and complex funding patterns. (GAO-05-803) [SOURCE: US Government Accountability Office] http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-803 Highlights: http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05803high.pdf

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Communications-Related Headlines are compiled, summarized and edited by Rachel Anderson (rachel@benton.org), Andy Carvin (andy@benton.org) and Charles Meisch (charlie@benton.org) of the Benton Foundation -- we welcome your feedback. Based in Washington DC, the Benton Foundation's mission is to articulate a public interest vision for the digital age and demonstrate the value of communications for solving social problems. Other projects at Benton include:
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