Articles by Adam Thierer 
Senior Fellow in Technology & Innovation at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC. Formerly a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, President of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, Director of Telecommunications Studies at the Cato Institute, and a Fellow in Economic Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
Many media pundits are fond of saying that newspapers are a dying medium. That seems logical to many of us since we see the rapid proliferation of new media outlets and devices all around us. But the fact is that a heck of a lot of people still read newspapers every day.
Want some rather shocking proof of that? Well, last week the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority reported that additional refuse from riders, especially free newspapers, are adding about 15 tons more trash a day to the subway system than 2004, causing more track fires, train delays, and adding millions to MTA expenses.
15 TONS! To put that number in perspective, that’s roughly the equivalent of 120 refrigerators worth of trash! (The average refrigerator weighs roughly 250lbs, or 8 fridges per ton). Granted, this is New York City we’re talking about here, but free papers are springing up all across America. Community weeklies are especially popular these days.
Finally, a new poll by Outsell Inc., found that 61 percent of consumers look to their newspapers as an essential source for local news, events and sports. Only 6 percent of those surveyed said they rely on Internet search engines for local news and information.
So, before we all rush to write obituaries for old media, it’s important to remember that a lot of people still read and love their local newspapers.
My oh my, how things change. Less than 10 years ago, FCC Chairman Reed Hundt preemptively declared that a rumored merger between AT&T and SBC would be, in his words, “unthinkable” under antitrust laws.
So I found it peculiar when I opened up the papers yesterday and today and read Reed Hundt’s analysis of the pending merger of AT&T–which has already taken over SBC–with Bell South. In yesterday’s
Wall Street Journal he argued rather matter-of-factly that: “It’s like a marriage between a couple that’s been dating for a decade. It’s so predictable as to not attract a great deal of questioning.” And then I opened up the Washington Post business page today and read this from Hundt: “It’s a sport. It’s a competition. In this business, scale really matters. It’s like NFL linemen. You want ’em big, you want ’em fast, but most important, you want ’em big.”
Talk about your sudden changes of heart! Let me just reprint a bit more of what he said back in the summer of 1997 about such mergers:
“Combining the long distance market share of AT&T in any RBOC region (even as it may be reduced by RBOC entry) with the long distance market share that reasonably can be imputed to the RBOC yields a resulting concentration that is unthinkable. [If we impute] to AT&T even a modest percentage of [local] market share taken form the existing Bell incumbent in that Bell’s region, as we must do under our potential or precluded competitor doctrine, then under conventional and serviceable antitrust analysis, a merger between it and the Bell incumbent is unthinkable.”
So, in less than ten years, he’s gone from thinking such a combination was “unthinkable” because of the “resulting concentration” to now calling the move “predictable” since “scale really matters” and “[we] want ’em big.”
File this one under “The Re-Education of a Regulator”!
But seriously, I have to give Hundt credit for recognizing the changed competitive landscape since 1997. Long-distance has largely been canabalized by the rise of rigorous wireless competition and flat-rate, nationwide calling plans. The Internet is everywhere, which means IP-enable calling is a new threat to the old players. And the old Bell copper empire has now become a copper cage they are fighting their way out of. It’s all about fiber now to ensure they can compete against cable’s high-speed offerings and whatever else competitors might throw at them. The world has changed in amazing ways in just 10 short years. Reed Hundt’s changed thinking on this issue proves that.
The AT&T-Bell South deal will be approved, that much is certain. After approving the previous deal between T & SBC, regulators know it would be silly to oppose T’s deal for Bell South. The two firms don’t compete directly and the combination could offer significant scale economies as the telcos continue to dig in for full-fledged trench war with cable operators. On those grounds alone, the deal will get through. The only real question is: What conditions might regulators impose on the deal?
While the so-called “consumer groups” will ask for a litany of restrictions, I want to address just three here:
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OK, here comes one of those columns that is going to win me a lot of enemies. (Like I need any more, right?) I want to say a few words about technological etiquette, or the lack thereof, in our increasingly media-saturated society.
Let me first establish the fact that I’m no Luddite. Indeed, I am a technophile to the core. Anyone who has read anything I’ve written over the past 15 years knows that I devote a great deal of time and column space to celebrating our wonderful new world of communications and media technology. Indeed, I personally spend much my life swimming in a sea of techno-gadgetry. In addition to my think tank work for PFF, I do some part-time work with a home A/V installation firm in the Washington, DC area where I help install, calibrate and program very high-end home audio, video and data systems. (My specialty is programming universal remotes & automated touch screens as well as video projector installation and calibration). Meanwhile, my own home looks like the combination of the Sharper Image catalog and a Best Buy showroom. Here’s a partial inventory of what my family has in our home currently: 3 HDTVs (including one ceiling-based video projector for an 8-ft wide screen); 2 computers (and many more retired ones in the closet!); 3 DVD players; 2 digital cameras; 1 camcorder; a Belkin pre-N wi-fi system for data networking; a 7.1 surround sound system in my home theater; 3 video game consoles (one is a PlayStation Portable); 3 XM satellite radio subscriptions (two are for the cars; one for home); a whole-house (6-zone) distributed audio system that pumps satellite radio and my massive CD collection through the entire house; 2 cell phones; and 1 Blackberry. (That Blackberry is my wife’s).
OK, so now you know how much I love technology! It was important I establish that fact clearly so I can make my next point: I am really beginning to hate technology! More specifically, I am really amazed to see how many people are losing all sense of social etiquette as they integrate all these new media and communications technologies into their lives.
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According to news reports, Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va) is planning on trying to force the Senate Commerce Committee to include a controversial cable censorship proposal in a broad-based telecom reform bill the Committee might consider shortly. Along with Republcan Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Rockefeller introduced S. 616, the “Indecent and Gratuitous and Excessively Violent Programming Control Act of 2005.” (I penned a lenghty analysis of this bill in the a PFF paper last year entitled: “Thinking Seriously about Cable & Satellite Censorship: An Informal Analysis of S. 616, The Rockefeller-Hutchison Bill.”)
In a nutshell, the Rockefeller-Hutchison bill proposes to roll the old broadcast industry content control regime onto subcription-based media outlets, namely, cable and satellite television distributors. James Reid, Sen. Rockefeller’s top telecom policy aide, told a crowd at a National Association of Broadcasters conference yesterday that “Sen. Rockefeller plans to offer his bill, in totality, or section-by-section, as amendments to the telecom bill as this goes forward.” If implemented, the bill would:
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On Tuesday I participated in a very interesting roundtable discussion on the future of content regulation in a multi-media world. The event was held at Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA and it featured representatives from a wide variety of companies and private organizations including: Google, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, AOL, Yahoo!, TRUSTe, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Children Now. Our discussion focused on how to craft workable, private parental controls for Digital Age media content.
The roundtable was hosted by Stephen Balkham, CEO of the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA). ICRA is an organization which works to create a safer online environment for kids by devising workable screening solutions for parents. In particular, ICRA has been a pioneer in the field of Internet content labeling and filtering. The organization has developed a system of objective content descriptors that website operators and other online media providers can use to label their content. Some of the companies and organizations listed above, as well as many other Internet, media and telecom companies, have already signed agreements with ICRA to use their content labels. Most recently, AT&T and Verizon agreed to use ICRA system to label their content offerings.
The Challenges of Controlling Content in a World of Media Abundance
I kicked off the roundtable with a “50,000-ft.” overview of the challenges that lie ahead. My remarks were drawn from the introduction to my new book on content controls in a world of media convergence. At the conference, as in my book, I put forward the thesis that content regulation, as we have traditionally understood it, is doomed. This is because a confluence of social, legal and, most importantly, technological developments is slowly undermining the ability of legislators and regulators, at all levels of government, to control the nature or quality of media programming. The demise of content controls may take many years–potentially even decades–to play out, but signs of the impending death of the old regulatory regime are already evident.
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Well, it appears my fun with telemarketers is over. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has created a “Deceased Do Not Contact” list to give family members the ability to remove the names of deceased loved ones from mass-marketing efforts.
I was a little sad to hear this for reasons that you might find somewhat disturbing. You see, back in the days before the “Do Not Call” list went into effect and my wife decided to put our number on it, I use to have fun toying with telemarketers by pretending I was dead. Just so you know, I’m not one of these people–and I know there are a lot of you out there–who get evangelical about the supposed evils of telemarketing. Frankly, I never saw what the big deal was. If you didn’t want to hear someone’s sales pitch, just hang up the phone! For God’s sake, they’re just trying to sell you something and you always have the right to say “NO!” and slam the phone down.
Nonetheless, I sometimes got as annoyed as the next guy when the calls came in, especially during the dinner hour. So, to get the really pesky ones out of my life, I use to have a little fun with them. When they called for the umpteenth time and I’ve finally had it, the conversation would go something like this:
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Last week I outlined a few of my concerns with the FCC’s new a la carte report. I was relieved to see that others are raising similar issues with the report.
For example,
Fortune senior writer Marc Gunther published an essay today entitled “Why A La Carte Cable TV is a Nutty Idea.” And Kansas City Star TV Critic Aaron Barnhart released an essay on Friday entitled “The Indecency Wars: Book II.” Gunther and Barnhart share similar concerns about the new report.
First, Gunther and Barnhart agree that the FCC’s report is remarkably ambiguous on several key issues. Gunther notes that:
“the FCC report is filled with so many ‘mights’ and ‘coulds’ that it’s impossible to know whether unbundling would drive down rates. The FCC admits that it lacks data ‘about what a la carte prices would be for individual networks.'”
Barnhart agrees and is even more scathing in his criticism of the report’s ambiguity:
“If you actually read the report, you’ll be amazed at how little [Chairman Kevin] Martin actually asserts as fact. There are a thousand “coulds,” “mights” and “mays” the cumulative effect of which is to create the perception it has refuted the Powell report line by line. In reality, Martin’s report has more fudge in it than Grandma’s cupboard.”
Ouch!
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It seems that the cable industry has once again become everyone’s favorite public policy punching-bag. The “government-knows-best” crowd is practically foaming at the mouth about the need for “Net neutrality” mandates on cable’s broadband offerings, censorship of speech on various cable channels or programs, and “a la carte” mandates for cable’s video lineup.
On this last item, the FCC has just today released a revised version of an earlier staff report conducted during Chairman Michael Powell’s tenure. The Powell era FCC report revealed that a la carte would raise prices and hurt program diversity. By contrast, today’s report, which new FCC Chairman Kevin Martin requested, argues that the old report got it completely wrong and that a la carte would lead to lower prices and not hurt diversity. So, within the span of 18 months, we have an expert regulatory agency coming to diametrically opposed conclusions on the same issue. (Makes you wonder about those old theories of scientific bureaucracy!) What are we to make of these contradictory results?
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I’ve been wondering how long it would be before a major copyright spat developed over the SlingBox and its incredible “space-shifting” technology. For those of you who have never heard of it, the SlingBox is a set-top device that allows consumers to retransmit their home television content to themselves no matter where they are at in the United States.
In other words, any TV show, local news program, or regional sporting event that a viewer would be able to watch if they were sitting at home is now be available to them on-the-road, thousands of miles away from their TV sets. So long as the consumer has a computer and a broadband connection, the SlingBox can make “anywhere, anytime” TV on the PC a reality.
A few years ago, techno-pundits were dreaming of devices such as these, but today you can go down to your local BestBuy and purchase one for just $250. It’s another sign of how media /TV /PC convergence is no longer just hype; its marketplace reality.
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.