In the rush of ink that flowed yesterday over AT&T’s announced merger with T-Mobile USA, I posted a long piece on CNET calling for calm, reasoned analysis of the deal by regulators, chiefly the Department of Justice and the FCC.
Since the details of the deal have yet to be fleshed out, it’s hard to say much about the specifics of how customers will be affected in the short or long term. My CNET colleague Maggie Reardon, however, does an excellent job laying out both the technical and likely regulatory issues in a piece posted today from the CTIA conference. Continue reading →
What I hoped would be a short blog post to accompany the video from Geoff Manne and my appearances this week on PBS’s “Ideas in Action with Jim Glassman” turned out to be a very long article which I’ve published over at Forbes.com.
I apologize to Geoff for taking an innocent comment he made on the broadcast completely out of context, and to everyone else who chooses to read 2,000 words I’ve written in response.
So all I’ll say here is that Geoff Manne and I taped the program in January, as part of the launch of TechFreedom and of “The Next Digital Decade.” Enjoy!
In this essay, I will suggest that (1) while “moral panics” and “techno-panics” are nothingnew, their cycles seem to be accelerating as new communications and information networks and platforms proliferate; (2) new panics often “crowd-out” or displace old ones; and (3) the current scare over online privacy and “tracking” is just the latest episode in this ongoing cycle.
What Counts as a “Techno-Panic”?
First, let’s step back and define our terms. Christopher Ferguson, a professor at Texas A&M’s Department of Behavioral, Applied Sciences and Criminal Justice, offers the following definition: “A moral panic occurs when a segment of society believes that the behavior or moral choices of others within that society poses a significant risk to the society as a whole.” By extension, a “techno-panic” is simply a moral panic that centers around societal fears about a specific contemporary technology (or technological activity) instead of merely the content flowing over that technology or medium. In her brilliant 2008 essay on “The MySpace Moral Panic,” Alice Marwick noted: Continue reading →
It was my pleasure today to debate the future of public media funding on Warren Olney’s NPR program, “To The Point“. I was 1 of 5 guests and I wasn’t brought into the show until about 29 minutes into the program, but I tried to reiterate some of the key points I made in my essay last week on “‘Non-Commercial Media’ = Fine; ‘Public Media’ = Not So Much.” I won’t reiterate everything I said before since you can just go back and read it, but to briefly summarize what I said there as well as on today’s show: (1) taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize speech or media content they find potentially objectionable; and (2) public broadcasters are currently perfectly positioned to turn this federal funding “crisis” into a golden opportunity by asking its well-heeled and highly-diversified base of supporters to step up to the plate and fill the gap left by the end of taxpayer subsidies.
The median household income of an NPR News listener is about $86,000, compared to the national average of about $55,000.
NPR’s audience is extraordinarily well-educated. Nearly 65% of all listeners have a bachelor’s
degree, compared to only a quarter of the U.S. population. Also, they are three times more likely than the
average American to have completed graduate school.
The majority of the NPR audience (86%) identifies itself as white.
Why do these numbers matter? Simply stated: These people can certainly step up to the plate and pay more to cover the estimated $1.39 that taxpayers currently contribute to the public media in the U.S. But wait, there’s more! Continue reading →
I’m not one of those libertarians who incessantly rants about the supposed evils of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcast Service (PBS). In fact, I find quite a bit to like in the programming I consume on both services, NPR in particular. A few years back I realized that I was listening to about 45 minutes to an hour of programming on my local NPR affiliate (WAMU) each morning and afternoon, and so I decided to donate $10 per month. Doesn’t sound like much, but at $120 bucks per year, that’s more than I spend on any other single news media product with the exception of The Wall Street Journal. So, when there’s value in a media product, I’ll pay for it, and I find great value in NPR’s “long-form” broadcast journalism, despite its occasional political slant on some issues.
In many ways, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR and PBS, has the perfect business model for the age of information abundance. Philanthropic models — which rely on support for foundational benefactors, corporate underwriters, individual donors, and even government subsidy — can help diversify the funding base at a time when traditional media business models — advertising support, subscriptions, and direct sales — are being strained. This is why many private media operations are struggling today; they’re experiencing the ravages of gut-wrenching marketplace / technological changes and searching for new business models to sustain their operations. By contrast, CPB, NPR, and PBS are better positioned to weather this storm since they do not rely on those same commercial models.
Nonetheless, NPR and PBS and the supporters of increased “pubic media” continue to claim that they are in peril and that increased support — especially public subsidy — is essential to their survival. For example, consider an editorial in today’s Washington Post making “The Argument for Funding Public Media,” which was penned by Laura R. Walker, the president and chief executive of New York Public Radio, and Jaclyn Sallee, the president and chief executive of Officer Kohanic Broadcast Corp. in Anchorage. They argue: Continue reading →
Last week, it was my great honor to speak at the 2011 State of the Net 2011 event, where I participated in a panel discussion about the future of the online video marketplace. In an earlier essay, I mentioned how some of the discussion that day revolved around the Comcast-NBCU merger, which had just been approved by the FCC, but with unprecedented strings being attached. The heart of the panel discussion, however, was a debate about the future of online video and regulation of the video marketplace more generally. Also joining me on the panel were Susan Crawford of Cardozo Law School, William Lehr of MIT, Marvin Ammori of Nebraska Law School, and Richard Bennett of ITIF.
During my response time on the panel, which begins around 28:45 of the video, I made a couple of key points: Continue reading →
At this week’s excellent State of the Net 2011 event, I participated in a panel discussion about the future of the online video marketplace. Unsurprisingly, a great deal of time was spent discussing the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) recent approval of the proposed merger of Comcast and NBC Universal (NBCU). On Tuesday, the agency voted 4-1 to approve the deal with myriad conditions and “voluntary” concessions being attached. The FCC voted on the matter and issued a short press release and late today issued its final 279-page order.
The Commission’s Comcast-NBCU order represents an unprecedented regulatory shakedown of a company that obviously would have done just about anything to gain approval of the deal. I believe the conditions the FCC has imposed on the deal, which are to run for seven years, are tantamount to a death by a thousand cuts for the deal and, ultimately, could lead to its failure. That’s because the requirements placed on the new entity make it practically impossible for Comcast to leverage the content it is acquiring from NBCU and profit from it such that they can recoup the significant costs associated with the deal.
In essence, Comcast-NBCU was forced to preemptively surrender much of its intellectual property rights by agreeing to share most of their content properties with others on terms someone else will determine. That’s a recipe for disaster. If Comcast-NBCU doesn’t have the right and ability to cut deals on terms that they find advantageous to the company and its shareholders, then why go through with this deal at all? Isn’t the whole point of such a deal with get some additional in-house content properties — something Comcast almost completely lacked previously — such that it would have some content gems to highlight and leverage in an attempt to attract new customers (or just keep old ones)? If someone else is constantly setting the terms of their deals, it will limit the inherent value of the IP owned by Comcast-NBCU and sap most of the value from the deal. Continue reading →
For an event that took place nearly a month after the FCC’s “final” vote on net neutrality, the issue seems not to have quieted down in the least. A fiery speech from Congresswoman Martha Blackburn promised a “Congressional hurricane” in response to the FCC’s perceived ultra vires decision to regulate where Congress has refused to give it authority, a view supported by House and Senate counsel who spoke later in the day. Continue reading →
So now you can pay Netflix $7.99 a month and stream all the video you want? Damn cool if you ask me!
What does the Netflix decision mean for consumers—two words: More choice! This is what functional markets deliver. There was a time when if you missed an episode of your favorite show, that was it. You might have gotten lucky and caught it on its single rerun, but that was hit or miss. These days, I can watch The Office at 8 p.m. on Thursday nights. Or I can record on my DVR and watch it later that night. Or I can watch it the next day on my PC by visiting nbc.com. Or I can watch it on-demand from my cable box. Or I can wait a few months and watch it on DVD. Or, soon, via Netflix stream.
I can’t help but wonder if this makes moot all the handwringing about the FCC’s desire to place conditions on the online services a merged Comcast-NBC Universal can offer. Come on, Netflix has blown up the whole cable TV model. Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.