Media Regulation

event: Dec. 1st Debate about Future of Broadcast TV Spectrum

by Adam Thierer on November 18, 2009 · 7 comments

As I noted in a recent paper with my PFF colleague Barbara Esbin (“An Offer They Can’t Refuse: Spectrum Reallocation That Can Benefit Consumers, Broadcasters & the Mobile Broadband Sector“) an official at the Federal Communications Commission (Blair Levin) recently suggested that it might be possible to craft a grand bargain whereby television broadcasters get cash for some (or all) of their current spectrum if they return it to the FCC for reallocation and auction. Such a deal could, eventually, open up significant amounts of prime spectrum for next-generation mobile broadband and data services.

Is such a deal feasible and in the best interests of broadcasters? Is the arrangement necessary to encourage growth in broadband penetration consistent with the goals of the Recovery Act? Will Congress go along with the deal, or would it be blocked as contrary to “the public interest?” Alternatively, would lawmakers back the deal but seek a significant cut of the auction proceeds, leaving less available for broadcasters? These and other policy issues will be discussed at “Let’s Make a Deal: Broadcasters, Mobile Broadband, and a Market in Spectrum,” a congressional seminar hosted by The Progress & Freedom Foundation. The event will be held Tuesday, December 1st from 9:00am to 11:00am in the Holeman Lounge, 13th Floor, at the National Press Club, 529 14th Street, NW in Washington, DC.

Panelists confirmed so far for the event include:

Blair Levin, Executive Director, Omnibus Broadband Initiative, Federal Communications Commission
Coleman Bazelon, Principal, The Brattle Group
David Donovan, President, Association for Maximum Service Television
Kostas Liopiros, Principal, The Sun Fire Group
John K. Hane, Counsel, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
and 1 or 2 more to come!

I will be moderating the event. Those interested in attending can register here. Should be a spirited debate.

7 comments

From the Oxymoron File

by Jim Harper on November 13, 2009 · 5 comments

A public policy collaborator and sparring partner wrote me just now, saying: “I don’t imagine you guys spend much time looking at media monopolies!”

Think about it.

5 comments

Let’s Make a Deal: Broadcasters, Mobile Broadband, and a Market in Spectrum

by Adam Thierer on November 10, 2009 · 6 comments

Along with my colleague Barbara Esbin, the Director of PFF’s Center for Communications and Competition Policy, I have just released a new paper on discussing the possibility of reallocating a portion of broadcast television spectrum for alternative purposes, namely, mobile broadband. As I discussed here before, Blair Levin, the Executive Director of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative, has been suggesting that it might be possible to craft a grand bargain whereby broadcasters get cash for some (or all) of their current spectrum allocations if they return spectrum to the FCC for reallocation and re-auction, likely to mobile broadband services.

In our paper, “An Offer They Can’t Refuse: Spectrum Reallocation That Can Benefit Consumers, Broadcasters & the Mobile Broadband Sector,” [PDF] Barbara and I argue that:

the benefits of such a deal could be enormous for wireless broadband providers, developers of digital technologies, and consumers. Expanding the pool of spectrum available for next-generation wireless broadband offerings will ensure that innovative new networks, devices, and services are made available to the public on a timely basis. Ultimately, that will mean more high-speed choices for consumers, especially those in rural areas harder to reach with high-speed wireline networks. Finally, more generally, anything that moves us in the direction of a freer market in spectrum is a good thing.

But fairness to broadcasters lies at the heart of this spectrum reallocation plan. If a deal can’t be structured that broadcasters would find acceptable, they should not be forced to come to the table. When we speak of an offer they can’t refuse, we mean one so attractive that no rational businessperson or investor would pass it up. It is essential broadcasters be willing partners in the deal, and be full participants in the process of shaping its contours.

Read the entire thing here, or below the fold as a Scribd document. Continue reading →

6 comments

The Dangers of Government-Subsidized News

by Adam Thierer on October 22, 2009 · 23 comments

We’ve talked here before about the dangers of a government-subsidized press as a way of “saving journalism.” But I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite as eloquent on the issue as Seth Lipsky’s editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled “All the News That’s Fit to Subsidize.” Mr. Lipsky is a member of the adjunct faculty at the Columbia Journalism School. In his essay today, he warns of the very real slippery slope associated with proposal to have government step in and somehow bailout newspapers as they find themselves in a time of crisis.Specifically, Mr. Lipsky addressees a new report (“The Reconstruction of American Journalism“) by Leonard Downie (former executive editor of the Washington Post) and co-author Michael Schudson (also of Columbia Journalism School), in which the authors call for a mixture of legal and regulatory changes as well as government subsidies to help prop up failing news operations.

Mr. Lipsky argues that they have “stepped onto an exceptionally slippery slope”: Continue reading →

23 comments

My Testimony at Hearing on “Video Competition in a Digital Age”

by Adam Thierer on October 22, 2009 · 12 comments

This morning, I testified before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet about “Video Competition in a Digital Age.” The focus of the hearing was to “examine competition in the video programming marketplace, including access by multichannel video programming providers and consumers to programming both via television and the Internet.” Testifying along with me were: Verizon Vice President Terrence Denson; Sunflower Broadband CEO Patrick Knorr; “Battlestar Galactica” executive producer Ronald Moore; Disney Media Networks President of Global Distribution Benjamin Pyne; and Cablevision Chief Operating Officer Thomas Rutledge.

I my remarks, I argued that the critical question that should govern debates about the state of the media marketplace is: “Do citizens have more news, information, and entertainment choices at their disposal today than in the past?” As told the Committee, “all the evidence suggests the answer to that question is, unambiguously, “yes.””

Indeed, although humans have lived in a state of extreme information poverty for most of history, we now live in a world of unprecedented media abundance: Increasingly, we can obtain and consume whatever media we want, wherever and whenever we want. Citizens of all backgrounds and beliefs benefit from this modern media cornucopia.

Nowhere has this abundance been more evident than in video programming. … we have more video options and diversity at our disposal today than ever before, and generally at falling prices. In sum, there’s more competition for our eyes than ever before. […]

America’s video marketplace should be viewed as a pro-consumer success story. With an abundance of choices, competition, and diverse viewing options, the only real scarcity remaining today is our personal time and attention spans—not video options.

My full testimony, including all the exhibits and tables I referenced in my remarks, is pasted down below. Continue reading →

12 comments

Cash-For-TV-Spectrum Scheme vs. A Property Rights Solution

by Adam Thierer on October 21, 2009 · 21 comments

Potentially huge FCC development here, and one they actually has some sense to it. According to Kim McAvoy over at TV News Check.com:

FCC broadband czar Blair Levin earlier this month met with leading TV broadcasters in Washington to discuss the nation’s urgent need for more spectrum for wireless broadband access to the Internet and the possibility of broadcasters’ relinquishing most of their spectrum to help meet that demand. According to sources familiar with the Oct. 8 meeting with the board of the Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV), Levin suggested broadcasters might want to consider returning their spectrum in exchange for a share in the billions of dollars that would come from the auction of the spectrum to the wireless industry.

Broadcasting would retain just enough spectrum so that each station could provide a lifeline standard-definition service to the millions of TV viewers who still rely on over-the-air reception. Broadcasters could no longer offer over-the-air HD and second channels and mobile video would be off the table, but they could continue to provide a single channel of TV to every home in their markets as they do today — in full-blown HD via cable and satellite carriage and SD via the over-the-air lifeline service.

Wow, this is a very big deal, folks, since we are talking about a mother lode of prime spectrum that could be put to any variety of excellent alternative uses. The problem is, broadcasters will—rightly, in my opinion—protest that they have occupied that spectrum for a long, long time and they have something akin to a property right in their allocations. Of course, paying them to relocate might be a very sensible way to get them off that spectrum voluntarily. But the question is whether they should be forced off of it and whether that is even legal. No doubt, any attempt to force them off would be held up in court for many years because of inevitable legal challenges.

There is another solution: Just give the broadcasters a full, unencumbered property right in their spectrum and let them sell it or use it however they wish. Some will protest that it’s not “fair” and that the broadcasters should never be given a property right in something they did not pay for to begin with. Yet, at some point we have to stop the endless search for what I have referred to as a “spectrum reparations policy” and just get on with life.

I think everyone can now agree that the old command-and-control regulatory regime for “zoning” spectrum has retarded innovation. Imagine if we told Apple back in the 1980s that, because they started in the PC business, they could never leave the PC business and offer other innovations. That would have been nuts! We’d never have the iPhone today. But that’s U.S. spectrum policy for broadcasting in a nutshell. As a broadcaster, it is illegal for you to repurpose your spectrum for alternative uses. Stated different, spectrum innovation is a crime. How pathetic.

It’s time to change the rules and move forward. I applaud Blair Levin and the FCC for offering at least one solution, but if it doesn’t work, we should try the other: property rights and flexible use rights in spectrum. And here are 4 or 5 other ways to get the job done.

21 comments

Don’t Cry for Media, Argentina! (pun repeated passim)

by Jim Harper on October 20, 2009 · 3 comments

It won’t be easy, you’ll think it strange, when Libby Jacobsen tries to explain how traditional journalism still wants your money after all that it hasn’t done.

On the OpenMarket blog, she critiques a report released Monday calling for the traditional journalism industry to be propped up various ways. And she does so with gusto:

Outrageously, [former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr.] also wants to put telecoms on the hook for bailing out reporting, suggesting that the FCC collect fees from internet service providers to be used for a national “Fund for Local News.” He’s blind to the fact that telecoms and ISPs have done nothing but help disseminate news and information. There is more reporting, more information, more news available to us today than there ever has been in the history of civilization. It’s true that there’s a lot of garbage out there, but there’s a lot of very good online journalism as well. Nearly everything published online is subject to peer-review from a massive amount of people, and the success of sites like Wikipedia are proof that accountability, credibility, and accuracy matter just as much online as they do offline.

Have I said too much? There’s nothing more I can think of to say to you. But all you have to do is look at Libby’s post to know that every word is true.

(Just one thing, Libby. What happens when a bad pun ruins a perfectly good blog post?)

3 comments

Nanny State Says: “Shhhhh! That Commercial is Too Loud!”

by Berin Szoka on October 8, 2009 · 27 comments

When the government tells someone to shut up, we call it censorship and the First Amendment requires the government to defend its regulation. But what if the government just says, “Shhhh… could you please turn that down?” Rep. Anna Eshoo’s Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (“CALM Act” – HR 1084) would do just that: require the FCC to issue rules that broadcast and cable TV ads:

(1) … shall not be excessively noisy or strident;

(2) … shall not be presented at modulation levels substantially higher than the program material that such advertisements accompany; and

(3) [their] average maximum loudness… shall not be substantially higher than the average maximum loudness of the program material that such advertisements accompany.

Now, I understand where Ms. Eshoo is coming from: I have a very low tolerance for noise in general and for television in particular—and it’s not just about commercials. (I find TV news at least as “noisy” and “strident” as commercials. That’s why I opted-out from the whole TV thing in about 2000. Yup, that’s right: I found better things to do with my time and the supposedly all-powerful “gatekeepers” of Hollywood couldn’t do a damn thing about it. You should try it if you don’t like what’s on TV! To paraphrase Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say watch, but I will defend to the death your right to say watch it! You can get most of what’s worth watching on DVD or online anyway.) But do we really need bureaucrats in Washington micromanaging volume levels? Maybe Congressmen would have a little more time to read the bills they vote for if they they weren’t so busy fiddling with everyone else’s remote!

Eshoo’s bill has passed the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Communications Subcommittee just as the TV industry is completing work on voluntary standards of their own. That’s one “less restrictive” alternative to regulation. What about technological empowerment? If Americans really hate loud commercials so much, why don’t they demand TVs with built-in volume normalization features? But this bill isn’t merely unnecessary, it would also set a disturbing precedent in at least six ways.

Continue reading →

27 comments

Sidewiki as Sunstein’s electronic sidewalks

by Jerry Brito on September 29, 2009 · 5 comments

This week Google unveiled Sidewiki, a tool that lets users annotate any page on the web and read other users’ notes about the page they are visiting. Professional Google watcher Jeff Jarvis quickly panned the service saying that it bifurcates the conversation at sites that already have commenting systems, and that it relieves the site owner of the ability to moderate. Others have pooh-poohed the service, too.

What strikes me about the uproar is that Sidewiki is a lot like the “electronic sidewalks” that Cass Sunstein proposed in his book Republic.com. The concept was first developed in detail in a law review article by Noah D. Zatz titled, Sidewalks in Cyberspace: Making Space for Public Forums in the Electronic Environment [PDF]. The idea is a fairness doctrine for the Internet that would require site owners to give equal time to opposing political views. Sunstein eventually abandoned the view, admitting that it was unworkable and probably unconstitutional. Now here comes Google, a corporation, not the government, and makes digital sidewalks real.

The very existence of Sidewiki, along with the fact that anyone can start a blog for free in a matter of minutes, explodes the need for a web fairness doctrine. But since we’re not talking about government forcing site owners to host opposing views, I wonder if we’re better off with such infrastructure. As some have noted, Google is not the first to try to enable web annotation, and the rest have largely failed, but Google is certainly the biggest to make the attempt. As a site owner I might be worse off with Sidewiki content next to my site that I can’t control. But as a consumer of information I can certainly see the appeal of having ready access to opposing views about what I’m reading. What costs am I overlooking? That Google owns the Sidewiki-sidewalk?

Cross-posted from Surprisingly Free. Leave a comment on the original article.

5 comments

FCC Speech Czar a Myth, FCC Threat to Speech is Real

by James Gattuso on September 22, 2009 · 10 comments

FCC chair Julius Genachowski has certainly been busy. This week, of course, he’s been occupied with regulating the Internet. But last week, he was busy fending off charges on talk radio and elsewhere that the FCC has its very own “speech” or “diversity” czar.

At issue was the appointment in August of ex-journalist and Center for American Progress fellow Mark Lloyd to be the agency’s “chief diversity officer.” That appointment instantly caused controversy, with Lloyd has becoming a cause celebre on conservative talk radio and in the blogoshere, where he was been portrayed as yet another in a long line of powerful and unaccountable Obama policy czars and – in light of his support of government regulation of TV and radio content – a threat to free speech. Nationally syndicated talk show host Glenn Beck led the charge, at one point twittering his listeners: “Watch Dogs: FIND OUT EVERYTHING YOU CAN” about Lloyd and several other “czars.”

But the critics had their facts wrong. Lloyd was never chosen to be a “czar” of anything. That regal title – and its connotations of unlimited influence — were entirely invented by overactive imaginations in the media. Lloyd’s actual position in the FCC bureaucracy is much more prosaic — “associate general counsel.” He serves in that position along with three other associate general counsel, and three deputy general counsels. Anyone who’s worked at the FCC knows that is an unlikely locus of power.

Continue reading →

10 comments

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →