Broadcasters Must be Made to Serve the Public Interest
By: Chellie Pingree and Jonathan Rintels
The Seattle Times
August 2004
With the encouragement of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell, the country's broadcasters and cable operators have agreed to meet behind closed doors to decide what Americans will see on their televisions as the nation transitions from analog to digital broadcasting.
Representatives of the public interest were not invited. Neither were the commissioners of the FCC, nor members of Congress.
Why do we call the public's attention to this private meeting? Because these two corporate oligopolies that control television are meeting to decide what the public will see on airwaves that are not their property, but the property of the public.
Television is acknowledged to be the most potent information medium ever, with tremendous power to influence our citizenry and our democratic process. With the public interest so obviously at stake, the public must be involved.
For years, there has been a war going on between the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the National Cable Television Association (NCTA), two of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. Today's digital technology makes it possible for each over-the-air TV station to broadcast up to six channels, where before they could air only one. This makes broadcasters' digital TV licenses, which they received for free from the public, worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Since the vast majority of the American people now receive their television signals from cable, broadcasters are demanding that the FCC pass a "must carry" rule requiring cable companies to carry all their new digital programming. The NAB argues that they deserve a special FCC rule requiring digital "must carry" because broadcasters serve the public interest, so it is vitally important that their availability to cable subscribers be guaranteed.
Conversely, cable owners are equally adamant that a "must carry" rule for broadcasters' digital channels will force their customers to take channels they don't want. They claim it will infringe their First Amendment rights to free expression and also steal valuable property from them — channel space on their cable systems. And they say they should be the ones to decide which network or local TV station programs are carried on their cable systems.
The private meeting has been called to end this stalemate. Powell has encouraged the meeting in the hope that the FCC itself won't have to act.
But all of this backroom jockeying misses a fundamental point: Do today's broadcasters serve the public interest so well that such a huge government giveaway of the public's digital spectrum and cable's precious channel capacity is justified?
We believe this claim ought to be put to the test. At a time when broadcasters' news coverage has never been weaker, more frivolous, and empty of any real information that helps citizens participate in their democracy, we believe that broadcasters ought to be held to real, quantifiable public-interest standards.
At a minimum, broadcasters should provide on their most-watched channel three hours a week of substantive coverage about important local, state and national issues, a higher percentage of non-network-produced programming, and at least two hours a week of quality election coverage. Is that too much to ask of broadcasters who received for free billions of dollars of public spectrum?
As the chairman of the FCC, Powell has a duty to regulate media in the public interest. He cannot simply let giant media conglomerates decide behind closed doors, without public input, what constitutes the public interest.
We hope Powell won't repeat the same mistake on digital "must carry" that he made on last year's controversial media ownership proceeding, when he held just one public hearing before he rammed through the commission new rules encouraging an unprecedented and dangerous consolidation and concentration of our nation's media.
Excluding the public from that proceeding earned the chairman an extraordinary triple rebuke from the Congress, the courts and the public.
This time, Powell needs to get the process right. Before the FCC can decide whether digital "must carry" is in the public interest, it must first articulate public-interest standards for broadcasters. To do otherwise puts the broadcasters' special-interest cart before the public-interest horse.
And this time, Powell must let the public weigh in on the fundamental question of what constitutes the public interest. If he does not, media conglomerates will meet behind closed doors to craft a deal that serves only their own corporate bottom-line interest, at the expense of the public.
That is something the public has no interest in.
Chellie Pingree is president of Common Cause, a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizens' lobby based in Washington, D.C. Jonathan Rintels is president of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C.
Tessa Wegert, Click Z
March 2007
Watch the news on your local TV station on any given day, and you'll see local broadcast media continue to be an advertising staple for many small and midsize businesses. What would that half hour be without idiosyncratic spots for the nearby car dealer or furniture store? While some of these advertisers are now replacing or supplementing TV ads with local paid search, they may be overlooking another online opportunity.
You might be, too.
TV station Web sites are a lot more robust than they used to be. They're still a source for news, weather, TV listings, and traffic updates, but they've also become lifestyle portals. The average station's site provides everything: entertainment updates, horoscopes, a classified ad marketplace, a career section, and a list of community events, which some stations even let users update, wiki style.
Rich in content, TV stations are their own brands, known and trusted by consumers, online and off-. An affinity with local stations can benefit advertisers. According to a study conducted for Internet Broadcasting Systems, the nation's largest platform of TV station sites, 80 percent of site users find ads on its sites more relevant than those on national news sites because the sites are local. Additionally, over two-thirds of survey respondents said they're more likely to click on local news site ads than those on national news sites.
That TV station sites are part of larger networks also makes them appealing to branded national advertisers eager to target by community or region. Marketers can purchase placements across a network of TV sites or on a specific local station without having to deal directly with individual station sites. Internet Broadcasting represents over 70 station sites, while competitor Clear Channel Communications owns 40 stations in 25 markets nationwide. Internet Broadcasting handles all interactive media directly. Ad sales for Clear Channel's station sites, however, are managed by Inergize Digital Media, the interactive Web services division of Clear Channel Television. Inergize acts as the go-between for station sites and potential advertisers, running potential campaigns past the sites for approval.
Those with a broader objective aren't likely to have trouble finding impressions, either. Internet Broadcasting boasts 12.9 million monthly visitors across its network and has been seeing a 50 percent traffic increase year over year. Clear Channel offers 3 million unique visitors per month and 72 million pageviews.
Where ad units and placements are concerned, the opportunities aren't so different from those available on national lifestyle and news portals like MSN and AOL. Campaigns can involve anything, from standard banner units -- including pre-roll video -- to customized opportunities.
Because the sites themselves are locally specialized, some station site publishers are willing to work with advertisers to create equally unique promotions. Internet Broadcasting, for example, will work with advertisers to design and develop original sponsored content such as articles and video tutorials. Section sponsorships, meanwhile, afford the ability to skin (define) existing site content like weather radar, local sports, and community news slideshows with a client's brand.
It isn't uncommon for TV station sites to make it into media plans for small local advertiser campaigns, but they're also well worth considering for national brands. If they want to connect with consumers by region, they need only look to the local TV news.
Josh Bernoff
January 2007
Now that so much video is available online, television executives are asking if future TV programming will be delivered over the Internet, bypassing today's traditional cable and satellite providers. This idea, known as "over-the-top TV," faces four obstacles: lack of Internet connections to TV sets, bandwidth-limited video quality, lack of business models, and the challenge of navigating through thousands of video programs. All of these are on the way to being solved, but, even so, it will take at least five years before over-the-top TV can compete at all with cable or satellite. more
Since the dawn of television, almost six decades ago, every TV station in America has had the capacity to beam out just one program at a time — Gunsmoke or The Huntley-Brinkley Report or Survivor or 60 Minutes. That was then; welcome to now: the Digital Era of broadcasting. The so-called analog, one-channel version of television will soon be as archaic as a 1950 Studebaker. Since the passage in 1996 of a new Telecommunications Act, all of the country’s television stations are allowed to reach their viewers on as many as six channels — simultaneously! Benefits for the public have been slow in coming, but suddenly “multicasting” — that’s the hot new word — is on the lips of everybody in TV land.
By Jennifer Harris
AT&T's leap into the converged world is illustrated in its two-pronged IPTV approach, Homezone and U-verse. IPTV is a system that enables digital television sets to be programmed using the more personalized data delivery method of the Internet – Internet Protocol.
U-verse, as explained by Joe Laszlo of JupiterKagan Research, is considered "the end-game" for AT&T. U-verse is similar to a cable-like video service offered by way of phone lines and to only those privileged enough to have fiber in their neighborhoods. Homezone, a hybrid satellite/IPTV service offered in conjunction with Dish Network, is a second-tier option offered to customers who don't want to wait (or may never see) fiber optic appear in their city. The cities able to yield the highest return on investment for the pricey deployment of fiber cables will get services first, while other communities remain on the back-burner. AT&T’s model of preferential treatment extends throughout the formation of their IPTV service, stepping up quality for those with deep pockets and standing aside for those without. By building a new media system that perpetuates the anti-competitive communications market and neglects the public interest, AT&T delivers a service to customers that falls short of its connective and innovative potential.
Traditional media is inevitably shifting from being a source primarily for entertainment to becoming a networked system that connects households inextricably to their educational, civic, health and buying needs. New media services will no longer be classified as stand-alone luxuries, because convergence is melding voice, video and data into singular systems essential for information sharing and communications. IPTV, and other new media services, will become staples in American households (much like electricity or telephone service) and become necessities in the information age. As AT&T sets the stage for an IPTV service that plays favorites between the haves and have-nots, it is setting in motion a system that restricts information, and allocates it only to the wealthy and the well-connected. The fiber lines being laid are dividing more than just parts of a city; AT&T is creating a lopsided playing field that will ultimately leave citizens and communities out of countless opportunities for advancement and connectivity.
When AT&T refused to disclose their build-out plans in the Geneva, IL tri-state area, it soon became clear to city officials that the reason was because AT&T had no intentions of offering U-verse and other advanced broadband services to the entire community. Geneva’s IT manager said “they're asking us to specifically segregate and point to one part of our community and say, ‘…in order to let AT&T come in here, we're going to serve the east side of town but not the west.’”
Unwilling to negotiate under local franchising authority and abide by the rules set for cable providers, AT&T eventually took the city of Geneva to court (many other cities have also been dragged into similar legal battles: Milwaukee, WI, Walnut Creek & Livermore, CA, Naperville, IL and multiple Chicago suburbs). Ralph Ballart, former vice president of broadband at SBC Laboratories commented that "If we are going to build the IP (Internet Protocol) pipe, we want all the revenue streams." However, AT&T cannot guarantee that all parts of a community that allow the company to build the IP pipe will ultimately receive AT&T’s IP services. When AT&T officials are questioned specifically about obligations to build out services, they claim that U-verse cannot be classified as either a cable or telecommunications service; therefore previous rules do not apply.
If U-verse is neither accountable for previous obligations nor responsible in adhering to principles guiding future innovation, then how can customers expect to benefit from services that don’t have to truly serve them? AT&T, as a stipulation to their $86 billion merger with BellSouth, agreed to abide by a set of net neutrality principles, or guidelines that the company will not favor one set of online content above others. However the guidelines distinctly exclude AT&T’s “end game”, U-verse. If U-verse is truly where the buck stops then as David Isenberg recognizes “we have provided AT&T/[BellSouth] the means to render the proposed Network Neutrality condition on the merger violable, and…so weak as to be meaningless”. By discriminating against certain types of content, U-verse will be able to set the hierarchy – dictating which content is most valuable for you and your family.
Pay for Digital Play
AT&T is not only seeking to control broadband on the user end, but to parcel it out to preferred content providers as well. AT&T is taking harmful steps to ensure that non-commercial television has no future on IPTV sets. Consumers should not expect to see community-focused, noncommercial programming in the world of U-verse…at least not clearly.
A suspicious request made in an agreement between AT&T and San Antonio asked that PEG access centers send all programming to the provider at rates that would clearly degrade the content; ultimately making the community channels unwatchable to all viewers. Alliance for Community Media Executive Director, Anthony Riddle believes that by juxtaposing the pixilated community media channels with the crisp HD images of the other cable channels that “AT&T is pushing to ghettoize PEG channels on U-verse”.
As AT&T has shifted into the new media environment, they have made it very clear that they want to leave the public’s interests out of the big IPTV picture. AT&T is rolling out a service that is perpetually cutting corners – exploiting converging technologies and dodging local oversight. AT&T is taking measured and calculated steps that trim the edges off of previous obligations to serve communities.
The infrastructure for a powerful, interactive communications system deserves to be built on a model that will give back to communities exponentially. A U-verse system that is responsive to the public interest would open windows in communities: enhancing distance learning programs in disadvantaged school systems, generating economic potential in rural and urban areas by offering career advancement in IT and media fields, and by connecting families to valuable health and medical care not offered locally. However, U-verse amounts to a universe of untapped possibility. AT&T could construct a U-verse environment that works toward a long-term vision instead of being based around fleeting profits, but in AT&T’s U-verse - advertisers mean the world.
What Makes U-verse Tick
U-verse, powered by an Alcatel-constructed network, will have additional resources to find “new applications and services that will exploit the new network capabilities to create the kind of ‘sticky’ experience that will entice users and keep them loyal” as stated in an Alcatel document titled Exploiting IP Networks to Create Sticky Services. The Alcatel partnership further suggests that AT&T will indeed seek ways to limit full access to broadband. Another Alcatel document (see link below) even proposes offering broadband ‘on-demand’ in order to better manage broadband access and usage. Alcatel notes that “the ability to track statistics on service uptake and usage, and correlate this to demographic information” will be of importance in assessing how to charge customers.
As AT&T takes such questionable policy steps to cripple non-commercial programming on U-verse, it will use clever business maneuvering to promote a more aggressive advertising model. U-verse will be able to integrate immersive and personalized services that will scale throughout AT&T offerings (including Cingular mobile) and across Microsoft platforms. The partnership with Microsoft ultimately means that U-verse will not be stifled by the inability to precisely measure viewership in ways that plagued traditional cable advertisers. By incorporating targeting and analytics services like AdCenter and DeepMetrix into the U-verse system, AT&T will give advertisers a clear picture of viewers and a clear path to turning those viewers into brand and product users.
As the director of a UK-based IPTV service noted:
Because of the in-built addressability of IP, IPTV ads can be targeted at large groups, small groups, or even individual television sets within a single household…For example, advertisers could target specific income groups; people interested in particular sports; first-time parents; or perhaps individuals who bought a particular car a certain number of years ago. The possibilities are limitless.
Alcatel further elaborates on the commercial potential saying that “the triple-play service provider is positioned as the system integrator and conduit, offering a one-stop shopping experience.” Overall, AT&T’s vision for U-verse is a next-generation shopping mall where the emphasis is on increasing transactions, not developing communications.
1 February 2005
A major change in how Americans receive TV is now underway. Phone giants such as SBC and Verizon are building networks to deliver what is known as IPTV--Internet Protocol Television. By using broadband Internet connections, including fiber optics, these companies will soon be sending multiple streams of high-quality video to TVs. Users will also be able to go online, receive email, text messages and Web access via their television as well. New home entertainment hubs--made by Microsoft, H-P, and many others--will easily permit one to send video and other media to other devices in the home. In our fast-developing mobile Internet society, this content will also be received via cell phones, personal digital assistants, and other devices.
But among the key questions are whether these significant changes in the electronic media marketplace will really open up new opportunities for content producers and the public. Microsoft claims that IPTV will bring us "better TV," with "virtually limitless programming and on-demand content." Yet early indications are that the telephone giants and others appear to be primarily interested in content that can easily sell and will please advertisers. Monopoly providers such as SBC and BellSouth will ultimately want greater control over what they distribute through their pipes, in order to maximize profits. How these major new systems for digital media distribution evolve will depend on what is expected from them by the public. That's why media activists and mediamakers should pay close attention to these developments.
SBC is spending $5 billion to roll out its IPTV network. They claim that within four years their new service will be available to 18 million households. The "brains" of this new system comes, in part, from Microsoft, which has built the operating system software for IPTV that SBC and Verizon have already purchased. Four simultaneous streams of high-quality video, including high definition, can be received, along with other online content. SBC believes it will reap $60 a month from consumers who want this service (undoubtedly, the price will rise as the telephone companies win market share from their cable rivals).
Microsoft's "Media Center" is just one of dozens of devices that have now entered the market designed to make greater personal access to digital content possible. Such technology facilitates the reception, storage, and retransmission of digital content (in the home or to mobile services). For example, there is Akimbo, which can deliver 70 "channels" of content and store 200 hours of the video you selected. Media centers will undoubtedly grow in popularity, becoming a core ingredient of what the technology industry glowingly calls the "connected home."
But the "vision" SBC, Microsoft, and others have for this "brave new world" of TV appears to be firmly fixed to our media past. They talk about providing "Discovery Channel," "National Geographic" and "Fox Sports." Yahoo! is the primary content partner for SBC, and they will likely create special content for IPTV. The potential for interactive and personalized advertising is also a major factor in how these companies view the future of IPTV. Not surprisingly, the model for much of IPTV is based on cable's on-demand service as well as the success Rupert Murdoch has had with interactive programming in the United Kingdom (Sky).
SBC and others also desire to do away with the ability of local governments to govern how IPTV systems serve their communities. They will undoubtedly seek favorable governmental rules so they can--like cable--maintain their video and broadband monopolies relatively unchallenged. But there are clearly new opportunities with IPTV to potentially provide the public with a broad array of content that serves the marketplace of ideas (public affairs and culture, for example). It is time for the public to begin programming IPTV.