How newspapers and broadcasters are different
The advent of the digital age has put both newspapers and television broadcasters — until not too long ago the arbiters of opinion and taste in America — under pressure. It’s hard for hardcopy newspapers to survive in a craigslist time, and they generally can’t force people to pay for their content online. It’s hard for broadcasters to differentiate their offerings, and so they are starting to release shows online.
But newspapers (unlike broadcasters) seem to get the idea that they’re better off with an open internet than a closed, cell-phone-like internet. I was happy to see the New York Times editorial today on the importance of the Verizon/NARAL issue:
We have long been concerned about the potential threat to free speech and a free press as communications migrate from old-fashioned telephone lines, TV broadcasts and printing presses to digital networks controlled by unregulated private companies. The threat stopped being theoretical recently when Verizon Wireless censored political speech on one of its mobile services. . . . Given this chilling experience, the Federal Communications Commission should quickly issue regulations that also bar interference with text messaging. Unfortunately, the F.C.C. is in the thrall of the carriers, and the Bush administration has an unblemished record of siding with corporations over the rights and safety of American citizens. That means Congress will have to take the lead, as it must on other issues affecting the mushrooming world of digital communications.
What’s great about this editorial is that it takes the long view. It recognizes that this fight isn’t just about “short codes,” but about the future of communications generally. The Times clearly takes the view that communications carriers - even wireless carriers - aren’t like “newspapers.” Newspapers get to choose what they print, and can’t be forced to “carry” any particular speech. Companies providing access to the internet don’t - shouldn’t - get to pick winners and losers in the marketplace of communications.
The editorial also picks up on the current political reality: the FCC simply is not going to do anything that disrupts the carriers’ business plans. Rather than ignore online communications, or say they don’t matter, the newspaper calls for Congressional action to bring our now-ancient communications law (1996!) up to date. This is brave stuff.
It’s something a broadcaster probably wouldn’t say. Sure, they’re under pressure from the internet. So they’d rather avoid it — by finding a way to hook up with cable systems that don’t have common carriage obligations (but can be forced to carry broadcast signals), and fighting any unlicensed uses of white spaces with innumerable lobbyists “red in tooth and claw.” They must want things both ways: special all-American status, so that must carry rules stay in place and we push the country through a digital transition optimized for broadcast, and affiliation with traditionally-proprietary, newspaper-like cable systems that can freely discriminate between transmissions.
Maybe we should put this to a vote. Who would we vote off the communications island? Who has to go? I’m hoping newspapers can stick around (albeit in different, online forms). Broadcasters, on the other hand…
Why the digital transition
One of my students asked whether his television set, connected to a cable system but with no set-top box, would be able to receive digital television after February 17, 2009.
So I decided to try the experiment of being a consumer with this question. I was happy to see the NCTA has this site with information about how this will work. And this:
The good news for cable customers is
that the digital transition should be easy. Thanks to a compromise
adopted by the FCC in September 2007, cable companies will carry the
main digital signal of “must carry” commercial broadcast TV stations
and will duplicate that signal into analog format so that all channels
can be viewed on any older analog TV sets connected to cable.
That’s putting a bright spin on a mandate that cable systems do the work of transforming digital broadcast signals into analog so that a majority of
the people with cable subscriptions will be able to continue to watch all of their local
broadcast stations on analog TVs until at least 2012. (I’m not sure whether cable systems will be allowed to charge for offering the analog version of the digital signal.) Also, see the words “main digital signal”? The FCC agreed to allow cable operators to remove sub-channels from the
broadcasters’ digital signal so as to allow as much compression of the signal as possible.
But if you’re not connected to cable this could be tricky. The first converter box has been approved [site requires free registration], but it costs $69.99. Lots of hearings are scheduled to examine how on earth consumers will hear about the digital transition and be allocated vouchers for these boxes.
Why are we going through all of these conniptions with broadcast, when the broadcasters themselves realize that they won’t survive unless the cable systems carry their signals? When their sub-channels won’t be carried? And when broadcasting is becoming just a subset of online content anyway?
The answer is that over-the-air television is free (in that you don’t have to pay a subscription fee, even you do have to spend time watching the ads), and no one wants to be the politician who strands people without a television signal.
Soon we’ll all be in virtual Google-worlds…
Friday in the white spaces
Things are heating up in the white spaces proceeding. The Commission will soon have to decide what to do. How will it deal with the conflicting technical evidence on interference, particularly given the abject failure of the Microsoft device last month? Is there a way to slice up the issue so as not to cut off later decisions about unlicensed portable devices? What impact should the broadcasters’ claims about not wanting to delay the DTV transition have, particularly given that the broadcasters themselves will end up (inevitably) delaying the transition themselves? There are no objective answers here. These are all deeply-contested, subjective, political issues.
Filings from the last week:
Google’s Larry Page called Chairman Martin to explain that consumers care about prompt completion of the white spaces proceeding and that new portable devices can avoid interference.
A huge flock of broadcasters (the “Association for Maximum Service Television”), sports leagues, television manufacturers, and others emphasized to the Commission the importance of over-the-air television, “especially during emergencies,” and claimed that the sensing levels the FCC is using to test portable devices don’t adequately protect TV transmissions. They’re also arguing that fixed devices can be used in the white spaces to help rural broadband penetration.
Former Commr. Kathleen Abernathy called in from Akin Gump on behalf of the above-mentioned Association for Maximum Service Television to point out “the need to ensure that the digital television (”DTV”) transition proceeds smoothly” and to note that “the potential for interference caused by mobile devices operating in broadcast spectrum would complicate the transition.”
The presidents of Entravision, Telemundo, TuVision, and Univision wrote in to say that “[b]ecause of [the] very tangible and significant threat of interference to Hispanic television viewers, large numbers of whom continue to be over-the-air viewers, we urge the FCC not to allow the wholesale introduction of untold numbers of personal and portable unlicensed devices into the television band until it can be conclusively demonstrated that they will not interfere with broadcast operations.”
And the New America Foundation makes the key point:
“It is important to bear in mind that “sufficient protection” from harmful interference is not a simple technical matter but a complex question of weighing potential benefits, risks and user expectations. For example, while broadcasters would set standards sensitive enough to protect every out of market signal – however distant – from the risk of intermittent interference, to do so would create such enormous costs and so limit the availability of the spectrum as to render such rules effectively unworkable.”
The transition to digital and the death of common sense
Two news items interestingly connect today: First, the airing of Ken Burns’ new documentary, “The War,” is causing broadcasters some anxiety, because it contains four fleeting expletives. From SFGate.com:
Many public broadcasters aren’t sure whether the FCC will fine public television stations for airing ‘The War,’ and the FCC hasn’t revealed its position. That uncertainty is placing the broadcasters in a difficult position. They must either show a documentary in a form other than the artist created, or risk getting hit with large fines for broadcasting naughty words.
And the notion that unlicensed, portable uses of the white spaces might be possible is causing broadcasters some anxiety, because they’re absolutely convinced that these uses will interfere with their programming. From Broadcasting & Cable:
‘[Even if] both the Phillips and Microsoft devices work as advertised, they will still cause interference to over-the air TV reception,’ says David Donovan, who heads the Association for Maximum Service Television.
These poor broadcasters. They’re stuck with an uncertain regulator. They crave protection, they cherish their special status, but they can’t tell what’s going to happen next - and it causes an awful lot of anxiety for them. It’s a schizophrenic existence, being a broadcaster. Your entire existence is predicated on the favors granted you by government.
Surely the broadcasters should cut themselves loose, sell off their airwaves, and retreat to the countryside. Calmer all around.