Over the next year or so, there will be skirmishes in Congress about video regulations. On the surface, they may sound technical – men wearing ties will bandy about terms like “compulsory license” and “local-into-local” – and it will be very easy to ignore the whole thing. But there are giants moving on the face [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
