Category Archives: Ofcom

Must-carry TV: putting viewers last in the US and Canada (2)

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HomeTheatre1_midrezArtist’s rendering of pentup demand for 22 more mandatory TV channels

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Update (Apr 11). In citing Michael Geist’s post below, I neglected to point out the suggestion he makes to replace must-carry in the service of viewer interests. A must-offer policy would require “broadcast distributors to offer all licensed channels to their subscribers in a pick-and-pay format.” That idea seems sensible, although it’s difficult to see how it could be implemented across the board without a) confronting capacity and delivery issues, especially for smaller BDUs; and b) having the Commission set demand thresholds for very marginal broadcast services. What happens if 50 people request a service on a system with 5,000 subscribers? Whatever the merits, the big distributors are not exactly enthusiastic about pick-and-pay, if only because of the money they would have to leave on the table. But these are all yesterday’s battles and they demonstrate clearly what’s wrong with Canada’s broadcasting system: it’s 20 years out of date, based on outmoded assumptions about infrastructure scarcity, the need to “protect” our sovereignty and the passive role of the TV audience. If only we had a technology that offered a more economic, personal and interactive way to communicate. Wait. We do. It’s called the Internet.

In my previous post, I concentrated on channel-bundling in the US and how the market has been reacting to the pros and cons. Today I want to talk about the CRTC’s must-carry proceeding, an event that has triggered a lot of debate (see Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2013-19).

Right after it was announced in January, Michael Geist tore into the CRTC, referring to the announcement as bad news for Canadians frustrated by ever-increasing cable and satellite bills (CRTC Should Put Consumers First and Drop ‘Must Carry’ Requirements):

Rather than convincing millions of Canadian consumers that their services are worth buying, the broadcasters need only convince a handful of CRTC commissioners that their service meets criteria such as making “an exceptional contribution to Canadian expression.” That is supposedly a high bar, yet it is surely far easier than convincing millions of people to pay for your service each month. Continue reading →

Open kimonos, closed minds: new risks for Canada’s Internet

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Artist’s rendering of Big Media opening their kimonos at secret CRTC meetings

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It’s very useful for the commission in our supervisory role to understand what they’re thinking and for them to open their kimonos. Some of them did offer new information, and we were grateful.

Denis Carmel, CRTC spokesman, Nov 25, in The Wire Report

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Fact-finding without the facts: must be OTT

As I’ve noted before (e.g. here and here), the CRTC’s handling of the over-the-top review is a travesty of due process. It’s based on a fact-finding proceeding that wasn’t a proceeding, and more secret meetings to continue where they left off in March. Denis Carmel’s expression (above) of “gratitude” to the participants for dropping by to grind their own axes, without the bother of rebuttal or outside scrutiny, is a less than comforting way to honor the principle of ex parte meetings. FCC rules require that private meetings with 3rd parties be disclosed, and that the content of discussions be summarized in public minutes. As Free Press noted last July: “The ex parte process may seem obscure to most people, but these meetings have a significant impact on FCC decisionmaking.” (That article was a commentary on the FCC’s proposal to strengthen its ex parte rules.) Continue reading →

The Internet in 2020: the Pew-Elon experts survey, edition V

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The folks at Pew Internet (aka the Pew Internet & American Life Project) produce terrific research on what Americans do online. They have a visitor-friendly website teeming with information about Teens, Broadband, Health, Social Networking, Mobile, Technology User Types and the Digital Divide – and those are just the popular topics. Their work is a boon to my students, who have no source anything like Pew for Canadian data (with the partial exception of Statistics Canada and its Canadian Internet Users Survey, which is still very limited in its scope). Continue reading →

Dumb things you can do with smartphones (1)

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or not…

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Personal messaging, king of the classroom

On campuses from sea to shining sea, it’s that time again. Your children are in a classroom somewhere, staring intently into the iPad you bought to improve their minds. You fondly imagine them looking up course terminology in Wikipedia while they listen to lectures, take notes and flip through coursekits. My kid, the multitasker, one step closer to law school thanks to Steve Jobs.

Dream on, sucker. Your kid’s on Facebook, not Wikipedia… or whatever messaging platform they prefer for keeping in touch with all their friends, all the time, no matter what.

smartphones

LT, shown here using the Skyward grip, keeps the gf's happy with her lightning response times

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The inappropriate use of mobile phones and other digital devices is gaining attention. Last week FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski counselled a back-to-school gathering of students to be “moderate with digital media.” He cited research according to which the average teenager consumes 11 hours of media content a day, and sends a text every 10 minutes he or she is awake (reported by NYT; pdf of speech here). Genachowski mentioned the dangers of texting while driving, as well as less lethal practices associated with academic performance: “How many of you use the Internet to do things like check your Facebook page or play video games, which keep you from doing your school work?”

200 million: the number of text messsages Canadian mobile phone users send every day (source: CWTA)

That’s the first mistake made by well-meaning authority figures: assuming kids believe their “distractions” are actually distracting them from anything, schoolwork included. This is, after all, the age of multitasking and nobody has embraced that lifestyle choice more than teens and young adults. What they don’t know or won’t acknowledge is good research has shown convincingly that our brains don’t like multitasking. Chronic multitaskers who think they can message, compute, listen, socialize and watch TV all at once are living in a fool’s paradise, and we’ve got the brain scans to prove it. Continue reading →