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A clear explanation of the TV spectrum auction

February 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

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Congress has approved a law that Obama will likely sign. That’s the first step in a long, complicated process. A national plan would be a good idea, but this adventure may take shape market-by-market, station-by-station instead.

What does this mean for the American people? Well, it’s probably the beginning of the end of broadcast television. If the FCC and lawmakers work together, they can probably construct a sensible transition to a robust IPTV-based system. Along the way, they must address the significant public interest concern of free access to information. The version of the future in which Comcast, Verizon and (probably) Google control all information is probably not in our best interests, but their investments are probably required to make ubiquitous broadband multimedia a reality. The alternative more closely resembles the information superhighway (remember the term?) version of the interstate highway system. This is not the way most people are thinking, but strong arguments will move in this direction, and soon.

Here’s the article as it appeared on February 17, 2012 in TVNewsCheck (link at end of article). It’s called Incentive Auction Headed for Obama’s Desk, and it was written by Kim McAvoy.

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After more than two years of political wrangling, Congress on Friday signed off on legislation authorizing the FCC to conduct an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum.

The measure is contained in a major legislative package that would extend payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits.

Both the House and Senate approved the package, which now goes to President Obama, who is expected to quickly sign it into law.

The legislation permits the FCC to hold auctions and share the proceeds of them with broadcasters that voluntarily relinquish their spectrum.

However, for TV broadcasters who chose not to give up their spectrum, the measure contains safeguards against their suffering any loss of service.

Before the FCC conducts an auction, it has much to do. Implementing the law could take as many as three separate rulemakings. Some believe it could take five to 10 years to get to get to an auction.

A key element of the FCC’s March 2010 National Broadband Plan, the incentive auction is a mechanism by which the FCC hopes to reallocate up to 120 MHz of spectrum from TV to wireless broadband carriers.

The NBP believes the reallocation is necessary to meet what it believes will be a severe shortage of broadband spectrum as more and more Americans use smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices to access the Internet on the go.

The incentive auction language in the spending package is based on legislation authored by House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and has the backing of the National Association of Broadcasters.

NAB has been pushing hard for specific safeguards fearing that the FCC’s incentive auctions might damage the broadcasting business.

Among the key provisions is a requirement that the commission make “all reasonable efforts’’ to preserve … the  coverage area and “population served’’ of broadcasters who don’t participate in the incentive auction.

For local TV broadcasters, it is paramount that any legislation guarantee that their service areas will remain unaffected by the channel reassignments or “repacking” that will occur as a result of the auction.

Broadcasters are also pleased that the legislation would set aside $1.75 billion to compensate TV stations (and cable operators) for costs associated with repacking — the wholesale switching of channels that would occur after the FCC identifies the spectrum it will have to auction and consolidates it into large swatches that can be more easily auctioned.

Originally, Walden’s bill allocated $3 billion to a relocation fund, but House Democrats complained about the amount and argued that the fund should be only $1billion as recommended by the Congressional Budget Office.

The legislation also makes it easier for those broadcasters that are thinking about leasing excess spectrum to wireless carriers. According to the legislation, in lieu of reimbursing stations for the costs of repacking, the FCC may grant stations waivers to use some of their spectrum for services other than broadcasting. Such a waiver would remain in effect only while the licensee provides at least one free, over-the-air television program stream.

The measure also prevents the FCC from moving stations from a UHF channel to a VHF channel or from a high VHF channel to a low VHF channel.

And it makes clear that this is a one-time auction with a 10-year sunset on the FCC’s authority to repurpose broadcast spectrum.

Under the legislation, only full-power TV stations and Class A low-power stations can participate in the incentive auction.

It states that the FCC must use a “reverse auction system’’ as a means to establish a price at which TV stations would give up their license and then conduct a “forward auction’’ of the TV spectrum.

Most important, if the proceeds are insufficient to cover the incentive payments and relocation costs, the auction fails. And stations that participate in a channel-sharing arrangement retain must-carry rights.

NAB is also pleased about the provisions directing the FCC to address issues that could affect TV stations with service areas bordering Canada and Mexico before it relocates those broadcasters to another channel.

Those provisions were authored by Reps. John Dingell (D- Mich.) and Brian Bilbray (R- Calif.).

There is also language in the measure that allows an unhappy broadcaster that is being displaced by the incentive auction, or any interested party, with the right to go directly to court.

“The bottom line is, instead of protesting a license modification at the commission first, you could go to court,” says a source familiar with the legislation.

Although broadcasters would get a cut of the incentive auction proceeds, the bill intends for most of the revenue to go to the federal treasury and to help fund a nationwide communications network for first responders.

The CBO is estimating that $15.2 billion will be raised by the incentive auction.

House Republicans wanted to include the auction language in the payroll bill as way to help cover the costs associated with extending those tax breaks.

Overall, the measure was being hailed on and off Capitol Hill.

“We struck a fine balance to make more efficient use of the airwaves while also providing necessary protections for broadcasters,” said a statement released by Chairman Walden and House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.).

NAB President Gordon Smith said: “NAB salutes the tireless efforts of Congress to ensure that local broadcasters have a vibrant and robust future.’’

Smith applauded the efforts of  Chairmen Upton and Walden “for steering this bill to conclusion, and … Reps. Dingell and Bilbray for a critically important amendment guaranteeing continued viewer access to TV station signals along the Canadian and Mexican borders.’’

Over at the FCC, Chairman Julius Genachowski was also pleased with the news of impending congressional action on the incentive auction proposal. The FCC chairman has been a chief proponent of the incentive auctions, believing that TV spectrum is underutilized and would be put to better use for wireless broadband services.

“I’m pleased that Congress has recognized the vital importance of freeing up more spectrum for mobile broadband, both licensed and unlicensed, although the legislation could limit the FCC’s ability to maximize the amount and benefits of recovered spectrum,” Genachowski said.

The wireless industry, which has been leading the charge on Capitol Hill to get the incentive auction bill passed, called today’s vote “a resounding victory for consumers and the American economy,’’ in a statement from CTIA-The Wireless Association President Steve Largent.

“Making spectrum available will make it possible for America’s wireless carriers to offer consumers better, faster, more ubiquitous wireless broadband service,” Largent added. “The release of additional spectrum also will spur the investment and job creation that our economy needs.”

Copyright 2012 NewsCheckMedia LLC. All rights reserved. This article can be found online at: http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/2012/02/17/57569/incentive-auction-headed-for-obamas-desk.
Filed Under: Trends, TV & New Media Tagged With: , , , ,

(Almost) Paperless Office

February 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’m not 100%, but I’m close. My working life is now mostly on-screen. And, as of yesterday, there’s no longer a five-inch stack of business cards on my desk.

Truly, I don’t use my full-sized color laser printer more than once a month. I carry around very few file folders, often, none at all. Just about everything is digital, easy to find, easy to search, Dropbox-able and email-able.

The biz cards presented a conundrum. This stack from a trade show, that one from four years of office meetings. My old systems–looseleaf notebooks with plastic insert pages, and a desktop filebox–were overwhelmed.

So I took the ultimate step: scanning business cards into some sort of database (in my case, Bento).

It worked. Not perfectly, but well enough to rate a good solid B-plus.

There are several available systems. I used the Neat Receipts Mobile Scanner for Mac. The scanner is about nine inches wide, maybe an inch high and two inches wide. There’s a large open slot that can be used to scan 8.5 x 11 pages (a nice convenience), receipts (hence the product name), and, for me, business cards. Each card is individually placed into the slot, and there’s a button marked “scan”–easy enough. I had some trouble because I connected the mini-USB cable to my Mac keyboard; the scanner requires more power than the keyboard can provide, so it must be plugged directly into the computer (an inconvenience).

The software grabs the image, quickly implements an OCR run (Optical Character Recognition), and places each bit of information in an appropriate field in its database. For some cards, the OCR does a perfect job. Usually, there are a few missteps, easily corrected because (a) the card is displayed alongside the database record, and (b) just about any item on the card can be manually dragged (and re-recognized) into your choice of database fields.

My several work sessions were amazingly productive–for three reasons. First, I was able to scan several inches of cards into the database in just a few hours (including my output from the Neat database to my Bento database). Second, the process itself required me to edit the batch of cards, to throw some of them away. Third, as soon as some cards were scanned, I copied the information and wrote a re-introduction email (“Hi, we met in 2008, thought I’d get back in touch…”)

And, perhaps best of all, I’m no longer accumulating random business cards in rubber-banded piles. Now, as soon as I collect a few cards, I scan them into the database.

Oh–one more note–if a business card presents a hyperactive multi-color design, don’t bother scanning because Neat will become completely flustered. Just type the information into the database.

Again, I’m not 100%, but the combination of hardware, software, and a new compulsion keep everything in order gets me closer to a 21st century workflow.

Filed Under: Products, Trends Tagged With: , , , , ,

Corning’s Clear View of the Future

February 13, 2012 by 2 Comments

Interesting concept video by Corning Glass.

Boring? Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. I was wrong.

Turns out, screens are / will be everywhere. And, Corning knows that those screens will be made of… you guessed it.

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Nielsen: TV isn’t changing so quickly, after all

February 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Traditional television viewing completely dominates viewing habits. New behaviors are evident, but they are slowly shifting the landscape.

The latest from Nielsen’s periodic Cross Platform Report (formerly, the Three-Screen Report):

90% of US households subscribe to cable, satellite and similar television services. This number is NOT dropping. It is stable.

75% of US households pay for a broadband connection.

5% are “broadcast/broadband households” – that is, they do not subscribe to cable or satellite services, instead watching either broadcast channels and internet video (and, presumably, a lot of DVDs from Netflix). This group is growing. In comparison with Q3 2010, there are 23% more today. It’s still a very small portion of US households.

81 million US households pay for cable plus broadband.

22 million US households subscribe to cable or satellite, but not to broadband.

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Looking at the total population, we’re still watching about 35 hours of television per week–still an astonishing 7 hours per day (do you actually know anybody who watches 7 hours of television a day–I know one person, but she’s pretty much housebound). About 2 of those hours are recorded on a DVR or VCR. Compare that with just 4 weekly hours of internet use (really? most people I know use the internet a whole lot more than 4 hours a week). How much internet TV viewing? About a half hour per week (seems about right to me).

Yes, there are generational differences, but the swings are not huge. Adults 18-24 watch 25 hours of television per week–over 3 hours a day. And they watch about 45 minutes of internet video. People 50+ watch about 45 hours per week, actually about twice as much TV as those 18-24. Teens 12-17 behave very much like the 18-24 crowd, but teens watch about a third less internet video than the college and post-college crowd.

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Or, so Nielsen claims. Although Nielsen presents itself as the authority on television viewing, nowhere in the report is the survey base explained–no numbers of people or households surveyed, no demographic breakdown, no description of the sample used. Remember: Nielsen’s work is based upon surveys and samples–that is, Nielsen uses one household to represent perhaps 5,000 households. Of course, Nielsen claims that over time, the households come and go, but the survey results are very consistent. Look closer and examine Nielsen’s base–not all age groups, not all communities, not all zip codes, not all household incomes or ethnicities are measured.

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Is something changing? Of course–everything is changing in every possible direction. Babies born in 2010 and baby boomers born in 1950 are watching “TV” on iPads and phones. Movies are available through so many sources, but these viewing habits aren’t really captured in Nielsen’s survey. Neither are videogames. So what we have here is a somewhat unreliable, but perhaps directional, study of a particular (though undefined) population of viewers who may or may not be evenly sampled or represented. A healthy skepticism of anything published by Nielsen should be part of any critical thinking exercise related to media and its transformation.

Nielsen-Cross-Platform-Report-Q3-2011

Filed Under: Trends, TV & New Media Tagged With: , , ,

The Ultimate Road Trip

February 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever built–bigger than the pyramids of Egypt, about a hundred times as long as the Panama Canal, easily eight times the length of The Great Wall of China. It’s newer, too. And, soon, we’ll probably build it all over again.

As Earl Swift explains in The Big Roads: The Untold Stories of the Engineers, Visionaries and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways, the U.S. interstate highway system is forty-seven thousand miles long, and it is the “greatest public works project in history.”

Messy as our current dilemma about infrastructure may seem, life was worse before the interstates, before modern roads. In the good old days, New York City’s horses output 2.5 million pounds of manure every day, plus 60 thousand pounds of urine. In 1893, the agriculture department got things rolling with a new Office of Road Inquiry, whose boss, a Civil War veteran, declared Americans “have the worst roads in the civilized world.” Still, intrepid automobiling pioneers attempted a cross-country race in 1903 (one car included a dog, Bud, who wore goggles and “became a hit in every town they visited.”) This was the beginning of an industry, complete with sales stunts on a grand scale: Carl Fisher, whose early days were consistently colorful (and completely crazy), “rigged a Stoddard-Dayton roadster to a massive balloon and flew it over Indianapolis, vowing to drive it back into town from wherever he landed.” (Actually, Fisher stripped the floating car and drove home in a look-a-like spare). Not long after, Fisher partnered with two other car crazy businessmen  and built the Indianapolis Speedway. Fisher was among the first to campaign for a big interstate highway system.

A half-century later, in 1956, “nearly $2.6 billion had been committed to the work… contracts had been awarded on more than a thousand bridges… construction was under way or about to begin on nearly two thousand miles of highway.” Half the book is about the wrangling, the engineering and politics, the slowdowns due to the Great Depression and World War II, and all sorts of rational and irrational arguments about the nature of the undertaking, the roles of the states versus the Federal government, the best ways to pay (tolls? gas tax? Federal funds? State funds?), and much more. In fact, the weakest part of the book attempts to describe this wrangling–Swift (great name for the author of a book about fast highways, BTW) does his to craft a story from his astonishing collection of arcane research. With Detroit pumping out over 5 million cars per year (1 in 3.5 citizens owned a car), America had a mess on its hands. Far too many cars driving on roads that were designed decades earlier. Trucks made the situation worse, both by contributing to congestion and also by damaging roads never built for a big truck’s combination of weight and speed. “Snarls at New York’s George Washington Bridge were traced back eighty-four miles–seriously, eight-four miles–to Monticello, New York.”

Even in these early stages, Swift explains that the highway system had its critics: Lewis Mumford published articles and books about the loss of city neighborhoods, and the economic destruction of towns and villages across the nation. By the 1960s, the environment movement gradually imposed restrictions on engineers who were once able to construct interstate highways pretty much anywhere, regardless of impact on animals, ecosystems, even city parks. Several Baltimore neighborhoods fought tremendous battles, and today, there is no interstate highway system cutting across Baltimore–the local activists won their battle. Visitors to Baltimore’s lovely old Fell’s Point neighborhood can thank those activists–if the interstate was built as planned, that neighborhood would be gone.

Swift goes on the record to give credit where it’s due, often to government functionaries who exceeded the call of duty, but his writing is far more interesting when he’s on the road himself, or when he’s telling the (too-brief) stories of how Howard Johnson’s or other roadside co-conspirators grew to be a part of American life on the road.

What’s more, I wish he had told us more about the next fifty years, or perhaps, the next twenty. Apparently, the interstate highway system was built for about a half century’s useful life. It has not been properly maintained. As the most dedicated of the government figures, Frank Turner, pointed out, “Highways grow old and wear out at a fairly predictable ages and lifespans, and therefore must be replaced or restored.”

Swift explains, “One federal study suggested that all levels of government should spend a combined $225 billion a year for the next fifty years to rehabilitate surface transportation…they’re currently spending just 40 percent of that, in a country that does 96 percent of its traveling by car and truck.”

So begins a brief discussion about dedicated truck lanes, alternative fuels and other incremental improvements. The bigger question is potentially world-changing and certainly mind-bending, so I offer it as the basis for Swift’s next book. A century ago, visionaries came up with the idea of cars (and trucks), and then, a connected interstate highway system to move people and goods in a safe, reliable, cost-effective way. By the time the interstate highway system was completed in the late 1960s, most of those people were either gone or too old to drive. Given the astonishing public good, the modernization of America, and the tremendous downside associated with our current system, I wish Swift would encourage a discussion so we can decide whether to, and how to:

(a) spend another $11 trillion ($225 x 50 years) to fix and upgrade a highway system conceived before television, McDonalds, cell phones, FedEx or the internet, or

(b) come up with an equally bold conception of transportation that could sustain us until, say, 2112?

Here’s the photo of author Earl Swift as published on the literary festival’s website.

Looks like a strange, unimaginable number, that 2112, but in 1912, when Fisher and his friends were tooling around Indianapolis in their early model cars, 2012 must have seemed as far away, and as impossible, as a 47,000 mile highway system connecting every city and town in what is now called the lower 48 states.

BTW: In researching the author, I found this impressive bit about his interests: “An avid outdoorsman, Swift has through-hiked the Appalachian Trail, circumnavigated the Chesapeake Bay by sea kayak, and traveled the 435-mile length of the James River by foot, canoe, and kayak.” I found it here.

The Big Roads was published in 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Buy it from Powell’s Books.

Filed Under: Books & Print, Travel & Food, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Know What? Why?

February 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment

New York Times illustration by Viktor Koen

Here’s an article by former Harvard President Lawrence Summers. It was tucked into the Education Life section of the January 22, 2012 issue, so you may have missed it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/the-21st-century-education.html?pagewanted=all

Summers is attempting to change the debate. Some key ideas:

1. Getting information is now the easy part. Twenty-first century education ought to be about processing and contextualizing information.

2. Processing and contextualizing leads to collaboration.

3. New technology allows the best teachers to be connected to every student. Everything else seems to be clutter.

4. Despite best efforts on the interactive side, most learning is passive: watch, listen, learn. Active learning is the future, but we’re just beginning to understand how and why.

5. Learn a language. Travel the world. Be global.

6. Education must shift from information dissemination to analysis.

Although he’s on the elitist side, the ideas make sense. The complete article isn’t long, but it does present ideas worth pondering.

Filed Under: Learning, Trends Tagged With: , ,

Tools: Publish your own eBook (or, iBook)

January 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Within the next 30 days, I am going to publish my first eBook. How I wish Mashable had published this chart of eBook publishing software applications before I got started. I struggled through Adobe InDesign and gave up. I would have used Apple iBook Author but it was not available. For me, Scrivener was the best available solution–and it seems to be working, but Apple has upped the game with its (and free) software.

Have a look, and be sure to pass this post on to anyone who might be considering their first eBook.

A chart comparing all the ePub tools available to users.

How iBooks Author Stacks Up to the Competition [CHART]

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Big Cities, 1860 Edition

January 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

I just came across the 1860 census. Fascinating.

With just over 800,000 people, our biggest city was New York. Philadelphia was second with just over a half-million. Third? Brooklyn, not yet part of New York, followed by Baltimore and Boston.

New Orleans was the sixth largest city, about the size of Cincinnati and St. Louis.

Surprises?  Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, Troy, Utica–the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, so this was high time for upstate New York. Also, Newark (NJ) as our eleventh largest city, on par with Washington, D.C., Detroit, Cleveland, Charleston (South Carolina), Hartford (CT). None of these cities were larger than 100,000; in fact, most of them were smaller than 50,000. Newark was home to 72,000 people–about the size of a modest suburb today.

Only one city on the list was west of the Mississippi: San Francisco. Population, just over 50,000, or about the size of Pittsburgh (then, Pittsburg), PA.

If you feel like exploring, visit: http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/hiscendata.html

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Bend Me, Shape Me, See Right Through Me

December 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This falls into the category of “totally amazing stuff.” You’re looking at one of several Samsung screens that will probably be available sometime in 2012. Yes, that’s a cell phone. Apparently, Samsung (which is turning itself into an awesome company on the display side, BTW) is working with Nokia to bring this concept to life, and to market, and to change everybody’s notions of what a phone, and a display, can be.

Initially, Samsung’s new screens will be introduced in Nokia phones.  Soon after, there will be tablets that are not only flexible, but see-through. Imagine looking through a map, with interactive directions, and directly in front of you at the same time. (Certainly, there will be heads-up displays used in automobiles for just that purpose, but maybe that comes a bit later on.)

The technology is called “flexible AMOLED.”

Interesting? This is just one of many mind-blowing moments in Samsung’s (Japanese-language) video. And, if you want more insight, check out this article in the London Daily Mail.

Even more interesting a thoroughly conceptual video from Samsung which illuminates the company’s view of their future. (It may take a moment to load.)

Filed Under: Mobile, Trends Tagged With: , , , , ,

Meet Boxie

December 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment


Boxie is a friendly little robot who lives and works at MIT Media Lab. He’s a busy little guy, and his story may change your perceptions of robots in our future.

Boxie Labcast

Filed Under: Art & Photography, Learning, Trends, TV & New Media Tagged With: , , ,
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