by Chris | February 29, 2016 | Observations
I was saddened and a bit shocked to hear today’s news that longtime NPR newscaster Craig Windham had passed away. He was only 66.
I met Craig during my first internship at NPR in 2002. I was desperate to be a newscaster at the time and even though I wasn’t interning with his group, he was generous enough to let me hang out with him during a few shifts and watch him do his thing (and eat dinner with the newscast unit a couple times). Getting to meet him was especially gratifying because at the time I was also a volunteer at Lehigh Valley’s community public radio station, WDIY, where I anchored local news breaks that often came right after Craig’s network newscasts and I always tried to emulate his calm, crisp delivery.
When I met him I believe he was still working on his Ph.D. in counseling, and I remember it being the first time that I realized it was possible to pursue multiple careers, or more accurately, that there might be a way to pursue my passion for radio while doing other things. I’ve been good at the “other things” part, but this makes me think maybe it’s time to figure out a way to get back into radio.
In an article covering Windham’s career, Robert Garcia, the executive producer of NPR’s hourly newscasts, says that “Craig touched so many lives.”
I can vouch for at least one.
Thanks, Craig. You’ll be missed.
by Chris | June 28, 2012 | Law
I’ve recently become interested in the economic challenges facing higher education. It’s well established that the cost of college (and most graduate education) has increased dramatically over the past thirty years, and fewer students (or more accurately, their parents) are realistically able to cover the cost without incurring significant student loan debt. Although interest rates on education loans appear to be leveling off, they remain higher than they were just a few years ago, meaning that some students — particularly those who take out loans for both undergraduate and graduate or professional school — face the very likely prospect of never paying off their education-related debt.
I just finished Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities (Knopf 2010), in which philosopher and professor Mark C. Taylor describes this so-called “education bubble,” and posits that unless colleges and universities embrace new network and communications technologies for content production and delivery, develop and implement new business models, and generally identify opportunities to reap economies of scale, higher education as we know it may well become extinct.
One of Taylor’s observations is that the scope of academic inquiry in many disciplines has become narrower and narrower as subfields are developed — complete with their own conferences, journals, and professional societies — to alleviate the pressure on the faculty to publish. In Taylor’s words, “[t]he problem is not only the growing number of subfields, but also the thinking behind how they are defined,” because as the world changes, so too should the organizational principles upon which we think about intellectual inquiry.
Taylor argues that many academics have become entrenched in their subject area and don’t explore connections to other areas. Taylor proposes the development of a model called “Emerging Zones” that “would be organized around problems and themes that lend themselves to interdisciplinary investigation.” More specifically:
the Emerging Zones program would be university- or college-wide, and all faculty members as well as undergraduate and graduate students would be required to participate. In addition to completing a major or concentrating in a specialized field, students would have to do significant work in at least one Emerging Zone. Faculty members’ contributions to these programs would play an important role in the hiring, renewal and promotion decisions.
Taylor provides two concrete examples — here’s one of them, a zone simply titled “media:”
Experience is always mediated by technologies that are constantly changing. This focus area examines how religious experience, thought, action and institutions are related to different technologies of production and reproduction. “Media” is understood in the broadest possible sense: visual (painting, sculpture, mosaics, film, photography, architecture), auditory (music, ritual, spirits), physical (bodily disciplines and practices, material factors–food, drugs, etc.), transportation (land, sea, air), information and communication (writing, mechanical, electronic, digital) and networks (social, political, economic, technological). The primary concern of inquiry in this area is to determine the ways in which religious beliefs and practices shape media and, correlatively, the impact of different media on religious ideas and life.”
Although Taylor’s arguments and examples are primarily focused on the humanities and sciences, it struck me that much of what Mr. Taylor proposes might work equally well in certain law school fields as well. Traditionally law schools, even those affiliated with larger institutions, have been isolated from non-legal fields of study, with “interdisciplinary” study occuring mostly in the form of dual degrees (e.g., JD/MBA programs requiring courses in both the law school and the business school).
But there are, of course, many areas of the law that implicate other areas of traditional academic inquiry and there certainly are areas of traditional academic inquiry that have legal implications. Take genetic engineering, for example — plainly a topic properly placed in the sciences. But technology aside, the impact of genetic engineering is far reaching, raising significant ethical questions, policy issues, questions about the nature of our health care system, and personal privacy, among others. I’ve seen law courses in ethics, healthcare, and privacy, but I’m guessing there’s never been an “omnibus offering” that contains bits and pieces of everything led by a group of expert faculty from a diversty of affected disciplines.
I’ve described this from a classroom perspective, but if I understand Taylor’s proposal, the emerging zone would be more than a single class offering from several professors in different departments — it would, itself, be a mini-department of sorts, fostering innovative scholarship that cuts across traditional academic lines, and encouraging conversations that rarely happen today because we’re all in our individual, ever narrowing, silos of knowledge and experience. When the relevance of a particular emerging zone fades, so too does the zone, making way for the establishment of new zones more closely aligned with current issues and areas of scholarly inquiry and social relevance.
In my own world — the intellectual property world — I can think of some exciting ways to use Taylor’s model. For example, one might have an emerging zone focused on brands and branding. Such a zone would reach beyond the law school, which would provide trademark experts, to other departments throughout the institution, including psychology, to understand how consumers use brands, slogans, logos, etc., to identify goods and services in the marketplace, and how the brain perceives such brands; marketing, to understand the business context in which brands are used and how; sociology to understand how brands impact our culture and how certain brands emerge as cultural icons; art or graphic design for the visual aspects of branding; music for the sonic qualities; and so on. I’d imagine there are areas of scholarly relevance that I haven’t even thought about.
Beyond the obvious value to scholarly discourse, the emerging zone model could be used to enhance student experiences and provide more real-world applications and perspectives. There has been a great deal of pressure on law schools as of late to produce “practice ready” graduates, and many schools have responded by adding skills-based courses to their curriculum. But taking a deposition or drafting a brief is only part of the law practice experience — students should also have a firm understanding of the social and cultural context in which their practice takes place, and an understanding of the business and economic factors that influence certain behaviors. Such background is lacking in many traditional doctrine-based law school courses, largely because of the very silos that Taylor seeks to eliminate with the emerging zone construct — a construct that a progressive law school would do well to consider seriously.
by Chris | October 26, 2010 | Media & Entertainment
According to this article just posted by Broadcasting & Cable, Time Warner Cable asked the FCC “to deny the sale of two TV stations over the issue of joint retransmission-consent negotiations, or put retrans conditions on the sale if the agency does allow them.” This isn’t the first time that cable operators have complained about stations jointly negotiating retransmission consent — about a year ago both Mediacom and Comcast were complaining about Sinclair negotiating agreements for its owned stations alongside the stations it operated under local marketing agreements.
Antitrust law condemns two competitors getting together and fixing prices or terms; in some cases, where it’s blatant and serves no legitimate business purpose, it may be considered per seillegal, rather than being subject to the more flexible “rule of reason” standard, which calls for a balancing of the procompetitive benefits of a particular arrangement against its anticompetitive effects.
Whether an agreement between broadcasters would be considered a per seviolation, or judged under the rule of reason depends on what procompetitive benefits the stations could proffer. My guess is that a naked agreement to jointly neogitate would be more likely considered a per se violation than one attendant to a local marketing agreement, where the retransmission consent neogitation is simply one of many jointly-performed business functions.
Under a rule-of-reason analysis, either the Justice Department — the agency charged with enforcement of the antitrust laws in the broadcasting industry — or a private plaintiff would be required to demonstrate adverse competitive effects in the market for carriage. And that begs the question: is there a market for carriage?
TV stations clearly compete in the market for viewers, and in some cases, for advertisers, but it’s a closer call whether they compete with one another for carriage. To say that stations so compete is to say that cable operators make decisions about which broadcast stations to carry in a particular market. Is it really the case that a cable operator such as Time Warner Cable decides between, say, the NBC and the CBS station? I doubt it. It’s far more likely the case that the cable operator considers each broadcaster in a market as essential to its lineup. Drop ABC, and you miss out on Desperate Housewives and Dancing with the Stars; drop CBS or Fox and you don’t get NFL football, NCIS or American Idol; similarly, no NBC means no The Office or 30 Rock. Put simply, to effectively compete, a cable operator needs them all.
And the same is true for the stations. They don’t sit around debating which cable, satellite, and telco providers to license their signals to — they want them all.
So, broadcast stations are “must-buys” for cable operators, and cable carriage is a “must-sell” for broadcasters, which suggests that there is little to be gained (and, conversely, little to be lost) by broadcasters jointly negotiating carriage terms. Accordingly, it seems unlikely fodder for an antitrust challenge.
So, why is Time Warner Cable raising it with the FCC? I suspect two reasons:
- It fits in with the cable industry’s narrative that broadcasters are bad people as the industry fights over retransmission terms generally (nicely illustrated by the highly publicized (and, as of this writing, ongoing) battle between Fox and Cablevision); and
- The FCC’s statutory mandate is far broader than that of the Justice Department. The latter can enforce only the antitrust laws, whereas the FCC can generally do anything it reasonably finds is in the “public interest, convenience, or necessity.” It has previously noted that competition is one of its policy objectives.
My guess is that the FCC won’t deny the sale on the basis of Time Warner’s complaint, nor do I believe that it will place any retransmission-specific conditions on the transaction. But, I could be wrong; it wouldn’t be the first time that the FCC has surprised me.
Shameless plug: I discuss competitive issues surrounding local marketing agreements in my recent article Regulating Relationships Between Competing Broadcasters which, I’m told, should be appearing in the Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal any day now. You can also find it on SSRN.
by Chris | September 20, 2010 | Media & Entertainment
This morning’s Inside Radio features several stories about small market broadcasters dropping Arbitron’s ratings services. Citing rising costs, falling revenues, lousy sample sizes, the perennial errors and restatements, and inadequate coverage of minority populations, a handful of broadcasters — namely those in smaller markets — are beginning to sell inventory based on results alone. And according to several of the quoted broadcast executives, it’s working.
It begs the question: did anyone ever really care about local ratings? National advertisers that buy local time probably used the numbers to allocate their spend across markets, but generally speaking, they have always been of relatively little value to local account executives. Aside from the most basic ratings figures, like cume, which can be explained relatively easily using plain language, small, local advertisers — even the sophisticated multi-unit businesses — don’t have time to understand the ins and outs of the ratings. And frankly, they don’t care. If they can’t buy a flight and see some results, then the numbers are irrelevant.
Of course, as any skilled radio tradesman will tell you, there are lots of factors involved in the success of a radio campaign: scheduling, the creative, and the duration of the campaign. And that’s where the sales staff ought to focus their efforts: helping the client build a successful campaign from the ground up, make it successful, show the client some results, and they’ll be back for more. Quarter-hour trends be damned.
As Arbitron fades from relevance in the smaller markets, one wonders how long it will be before they disappear completely. Even with the new PPM technology, Arbitron appears ill-equipped to measure Internet radio, and really, does anyone really need it? Internet-based radio is measured by virtue of its transmission through monitored networks, and it’s a fairly simple matter to link that up with basic demographic information through the use of cookies. Sure, cookie monitoring is controversial and may have accuracy problems of its own, but compared with the sample-size issues that Arbitron faces (which were only exacerbated in major markets as a result of the PPM launch), I bet the numbers are still far more reflective of actual listening patterns.
So, farewell Arbitron. It’s been fun, but it seems as though you’ve overstayed your welcome.
by Chris | September 2, 2010 | Media & Entertainment
I first learned about yesterday’s incident at the Discovery Communications headquarters via Twitter. It started with a simple tweet about traffic issues in the Silver Spring area and quickly mushroomed into a torrent of information, updates, and pictures of the scene. Media outlets, people who worked in the area, and others posted what they saw, and allowed those of us who weren’t at the scene to keep abreast of the rapidly developing story.
I briefly was watching TBD.com‘s online stream, but found it to be typical of TV station crisis coverage: lots of speculation and repetition of the scant facts that were confirmable. Without question, Twitter had the most comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of the situation and its aftermath.
Legacy journalists have criticized the idea of crowdsourcing news, complaining, in particular, that misinformation or knee-jerk reactions can quickly go viral. But that downfall was also a virtue. Several times throughout the afternoon people had tweeted inaccurate information, or drew connections and conclusions that turned out to be false. Just as the misinformation spread quickly, so too did the debunking. Incorrect facts were quickly corrected by others; other facts were quickly corroborated. Put simply, Twitter appeared to function as a true, unencumbered marketplace of ideas, where the best ideas won. No rambling news anchors, no reporters shoving microphones into random bystander’s faces, no and no buried ledes. Just unadulterated content, filtered by the masses, in 140 character chunks.
Other than a handful of media outlets who were tweeting (and, largely retweeting that which other individuals had already said) there wasn’t an AP member among us.
Is this the future of news? I sure hope so.
