Author: Paul
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radioshow news headline: HOUSE DEMS URGE OPENNESS ON MEDIA OWNERSHIP REVIEW
From the Aug. 4, 2006 edition of the mediageek radioshow: Eighty-four members of the House, all Democrats, save for one Republican, sent a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin calling on the Commission to conduct its review of media ownership rules in an open fashion. As I reported last week, the Martin plans to hold…
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radioshow headline: DISH AND DIRECTV GANGING UP TO BUY SPECTRUM
From the Aug. 4 edition of the mediageek radioshow: Speaking of big media, satellite TV rivals Dish Network and DirecTV are ganging together to buy up as much spectrum as they can in the FCC’s Aug. 9 auction. Teaming up under the name Wireless DBS LLC the companies are looking to win the right to…
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Ted Stevens Goes Postal
On today’s radioshow I reported on a half-baked pamphlet that Senate Commerce Committee Ted Stevens is distributing to fellow Senators to promote his telecom bill and oppose network neutrality. Click here to take a look at the pamphlet yourself [PDF]. Public Knowledge’s Alex Curis asks some good questions about the pamphlet: Has a congressional committee…
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#2 Music Download Service Has No DRM
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about eMusic. I was a customer for a few years when it was a monthly-subscription fee for all-you-can-download MP3s from independent and minor labels. I quit in 2003 when eMusic changed hands and went to a limited download model. But this year I decided to resubscribe after noticing…
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Lying Liars on Network Neutrality
Techdirt properly points the finger at liar Mike McCurry, current mouthpiece for the big telcos, for his farcical Op-Ed attacking network neutrality in the Baltimore Sun: Among the whoppers in the editorial: “The “neutral” proposal that companies like Google are touting will ensure that they never have to pay a dime no matter how much…
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The Future of Cuba May Be on Shortwave
Back in ancient times, say before 1995, if you wanted to get up-to-the-minute news from far away places generally ignored by the western press, the best place to get it was a shortwave radio. While you were not guaranteed to get a professional, quasi-objective take on events, you would nevertheless hear voices much closer to…
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Same News, New Channels — A Different Sort of NewsCentral
Those Google News alerts are occasionally worth something…. Today my alert set for “Sinclair Broadcast Group” brought me this little gem from the PR Newswire, announcing that my local Central Illinois Sinclair-owned stations will now be producing the 9:00 PM nightly news broadcast for the local FOX affiliates, too, which are not owned by Sinclair.…
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Making Sense of the New Hi-Def Camcorder Format
The new PC World column from Richard Baguley, also my guest on today’s radioshow, is about the new AVCHD format for recording HD video to DVD-R and hard drives. I mentioned the new format as part of Sony’s announcement of two new HD camcorders last week. The main point of functionality I wonder about is…
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Mediageek Joins the 21st Century Phone Era
I just finished an interview with video and camcorder writer Richard Baguley and for the first time I conducted the interview using the free Skype voice over IP (VOIP) service. And I must say that I am very impressed with the quality and ease of doing it this way. Mostly, I am blown away by…
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FCC Opens The Ownership Floodgates — We’ve Got 120 Days To Learn to Swim
On Tuesday the FCC finally released the official Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for its Media Ownership Proceeding [PDF], more than a month after first announcing that it would happen. This proceeding marks the Commission’s attempt to deal with the 2004 appeals court ruling against the 2003 media ownership rules rewrite which attempted to greatly loosen…