mediageek

Category: just politics

  • On Thursday’s Radioshow: Uncertain Futures – Tim Hwang Analyzes the New FCC

    “Uncertain Futures” is a new report that reviews the background of the new and returning FCC Commissioners, making educated guesses about what lies ahead for our communications environment. Co-author Tim Hwang will be on this week’s mediageek radioshow to discuss what’s in store for important issues like network neutrality and media consolidation. Hwang is a…

  • If you can’t help but watch…

    Although I know it’s best just to wait until tomorrow morning when all the polls have closed and the votes have been counted (we hope…), it’s hard not to keep your eyes glued to the car wreck that is election night news coverage. But if you want to break away from the mainstream, at least…

  • You Get What You Pay For

    Well, not necessarily YOU exactly, unless you happen to have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to congresspeople this year. But if YOU are AT&T, then you’ve gotten a pretty good return on the $1.7 million you’ve donated to federal candidates this year. 67% of AT&T’s donations have gone to Republicans, and as a result…

  • 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…

  • Tubes, not Trucks — Sen. Stevens Explains the Internets

    One of the most wonderful things about the Senate Commerce Committee is that it is chaired by a doddering old man from Alaska who rarely demonstrates a clear understanding of the technologies his committee oversees. Not that we should be surprised about relative tech ignorance on Capitol Hill, where enough Congresscritters were willingly bamboozled by…

  • Political Economy by Any Other Name Is Apparently a Fresh, New Idea

    Perhaps this is nothing new, but I’m starting to really notice a severe lack of awareness of critical traditions within the A-list blogosphere/digerati culture. Back in March, Andrew took note of a proposal to create a new “interdisciplinary discipline’ of Critical Information Studies, which he concluded, “sounds very like the areas covered by Political Economy…

  • Catch Up on Your Indecency

    Last Thursday the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on “Decency,” and the hearing’s video is now available on-line at the Committee’s website, along with printed statements from the invited guests who gave tesimony. I did short report on the hearing on last Friday’s radioshow, available for listening online. You can also read that headline.…

  • House OKs End Date for Analog TV, Poorest Households Set To Get Screwed

    This is a story I’ve been following on the radioshow, though not so much on the blog. Monday the House passed a bill that sets Feb. 17 , 2009 as the date when your analog TV officially becomes obsolete, and all stations must broadcast exclusively in digital. One of the big controversies, besides the transition…

  • Senate Communications Hearing Orgy with our Spectrum and Internet Rights in the Middle

    Perhaps responding to criticism that he’s been dragging his feet on comm stuff, Senate Commerce Committee Chair has schedule a virtual assload of hearings for the first 11 weeks of the next session on various communications related issues. My guess is that this is all prep work for the forthcoming Telecommunications Act of 2006, and…

  • Next Battle of the Indecency War is Cable and Satellite… and Unconstitutional

    Salon has an article on the forces girding for the next stage of the regulatory battle over indecency. One of the next fronts may be cable and satellite, which FCC Chair Kevin Martin would like to see subjected to indecency regs just like broadcast TV and radio. According to Salon the staff of Senate Commerce…