The newspaper bailout proposal you may have heard about over the last few months? The newspapers want no part of it, says an industry spokesman.
That said, the industry wouldn’t turn down some help from Congress, says John Sturm, CEO of the Newspaper Association of America. He is testifying before a joint committee this morning.
Did a federal court just give underemployed M&A guys a boost? Could be: The United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has overturned a longstanding cap on cable-system ownership.
If the decision holds up, it could well start another round of dealmaking similar to the one we saw at the beginning of this decade in which the industry consolidated to about half a dozen major players.
Here comes the battle the online ad business has been dreading: Congress is drawing up a bill that would require users to sign up to let advertisers track their online behavior–and, if you believe online publishers, more or less destroy the online ad business.
The man who wants to regulate Web advertising, or more precisely, Web advertising that knows who you are and what you do, puts Google, Yahoo and Facebook on the Congressional hotseat.
Want to watch Web clips of Barack Obama’s latest press conference (or backyard shoot-around) but worry that the Administration–or Google–is watching you? Worry no more!
Did you know that Internet publishing–Internet publishing supported by advertising, that is–creates millions of jobs in this country? It’s true, says a trade group, which is trying to convince Washington that all that is at risk if people start passing pesky laws.
I’m still skeptical that “The Performance Rights Act,” which would require radio stations to pay musicians–or at least, music labels–whenever they play one of their recordings, will ever get through Congress. Not because it’s a bad idea, mind you, but because the music business seems like an unlikely candidate for Washington aid. The bill, however, did take one big step forward today.
The newspaper industry wants help from Washington. But it’s not going to get it anytime soon. That’s the takeaway from a Congressional hearing yesterday, where some industry executives pleaded their case–specifically, that they need a change in antitrust law to survive. But if they were thinking that the Obama administration would be receptive to that sort of thing, they got a swift rebuke.
That was quick. Time Warner Cable is shelving plans to charge its Internet customers based on usage. For now, that is.
The cable giant had planned on charging customers in four locations on a “consumption” plan in which they’d pay between $15 to $150 a month based on the amount of data they hoovered via the Web. But noisy opposition to the plan surfaced immediately and has been getting louder over the past few weeks.
More drum-beating from Eric Massa, the Democratic congressman who has decided to make an enemy/example out of Time Warner Cable, which wants to charge its broadband customers based on their Web usage. The New York rep says he’ll introduce a bill that will prevent Time Warner and other pipe providers from “capping” their broadband offerings.
Behavioral targeting–serving up ads to Internet users based on the sites they’ve already visited–has been standard practice on the Web for a couple of years, but not at Google. That changed this morning when the search giant rolled out “interest-based advertising.” Expect to hear from Congressional critics like Rick Boucher very soon.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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