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The Telecom Digest for April 17, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 83 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Date: 16 Apr 2013 14:20:17 -0400
From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Coconut Connection
Message-ID: <kkk4p1$gmv$1@panix2.panix.com>
I'm reading a journal article from a decade or so ago which in passing
refers to the "Coconut Connection" case, which it describes as the
largest telecommunications fraud on record. A quick google search brings
up basically nothing about this incident. Does anyone have any details or
any suggestion where to look for more info?
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 02:55:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Networks Threaten To Pull Channels Off The Air If Aereo & Dish Win Lawsuits
Message-ID: <73b8fe9b-6fa5-4bf3-8cac-83226578ed43@w3g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 15, 11:54 pm, Monty Solomon <mo...@roscom.com> wrote:
> Hilarious And Ridiculous: Networks Threaten To Pull Channels Off The
> Air If Aereo & Dish Win Lawsuits
>
> by Mike Masnick
> Mon, Apr 8 2013
>
> The entertainment industry has a long, long history of claiming that
> if copyright law doesn't go their way, they'll all go out of
> business. It's the adult version of "if you don't do it my way, I'm
> taking my ball and going home." If court cases don't go their way, or
> if the law isn't changed, we've been told over and over and over
> again for the last century (and more frequently in the last two
> decades) that the industry will take its ball and go home, because
> they won't create under such awful circumstances (even if those
> circumstances really aren't particularly different than they've
> operated under for years). The latest? First, Fox's COO, Chase Carey,
> claims that if they lose the Aereo case, they might shut down Fox,
> the network TV channel, and move all its content to cable TV channels.
>
> ..
>
>
> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130408/12161722625/hilarious-ridic
> ...
If CBS and FOX go cable-only, do they really think their affiliate
stations are just going to turn in their licenses and go off the air?
There are plenty of other second-tier networks that would jump at the
chance to grab a former FOX or CBS channel. Possibilities are
endless: Bounce TV, This TV, Ion Television, Retro Television Network,
foreign language, religious, home shopping. It's also possible that
some current cable channel (CNN for example) would turn itself into a
broadcast network. Never underestimate Ted Turner.
Furthermore, if CBS and FOX go cable only, they lose all the cushy
perks their affiliates got under the 1992 Cable Act. No more mandatory
cable carriage, no more retransmission-consent, no more government-
mandated geographic monopolies, no more mandatory access to the basic-
cable tier. From the cable TV operator's point of view, they'll become
just two more advertising-supported video feeds competing for channel
space in an already-crowded market.
But their former affiliates will still have those perks!
Of course CBS and FOX could still try to play these same tricks as
cable-only channels, but they would be doing so in the free level-
playing-field market without the big stick of the Cable Act on its
side. The cable companies have ample reason so play tough if no other
reason than to seek revenge for years of abuse by the networks.
All that said, I think this whole discussion is premature. The
decision that led to the current discussion was a 2-1 vote by a three-
judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The lone
dissenter, Judge Denny Chin, wrote a vigorous dissent. The
broadcasters will surely request a rehearing en banc at the Court of
Appeals, and the loser in that case will surely appeal to the Supreme
Court. The final decision is years away.
Neal McLain
aka "Texas Cable Guy" in the comment section of the techdirt article.
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 03:00:48 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Networks Threaten To Pull Channels Off The Air If Aereo & Dish Win Lawsuits
Message-ID: <kkl390$3pb$1@reader1.panix.com>
In <73b8fe9b-6fa5-4bf3-8cac-83226578ed43@w3g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com> writes:
>If CBS and FOX go cable-only, do they really think their affiliate
>stations are just going to turn in their licenses and go off the air?
>There are plenty of other second-tier networks that would jump at the
>chance to grab a former FOX or CBS channel. Possibilities are
>endless: Bounce TV, This TV, Ion Television, Retro Television Network,
>foreign language, religious, home shopping. It's also possible that
>some current cable channel (CNN for example) would turn itself into a
>broadcast network. Never underestimate Ted Turner.
I'm pretty sure I'm remembering, or maybe hallucinating, a period
where CNN was carried by some over-the-air stations during
the late night hours.
Anybody else recall that? Thanks.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:59:44 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Networks Threaten To Pull Channels Off The Air If Aereo & Dish Win Lawsuits
Message-ID: <kkks60$okj$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <73b8fe9b-6fa5-4bf3-8cac-83226578ed43@w3g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com> wrote:
>If CBS and FOX go cable-only, do they really think their affiliate
>stations are just going to turn in their licenses and go off the air?
I think they don't care about their affiliates, but are looking at
their O&O stations as parts of a potentially lucrative
spectrum-repacking deal.
>There are plenty of other second-tier networks that would jump at the
>chance to grab a former FOX or CBS channel. Possibilities are
>endless: Bounce TV, This TV, Ion Television, Retro Television Network,
None of those pay enough to justify the electric bill.
>foreign language, religious, home shopping.
Those can be lucrative, and are generally the stations that elect
must-carry anyway.
>Furthermore, if CBS and FOX go cable only, they lose all the cushy
>perks their affiliates got under the 1992 Cable Act. No more mandatory
>cable carriage,
That's fine by them, since they weren't depending on must-carry
anyway. They were depending on their NFL and other sports rights.
(Murdoch, for his part, has been quietly accumulating sports rights
over the past few years, because he thinks six national
general-interest cable sports networks just aren't enough and plans to
launch a seventh later this year from the remnants of SPEED.) Fox and
CBS both think their programming is valuable enough to consumers that
they could get at least as favorable a deal from the big-five MSOs
(and anyone who isn't one of the big five is too small to count) and
the two satellite companies.
>no more retransmission-consent,
See above.
>no more government-mandated geographic monopolies,
A national service doesn't have any use for that anyway.
>no more mandatory access to the basic- cable tier.
See above.
>But their former affiliates will still have those perks!
But they won't have programming anyone (other than little old ladies
on Social Security, who aren't the most lucrative advertising market
out there) has the slightest interest in.
I've believed for a long time that broadcast television is
functionally obsolete, and will be gone (at least as a mainstream
commercial offering) early in the next decade. It's just a huge waste
of energy, and if the executives weren't mired in the sunk-cost
fallacy, they'd have seen that and gotten rid of it already.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
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