Susan Crawford on telecom monopolies and sports programming's role in high U.S. Internet prices and slow speeds

On the Majority Report yesterday, Susan Crawford chatted with Sam Seder about her new book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. It's a generally insightful (and frustrating) talk about the absence of competition in the telecom marketplace -- especially the market for home broadband service.

Crawford "explains why the Internet should be treated like a electricity, why Wired access is essential for success in today’s economy, why private companies have no incentive to provide universal access, the industry push back against her ideas, why market concentration is so high in the wireless market and educating the public on the need for an communications policy."

Of particular interest to me was an exchange between Seder and Crawford about the role of sports in these processes (transcript below). Since sports content is so highly valued by consumers (and, arguably, the one type of programming that's holding the traditional cable model together), companies like Comcast can use their sports holdings/programming to erect barriers to entry to competing providers. Providers that, as Crawford explains, could offer (or force the big fellas to offer) faster and cheaper broadband services.

Profit Slides 6% at Disney as Movie and TV Divisions Lag

"ESPN had a significant impact on Disney's quarter, with programming expenses increasing for football and basketball. Those costs held back results for Disney's media networks unit, which houses the cable sports behemoth; operating income there increased a tepid 2 percent, to $1.21 billion. The growth came from the Disney Channel, ABC Family and higher ad sales at the ABC broadcast network."

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/costs-at-espn-depress-disney-profits/

Sent from phone. Sory for tpyos.

PaidContent: How social media is becoming as important a live event as the live event itself

"Most of us will have to accept the fact that seperating live events from their social media counterparts is a losing battle at this point, but for brands like Oreo, the knowledge that they have a dual-platform audience creates real possibilities"

http://paidcontent.feedsportal.com/c/35063/f/648056/s/28405000/l/0Lgigaom0N0C20A130C0A20C0A40Chow0Esocial0Emedia0Eis0Ebecoming0Eas0Eimportant0Ea0Elive0Eevent0Eas0Ethe0Elive0Eevent0Eitself0C/story01.htm

CNBC: Advertisers Bet Big on the Super Bowl

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100424213

"So why are advertisers flocking to a single event, where a mere 30 seconds of ad time costs as much as $4 million, plus often another million or so to produce a commercial?

Because it's still the best way to reach a massive audience, who treat the ads with just as much respect as they treat the game itself. And now brands can get more bang for their buck by extending their ads for weeks before and after."

Nielsen: Avid sports fans are a particularly tech-savvy demographic

Perhaps the most over-used phrase in my dissertation was "tech-savvy affluent males." This is the specific audience that Vox Media -- the company I studied -- is most interested in attracting to its network of 300+ sports blogs (SB Nation), its consumer technology news site (The Verge), and its video games news site (Polygon). As Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff explained of the company's expansion from sports to technology:

Nearly all of our advertisers are looking for young, tech savvy affluent males so there is great overlap and expansion opportunity there.

Indeed, Nielsen research published this week suggests that avid sports fans are a particularly tech-savvy demographic. Some highlights:

• "Avid sports fans are 52 percent more likely to own a tablet"
• 42% more likely to own a DVR
• 33% more likely to own a gaming console
• 21% more likely to own a smartphone
• 20% more likely to own a HDTV

• "Nearly 60% of tablet and smartphone owners who access sports on their device check this content at least once a day"

• "41% of all TV-related Tweets are about sports programming, although sports accounts for only 1.3% of all TV programming."

• Users of the top six sports apps spend more than 1 hour, on average, using that app each month. ESPN Streak for the Cash users spend an average of 2 hours each month using the app.

As Stephen Master, senior VP of sports for Nielsen, told Mashable:

"Live sports are all about real-time action, and mobile devices allow sports fans to keep up and discuss that action, while also providing instant access to the sports content they want — whether that's score updates, fantasy stats or tweets to their favorite athlete ... Smartphones and tablets haven't quite changed the live sports viewing experience yet — TV is still the top platform — but our research shows that more and more people are frequently using these devices while watching TV, indicating that these devices are enhancing that viewing experience."