NBC's Olympics coverage, both on TV and online, hasn't won high marks. Business Insider writes that NBC's TV coverage is "ruining the Olympics for millions of Americans." Harsh. Its Internet coverage is also unavailable to the millions of Americans who watch TV over the air, undermining NBC's position that broadcast television remains an important part of its business.

It seems that over-the-air viewers, who probably watch more ads per hour than DVR-addicted home theater types--not to mention cord-cutters and "Cable's Lost Generation"--are harder to monetize than cable, satellite, and telco video subscription customers.

The proposed merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio should be approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) only if the deal passes antitrust scrutiny and only if the Commission imposes conditions "that will result in greater program diversity, increase consumer choice and keep prices in check," Public Knowledge told the Commission in comments filed today.

Public Knowledge said in its filing: "If the proposed merger survives the scrutiny of an antitrust analysis, the only pertinent questions are 1) whether the merger would benefit the public interest, and 2) whether denying the merger would harm consumers. Absent a merger, the two companies would likely avoid investing in programming that meets the needs of underserved communities. In contrast, a merged company could provide more diverse programming at better prices." The conditions Public Knowledge recommends are:

Much of the debate over the proposed XM-Sirius merger centers around whether terrestrial radio really provides the same service as its satellite cousins, or if its orbiting kin provide something so different that Gugliermo Marconi's baby just can't compete. As anyone who's driven cross country - fiddling with the dial trying to find a station that is playing something they can stand and that won't fade to static five minutes later - can attest, there are some advantages to satellite that terrestrial just can't match. Users to whom those advantages are important, the argument goes, have only two places to get them: XM or Sirius. A new company aims to change that. This blog has noted the forthcoming Slacker as a potential competitor in the satellite radio market before, but details were sparse as to how the service would actually work, and thus how similar to XM or Sirius it would be.

This article reveals several new details about how exactly the nascent technology will operate, and the picture revealed is of a robust competitor to XM/Sirius - at least as far as music is concerned.

I've never thought that there is only one "public interest" position in communications policy, although it is relatively rare that the most prominent groups disagree. The proposed XM-Sirius merger is one of those rare occasions. First three and now six public interest groups have called for flat-out rejection of the merger. PK, on the other hand, reserves judgment on whether the deal passes antitrust scrutiny, saying that if the antitrust authorities allow the merger, then the FCC should permit it as well, but only subject to the following three conditions:

• the new company makes available pricing choices such tiered programming.

• the new company makes 5% of its capacity available to non-commercial educational and informational programming over which it has no editorial control.

• the new company agrees not to raise prices for its combined programming package (as opposed to each individual company's current programming package) for three years after the merger is approved.

Its summer and time for old habits to kick in. It might be going to camp, or taking a vacation, or working at a summer job or just hanging around. Even Congress has its summer habits. Much like TV, Congress from time to time uses the summer for re-runs, bringing back some old classics of years past - like giving the telecom and entertainment industries a bag of goodies all nicely wrapped up.

It's not just Net Neutrality. There's lots more at stake.

Stop me if you've seen this one. The big media and telecommunications industries persuade Congress to write a bill that gives them anything they want, while consumers get little or nothing.

Does the plot sound familiar? It should, and it's on yet again, in the form of the new Senate telecom legislation (S 2686) to be marked up this week in the Senate commerce Committee. We've seen this show before. In 1996 Congress passed the Telecommunications Act. That one took price controls off of cable service, allowed broadcasters to build up huge empires and let the telephone companies buy out each other while putting the screws to competitors.

It was such a success that the act was brought back in modified form in 2001 and 2002. The bill known for its sponsors, then-Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Commerce Committee and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the committee's senior Democrat, would have lifted the restrictions on telephone companies to share their lines with competitors and deregulated their prices. That bill passed the House, but died in the Senate during the time when Democrats had control, but the Federal Communications Commission implemented many of the policies without Congress. (We note for the record, however, that Dingell has seen the light and altered his views and become a backer of Net Neutrality, a pro-consumer Internet concept the phone and cable companies oppose.)

Now it's time for another appearance, and the real, big industries, as opposed to the relatively nascent Internet companies, have had their shopping lists enshrined in legislation. We've seen one version of the act over in the House, where the telephone and cable companies got their wishes heard, for a streamlined national system of getting or keeping cable licenses without any pesky requirements that would keep the Internet as open and free as today's Internet.

On Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee will mark up an even bigger, more ambitious bill that has more goodies for more industries and arguably next to nothing for consumers. Read on for details.

The EFF has just posted their new video that does a great job explaining the consumer gripes about the broadcast flag, the radio flag, and the analog hole "copyright protections" proposed by the MPAA/RIAA. Both educational and entertaining.

To view the video, click on the image above. You can share it on YouTube here as well. I've added the video to our PK's VideoBomb channel|RSS. Bomb it! Share it! And make sure to note the "Publisher Hookup" link to further support for the EFF.

Great work again to the folks at EFF who have done a great job with this!

Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, urged Congress not to limit consumer choice or hamper innovation by enacting legislation allowing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to implement content controls on digital TV and radio.

In this issue: Gigi on the Hill — Part I; Gigi on the Hill — Part Deux; Telecom Draft Faces Opposition; DoJ Proposes New Copyright Crackdown

Public Knowledge President Gigi B. Sohn testified before the House
Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and
Intellectual Property on November 3rd, 2005.

Public Knowledge President Gigi B. Sohn testified before the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property on November 3rd, 2005.