The PPM Coalition has teamed up with the Spanish Broadcasting System and vowed to attempt to increase FCC scrutiny on Arbitron’s PPM.
The latest move from the minority broadcaster group comes in response to a court order requiring the Spanish Broadcasting System to honor its contract with Arbitron and encode for PPM ratings, MediaPost writes.
SBS: Arbitron Still Fails to Meet Minimum Sample...
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The House Commerce subcommittee on communications began exploration of the proposed deal between Comcast and NBCU today.
Antitrust experts have said the Justice Department’s antitrust division and the FCC could take up to a year to work out conditions for the deal to be approved, writes Reuters.
Opponents of the merger believe a deal would hurt competitors and consumers by giving Comcast the...
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Arbitron’s Michael Skarzynski, named CEO of Arbitron exactly a year ago, has been booted from the position. William Kerr, a member of the board of directors since 2007, will take over the role of president and CEO.
Skarzynski was forced to resign after the board of directors found that he had “violated a company policy” in a matter the company says was unrelated to its financial...
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The Advertising Standard Authority (ASA), the U.K.’s advertising watchdog, has banned a Finnair ad claiming that it is eco-smart for travelers to use the Finnish airline. The ASA also recommends that airlines choose their ad words carefully when promoting their green credentials.
After receiving two complaints, ASA banned the Finnair poster that features an image of an Airbus flying over the...
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We polled marketers with real experience conducting green marketing on what works, where, and with what media and messages. Some results were pretty surprising. Click here to get our executive summary and see some of the key charts.
The cable industry’s TV Everywhere initiative is being attacked by seven consumer advocacy groups which claim the plan stifles competition in the emerging market for online television programming.
The groups - Free Press, Media Access Project, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Open Technology Institute, Participatory Culture Foundation and Public Knowledge - say TV Everywhere is...
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Google has just expanded its Personalized Search function to apply to signed-out users as well.
Previously, Personalized Search was only enabled for signed-in users - and only when they had Web History enabled on their Google Accounts. Expanding it to signed-out users allows Google to customize search results based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in the user’s...
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A recently released Senate Commerce Committee staff report is taking aim at the dark side of ‘aggressive’ online direct marketing, and has singled out three companies, Affinion, Vertru and Webloyalty, in addition to the hundreds of retailers that have used their services.
The report says that the three companies “use aggressive sales tactics intentionally designed to mislead online shoppers.”...
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The FCC has appointed former U.S. News & World Report national editor Steven Waldman to lead a fact-finding process to study the impact technology and the weakened economy has had on media, and to make any necessary policy recommendations.
Waldman’s mission to assess the state of media comes as the FCC begins reviewing media ownership rules, writes Mediaweek.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski...
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In Nielsen’s final update on the readiness status of U.S. homes to receive digital TV signals, the measurement company pegged the number of homes that failed to make the DTV transition at nearly 1.5 million.
Nielsen says 0.49% of U.S. households are still unable to receive DTV signals. These households are no longer part of Nielsen’s DTV universe, reports MediaPost. “With the passing of the...
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As the national union of flight attendants urges Congress to ban in-flight phone calls, passengers on foreign airlines have routinely begun using mobile phones and other wireless devices mid-flight, The New York Times reports.
The argument against mobile phone use on planes ranges from radio interference to social turbulence in-cabin. But frequent flyers abroad see the situation...
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