Chipmaker Qualcomm agreed to buy Wi-Fi chip manufacturer Atheros for $3.1 billion to accelerate expansion to businesses beyond cellular, the companies’ executives said in a conference call Wednesday. The deal, expected to close in the first half, would create a communications platform that spans wireless, home, smart grid and sensor networks, analysts said.
Teen girls have become “oversexualized” in prime-time broadcasting, the Parents Television Council said after analyzing how they're portrayed on popular shows. “Storylines on the most popular shows among teens are sending the message to our daughters that being sexualized isn’t just acceptable, it’ should be sought after,” said council President Tim Winter. “It will take action from parents, actors themselves and advertisers who pay for TV content … to instigate change,” he said. Among the study’s findings: On shows popular with teens, younger female characters are more likely than older characters to be “portrayed in sexual behaviors” on screen; in the “sexualized scenes” featuring underage characters, 86 percent of the characters were depicted as of high school age; and only 5 percent of those characters communicated “any form of dislike for being sexualized.” And 75 percent of the shows that the council found to have sexualized portrayals of teens lacked the “S-descriptor” in their V-chip ratings, so “it is unclear how existing parental devices like the V-Chip can be useful in helping families avoid explicit sexual content portrayed by underage characters,” the study said.
BALTIMORE -- Asking the government to require FM tuners in cellphones, as the NAB has done, “brands” the radio industry as “desperate” for a bailout, CEA President Gary Shapiro said Thursday at the Arbitron-Jacobs Media Summit. Shapiro, who in the summer will mark his 20th year at the CEA’s helm, has no plans to run for public office, he told us at the conference.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., “will remain active” after he departs the Congress at the end of the year, he said in an interview last week. “I'm 64 but I feel pretty young … and I think I'm good for another 20 years doing something.” The outgoing House Communications Subcommittee chairman hopes Congress next year will finish bipartisan work he started on privacy, incentive auctions and a revamped Universal Service Fund.
The World Trade Organization will open discussion on an EU proposal to review the Information Technology Agreement, the WTO said after talks last week. The discussion will include negotiations on barriers other than tariffs and on expansion of product coverage and countries that have signed the agreement. The EU went over its proposal on electromagnetic compatibility and electromagnetic interference conformity assessment procedures, which is stalled in the long-running Doha Round of trade negotiations. Chairman Tomohiro Kaneko of Japan urged the negotiators to notify the WTO’s committee on technical barriers to trade of their conformity assessment procedures as soon as possible. The WTO said it may first deal with “easy items,” those that customs experts from countries that have signed the agreement are in general accord about. Kaneko will offer a draft list covering mainly semiconductor manufacturing equipment for discussion at the next meeting.
The HomePlug Powerline Alliance said it’s demonstrating its powerline network technology at this week’s Broadband World Forum in Paris. The three-day conference ends Thursday. HomePlug is touting “the wide adoption” of its current AV powerline technology. The Alliance was “very pleased with the milestones” it passed this year, including completing its Green PHY Smart Grid specification in June, HomePlug AV chips from four semiconductor companies passing its certification program, and shipments of HomePlug devices topping “the 60 million benchmark,” said President Rob Ranck. The IEEE 1901 powerline standard based on HomePlug AV technology was also completed this year, and its next-generation AV2 broadband specification “will be finished in early 2011,” he said.
A term sheet on NAB’s performance royalty position adopted by its radio board late Monday and approved Tuesday by the TV board drew criticism from other industry groups. The NAB sent the term sheet to the MusicFirst coalition Monday night and said it would only support legislation to institute a performance royalty for terrestrial radio broadcasters that mimicked it. The coalition said it differed from an agreement the groups had reached over the summer. But NAB CEO Gordon Smith said no such agreement had been reached as talks between the parties continued (CD Sept 29 p6).
Consumers are poised to spend more time watching TV delivered over the Internet, Radius Global Market Research said after conducting a survey. But not all consumers see the benefit to watching Web-delivered programming, Radius said. That, coupled with the potential for lower video quality of Internet-delivered programming, could slow adoption, it said. About half the people Radius surveyed said they've been frustrated by the “lack of smoothness in streaming or buffering” of online content. And about 40 percent said they don’t have access to broadband speeds fast enough to watch video. “The majority of regular Internet TV watchers are still early adopters who will work to overcome some existing technology limitations,” said Chip Lister, Radius managing director. “Manufacturers will have to work to eliminate current access hurdles in order for the general population to begin viewing on a regular basis."
The end of government stimulus spending will mean reduced wireless semiconductor revenue in 2011, said a Mobile Experts report released Friday. But revenue will grow again as LTE deployment ramps up globally, said Joe Madden, the group’s principal analyst. Expanding 3G and 4G capacity also will help, he said.
HOLLYWOOD -- The effort by NAB and RIAA to mandate wireless devices be manufactured with an FM radio chip is a transparent “poison pill” intended to derail radio performance royalties, said CEA Senior Vice President Michael Petricone at the Digital Music West conference. CEA originally took no official position on the issue of radio royalties until the electronics industry was involved through the back door, he said.