Dan O’Shea Retail Dive, 1/3/19 Dive Brief: About 41% of U.S. consumers owned a smart speaker by the end of 2018, almost twice the percentage of consumers who owned the voice-driven devices at the end of the previous year, according to a TechCrunch report that attributed the data to recent reports from RBC Capital Markets. The…

Bob Fernandez Philadelphia Inquirer 11/6/2018   Four years ago, the Supreme Court hammered nails into the coffin of the Aereo television service that captured local over-the-air TV stations on tiny antennas and streamed them to laptops and mobile phones for a subscription fee. The nation’s highest court said, in a 6-3 vote, that Aereo violated…

Inside Radio October 17, 2018   Supporters of a performance royalty on AM/FM radio have said they’ll work to make life difficult for broadcasters until the industry begins paying the fee. The latest evidence that strategy is still part of the playbook comes from the Federal Communications Commission, where the musicFirst Coalition and the Future…

Bob Fernandez The Philadelphia Inquirer   The countdown has begun: NBC10 and Telemundo62, both owned by Comcast Corp. through NBCUniversal, are relocating to the 12th, 13th, and 14th floors of the $1.5 billion new Comcast tower, leaving their legacy studios in Bala Cynwyd. That means news anchors and control-room crews are doing double duty, as…

At issue is who gets to control the location of antennas for 5G. Philadelphia Inquirer, September 27, 2018 By Bob Fernandez STAFF WRITER   Verizon and AT&T won big at the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday as the agency voted to make it easier and cheaper to place 800,000 small antennas for super-fast 5G services…