Media Covers "Video Competition" Bill Signing and Partial Vetoes Despite Timing Designed To Bury Story

If you are Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, and you must sign a bad bill pushed heavily by one of your biggest financial supporters, and you've line-item vetoed some of the bill's worst provisions, which contained language that its legislative proponents specifically voted in both chambers not to amend, what do you do?

How about skipping a public signing ceremony, and releasing the veto message on, say, the Friday afternoon before Christmas, while doing a "feed the hungry" event at Second Harvest? That way, the story misses most television news on Friday, which had already overstuffed its audience with the "NFL Network and Big Ten Network at the Legislature" story the day before. The signing and vetoes story then lands in Saturday's newspapers, and sits largely unread as Wisconsin frantically shops itself into a stupor over the weekend in preparation for Tuesday's Holiday To Save the American Economy, formerly known as Christmas.

So Friday afternoon, my phone heated up with interviews from the working press trying to scope out What It Means, file a coherent story, and go home by dinnertime. Having read the veto message and the text of the actual vetoes, I was ready. This morning I was able to find out what it was I said to each reporter.

Despite the Governor's effort to bury it, the story ran page one above the fold in the Capital Times and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and page one in the local section of the State Journal.

As usual in this story, The Capital Times' coverage was solid.  Jeff Richgels and Judith Davidoff ("Prof: Don't hold breath for new services under state cable law") led with my prediction that:

Gov. Jim Doyle's signing of the state cable franchising bill isn't likely to mean AT&T -- a leading backer of the bill -- will bring its U-verse TV service to the Madison area anytime soon, one prominent observer said.

"I don't see it in Madison in any widespread way in 2008," said Barry Orton, a UW-Madison professor of telecommunications who has advised many communities in their dealings with cable companies.

Orton noted that AT&T has been reducing its rollout projections for U-verse in recent announcements.

"Every single estimate cuts back on the previous one," he said.

Richgels and Davidoff also nailed, in plain language, what Doyle's vetoes did and the likely impact on local access channels.

Mark Pitsch's Wisconsin State Journal story also did a very good job in outlining the vetoes, and covered the access angle as well.  I was happy with my quotes, which Mark used to frame the story:

Doyle 's vetoes hold the potential for substantial state oversight of the industry -- whereas the bill the Legislature sent to his desk sought to eliminate state regulation.

"The state will be a legitimate overseer of this industry rather than a rubber stamp to whatever the industry wants to do, " said Barry Orton, a UW-Madison telecommunications professor who urged Doyle to issue the vetoes on behalf of local governments and some lawmakers who opposed the bill.

"It means the cable companies and other providers won't be able to run roughshod over consumers. "

..."He's made a ridiculous bill only pretty bad, and that's good, " Orton said of Doyle.

Over at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Steve Walters and Stacy Forster managed to cram in a list of all the vetoes, cover the impact on access channels,  add my framing ("Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor and consultant to local governments, called Doyle's vetoes courageous."), and then advanced the story by quoting Senator Jeff Plale, a chief sponsor, that there wouldn't be any attempt to override the vetoes.

Walters and Foster also skillfully managed to put the whole bill in context while quoting one of its most effective opponents, Rep. Gary Hebl, and its most effective shill, Thad Nation of TV4US:

Legislators who fought the bill said Doyle's vetoes improved it but predicted that rural areas will not be helped by competition and new telecommunications products.

"People in many areas of the state won't see any competition . . . because companies such as AT&T have no plans to provide service beyond their existing service footprint, which covers less than half of the state," Rep. Gary Hebl (D-Sun Prairie) said in a statement.

Thad Nation, executive director of TV4US Wisconsin, which ran hundreds of TV ads statewide pushing the bill, predicted that "prices will fall, services will improve and companies will have incentives and bring consumers new, exciting technologies."

TV4US reported $44 million in contributions in 2006 - including $43.9 million from one contributor it refused to identify on its Internal Revenue Service disclosure report.

A "small percentage" of that money was spent in Wisconsin in 2006, said Lizanne Sadlier, a TV4US official.

Sadlier said AT&T was a "significant contributor" to TV4US in 2006.

So maybe millions in advertising from "grassroots" TV4US had some impact on this process?  Could be.

- Barry Orton

(with apologies for lengthy and self-centered post)

Comments

[Tim M.]

Barry - your comments on "Live at Five" on Channel 3 Thursday night were absolutely HYSTERICAL - I haven't seen Mark Koehn caught that off guard for years. "The purpose of the hearing was to have TV cameras come to the legislature to take pictures of politicians talking about the Packers and Badgers"....or words to that effect. I was laughing so hard I may not have gotten the quote accurately, but you were a GEM!!! Diogenes' search is over.

/tjm

[Paul]

Tim, stop it. You are only encouraging him.