Art Brodsky

There probably was no great need for Comcast toraise the usage caps on its broadband service, as it did last week from 250 gigabytes (GB) to 300 GB per month. If the company thought for an instant that the modest increase bought it any good will from...

You have to hand it to the Dutch.  On one hand, they crack down on their biggest tourist attraction -- the ability of tourists to toke up legally in the famous cannabis cafes.  That's a big business over there and of course there are protests developing, mellow ones...

The entertainment industry today is caught in a kind of purgatory, somewhere between Zero Mostel and Franklin Roosevelt. It's an odd place to be, and not sustainable to be there for much longer.

From Mostel, comes the line, "Without our traditions, our lives would be as...

It's hard not to feel sorry for Al Perry these days.  As Paramount Picture's VP for worldwide content protection and outreach, he has been on the road a lot, mostly to law schools. The past few weeks, he's been to the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina,

On any given day, on any given cable or satellite system, subscribers will see a message telling them that a favorite channel which had been in one spot on the channel lineup has been shifted to another.  It happens all the time as channels are added, subtracted or moved around. ...

My friend Jeff Sherman is a Los Angeles writer and producer. He's also a fine documentarian, putting together with his cousin Greg a film about his father, Robert Sherman, and uncle, Richard Sherman. If their names aren't familiar, their music is. They wrote the music for Mary Poppins...

It has only been a couple of months back that AT&T gave up on its attempt to take over T-Mobile, in what would have been quite a coup for the second-largest wireless carrier to take over the fourth largest. It took all of the gumption of the Justice Department and...

Earlier today (Feb. 6), a most extraordinary group of people sent a letter to Capitol Hill, in the latest round of the fight over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), telling Congress it was time to reject the well-worn lobbying...

This is a great week for taking a step back for a good look at how Washington works.  It's also a great demonstration of that wonderful saying, "It's never over until it's over.  And it's never over."

On the menu are AT&T's failed takeover of T-Mobile, a bill to...

Here is the first sentence from a news story about what's going on in Washington:  "California's two most prominent and powerful industries -- Silicon Valley and Hollywood -- are at war in Washington." 

 That sounds about right, given the recent turn of events over the Protect...

In the next couple of weeks, Congress will come back to Washington to start debating, once again, legislation that would severely limit innovation online, limit free speech and weaken cybersecurity, all in the name of protecting the big content companies. Yes, those are the dreaded Stop Online Piracy...

Treasure this past week in Washington. It's not often -- no, it never happens -- that that consumers get a multitude of good tidings from Washington. Is it too much to hope that this is the start of a trend? Of course. The FCC then approved AT&T's purchase...

If corporations were people, here's a bit of advice: Don't enter into a Survivor game if Verizon is a contestant. Verizon shows an uncanny ability to get what it wants with a minimum of fuss, even if it means cutting out erstwhile partners.

AT&T, on the other hand, is a...

A contentious hearing broke out yesterday on Capitol Hill when the House Select Committee To Protect American Culture followed up on the Fox News story asserting the new Muppets movie, and the Muppets in general, had a leftist, anti-corporate agenda.

Committee members leveled a variety of pointed questions...

AT&T hasn't yet formally surrendered in its campaign to pay $39 billion for T-Mobile, and may not for a while. Its top officials are still making provocative, pugnacious pronouncements, whinging about its unfair treatment at the hands of regulators, while repeating arguments that have all but been discredited and dispensing...

With any other company, in any other merger, the action the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced on Tuesday would be the signal that a deal is dead. But when one of the parties involved is AT&T, the rules don't apply.

To recap, on Nov. 22, the FCC announced...

In April of last year I, like many millions of people, was engaged in reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, starting with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which is now being made into a film for the second time. (The Swedish version was fabulous; Hollywood's come out...

WTOP-FM is literally at the top of the radio heap in Washington, D.C. The all-news station is the top revenue-producing station in the country, billing $57.2 million last year, the only station in the top 10 not in Los Angeles (which had the number two station), New York...

Earlier today, about 50 people took a drive down Emory Church Road, a quiet little street in Olney, MD. The road is 24 feet wide at its widest, 14 feet wide through most of its length. Located in the last remaining really rural portion of Olney, Emory Church...

If it wanted to, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could create tens of thousands of jobs. But it doesn't want to.

If it wanted to, Congress could let the FCC create tens of thousands of jobs. But Congress doesn't want to. (In fact, Congress is contemplating actions that could thwart...