Plans by Verizon and AT&T to roll out 5G service near airports in major cities could result in the cancellation of thousands of flights, the airline industry told the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday.

The industry group Airlines for America -- which represents Delta, United, UPS, FedEx and others in the aviation industry -- makes the claim in an emergency petition asking the FCC to stay a decision allowing airwaves in the “C-band” of spectrum to be used for 5G service near airports in dozens of cities.

“Failure to pause the initiation of 5G service near or at the airports ... will cause immediate and irreparable harm to the nation’s aviation system because of the need to redirect or cancel flights, as well as cause significant disruptions and unexpected costs to the traveling public and all consumers as a result of further disruption and delay in the U.S. and global supply chains as a result of canceled, delayed or rerouted flight,” the airline industry writes.

Absent a stay, or court intervention, the telecoms can begin using the C-band for 5G on January 5.

The airlines contend that telecoms' use of that spectrum near airports could interfere with altimeters -- which determine altitude based on radio waves. The emergency petition comes several weeks after the Federal Aviation Agency warned that the planned 5G service could potentially affect altimeters.

“This interference will cause irreparable harm and jeopardize the function of critical aircraft safety systems, which in turn threatens to divert or cancel thousands of flights every day,” the airline group writes.

The airline industry also contends that a stay will only affect Verizon and AT&T to a limited extent.

“AT&T and Verizon will incur costs by the stay, but certainly not as much as the airline industry if it must reroute or cancel the thousands of flights,” the organization adds. “Any adverse impact will entail some delay in implementation of the new service, but will not impact ongoing operations. More importantly, members of the public are not likely to be affected at all by such delay.”

The Alliance for Audited Media polled its publishing clients to learn more about their experiences in a turbulent 2021. It found the year was a decidedly mixed bag.

On the plus side were the benefits of flexible work arrangements and increases in digital subscriptions. On the negative side was a loss of advertisers and print subscribers.

AAM is the nonprofit, third-party agency that verifies audience claims for media brands across magazines, newspapers, web, mobile and more, therefore ensuring trust and transparency among those brands and their advertisers.

In the survey, it sought to learn more about what was on clients’ minds and what their outlook was for 2022. Nearly 45 clients participated. 

Remote work was a big win. Some 75% of respondents said that an increase in remote work was one of 2021’s positives, while 64% said they experienced more flexibility in their workday. With regard to revenue, 66% of respondents said their publication experienced an increase in digital subscriptions. Some publications got creative in other areas. “We created a new line of virtual events that will serve us well in many markets in the future, one respondent reported.

Still, 68% of the respondents said they experienced a loss of advertising clients, while 61% said there was a decrease in print subscriptions. And 39% said their work responsibilities increased. “We’ve had a lot of difficulty training and on-boarding new hires,” one respondent said.

2021 affected respondents in other ways, too. Employers struggling to fill open positions. How has this trend impacted AAM publishers? As many as 40 million people have left their jobs this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, creating what has become known as “The Great Resignation.”

Among AAM publisher clients, the results were mixed: 37% said their companies had experienced an increase in resignations and retirements, while 23% said they had not. Also, 32% said they weren’t sure.

Many still felt The Great Resignation’s impact indirectly. “My company hasn’t experienced it directly, but our fulfillment vendors have, and that’s impacting our business,” one respondent said.

Goals for 2022 ran the gamut. Embracing change, increasing revenue, keeping up with trends, and more. Read the full report here.

Personalization works better in email than it does in any other channel. But brands seems far from satisfied with their overall results, judging by Personalization In Digital Marketing, a new study by Ascend2. 

Only 21% see themselves as best-in-class at making personalization work strategically, and 72% as somewhat successful. And 7% are unsuccessful.  

On the positive side, 47% strongly say campaign performance is significantly impacted when personalization is used. And 48% moderately agree. 

In addition, 53% say they have sufficient technology to deliver relevant and consistent messaging across all of their marketing channels. Another 26% don’t, and 21% are unsure.

Email produces the biggest impact for companies engaged in personalization: 

• Email—62% 
• Website—54% 
• Landing pages—29% 
• Live chat—25% 
• Mobile apps—17% 
• SMS—16% 
• Paid social—19%
• Paid search—13%
• Organic social—9% 
• Organic search—9%

Why is email tops? In part, because “email personalization has become “increasingly accessible to most businesses regardless of size, budget or marketing channel,” the study states.

But there are challenges to achieving strategic success with personalization. They include: 

• Managing customer/consumer expectations—39%
• Budget/resources to execute—38%
• Creating/delivering relevant content—31% 
• Tracking customer through the entire journey—28% 
• Required technology to execute—21%
• Creating a single view of the customer—19% 
• Data integrity—18%
• Data unification—13%
• Adhering to compliance/data regulations—12%
• Buy-in from leadership—10% 

The critical elements needed to execute a personalization strategy are slightly different in order of importance:

• Creating/delivering relevant content—45%
• Managing customer/consumer expectations—43%
• Budget resources to execute—35%
• Data integrity—28%
• Taking customer through the entire journey—26% 
• Required technology to execute—26% 
• Adhering to compliance/data privacy regulations—17% 
• Data unification—14% 
• Creating a single view of the customer—13% 
• Buy-in from leadership—10%

All that said, the respondents see clear benefits in personalization:

• Increased customer retention—49% 
• Improved customer experience—43%
• Increased engagement—43%
• Increased revenue--41% 
• Increased brand awareness—36% 
• Increased conversions—26% 
• Sales and marketing alignment—22% 

Ascend2 and its Research Partners surveyed 364 marketers. Of these, 25% were B2B, 50% B2C and 25% B2B and B2C equally. In addition, 21% were in companies with more than 500 employees, 19% in firms with 50 to 500 and 60% in those with fewer than 50. 

Traditional U.S. radio listening got back to its pre-pandemic levels in mid-2021, partly due to the return of that important mobile use -- in cars and other places.

But is this enough to keep encouraging business? And more importantly, can radio continue to hold off streaming audio?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, that out-of-home traditional radio listening took a dip -- to a 58% share of all traditional radio use, according to Nielsen. This was down from just over 70% in pre-pandemic times. As of August this year, it returned to the 70% level.

Recovering radio usage was expected, especially due to the pandemic easing earlier this year.

Looking a bit deeper at just audio -- traditional versus digital -- provides a more revealing story.

While AM/FM radio still owns the largest piece of America’s audio pie, with terrestrial radio now accounting for 39% of audio consumption among those 13 and older, streaming audio services have grown to a 18% share.

Streaming is now second among all audio segments, including podcasts, satellite radio and owned music, according to Edison Research.

Want to get a little more granular? Taking out news/talk radio content, podcasts and other non-music fare, streaming music platforms led all sectors in the fourth quarter of 2020 with a 33.2% share, according to MusicWatch. Traditional radio music was ranked second, with a 15.9% share.

Even then, analysts tell us, some really big top 40 music artists can still amass a decent overall radio audience of 15 million to 18 million when all traditional radio promotional forces are in play. This is down from the 30 million some years ago.

Why? Radio still commands a massive U.S. weekly reach -- 91% of the total population, or 228.3 million, according to Nielsen. (Streaming audio is at a 64% number).

Some would say all these transitional metrics are trending in a similar direction to that of traditional linear TV versus connected TV -- that while digital continues to grow, legacy media platforms still have staying power and share of the market.

A true measure then might be what really happens when those melancholy melodies of pandemic-related issues are mostly behind us.

The Consumer Electronics Show, one of the largest and best-known trade shows in the world, is next week, Jan. 5-8  in Las Vegas. With more than 182,000 attendees in 2020, and nearly 4,500 exhibitors, it’s a bellwether event for innovation and for show producers everywhere, many of whom are full-scale media companies.

It’s a litmus test for the success of their own events. 

Now, the January 2022 CES is hitting an extraordinarily rough patch. Just days before the event, exhibitors are dropping out, and attendees are struggling with whether they want to go through the ordeal of airports, sitting on planes, and participating in a giant indoor event.

CES has hit a perfect storm of a record-breaking surge in COVID cases, centered on the highly contagious Omicron variant, combined with the likelihood that it will worsen over the next two weeks.

Just yesterday, the U.S. hit a record-breaking number of new cases, with a seven-day average of 265,427 new cases on Tuesday, blowing past the previous record of about 252,000 daily cases, reported nearly a year ago. The new peak, according to CNN, comes amid a rapid acceleration of infections in the United States — and across the world‚ since last month.

Already, dozens of CES exhibitors have canceled in-person appearances, including T-Mobile, Microsoft, Google, Intel, AMD, OnePlus, Google and Lenovo. “The health and well-being of our employees is our ultimate priority,” Microsoft said in a statem ent to CNet. “After reviewing the latest data on the rapidly evolving COVID environment, Microsoft has decided not to participate in-person at CES 2022.”

Because of the global COVID pandemic, CES 2021 was a full virtual event.

Even though CES will require proof of vaccination for all participants, and recommends a negative test within 24 hours of entering the hall, things have gotten so bad for 2022 that Gary Shapiro, the CEO of CES parent organization the Consumer Technology Association, wrote an op-ed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal saying: CES “will and must go on.”

CES has a pinned tweet on its Twitter page that says: “Over 2,200 companies are confirmed to participate in person at CES 2022 in Las Vegas. Our focus remains on convening the tech industry and giving those who cannot attend in person the ability to experience the magic of CES digitally.”

In his commentary, Shapiro said CTA believes passionately that innovation and technology will make a better world. Technology and innovation solves some of the biggest problems in health, energy, mobility, the environment and more, he wrote. CES is the world’s largest innovation event, Shapiro said, with thousands of people coming from around the world.

“Innovation can come from anywhere and anybody, and we must respect and encourage that,” Shapiro said. “More than 80% of our membership is smaller companies. These companies and these founders are the ones I think of when I say it’s not time to pull the plug on CES 2022.”

Still, he noted, the show organizers face a tough choice.

“If we cancel the show, we will hurt thousands of smaller companies, entrepreneurs and innovators who have made investments in building their exhibits and are counting on CES for their business,” he said. “If we do not cancel, we face the drumbeat of press and other critics who tell the story only through their lens of drama and big-name companies.”

CTA, Shapiro continued, understands concerns that CES could become a super-spreader event. “We are leading the way in requiring masks and vaccines, recommending testing and offering free tests,” he wrote. “We respect that some do not want to take the risk involved in travel to Las Vegas, even in the vaccinated bubble of CES. But with significant safety measures and fewer people, there is plenty of space for attendees to socially distance.”

One thing is certain: Show organizers everywhere will be watching CES to make decisions about their own events, large and small, for the next several months.

In a move that could pave the way for faster WiFi service, an appellate court has upheld a Federal Communications Commission decision to make additional spectrum available for unlicensed use.

AT&T, Century Link, National Association of Broadcasters and others challenged the FCC's decision in court, arguing that the agency had discounted the risk of interference with services such as 911 dispatch, and electric grid monitoring.

In an opinion issued Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals largely rejected that argument.

“Petitioners have failed to provide a basis for questioning the Commission’s conclusion that the order will protect against a significant risk of harmful interference, just the kind of highly technical determination to which we owe considerable deference,” Circuit Judge David Tatel wrote in an opinion joined by Judges Patricia Millett and Justin Walker.

The FCC's order specifically freed 1,200 megahertz of spectrum in the 6 GHz band available for use by unlicensed devices, provided they are designed to prevent interference with incumbent users of the 6 GHz band.

The agency said at the time that its decision would result in next-generation WiFi service, which is expected to transmit data at speeds of at least 2.5 times the current standard.

FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel called the court ruling “an important step in clearing the way for next generation Wi-Fi access.”

She added: “In this pandemic so much of modern life has migrated online. 6 GHz Wi-Fi will help us address this challenge by offering more access in more places, faster speeds, and better performance from our Wi-Fi networks.”

While the appellate judges upheld the bulk of the FCC's order, they also said the agency hadn't adequately addressed an argument raised by the National Association of Broadcasters. That organization contended that the agency failed to protect broadcasters' licensed mobile operations from interference. The judges directed the FCC to respond to those concerns, but left in place the agency's underlying decision to make spectrum available.

The intense competition among popular social media apps has led to a blending effect -- whatever element seems to be captivating users most is then poached by other platforms, only to be adopted into their overall vision.

This growing trend may be most obvious in Instagram's incorporation of key elements of the increasingly popular app TikTok. One just has to look at their adoption of a vertical feed, Reels, an online shopping component, stickers and text-to-speech effects, among other features.

In a recent video, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, says this trend will only ramp up in 2022. In terms of the app’s focus on areas of growth for the new year, consolidating video to maximize engagement will take the cake.

Specifically, the focus is on short-video format Reels, Instagram's most visually similar feature to what continues to make TikTok the most downloaded app globally on Christmas Day.

The platform’s focus on Reels is not a mystery to regular users, as the automatic vertical video clips were integrated into the main Instagram feed back in October.

It's worth noting the direction that Instagram is headed.

Will full-screen short-form videos fully take over the current stream of static posts? Or will the company still value its original photo-sharing vision in at least some capacity?

Within the next year, how much more consolidating can Instagram do without looking identical to TikTok?

Numbers alone will likely determine this fate.

Aside from short-form video, Mosseri also mentioned the importance of three other aspects of the Instagram experience. First was in-app messaging, as he called it “the primary way that people connect online.” Second was transparency, giving users more control over their actions when posting and scrolling. Third was the continued focus on creators, a trend seemingly crucial for any social app's survival.

While Instagram is still a massively popular platform, its further moves toward TikTok are debatable in terms of its ability to stand out in the future. This, though, begs the question of whether an app stands out, or rather its ability to do the same thing best will determine success?

Another idea being cast around is Instagram’s attachment to the rise of Meta’s potential virtual (VR) and augmented (AR) reality frontier. While Snapchat has been on the forefront of in-app AR experiences, Meta's Oculus app was recently the most downloaded app on Christmas Day in the United States.

Teaming up with the future of AR/VR technology could be what eventually pushes Instagram past TikTok. It's too early to tell.

Just four months after disclosing a massive data breach, T-Mobile has again been hacked.

The newest breach affected a “small subset” of customers, according to T-Mo Report, which first reported on the hack. In some instances, the hacker or hackers obtained SIM cards as well customers' names, phone numbers and other data related to their billing plans, according to T-Mo Report. In other cases, hackers obtained just SIM cards, or just the plan-related data.

A T-Mobile spokesperson says the company informed "a very small number" of customers that their SIM cards "may have been illegally reassigned," or that "limited account information was viewed."

"SIM swaps are unfortunately a common industry-wide occurrence, however this issue was quickly corrected by our team, using our in-place safeguards, and we proactively took additional protective measures on their behalf," the spokesperson added.

This latest cyberattack marks at least the fourth data breach for T-Mobile in the last four years.

The most recent prior attack was disclosed in August, when the company confirmed that hackers had obtained full names, birthdates, Social Security Numbers and driver's license information for more than 40 million former or prospective customers, as well as 7.8 million current customers. (The telecom collects that information when running credit checks of people who apply for post-paid accounts.)

News of that incident spurred calls for a crackdown on the company.

“If companies need to conduct a credit check, and they need the Social Security number to do that, that information should be collected in an encrypted fashion, and not stored,” Free Press research director S. Derek Turner said in August.

“It's flabbergasting that T-Mobile kept Social Security numbers of people who were no longer even customers of theirs,” he added. “No business should ever retain a Social Security number.”

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) responded to news of the August data breach by suggesting the Federal Communications Commission should issue fines “in the billions,” according to The Washington Post.

T-Mobile customers also filed numerous lawsuits over the August data breach. Those cases were consolidated into one potential class-action, which is currently pending in federal court in Missouri.

Through 48 games, TNT and ESPN -- two major NBA national TV platforms -- have averaged 1.54 million viewers in Nielsen’s live program/same day viewing metric this year (October 19 to December 22) -- up from 1.38 million in 2019.

Airings on TNT in particular are soaring -- 22% higher to 1.65 million for 18 games. ESPN is 4% higher to 1.47 million for 30 games.

Estimated NBA national TV spending so far is at $146.6 million, according to iSpot.tv.

Top NBA advertisers in terms of spending are Google Phones, Sprite, State Farm, Corona Extra, Modelo, Under Armour, American Express, T-Mobile, Geico, and Kia Motors.

These results cover all NBA national TV ad messaging on ESPN, TNT, NBA TV, ABC, and ESPN2.

Some analysts say the NBA is part of a general overall uptick in sports TV viewing, which has also seen the NFL, NHL, and Major League Baseball posting steady gains.

Due to rescheduling issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the previous 2020-2021 NBA season did not begin until December 22, 2020.

Before that, the 2019-2020 NBA season was fully disrupted by the pandemic.

That season began on October 22, 2019, and play was suspended on March 11, 2020.

The league then resumed play on July 30, with that season’s finals ending on October 11, 2020. All games during that time were played in a “bubble” to avoid COVID-19 infection at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando.

TV ratings were dramatically lower as four major sports overlapped schedules because of the pandemic. The NBA in particular witnessed more than a 25% decline in regular-season viewership per game for the entire 2019-2020 season to 1.32 million viewers. The pre-pandemic 2018-19 season averaged 1.75 million viewers.