There's an arcane communications issue out there that involves Time Warner and a two-lane highway mandated by a communications gatekeeper -- but has nothing to do with the internet.

Stumped?

This story is about what it costs to mail a magazine using the U.S. Postal Service.  There's only one mail service, so the USPS is a gatekeeper of sorts when it comes to postal mail. 

For years and years, newspapers and other publications were charged especially low postal rates -- dissemination of knowledge and all that.  These rates have gone steadily up, but periodicals were able to plan for the higher rates.  Indeed, this year most people expected that periodical mailing rates would increase by about twelve percent across the board, for everyone.  (That's what the Postal Service itself suggested back in May 2006.)

But then Time Warner submitted an elaborate plan (described here) that in effect created two classes of service:  one for the large conglomerate publishers that could afford to do things like pre-sort their mail and drop it off at convenient centralized locations, and the other for all the little publications that couldn't afford those sorts of moves.

The group that accepted the TW plan is called the Postal Regulatory Commission.  It makes recommendations to the Postal Service Board of Governors.  (Isn't this interesting? I had no idea.)  The Board of Governors has in turn accepted the PRC recommendation.

I heard today that the plan was so complicated that no one could figure out how much its implementation would cost small publications.  But it appears as if it will create rate hikes of 20 percent and up (way up) for the littler guys.

The little guys just simply could not afford to lobby the way TW did.  TW put enormous energy behind its plan, and got it through.  It will save TW money because they will be able to take advantage of discounts for the pre-sorting etc. that they do.  The littler guys now will be making editorial content decisions based on distance -- historically, they had faced a flat fee no matter how far within the US the content traveled.  That's no longer the case.

That's the story.  It's apparently a done deal.  The smaller magazines don't have the funds to reverse the decision.  They've been out-lobbied for access to what should be a resource managed in the public interest: the US Mail.