Through the Wire

Barack Obama and John McCain are expected to raise $1 billion combined to finance their White House campaigns. Not surprisingly, they need rich supporters with a lot of well-heeled friends to cough up millions of dollars so their campaign war chests don't run dry in the fall.

Both Democrat Obama and Republican McCain have turned to communications executives, lawyers and lobbyists among their sources for large sums of cash. Within the last week, the Obama campaign posted (the better word is buried) on its Web site the names of its top “bundlers,” people who have raised “at least” $500,000 from their network of friends and acquaintances. The McCain campaign did the same back in July, also in a hard-to-locate place.

McCain's list of big bundlers included: Time Warner Inc. director James Barksdale, who led Netscape in its boom years; Liberty Media CEO Gregory Maffei, who is overseeing the company's consolidation of DirecTV; Jerry Perenchio, former chairman and CEO of Univision; and Timothy McCone, one of AT&T's top Washington lobbyists.

Obama's cash kings included some familiar names, such as former Federal Communications Commission chairman William Kennard, now a managing director at the Carlyle Group; Julius Genachowski, co-founder of Rock Creek Ventures and Obama's former Harvard Law School classmate; Don Gips, group vice president of Level 3 Communications, who was chief domestic policy adviser to Vice President Al Gore; and attorney Scott Harris, who headed the FCC's International Bureau and now represents DirecTV at the FCC. DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg also is among Obama's bundling bigwigs.

Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign-finance watchdog group, said McCain's campaign Web site disclosed more about its bundlers than Obama's site. McCain's site lists a bundler's name, city, state, occupation and employer. Obama stops after name, city and state.

Ritsch faulted both camps for not being more precise about the exact dollar amounts raised by their bundlers.

“I think we would be satisfied if they added a tier of $1 million because I think it would probably encompass most people. There aren't that many donors raising significantly more than $1 million,” Ritsch said.

The rebuilding of Greensburg, Kan., devastated by a tornado in May 2007, has been chronicled by Planet Green series Greensburg. Unfortunately, that Discovery Communications outlet wasn't on the local cable system — until last month, when Discovery and cabler Allegiance Communications put Planet Green on basic-cable channel 59, about four episodes into the 13-part series.

For the most part, people watching Greensburg on Allegiance there do so in FEMA trailers. But that's starting to change, as new homes are built, following the sustainable, low-resource-consumption principles the city has committed to.

Allegiance is part of the process, too, opting to rebuild there using fiber-to-the-home technology. Because it requires fewer devices like amplifiers, the new setup will use 60% less energy than the old hybrid fiber coaxial plant, Allegiance says.

“This is all private investment,” operations VP Sean Hendrix told The Wire, crediting Bill Haggarty, CEO of the 70,000-subscriber operator based in Shawnee, Okla. “It's a commitment to this community to bring it back and bring it back better than it was.”

From a former total of about 350 subscribers, Allegiance has lost about 200 in the short term from residents who have left. But by bringing in high-speed Internet, telephone and more video services, the intent is to recoup the “couple of million dollars” or so of capital, Hendrix said.

“Greensburg is still very much scarred earth, if you can use that term,” he said, but it's growing back green and “right now it's a mad house of hammer and saws up there.”

Who needs the great outdoors? At least one TV manufacturer wants to encourage more Americans to stay home — sitting glued to their shiny new high-def TVs — instead of burning up multiple tanks of $4-a-gallon (or more) gas.

“With gas prices at record highs, the best and most affordable vacation this season may be to just stay home and enjoy some great entertainment!” enthused a media alert sent out last week by Westinghouse Digital, pitching its family of HDTV sets.

Westinghouse suggests that an HD “stay-cation” provides more bang for your entertainment buck. For example, for the cost of driving roundtrip from New England to New Orleans (2,758 miles), you could pick up a brand-new 26-inch 720p LCD HDTV (suggested retail price: $549). Bonus: no problem if you fall asleep at the controls.