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The FCC and Media Consolidation
An anonymous reader writes "A story on this evening's All Things Considered but also at Now with Bill Moyers reports this June, the FCC will choose whether to keep or drop longstanding rules limiting the number of media outlets (radio stations, TV stations, etc.) a company may hold in a single area. That means all the radio stations in your area, for example, may one day be controlled by one company, like Clearchannel or Rupert Murdoch's FOX Communications. One irony is virtually no news outlet is covering the story. Another is the justifying argument for this move comes from the emergence of new media, like the Internet and Cable/Satellite. Yet with all 100's of new TV channels available, there are only five major media companies out there controlling them all, and recent copyright rules applying to the Internet have all but squelched-out Internet radio. So the old rules might not be so outdated after all. But the only voices being heard in this argument are coming from the media giants." In a related story, AOL/Time-Warner is petitioning the FCC to lift the restriction forbidding AOL from launching "advanced" IM services without letting others access the IM network.
One part of the FCC rules that could be lifted prohibits a company from owning a newspaper or broadcast outlet in the same market. So not only could they own all the radio and television stations, but they could also own the newspaper in town.
Sounds great from a "diversity of voices" standpoint doesn't it?
Yes. In fact, it was in the article.
Public Comments Filing for Media Ownership Policy Reexamination
Public "People's Forum" on Media Ownership, at Phoenix, Arizona (April 7)
AOL Time-Warner - WB, HBO, Cinemax, CNN, TBS
General Electric - NBC, A&E, Bravo, MuchMusic
Viacom - CBS, UPN, MTV, VH1, Showtime, Nickelodeon
Walt Disney Company - ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN
Liberty Media Corp. - Discovery Channel, TLC, USA Networks, Sci-Fi Channel
AT&T Corp. - Many shared stakes with AOL-TW
News Corp. - Fox Network, FX
Bertelsmann - Largest European broadcaster
Vivendi Universal - USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel, HSN, Sundance
Sony - Telemundo, Game Show Network
More detailed information available at The Nation.
PBS has a very informative website outlining The Merchants of Cool -- "a report on the creators and marketers of popular culture for teens".
But the most eye-opening part is their section on the Media Giants. It has a huge listing of all the holdings and subsidaries of the largest media giants: News Corp, Vivendi Universal, Sony, AOL Time Warner, Walt Disney and Viacom.
Check out AOL Time Warner, for instance.
As you know from a previous /. story, the spectrum is limitless. Current dumb devices tune to frequency X and simply display, A/V or other; smart devices would be able to filter transmissions, meaning that you could have an infinite amount of data in a very small chunk of spectrum. Spectrum is nothing more than colors, visible or otherwise, and you cannot run out of colors. Even if it was not so, the internet gives one the ability to transmit whatever they please, assuming of course that they are willing to make the same investment as those already in play. The FCC, by basing itself on the flawed-theory of spectrum scarcity, is doing far more to limit broadcast diversity than any one corporation.
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Just my two cents:
I live in Indianapolis, IN and have seen the effects of media consolidation. There was once two newspapers in Indy, the News and the Star. Although both were owned by the same company, they operated independantly. The News was a little left leaning, and the Star a little right leaning, and all was good. Well the corporation decided to trash the News (its readership was about 1/2 the Star), and consildate them into one paper. The sad fact is that almost none of the editors/reporters from the News were hired onto the new paper (called the Star). Thus we were left with a right leaning newspaper. Ok, this wasnt so bad, there were 3 major networks broadcasting 3 hrs of local news each a day. Ahh, but then the dominant local channel, WTHR (an NBC affiliate), joined the Indianpolis Star in a "strategic news partnership". So nowadays in Indianapolis, IN you can see the same stories, with the same angle, from two seperate mediums. All that is left is the less glitzy CBS and ABC affiliates, and a smattering of independant newspapers (Nuvo, The Recorder) which get almost no attention by the majority of the people who live in Indianapolis. I miss the days of the Indianpolis News, when I could read stories that do not get reported in the current situation.
I do some contract work for a nationally-syndicated home improvement radio show, so I'm quite familiar with the whole Clear Channel buyout process. Since some of you may not know how this works, I'll explain it as succinctly as I can.
Let's say you own a radio station. Your radio station plays Top 40 stuff. You have hired some local DJs from the nearby college to play music, and you have some fun with various weekend and Friday night shows that showcase some local artists. You have a playlist that is based both on what other Top 40 stations are playing (the "popular" music), and requests from your listeners. You're doing well, but you have to maintain a staff to sell ads, and you're finding it harder and harder to do this.
Clear Channel comes in and offers to buy your radio station. Now, Clear Channel has enough money so that they can make you an offer you can't refuse. You acquiesce and agree to become a Clear Channel station.
Clear Channel places your station into one of seven formats. Everyone who listens to radio is now clear on what these formats are, because that's pretty much all that remains on radio today. There's "Top 40", which is what your station will be. There are also "easy listening", "talk", and four others.
Clear Channel fires 4 out of your 6 local DJs and replaces them with DJs from other areas. This is how Clear Channel makes its money: it can pay one "regional" DJ $15 an hour to broadcast out to 4 regional stations, or you and 3 other stations could each pay $12 an hour to 4 DJs to do the same thing. Thus, the complaints from the listeners start to arrive about losing the "local" feel, but by then there's nothing you can do--it's all in Clear Channel's hands.
Clear Channel takes a look at your programming and decides what you will and won't continue to play. In the case of Top 40, they give you a playlist. In the case of talk stations, they give you a list of syndicated shows and force you to drop everything that isn't on the list. (This is where On The House comes in-- every time Clear Channel buys a station out, they force the station to drop On The House in favor of their home improvement guy. We've lost several affiliates this way.)
Let's continue with the analogy of your (er, Clear Channel's) Top 40 station. You're now forced to drop the local bits since you only have two local DJs left (and in all likelihood, they're both doing the morning show, since that's the most lucrative time for radio.) You're now fed a playlist. Clear Channel has national playlists. That means that whatever your station is playing is the same stuff that every other Top 40 station owned by Clear Channel is playing. Do you wonder why all radio stations seem to play the same stuff? If they're owned by Clear Channel, it's because they are playing the same songs.
How does Clear Channel come up with these songs? They test-market in one market. ONE. In your case, the Top 40 stuff is tested in places like New Mexico. Yep, listeners in New Mexico are deciding what your station is going to play! Welcome to Clear Channel.
If you're wondering why radio seems to have gone downhill, you can look no further than Clear Channel. Sadly, DJs are pretty much corporate minions these days. They no longer get to spin new local tracks, and they don't have a choice on what to air. Many of them aren't even in the studio for half or more of the time they're on air -- they pre-record bits and play them as their segment progresses.
It's a sad time for radio. Fortunately, I believe the independents like On The House will survive. The independent radio stations will find their niche as well. I believe that Clear Channel will eventually feel the consumer backlash, much like we lashed out against high CD prices.
Please don't shrug your shoulders about the new FCC regulations being suspended, though. Loosening these regulations is a bad thing. Clear Channel doesn't need to hurt radio any more than it already has.
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Here is the deal with AOL IM. When AOL and Time Warner merged, they were forced to agree not to add advanced IM features (Video and such) until their network was open to other companies. Hindsight shows that this was a poor choice. Now that other companies offer these services, and the fact that AOL-TW has not become the behemoth it was supposed to have become, they seek to remove this restriction.
While it may be used as a revenue item, the purpose is to level the playing field before people starting switching to YIM for the video chat capabilities.
(Full disclosure, I am a TWC employee)
This site provides information on the current monopolies that dominate media due to the deregulations in the early 1990s. Extrapolate from there.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
(From PBS's Merchants of Cool)
I think that the slashdot story relating electromagnetic spectrum to colors, while fundamentally true, missed a significant point: the methods we use to broadcast on the electromagnetic spectrum fundamentally limit the amount of spectrum available.
The people who are spouting off on this forum about "unlimited digital spectrum" and the infinite "color spectrum" are forgetting that whatever methods we choose to transmit over airwaves do NOT operate on single, "point" frequencies. Sure, protocols such as frequency modulation are worse than others, such as amplitdue modulation or single-sideband, but all of them operate on multiple frequencies -- if only because of the "parasitic" broadcasts that a single single tends to produce on multiples of the main frequency. And worse, it's always been true that higher-frequency modulation of a signal (i.e. higher bandwidth) leads to an increase the width of the broadcast signal.
Don't misunderstand me: I think that the current broadcast universe could hold a lot more information -- and produce a lot more "channels" of data. But at the same time, the size of the electromagnetic spectrum is limited by our ability to utilize it -- and there are some fundamental physical limitations of radio waves that we will likely never overcome.
In short, I think it's silly to be calling for a dismantling of the FCC -- we need the FCC to make sure that whatever the current methods of broadcast are, they aren't used to dominate the airwaves. The FCC needs a swift kick in the pants, sure (write your legislator), but calling for dismantling is shortsighted.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?