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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 So the old rules might not be so outdated after all.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.
is there a public comment that anyone knows about?
All the FCC rules for divying up the airwaves is based on the notion that bandwidth is a very scarce resource, and ultimately owned by the public. This "extreme scarcity" however is changing.
Once television stations are transmitted digitially, there will be far, far more bandwidth available. There will no longer be these so-called "natural monopolies" in each locality, encouraging government regulation of the resource.
When we go digital, there is no longer even any half-justifiable reason for restricting who gets what. There is plenty more to be gotten, and far more oportunity for competition.
Moreover, freedom of speech does not require restrictions placed on the private sphere -- just the opposite. If anything, government restricting who is allowed to run a media outlet in a free market is an attack on the first amendment.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
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?
We need diversity in TV channels as it the main media through which people get their information. If there is only a limited number of media outlets the stories that get broadcast will be more one sided than they are already. Things like the BBC are relativly fair but still not totally independant. The best course I would say is news.google.com. As all the stories are supposdly chosen by computer then it at least gives a fair cross sample
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
All media has a point-of-view. Each media outlet does have a point of view, some conservative, some progressive, some liberal, some off-the-wall. Mostly conservative nowadays, because of being controlled by large megacorps that are by definition conservative in their approach. But there is a point-of-view.
OK, so what if you are in a market with several media choices (newspapers, TV stations, radio stations)? Then you get a variety of political positions being pushed at you. You can pick and choose among those points-of-view and then make up your own mind. Reading all sides helps you come closer to reality. In contrast, if one company owns your local newspaper and your local TV station and your local radio outlets, you get only one viewpoint. If the owner of that company is extreme in his or her viewpoint, you get your news slanted in just that direction -- and no other viewpoint.
If you are Web-savvy, you can escape this trap, but most people get their news as it is fed to them, spoonful by spoonful. Look at how many people think CNN provides an unbiased viewpoint, the facts. Look at how many people think Fox is unbiased. The more control is put over the media by any one company, the worse this will get. Can you imagine a world where the only news it was possible to get came from AOL-Time Warner, or Fox, or any one source?
We may yet find out what that would be like...
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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.
This article brings up some important points that need to be addressed about government regulation of media. Nobody wants a consolidation of media so that one company ends up controlling all the media in a given area. This would be similar to if K-Mart bought up every retail store in a metropolitan area.
There is a distinct difference between the retail environment and the media environment. If government decided to limit the number of grocery stores in a given area with a new agency called the GCC (Grocery Control Commission) there would be obvious problems. Corporations with the most money would immediately suck up all of the licenses and every mom & pop store would immediately go out of business.
The way things stand now, city councils have some regulatory power over rezoning but for the most part there are no limits on the number of grocery stores in a given area. The market sets the price. Unfortunately, due to the huge amount of regulations by the FCC the radio and televison stations are limited by something that the government calls bandwidth.
The effect is that the barrier to entry to start your own radio station, television channel, etc. is very high due to licensing costs and bandwidth "availability". Thus we really don't have anything resembling a free market in the area of media. As long as the government controls the licenses, the people will not have a voice. I have heard arguments recently on slashdot that there is no such thing as a bandwidth problem. This begs the question exactly what is the government doing limiting the number of radio or television stations in a given area?
I'm not sure what the solution is to the problem with the FCC and giant media companies buying up stations around the country. One thing is clear, though: The present situation is nowhere near capitalism, nor the fault of the free market.
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.
The reality: A Constitutional Democracy occupied by a Capitalist Republic.
... (all is lost).
Business wins we lose. Government giveaways come in many disguises, but all are in fact Corporate Welfare. The world will follow where we go, and the US is lost forever to history. There are five that closely follow the new "Politically Correct" that provides the "Unified Field of Vision" theory that provides one sight with hues and tints that build our fence.
Until Business and Government are separated expect the worse for US, and those that follow Religion and Government unable to separate the two. Yes, in today's world depending where you live BUSSINESS=RELIGION, both are oppressive, corruptive, and deadly to people/citizens and our GOVERNMENTS.
I have limited my intake of news to ABC, BBC, PBS, and Times/Post/Herald news articles on the internet. The others appear to biased/BS to me and frequently parochial, lame, and personality centric stupid (Talking Heads). Plenty of idiot personal opinion comments with grins and giggles, limited substance, no character, soulless drivel in a complex dynamic world with extremely significant news being avoided or marginalized by policy and actors. Longing, for the days when news people, editors, and the story had dignity
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Ordinarily I try just to ignore trolls, but someone actually modded this up...
scripsit LibertineR:
That is just horribly, horribly wrong. Let me give you some simple situations where this doesn't work:
I could go on ad nauseum. I think this is nauseating enough, though.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
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.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
In Los Angles, Viacom owns channels 2 (CBS) and 13 (UPN), Disney owns 7 (ABC) and 9 (KCAL), and the Chicago Tribune owns both channel 5 (KTLA) and the only daily newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. Here in Worcester, MA, both channels 7 and 10 are NBC, 4 (CBS) and 38 (UPN) are both Viacom (and actually share the same nightly news), 2 and 44 are owned by the same PBS affiliate (WGBH), and 98 is also owned by PBS. So what exactly would change here?
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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Like medicine, news is not necessarily best served by a purely capitalist model -- especially since the broadcast spectrum allows for far fewer points of view to be expressed than print media.
Some points of view have more advertiser backing than others. Recall that it's the advertisers who pay for radio stations, not the listeners. Distortions of listener desires occur in the space between the advertisers' customers' money and the advertisers' money.
Therefore, it makes sense that the vast majority of advertiser dollars will support mainstream, majority points of view, flushing out minority concerns. Public funding helps restore the balance caused by these distortions.
This is not "socialist" thinking; it's entirely rational given the rules of the game.
Long, long ago (early 1910's to be exact) the US parcelled out its radio frequencies. They were/are supposed to be resources dedicated to the benefit of us all, like our national parks.
Of course that ideal has eroded considerably over the years. The commercial US media has proven time and time again that it can't be relied upon for substantial news or even decent entertainment content. To all my laissez faire friends, look no further than Clear Channel to see how this actually hurts the market...
After the FCC relaxed ownership regulations, the radio industry is actually smaller, less jobs are available, and musicians' barriers to radio play are higher than ever.
PBS and NPR are merely bones thrown out to the public, a meaningless gesture. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has no more interest in providing decent news than FOX or CNN-look no further than the 2000 Presidential debates, where Jim Lehrer supported the blocking of third-party candidates from the discussion for proof.
So what needs to happen? A lot of people have noted that the amount of spectrum available through digital 'modulation' makes it possible to broadcast an almost unlimited number of radio channels...and this technique could be applied to television as well, to a lesser extent. With limited spectrum a thing of the past, public and commercial interests can share the media, each supporting the other. Here's what I'd like to see happen:
1)Corporation for Public Broadcasting/PBS/NPR dismantled. Public funding allocated for those organizations should be used to build a strong public access infrastructure. This new public access project awards grants to budding television producers. This public access network could also serve as a 'farm league' for larger commercial interests. Successful public-access producers could be picked up by the larger networks-allowing risk-free, cost-free market research for Big Media. Everybody wins!
2)FCC laws limiting media ownership strengthened. Let's limit how many media outlets, and what kind of outlets each corporation can own. Media outlets should be required to report their owners, as well as what other media outlets are owned by their owners, on "public service announcements" several times per day. You'd be surprised at how many people don't know that AOL owns CNN, Time Magazine, many local cable companies, etc.
3)Classrooms teach semiotics/media literacy. Knowing how to dissect and critique popular media is very important for a free-thinking society. As (somebody? Gramsci?) said, "The power of ideology is that it presents itself as normal." People need to know that 'objective' news is impossible, and how to spot astroturfing, shilling, and other forms of deception.
So...that's my long-winded take on how to 'fix the media'. Appoint me as FCC chairman in 2004!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
The one where lawyer Steve Dallas time travels and screws things up. He then quips "A blighted landscape of insurance monopolies and hiding, dependent, squabbling mice-people...An entire planet of victims!" Substitute any number of corporation types for "insurance" and you get the picture.
In these times when the major media corporations suck at the tit of the ruling political party and largely publish only those items that the ruling political party wishes to be published, that the citizenry should question government and the ideology by which the government is using to rule. The citizens cannot truely be free if they do not have free access to unfiltered streams of information. Refresh my memory, didn't we fight a war +230 years ago to put a stop to this nonsense?!
Monopolies are illegal and should be broken and/or punished. Media monopolies should not be allowed to start. The FCC should not even be considering this action - it should not be allowed. So much for being a democracy and/or republic.
One of the worst things that ever happened to this country was corporations being given protection under the Bill of Rights. Corporations cannot be given the same rights as citizens since corporations cannot be trusted not to abuse those rights. Government and corporations should be on a short leash being held by the citizenry, not the other way around.
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)
If ClearChannel owns all the radio stations in an area, but no one listens to any of them, do they really use any bandwidth?
"Correction: Cheney's former Company. He left the company before he became vice president. " Hmmmmm. I seem to remeber an article in Newsweek that said something along the lines that Cheney is still receiving $400,000 yearly from Haliburton, but it's all deferred into charity until after 2008. Hmmmm. Not the same thing as not having a conflict of interest.
CAPS LOCK: ITS LIKE THE CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME
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?