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How the mighty have fallen: A post about the National Association of Broadcasters
| June 11, 2009 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 626 |
 The National Association of Bastards Broadcasters -- the main trade lobby on behalf of U.S. commercial radio and television broadcasters, and which has a lot to answer for -- ranked among the most powerful and feared lobbies in Washington, but there are signs that its influence is waning, mightily. Consider:
(1) Acting FCC chair Michael Copps has now been openly pushing for shorter broadcast license terms (from 8 years to 3 years), which is a good start. Like a bunch of crybabies, the NAB complained, whining that "Congress wisely reformed license renewal terms to allow broadcasters to better compete against our pay platform competitors," [even though license renewals are a patent sham and have only been pulled twice in American history], and that "Reducing a broadcaster's term of license would actually harm localism by injecting greater uncertainty into a business model facing the worst advertising downturn in decades." [even though anything construing localism has been gutted by a neoliberal business model that has nothing to do with a crap economy]. Of course, it's not like CMA is biased or anything.
(2) David Rehr, the teetotalling beer lobbyist who was head of the NAB in recent years, abruptly resigned from the NAB in early May 2009. Rehr's reign has elicited negative commentary from industry types, where the NAB made a number of questionable and backfiring strategic choices under his thumb.
(3) Last week, the NAB lost a key lawsuit where they challenged the legitimacy of FCC authority to help manage low power FM radio stations. The NAB got duly slapped around. Congrats to our friends in the LPFM movement and our lawyer friends for this important win. John Anderson remarks: "The NAB is not the well-connected political juggernaut that it was close to a decade ago."
(4) The coup de grace: On June 12, all high-powered analog television ceases, and the NAB may well feel the brunt of criticism of problems that result in the conversion. The non-broadcast corporate media has been paying attention finally, and if this article is any indication, they may well be slammed as obsolete fuddy-duddies whose time has come and gone. The NAB still has mighty influences, but given the confluence of all these events and certainly more to come, might the NAB suffer something like a death of a thousand cuts?
UPDATE: TVNewsday reports that Meredith Broadcasting Group President Paul Karpowicz is elected president of the NAB Television Board. CAN TV March 16 funding ordinance takes a turn for the worse
| March 15, 2009 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 624 |
 On Friday afternoon, the CAN TV funding ordinance involving the state franchise that preivously went from good to okay has now somehow gone from okay to just horrible. (It'd be great to know this happened; we'd love to know how our tax dollars are being spent.)
A dispatch from CAN TV is posted below. Read 'em and weep (and stay tuned to CMA for further developments on this neverending story).
*** *** *** *** *** *** ***
We recently asked you to urge support of the Stone/Burke ordinance to fund CAN TV as a first step toward resolving one of the two funding issues facing the organization.
THAT ORDINANCE HAS NOW BEEN CHANGED IN WAYS THAT ARE HARMFUL TO THE FUTURE STABILITY OF CAN TV AND DOES NOT RESOLVE EITHER FUNDING ISSUE.
We've informed the City that we oppose this version of the ordinance. We don't know if it will be introduced or held for further consideration at Monday's meeting.
If the ordinance passes in its current form:
* The ordinance provides no adequate funding solution for CAN TV.
* The 1% PEG fee from all state holders except for AT&T will go to the City.
* Current funding support from Comcast, RCN and WideOpenWest will go to the City should those companies opt into state franchises.
The 3/16/09 meeting will be held at 10am, City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St., 2nd floor, City Council Chambers.
CAN TV | 312.738.1400 | www.cantv.org | info@cantv.org
UPDATE: The ordinance passed, and it wasn't pretty to watch. Read all about it. Call for support -- CAN TV funding ordinance slated for a March 16 vote
| March 4, 2009 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 623 |
CAN TV is Chicago's public access cable TV network -- the home of programs like Democracy Now!, Labor Beat, Chicago Independent Television, plus call-in shows hosted by Chicago groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War and the Gay Liberation Network, not to mention many excellent and informative programs through CAN TV's Community Partners and Community Forum series. (Not to mention that CAN TV has hosted Community Forum appearances with CMA.)
But CAN TV's outdated funding structure has created funding problems for years, threatening the future stability of this important community resource. There is good news, however: On Monday, March 16, 2009, the City of Chicago Committee on Finance will vote on the Stone/Burke Ordinance to resolve CAN TV's funding issues. Yes, things are busy this time of year for many of us, but taking some time now is critical if we hope to keep a valuable media resource like CAN TV viable for years to come.
The stakes are high. If the ordinance passes, CAN TV can count on reliable funding now and in the future. But if the ordinance fails, CAN TV will lose 1/4th of its funding in 2009, resulting in significant service cuts.
CHICAGO RESIDENTS -- PLEASE TAKE ACTION TO HELP PASS THIS ORDINANCE TO HELP PRESERVE CAN TV.
1. ATTEND the March 16th meeting at 10am, City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St., 2nd floor, City Council Chambers.
2. CALL OR MEET WITH YOUR ALDERMAN prior to the meeting to urge a "YES" vote for the Stone/Burke CAN TV ordinance.
For your Alderman's contact information call CAN TV at 312-738-1400 or look up the info here.
If you plan to attend the meeting or if you need bus transportation from CAN TV to City Hall, please contact CAN TV:
Phone: 312-738-1400
Web: http://www.cantv.org
Email: info at cantv.org Are America's Media Dying?
| March 1, 2009 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 622 |
It would appear that America's newspaper industry is facing troubled times. Consider:
* The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has filed bankruptcy
* The owning company of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News filed for bankruptcy
* Hearst is threatening to close the San Francisco Chronicle
* E. W. Scripps has closed down The Rocky Mountain News after nearly 150 years.
* Oh, and the trendsetting Tribune filed for bankruptcy months ago.
Despite this seeming trend of the Internet and the shitty economy delivering a one-two punch to America's newspapers, we commented back when the Tribune filed for bankruptcy that the newspaper industry was still profitable. As FCC acting chair Copps said, "Newspapers profits are about double the S&P 500 average" and Gannett leaked profitable numbers. And now we hear from Advertising Age an analysis that spans the disconnect between a profitable industry and increasing newspaper bankruptcies: It's not the newspapers, it's their debt-laden owners:
"Publicly owned newspapers averaged an operating profit of 10.8% in the first three quarters of last year, Mr. Morton said. That's not the margin enjoyed by newspapers when they were monopolies, but it's not nothing either. The owners, on the other hand, are variously posting huge losses, at least on paper; watching their stock prices plunge; and, crucially, struggling to make payments on debt they took on under projections that didn't pan out."
But while the newspaper industry is delivering mixed signals, one major media industry which might well be on the brink is broadcast television. Here, the signals in recent weeks and months are clear: all hell is breaking loose. Advertising on broadcast TV has taken a nosedive, and with little else in the way of income, there is talk in recent weeks in the media business press of what was considered unthinkable just a few months ago: broadcast networks could leaving behind local stations for cable:
"NBC Universal's Jeff Zucker and CBS Corp.'s Les Moonves have all but said what's coming, even before the crushing recession started to take hold: Sometime in the near future, TV stations may not necessarily be a part of traditional TV networks. The lure of turning a broadcast network into a cable network, complete with advertising revenues and subscribers' fees, has always been too tempting, with the attraction of not one, but dual revenue streams."
If that were to happen, local broadcast TV affiliates, who relied on networks for filling in a good chunk of their airtime, might face an otherwise unfillable gap and even disappear. This would dramatically change the calculus on media in Chicago and the U.S. in at least two directions:
(1) On the DTV front, it could well be the case that broadcast analog TV in the United States wouldn't be able to reach poorer communities, as we've long been saying, but not because of poor outreach or any of a host of problems with digital convertor boxes, but instead because broadcast TV (digital or analog) will no longer exist.
(2) Since broadcast TV in the U.S. would no longer exist, it would be the case that you'd have to pay to watch television. What's been called "free TV" would disappear, but so then would the policy rationale supporting "free TV". Thus, we should ask: Why shouldn't we have a TV licensing scheme in the United States? After all, we're paying for TV anyway and it's our money, so why shouldn't we have our money go to well-funded broad-based public service broadcasting in the United States and have more of a say in where our dollars go, rather than to private unaccountable fiefdoms in the cable, satellite and telecom industries? CMA makes a splash in America's editorial pages
| January 16, 2009 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 621 |
 We welcome those visitors to this website who found out about us from an editorial that two CMA members co-wrote for the American Forum, a national editorial distribution network. The editorial, about the DTV transition, has garnered considerable attention in the American corporate media in recent weeks. And our editorial has been enormously popular. So much so, in fact, that our op-ed ranks as the most popular editorial in the history of the American Forum.
Here is a list of newspapers and websites that we know have published the editorial:
* The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
* The Capital Times (Madison, WI)
* The Kalamazoo Gazette (Kalamazoo, MI)
* The Sierra Vista Herald (Sierra Vista, AZ)
* The Delaware County Daily Times (Delaware County, PA)
* North Texas e-News
* CommonDreams News Center
* San Marcos Daily Record (San Marcos, TX)
* San Antonio Express News
* The Clinton News (Clinton, MS)
* The Lake Sun Leader (Camdenton, MO)
* The Island Reporter (Sanibel, FL)
* Bluefield Daily Telegraph (Bluefield, WV)
* The Corydon Democrat (Corydon, IN)
Note that there were no Chicago or Illinois newspapers in this list, although the suburbs Arlington Heights Post (in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights) did post a notice about our editorial, even quoting it briefly.
The popularity is the result of good timing, not only that of the American DTV transition, which is currently scheduled for February 17, 2009, but that the incoming Obama administration and key members of Congress have brought increased attention to the problems around the conversion. One stopgap measure which has gained considerable momentum is to postpone the deadline to buy more time -- perhaps to June 2009.
Regardless the debate over postponing the deadline, I should say, the momentum around this proposal is stunning. In the course of about a week, it has gone from "utterly impossible" to "likely to happen". For three years, media democracy activists have suggested postponing the deadline, but realized that such a proposal would be utterly dead in the water amid a Republican Congress, FCC, and White House that simply refused to budge on the issue. Indeed, many of us thought that such a deadline would have to have been moved no later than the end of 2007 in order to have any appreciable impact. It is breathtaking the degree this issue has moved to wider public consciousness.
One other thing of note: We've set up a sister website to Chicago Media Action about the DTV conversion at dtvredalert.org; we invite you to visit that website to learn more.
Incidentally, this date of this blogpost -- on January 15 -- marks the date for the first full state DTV conversion to occur, in Hawaii. A few words about the Fairness Doctrine
| December 30, 2008 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 620 |
 A 2007 study about political bias in radio talk shows showed that ten major American cities (including Chicago) examined in the study saw more radio airtime dedicated to politically right-wing radio talk. It seemed that this study and its results launched a potent buzz in right-wing political circles of the impending return of the Fairness Doctrine, or a "noveau version" of the Fairness Doctrine. The buzz has been renewed since election day, particularly since Democrats will regain both houses of Congress and the White House.
Backing up for a moment, let's first ask: What is the Fairness Doctrine? It was an FCC regulation that was first formally enforced by the FCC in 1949 which said that broadcasters had prevent tedium regarding on broadcast radio and TV. It didn't mean that broadcasters were required to perfectly balance every perspective they aired; it just meant that an attempt at a variety of perspectives was to be achieved to avoid tedium. However, the FCC in 1987 announced it would no longer enforce certain regulations under the Fairness Doctrine, which was upheld two years later by the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
Since CMA's founding in 2002, the Fairness Doctrine has come up a grand total of three times in various discussions (mostly public events where audience members who remember the Fairness Doctrine ask about it), and a grand total of zero times in six years' worth of CMA meetings before the 2007 study and the subsequent fracas. In 2008, as right-wing hype around the Fairness Doctrine, progressive and liberal commentators decried the hype as just that.
The conventional wisdom, even among left and liberal media activists, has been thinking that since the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine opened the door to the explosion of right-wing talk radio, therefore restoring the Fairness Doctrine will help to stem that tide. There are two problems with that line of thinking. One, restoring the Fairness Doctrine would not mean the end of Rush Limbaugh and right-wing radio since the circumstances that let that genie escape extend well beyond the Fairness Doctrine. And two, the Fairness Doctrine was never abolished and still remains on the books. The FCC in 1987 didn't abolish the Doctrine; it simply stated that it would no longer enforce it. Many legal experts say that the FCC could start enforcing the Fairness Doctrine again if it wanted to. Thus, in a manner of speaking, the Fairness Doctrine was never actually abolished and still remains on the books.
But Democrats across the board have said no to restoring the Fairness Doctrine, or presumably to its re-enforcement by a Democratic FCC. Still, the Fairness Doctrine is controversial, particularly among progressive or liberal media activists, and whether or not the re-enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine would improve media overall remains something to be seen. After all, one could argue that American media simply weren't that fair with the Fairness Doctrine.
But there's a larger concern here. With at least talk of the Fairness Doctrine back in play, we could see a smearing of everything media-reform related -- net neutrality, media ownership, strict broadcast license enforcement, and so on -- as being connected with the Fairness Doctrine, or as a "new" Fairness Doctrine. Whether or not those aligned with right-wing media actually understand what we're about, this could be seen a ploy to trying to drag the media and democracy forces through the mud, or to decry any kind of non-Republican non-corporate media enforcement as re-enforcing the Fairness Doctrine. This is something we have to avoid ourselves, and refute when discussed. Remarks made to the FCC/Obama Transition Team
| December 22, 2008 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 619 |
One good thing to have emerged from the Barack Obama transition team is that the part of the team tasked with creating an Obama FCC has turned up some very good people -- Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach, by name.
While there is reason to be critical of the forthcoming Obama adminstration, and no assurance that a selling-down-the-river still won't happen (and some signs that it already has), the noises we have heard thus far from the Obama administration regarding media policy matters are far more encouraging.
I and about 25 other media activists and policy folks met with FCC transition team co-lead Kevin Werbach in a conference call this afternoon where we discussed a host of issues with Mr. Werbach: network neutrality, local media practices, public interest obligations of major media, digital access and digital inclusion, community media (particularly public access TV and low-power FM), the impact of media policy on artists, the DTV transition, and the topic I discussed -- concentrated media ownership.
The remarks I made are basically based on the following script I wrote before the conference call.
In the past 6 years, I have been involved with the group Chicago Media Action, and one initiative that CMA has been involved with is the some-would-say-quixotic efforts at stopping and reversing concentrated media ownership, particular to Chicago (and especially involving the Chicago Tribune Company) but also more generally nationwide. (But maybe it's not that quixotic, since the Tribune this month filed for bankruptcy and I would argue that the Tribune's bankruptcy is to some extent a consequence of our actions).
On the matter of media ownership, I would make three specific recommendations -- in order of increasing feasibility:
First, I would recommend the FCC investigate the matter of concentrated media ownership with an eye to make recommendations to the Justice Department for pursuing antitrust measures to help reverse concentrated media ownership. I understand that such an idea is not terribly popular within policy circles, and even less feasible, but there is some historical antecedent (the emergence of the ABC radio and television networks, for example), and I would suspect (as I see anecdotally myself) no shortage of popularity for antitrust among the general public.
Second, the FCC should demand more of whatever hurdles possible against current and future media mergers, be they more stringent requirements, greater public-interest obligations, or more concessions of other sorts. Even if throwing the switch to reverse the current media concentration is not realistic for the time being, I think the FCC can do more to throw sand in the machine of concentration media ownership.
Third, the FCC should be more forthright about its current operational matters regarding questions of media ownership. I'm specifically reminded of the development announced in September 2006 where former FCC economist Adam Canedub was quoted in an AP dispatch saying that former FCC-chair Michael Powell ordered the destruction of all copies of a draft study which connected consolidation of media ownership with poorer local TV news coverage. Then, days later, a second suppressed study concerning media concentration and the decline of the number of radio station owners is brought to light. I hate to have to ask this, but even if we can't have the rest of what I've asked for, can we at least have FCC commissioners who don't suppress research?
Thank you.
In Memoriam: Beauty Turner
| December 19, 2008 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 618 |
Today, we have lost a major Chicago journalist, political activist, and all-around great person. Beauty Turner was noted for her writing for a host of Chicago community the Residents' Journal, the South Street Journal, and the Hyde Park Herald. In particular, Beauty worked on issues particular to Chicago's public housing community, including police brutality and the rights of the poor. Beauty was the epitome of using the media as a tool for positive social change -- work that resonates with the mission of Chicago Media Action.
CMA was fortunate to collaborate with Beauty. She was a panelist on our forum "Coverage of the Inner City and the Urban Poor: The Media and Urban Issues" held October 2006. The full audio of the forum is online in MP3 format here:
http://www.chicagomediaaction.org/audiofiles/cma_forum_2006-10-04.mp3
Beauty suffered a stroke earlier this week which put her in a coma, and unfortunately the news broke that Beauty Turner passed away this afternoon. She was 51 years old.
Details of wake and funeral arrangements are pending.
Here are some links to Beauty's life and work:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030701352.html
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/12/beauty-turner-housing-activist-dies-cha-chicago.html
http://windycityworldwindnews.blogspot.com
http://www.beautysghettobustours.blogspot.com DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed on this
website are those of the individual members of Chicago Media
Action who authored them, and not necessarily those of the entire
membership of Chicago Media Action, nor of Chicago Media Action
as an organization. Newsfeed software courtesy CaRP |
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