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| Thursday, May 29, 2003 |
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Britt Blogs Bryant 
| | Well, not so fast. It's a perfect morning here in New Yawk, so Britt (my gracious host these last few days) and I strolled over to Byant Park, where we could sit, have some coffee and talk deep tech trash in the midst of the best free wi-fi in town. |
| | Now, back to the apartment, and off to the plane. |
Till next coast
| | Heading home today. See you back on the left coast. |
Broadcast Drekulation
| | When I was coming up in radio, back in the Seventies, there were limits on broadcast property ownership. Back then, you could own seven AM , seven FM and seven TV stations: the "7-7-7 rule." And in any one metropolitain area, you could own at most one AM, one FM and one TV station. There were also limits on how many newspapers you could own. The big O&Os (owners & operators) — NBC, CBS, ABC, RKO, Westinghouse, Capital Cities — O&O'd the biggest signals in the biggest markets. But, again, there were limits. Newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership was highly limited. (Or maybe not — see here.) |
| | In 1985, 7-7-7 went up to 12-12-12. |
| | Then came the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Now the limits were 8-infinity: Up to eight stations in any one market, and no limit on the total nationwide. |
| | In 1999 the FCC created the Eight Voices test and the 35% rule: locally, a company could own two TV stations in a market if a total of eight "voices" still existed; and nationally, no company could "own" (I hate that term in this context) more than 35% of the national TV audience. |
| | Killed along the way were minimal requirements for non-entertainment programming (1985), the Fairness Doctrine (1987), limits on percentage of advertising content (1985) and various other limitations, including ones on operating stations you don't own, allowing de facto ownership of programming to exceed ownership of licenses. |
| | Deregulatory proponents do not perceive station licensees as "public trustees" of the public airwaves required to provide a wide variety of services to many different listening groups. Instead, broadcasting has been increasingly seen as just another business operating in a commercial marketplace which did not need its management decisions questioned by government overseers. Opponents argue that deregulation violates key parts of The Communications Act of 1934--especially the requirement to operate in the public interest--and allows broadcasters to seek profits with little public service programming required in return. |
| | On June 2, the FCC is due to release the next round of dereg rules. FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a dereg proponent, is expected to raise the local limit to ten, among other things. At issue especially is cross-ownership of newspapers as well. |
| | Notice how much of the few minutes of non-advertising content on your local 11 O'Clock news is devoted to "stories" that are nothing more than promotions of entertainment shows on the same stations? Prepare to see the same, and worse, in your newspapers. |
| | Nobody on the receiving end of broadcasting and newspapers is asking for more dereg. In fact, the pols, noticing which way the wind blows, are opposing it. |
| | The problem is that broadcast spectrum, as conceived since the first radio stations went up early in the last century, is highly finite. Engineering rules have been relaxed in the extreme, to the point where I can stand here in an apartment bedroom in New York City and get two or more stations on one FM channel just by turning my radio 90 degrees in one direction or the other (and all of them sound like crap). But there are still only a few thousand stations on AM and FM, and far less on TV. In other words, there are limits to the total number of stations that can be owned. |
| | What's more, the business of commercial broadcasting is not one that involves listeners and viewers except in very indirect ways. You and I pay nothing to the originators of the signals we watch and hear. We are merely consumers, not customers. Since we pay squat, that's the sum of our influence as well. |
| | That means we need some kind of market representation. That's what the FCC is for, and Congress as well. And they're not listening. |
| | As a result, we get what we can't pay for, but that Clear Channel can: influence. |
| | I hate to say I don't have much hope, but I don't. |
| | Instead my hope is with the Net. I want regulation to protect the end-to-end nature of the Net, which will allow any of us to broadcast whatever we please to anybody else who cares to watch and listen. |
| | That's worth saving, big time. I'm not sure about what's left of broadcasting. |
I'm feeling unlucky
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