Category: Media

ABC’s Frisco station, KGO-TV, had a little get-together for the national audience with Peter Jennings and a bunch of local media folks (the PG&E guy from the Bay Guardian, local news anchor Pete Wilson, an ethnic media guy, the deputy editor of the Frisco Comical, and Barbara Simpson, the right-wing talk radio “Babe in the Bunker”) and a live studio audience.

One of the subjects was the proposed FCC rule changes that will allow more consolidation. So obviously, this discussion didn’t happen, because if it did there could be no Blackout. Seriously, it was the one issue that all panelists agreed on, left, right, center, and loony: bad, bad, bad. It was as if you had proposed privatizing the schools to a meeting of the teachers’ union.

Which leads me to believe it must be a good idea.

Happy Fun Pundit has a serious claim on the title “The New York Times of the Blogosphere” once seen somewhere else.

Stefan Sharkansky has done an amazing feat of research in the Robert Scheer Canard-o-Matic, a chart of the repetitive set of canards that recur in Scheer’s columns.

Like any good citizen, Scheer recycles. Or maybe he composts, I’m not sure.

The usual suspects (Lessig, Salon, Gillmor, free software blogs) are floating a myth to the effect that Big Media are hiding proposed FCC rule changes from their viewers. Let’s see what we can find in five minutes of looking for the story.

MSNBC: Broad media ownership rules floated

ABC: Fed Ruling Could Make More Media Monoliths

CBS: Media Giants Want Room to Grow

CNN: nothing.

Fox News: FCC Proposal Would Ease Media Ownership Restrictions

Another myth bites the dust.

Now what about the rules? The criticism generally makes the same point, whether it’s from conservative Bill Safire or Bushwacking Salon: fewer voices. Given that we only have two today – Fox News and the rest of the right against the East Coast Establishment and the rest of the left – I don’t really see that happening. Media companies are still going to compete for eyeballs, and if there’s only one media company in the world, then departments are going to compete for eyeballs. So that doesn’t persuade me.

There are some potential benefits that could come from more streamlined and efficient news-gathering, however. To give one example, you used to be able to get fairly decent coverage of state government from TV, radio, and print almost anywhere in California, but today you only get it from the Sacramento Bee. Oh, the LA Times, the Frisco Comical, The Union Trib, the Register, the CC Times, and the Murky News put up a front, but their coverage is episodic and incoherent to all but insiders who’ve been studying for years.

If the Bee were part of a conglomerate that included papers in LA and Frisco, their Sacramento coverage would be part of the deal, and if they were connected to TV and radio stations, it would probably penetrate to the mass audience that doesn’t read a daily paper.

News companies used to live and die by local and regional stories, depending on wire services for state, national, and global coverage, but the wire services aren’t cutting it any more, for reasons I don’t entirely understand. So our media is moving in a new direction, where news companies depend more on broadly-based audience for news with a particular attitude. So you’ve got your Fox News fans with their conservative point of view and your ABC News fans with their progressive point of view, happily enjoying news that reinforces their beliefs. So markets are defined differently these days, thanks to cable and satellite and the Internet, than they were in the days when the existing FCC rules were drafted, and that’s just a fact.

Having invested money in researching and reporting a story, why shouldn’t Fox and ABC be able to present it to radio and newspaper audiences as well as their TV audience? After all, these are just different delivery vehicles serving the same public. Outside the US, the myth of impartial news has no standing; you know when you pick up a paper in France, the UK, or India where its bias lies, and you interpret accordingly.

This isn’t too much for the poorly-educated American public to do for themselves.

Another interesting aspect of this story is the criticism of the belief that the Internet can ever be a check on the networks. The Internet can’t, in its present form, deliver broadcast-quality audio and video, but isn’t this exactly as the very critics of “MediaCon” have said they wanted it to remain? (I’m referring to the “World of Ends” concept that the Internet is perfect and shouldn’t be improved.)

An enhanced Internet capable of carrying broadcast-quality programming is a technical possibility. If we were to have that, what would the objection to relaxed FCC rules then become? There has to be one, because bigger is always badder, in this analysis, even when it isn’t.

Lawrence Lessig deleted a comment I left on his blog about this phony claim of his:

Remember, we had to increase our term to harmonize with the rest of the world; now the administration is pushing the rest of the world to increase its term to harmonize with us.

The comment: You can’t be that ignorant. The US extended the term of copyright to harmonize with the EU, and now we seek to bring other nations, such as Singapore, into compliance.

When I lived in Singapore in the mid-80s, their copyright law didn’t protect the works of non-Singaporeans. It was possible to buy all the popular software of the day (Lotus 1-2-3, MS-DOS, Microsoft C, dBase) for the price of a floppy, and photocopied manuals were available for a minimal charge. Pirated audio and videotapes were also available for next to nothing, complete with fake liners. It was a Napster-lover’s dream.

I think you would have liked it.

Oftentimes, the folks who scream the loudest about commercial interests trampling their free speech don’t respect the concept when it applies to those with whom they disagree. Lessig proved himself to be one such person. Of course, the boy has no obligation to let me disagree with him on his blog, but if he wants to be taken seriously as a First Amendment champion he should at least try and confine his rants to the general neighborhood of the facts.

UPDATE: Lessig claims he didn’t delete my comment, so I’ve reposted it to see if it sticks. He also posts, in my comments, some misdirection on CTEA and the EU.

By way of observing the universality of TV criticism, here’s a piece by a well-known reviewer where I’ve switched shows: Before I add my voice to the din that’s discussing where “Buffy” may have gone astray, let’s first take half a second to acknowledge the obvious: This is one of the best dramas on television, with writing so intelligent and dialogue so strong it laid the groundwork for the current generation of great TV dramas. Furthermore, while most TV writers are willing to grapple with vampires or cheerleading as little as is necessary to make it through the next predictable courtroom or autopsy scene, Whedon has taken on incredibly difficult subject matter with enthusiasm, presenting the bizarre twists and turns of policymaking with humor and no small amount of suspense. Of course now we take for granted that watching a bunch of vampire slayer support group members could be riveting, unpredictable and even touching, but before “Buffy,” making a fictional TV version of the high school office warren look romantic seemed almost unthinkable. Whedon has a unique style, voice and vision; on almost every show, there’s an innovative plot device or a revelatory moment that maximizes the drama of an otherwise dry subject.

Now for a free beer, what TV show was this piece written about originally, and for bonus points, where?

Having been unemployed for a few months, I can sympathize with Jayson Blair’s current employment status. Therefore, I would like to offer him a lead for his next blitz of resume-bombing: try Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Your style of reportage would fit beautifully with their existing format, you’d get to be on TV, there’s very little travel involved, and, like the Times, the show has no pesky fact-checkers to muck up your prose.

What could be better?

The illustrious Dr. Frank has a new CD out, called Eight Little Songs:

This home-made CD contains eight new songs, recorded in Dr. Frank’s bedroom. The whole idea behind the CD is explained here– comments and feedback are encouraged. These CDs were originally intended to be sold only at shows, but there have been a lot of requests for mail order from people who couldn’t make to the shows, so we’re going to give it a try.

I’ve heard them all, and it’s great stuff, so check it out.

The New York Times reports on their massive group therapy session over Jayson Blair:

“Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts he appeared to be a promising young minority reporter,” Mr. Raines said. “I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities.”

“Does that mean I personally favored Jayson?” he added, a moment later. “Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes.”

I think the point is that Mr. Raines is paid to be an executive editor of a major daily paper, not to be a “white man from Alabama,” and as such he’s a dismal failure. His paper is losing credibility and circulation, his quixotic campaigns, like one on behalf of rich, white, female golfers in Georgia and another one against the liberation of the Iraqis, are an embarassment to the entire staff, and the policy of removing the firewall between the Op-Ed pages and the news pages has hurt the paper and the people it serves enormously.

He should resign.

NBC has officially axed Mr. Sterling:

Missing from the fall lineup and presumed to be dead are “In-Laws,” “Just Shoot Me,” “Hidden Hills,” “Watching Ellie” (the “Seinfeld” curse strikes again!), “Mister Sterling” and “A.U.S.A.”

…which proves studio dawgs aren’t as dumb as they appear to be. In its place:

“Miss/Match” stars Alicia Silverstone and Ryan O’Neal. Silverstone plays a divorce lawyer working for her father (O’Neal). Dad, in turn, has a knack for matchmaking. This series has been described as “lighthearted.”

sounds like progress. Now if they’d just added Baghdad Bob to the show, they might have had a chance.

Gray Davis, you’re next, sucka.