A reoccurring theme of many of my posts on this blog is the very real danger of policymakers–both here and abroad–attempting to extend traditional media content controls to new media outlets and technologies. My PFF colleague Patrick Ross has just released an excellent new report entitled “Do’s and Dont’s for Global Media Regulation: Empowering Expression, Consumers and Innovation,” which summarizes some of the most serious threats to new media that are developing in Europe, Australia and Canada.
Patrick’s new study builds on two other important papers he authored on Europe’s dreadful “Television without Frontiers” initiative, which Patrick has appropriately labeled “Content Regulation without Frontiers.” Patrick’s alternative vision focuses on achieving legal symmetry between old and new media by deregulating down instead of regulating up. He also warns policymakers about the dangers of continuing to distinguish between different types of content delivery or platforms, and to be careful not to discourage migration of content from one type of platform or device to another.
Anyway, read the whole study for more details.
Former Vice President Al Gore had some rather passionate things to say about democracy and the role of media in it during the recent Edinburgh International Television Festival. “Democracy is under attack,” he told the crowd. “Democracy as a system for self-governance is facing more serious challenges now than it has faced for a long time. Democracy is a conversation, and the most important role of the media is to facilitate that conversation of democracy. Now the conversation is more controlled, it is more centralized.”
Apparently, Mr. Gore wants us to believe that democracy is dying and that the blame for it falls on “controlled, centralized” media. I guess such apocalyptic rhetoric helps grab attention for your cause but, in reality, such comments are completely off that off-the-mark and bear no relationship with reality whatsoever.
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I was listening to an interesting piece on NPR the last night entitled “Does Age Quash Our Spirit of Adventure?” The piece featured a neuroscientist who had been studying why it is that humans (indeed, all mammals) have an innate tendency to lose their willingness to try new things after a certain point in their lives. He called this our “adventure window.” The neuroscientist came to study this phenomenon after growing increasingly annoyed with his young male research assistant, who would come to work every day of the week listening to something new and quite different than the day before. Meanwhile, the much older neuroscience professor lamented the fact that he had been listening to the same Bob Marley tape seemingly forever.
Why is it, the neuroscientist wondered, that our willingness to try new things (our “adventure window”) fades rapidly after a certain point in life? Unfortunately, science can’t provide us with all the answers here, but his research and that of others suggests that there exists something deep within our psyche that relishes novelty and experimentation when we are young, but firmly rejects it as we grow older. To use a more common phrase: We grow set in our ways. And what’s most interesting, this neuroscientist unearthed research on other mammals (like baboons) which suggests that this is a common phenomenon throughout nature. A group of older baboons transported to new surroundings, for example, will typically refuse to try new foods they find, whereas their young will be willing to sample everything in sight.
OK, this is all quite interesting but what does all of this have to do with radio formats?
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I heard the rumors over the weekend and hoped that they were not true. But they were. “E3” the video game industry’s amazing annual trade show, is going to be scaled back starting next year. The big, beautiful, booming spectacle of hundreds of gaming companies coming together to show off their amazing new games, platforms and other inventions… is no more. It will be replaced by a smaller show at a smaller location with a smaller crowd.
As a gaming fanatic, it is sad news to be sure. I may be a 37-year-old father of two, but when I was walking the aisles of the “E3” show this May, it was a non-stop, “kid-in-the-world’s-greatest-(eye & ear)-candy-store” moment for me. (My complete review of this year’s show can be found here.
But, after the news set in–and after I had time to kill the pain by getting on XBOX Live and kicking a good friend’s butt in a heated match of “NCAA Football 2007”!–I started thinking more rationally about the economics of trade shows. Specifically, why do industries host trade shows at all? Is it really worth it for them?
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I suppose you could argue that a 37-year-old father of two shouldn’t still be playing video games, but I love ’em and just can’t give them up. I’ll probably still be playing when I’m 80 inside a virtual holodeck down in some lame Florida retirement community. (God I hope my Golden Years are that exciting).
These days, I just don’t have the time to play the more sophisticated action & adventure games that I used to love the most, so I now spend most of my time with “single-session” games, especially sports games that allow me to play a quick game and then put it aside for awhile. Last night, while I was sitting in my basement with my kids playing an intense Michigan vs. Ohio State matchup on EA’s marvelous new “NCAA Football 2007,” my mind started drifting back to all the other football games I’ve played through the years on multiple platforms. In particular, I remembered the very first sports game I ever bought was “Atari Football” back in the late 1970s. At the time, I thought it was about the most cutting-edge thing ever invented. Today, of course, it looks absolutely primitive. Just look at this! …
… And then look at this beautiful screen shot from the new NCAA Football game…
We’ve come a long way in a very short time!
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Remember the digital TV subsidy? Last year, as part of the price for establishing a firm date for broadcasters to return their old (now) analog frequencies by 2009, making them available for new uses, Congress set up a program to subsidize converter boxes for those that don’t already have digital TV sets. More precisely, it ordered the Department of Commerce to set one up. It has now started that process–proposing rules on exactly who will will get money and how.
The total cost authorized for the program was $990 million–with an automatic extension up to $1.5 billion if Commerce so requests. That’s much less than the $3 billion at one time being considered by Congress, but still real money.
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CNN famously made its mark during the first Gulf War, as its 24-hour, on-the-spot reporting brought that conflict into people’s homes in a way never done before, marking a revolution in TV news. A story in today’s Washington Post suggests that the current Lebanon war may mark another revolution in how people get information However, this time the change isn’t coming from a news organization, but from videos posted by countless individuals on youtube.com
Up till now, youtube has been known mostly as a place to watch home videos shot by others, and perhaps the odd Jon Stewart clip. But, the Post reports, in recent days it has taken on a more serious role. As the Post explains it: “In a matter of weeks, YouTube has become a video Dumpster for a global audience to share first-hand reports, military strategies, propaganda videos and personal commentary about a violent conflict as it unfolds.”
While not likely to replace professional journalism, the amateur posts on youtube have a substantial audience. According to Robert Niles of USC’s Online Journalism Review: “in real numbers, I think any broadcast executive would consider it a huge audience–it’s just dispersed around the globe. It would probably challenge hourly ratings at NBC or CNN.”
A trend worth watching.
In my college days, I majored in both journalism and political science, but I briefly flirted with the idea of a major in psychology as well. (Actually, I was just trying to extend my college partying days as long as possible but I ran out of money!) While I was briefly flirting with the idea of a psychology major, I took a psyc class that featured a brief discussion of a subject that would forever change the way I look at the world and media issues in particular: “third-person-effect hypothesis.” Simply stated, the hypothesis predicts that people tend to overestimate the influence of communications / media on the attitudes and behavior of others relative to themselves. For example, many people will see media “bias” where there is none (or very little) and they will often advocate a “re-tilting” of the news in their preferred direction. (Incidentally, in case you’re wondering, there’s plenty of research to back up the thesis.)
When I first read about this hypothesis, I experienced a profound personal epiphany; a real “ah-hah!” moment that helped me finally unlock the secret to why so many people alleged media bias where I personally saw none. Specifically, it helped me understand why good friends of mine on both the political Left and Right saw different forms of bias in the exact same news. As someone who was, and remains, rabidly independent (I’ve never voted for either major party in my life and I doubt I ever will), I was always fascinated by this. When I sat down with classmates, friends, roommates or others to watch the news, I’d witnessed endless bickering among them about supposed slant one way or the other. But, with a few exceptions, I never quite saw or heard that bias myself. I’m not saying that all news is perfectly unbiased, it’s just that a large percentage of the time it is not biased and yet people argue that it is, but in decidedly different ways and directions.
What explains this? The answer is “third-person-effect hypothesis” and “hostile media effect” theory. To explain, let me step back and begin by telling you what got me thinking about this again.
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I’m consistently amazed with Microsoft’s XBOX 360 and XBOX Live Network, and not just because of the games I can play on it but because of everything else I can do.
I was reminded of that tonight when I got on the XBOX Live Marketplace to look for a new “NCAA Football 2007” game demo from EA Sports that I wanted to download and check out before buying the game. When I got to XBOX Live, however, the first thing I was greeted by was a notice about the latest “Artist of the Month.” So, I gave that a listen.
Then, my wife came into the room and said something about getting a babysitter sometime soon so we could go see a new movie. But she wasn’t sure what she wanted to see, so I pulled up the movie and TV previews page on XBOX Live and downloaded clips from “Superman Returns,” XMEN 3,” “A Scanner Darkly,” and several other movie clips… all in glorious 720p high-def with stunning digital surround sound. (Indeed, downloading all these high-def clips via XBOX encourages me to just wait for home release of the flix because they look much better on my home projector than they do at the theater!)
A short while after that, my kids came into the room so I decided to pull up something for them. I downloaded some clips from Pixar’s new movie “Cars” and then also downloaded a free version of the arcade classic “Frogger” for my daughter to try out. Here was a game that I pumped countless quarters into as a kid back in 1981, and now my daughter was sitting with me playing it for free 25 years later. On the sofa in our basement. With a wireless controller. On an 8-foot wide projection screen. My how times change!
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According to the AP, FEMA yesterday unveiled an upgrade to the Emergency Alert System that will eventually allow the feds to text-message every single cell phone in the country in the event of an emergency. (What would these messages say? “N.Korean Missl coming Ur way. Duck!” or “Grab Ur duct tape now”?) It looks like the $5.5 million system will initially be targeted at public safety officials, but Homeland Security Department spokesman Aaron Walker said yesterday, “Anything that can receive a text message will receive the alert. We find that the new digital system is more secure, it’s faster, and it enables us to reach a wide array of citizens and alert them to pending disasters.”
Now, apart from the obvious problem of network overloading that could occur not only by sending millions of text messages at once, and, as a result, by prompting everyone in the country to call their loved ones to see if they’re OK, there is the larger question of whether text alerts are necessary at all. The original Emergency Alert System was never activated–not even on 9/11. With at least three television networks, dozens of cable news channels and radio networks, and the internet, can anyone possibly escape being alerted of an emergency? Is there any reason to believe that the networks won’t pass on instructions from the government to citizens (or even give government airtime)? What value could text messages possibly add?
John Lawson, president of the Association of Public Television Stations (which, by the way, has the biggest interest here since public TV stations are the ones getting paid to use their DTV spectrum to broadcast the messages), explains why text messages are useful: “[W]e’re hoping that your cell phone will go off saying something bad is happening, and you need to get to a TV or radio to find out what’s going on.” Exactly.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.