Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Rudy Giuliani gave a pretty good speech last night, IMHO. But, alas for the GOP, the speech got cold-shouldered from the broadcast networks. Flipping around the bacast dial during the speech, I found Monday night football, a local weather report, and one local broadcast report from the convention floor–but even that didn’t show the speech. Time to take up arms against networks disregard of the body politic? No.
While running television ads in Washington, D.C. to show what a swell bunch of people they are, the National Association of Broadcasters have been running an aggressive campaign to squeeze out the latest threat to local broadcasters, satellite radio providers XM and Sirius. The problem, it seems, is that XM has been offering its subscribers useful information about local traffic and weather conditions. The local broadcasters view this as a major transgression, and have cried foul to the FCC. Because of previous regulatory barriers inspired by local broadcasters, XM Radio is restricted to national programming. XM’s solution is to provide local forecasts on a national basis. While it may be inefficient to provide listeners in L.A. up-to-date information on traffic jams in Manhattan, it’s the only way around the existing rules. Local broadcasters have petitioned the FCC and have also played the homeland security card in an effort to keep satellite providers out of local markets. Scott Woolley provides a full account at Forbes.com.
A few weeks ago, perhaps upset that the broadcast networks didn’t feel compelled to offer gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democratic convention, John Kerry stated his opposition to media consolidation, supporting stronger ownership rules. A threat then, to the big media companies? They don’t seem to think so. According to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics (as reported in today’s Internet Daily), Kerry has received far more in cash from media companies than President Bush–beating him $1.9 million to $1.1 million. Overall, some 2/3 of media dollars this cycle has gone to Dems, with Time Warner giving 72% and Viacom 74% to the Democrats. So much for the Left’s claim that big media corporations are part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. If only they were. Instead, they are more influenced by their Hollywood roots than Washington battles. Combine that with the general masochistic tendency of U.S. corporations to support their own detractors, and the CRP figures may not be that surprising.
I recently finished reading Daniel M. Kimmel entertaining new history of the rise of the Fox television network entitled The Fourth Network: How Fox Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television. While many younger Americans can’t remember a time when multiple networks and cable channels were not at their disposal, for most of television’s history, citizens had only three primary commercial options from which to choose. After inept regulatory policies caused the demise of the DuMont Television Network in the 1950s, no one thought a fourth network was feasible in America. Perhaps that explains why it took a non-American to think outside the box and roll the dice on the launch of a new network in the U.S.
An interesting story ran in the Economist a few weeks ago on France’s attempt to create a French 24-news channel (my apologies to you who aren’t weeks behind in reading Economist issues as I am.) Apparently, during the invasion of Iraq last year, Jacques Chirac grew frustrated with what he saw as a pro-US slant on war reporting by CNN and Fox. So he called for creation of a French rival to these networks, calling it “essential” to French global influence. The new venture of course, while partly privately owned, would be almost entirely taxpayer-financed.
The plan ran into problems, not surprisingly. First, it was decided that the new network would not operate in France . After all, French TV doesn’t need more competition, does it? Then, it was decided the initial programming would be only in French. Seems France’s desire to influence public opinion was outweighed by an aversion to using languages that the vast majority of the world actually speaks, such as English. Of course, that left potential audiences in parts of Belgium, Canada and West Africa, but even to the French government it was clear that would hardly create a rival to CNN. Last month the whole project was shelved as a waste of money even by French standards.
Of course, I’m sure some will see this as yet another example of how hard it is to compete against Fox, CNN, and the dozen or so other media “monopolies” that operate today without taxpayer support, French or otherwise.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
