[opendtv] Re: Commentary: Bad News in Mogulville
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 14:56:02 -0400
I just don't get these vitriolic articles with such dogmatic points
of view.
If the writer has a point about any one company owning both all-
news radio stations in a given (enoromous) market, that point gets
lost completely when his true colors shine through the rhetoric.
So he hates radio and TV, and believes it is, or rather should
be, going out of business. If it's truly failing, then what's
he ranting about? Anything the FCC does or doesn't do will
be irrelevant. Who cares if the same company owns two news
radio stations (in a market that has heaven only knows how many
dozen radio stations) if "everyone" getting their news via
the Internet? Let it be, then. The radio and TV stations will
go extinct, and all the ranting will have been for nothing.
Meanwhile, all these folks getting their news via the Internet
will certainly not be affected by anything media moguls own
in the radio and TV market.
Bert
------------------------------------------
> Via ShopTalk
>
> Bad News in Mogulville
> Marvin Kitman
> Newsday
>
> Your average media mogul got some upsetting news last week.
>
> First, the U.S. Senate voted to rescind the new Federal
> Communications Commission rules that would allow a company to own as
> many as three television stations, eight radio stations, a cable
> operator, as well as a newspaper, in the same market.
>
> What an outrage!
>
> And if that weren't bad enough, a federal appeals court in
> Philadelphia ordered the FCC to reconsider those same rules that big
> broadcasting and publishing companies had lobbied for and litigated
> for years.
>
> The FCC's new rules, according to its chairman, Michael Powell, were
> a shot in the arm for democracy, competition and diversity, allowing
> a fuller range of opinion than was possible under the old rules
>
> By a free press, Chairman Powell means freedom for average media
> mogul Rupert Murdoch to own a duopoly, both WNYW and WWOR in the same
> New York market. And for Sumner Redstone of Viacom to own both of our
> local all-news radio stations (WINS and WCBS).
>
> By diversity, your average media mogul means the ability to fire
> people and reduce costs. For example, who needs two news directors,
> one for the WNYW and one for the WWOR news?
>
> Chairman Powell, the average media mogul believes, is the patron
> saint of free enterprise. Any day they would try to convince the
> Senate that his face should be on the new $1,000 bill.
>
> What a slap in the face it was to the well-paid lobbyists who had
> been trying to convince the Senate since June 2003 that the FCC's new
> rules were in the public interest. After all the money they spent on
> dinners and drinks, plane rides to fancy resorts for corporate
> meetings and seminars, and whatever else lobbyists do in a town and a
> Congress run by lobbyists.
>
> What's the Senate coming to these days, actually doing something for
> the people instead of to them!
>
> What a denigration of all the hard work Chairman Powell and the three
> blind mice (the Republican majority on the five-person commission)
> had done over the years to free the nation's media moguls from the
> shackles that limited the fulfillment of their destiny.
>
> After all the trouble the media companies' lobbyists and litigators
> went to to convince the FCC that what competition means in the
> marketplace today is that the fewer owners, the more competition. It
> took some industrial-strength shutting of eyes since the Telecom Act
> of 1996, which allowed your average media mogul to swallow everything
> swallowable.
>
> After all the trouble, the FCC helped by the average media mogul over
> the years, went to in making people not care about the so-called
> public interest the moguls are required to serve in exchange for
> their licenses. The simps think public interest is voting for
> "American Idol" candidates.
>
> Now this - a public rebuke from the judiciary. The court is
> abusing its powers.
>
> I know there are people who think Colin Powell should have bought his
> kid Michael a tank or a candy store, as one famous agent explained,
> "and that he and the FCC are a national disaster."
>
> But, hey, he represented the views of the average media mogul, his
> favorite minority group. What are they - chopped liver?
>
> Personally, I think the actions by the Senate and the court are good
> for business.
>
> If I was your average media mogul, I would be looking to sell TV
> stations, not buy them. TV is dead.
>
> Everybody younger than 40 I know goes home and checks the news and
> e-mails on the computer. They download music or some movie they want
> to see again, play video games. Nobody is watching television.
>
> Each year, fewer and fewer people watch TV. Historians will tell you
> that in the 1950's on Tuesday nights, when Milton Berle did his
> Texaco show, movie theaters closed down because the entire country
> was at home watching.
>
> And these smart guys are trying to buy more market share when people
> are tuning out in alarming numbers?
>
> The market is disappearing in front of their eyes. It's like trying
> to catch quicksand or mercury. And it's happening because the
> programs are so bad.
>
> The bottom line is they're fighting over something that is going to
> disappear in 15 years. Increasing ownership now is like buying up a
> town after the railroad stopped going there. TV stations are the
> ghost towns of the arts.
>
> I think the moguls are fools. Why bother putting a couple more
> billion dollars in a losing market? They'd be better off taking the
> money and putting it into real estate, some apartment buildings in
> Queens.
>
> My further advice to your average media mogul: Cheer up.
> Don't despair.
>
> Somehow, some way, despite all the bad news last week, they will
> manage to get the crazed senators and the wacko federal courts to
> drop their insane crusades, trampling the rights of media moguls to
> own it all. Nothing will stop the friends of democracy, free speech
> and diversity in government from giving away the public airwaves
> until they end up where they belong: in the grip of the average media
> mogul.
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