[opendtv] Commentary: Bad News in Mogulville
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 07:33:10 -0400
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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