[Mb-hair] Broadcast TV on life support

[Michael Butler]

Tioga,

Yes, it is preaching to the choir but we should all keep it up. Without such
the truth will never leak out. Media is more under control all the time.

Michael
-- Never doubt that a group of thoughtful, committed
citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only
thing that ever has.   Margaret Mead





> Dear Michael,
> 
> Thanks for posting this.  It's a great nutshell history of the evolution of
> television in America, from the days of the Vietnam Era when, for news, you
> listened either to Huntley and Brinkley (NBC) or Walter Cronkite (CBS), who
> changed America's opinion about the war in Vietnam when he taped a newscast in
> Hue City following the 1968 Tet Offensive and declared America was in a
> "stalemate" in Vietnam.  You know, I can't even recall who the ABC News anchor
> was.  These were our only sources for news and views at the time.
> 
> Hmmmmmm, we may have news and commentary sources out the wazoo these days,
> but, you know, we have yet, apparently, to have learned all necessary lessons
> from our Vietnam War experience.  They may claim today there are no parallels
> to our war in Iraq with our war in Vietnam and that we are NOT in a stalemate,
> yet, how long has it been since the war was officially declared over?  And how
> many have been killed and seriously wounded since?
> 
> Ah, but this is just preaching to the choir, eh?
> 
> --Tioga
> 
> =============
> 
> Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 08:59:38 -0700
> From: Michael Butler <michael at michaelbutler.com>
> 
> Thomas W. Hazlett: Broadcast TV on life support
> 
>> By Thomas W. Hazlett
>> Published: June 2 2005 17:17 | Last updated: June 2 2005 17:17
> 
> Broadcast television is fading into oblivion. Just two web sites, Google and
> Yahoo!, now account for more advertising revenues than do the prime time
> schedules of the three traditional television networks - ABC, CBS, and NBC -
> combined. In contrast to the explosion in e-commerce, broadcast TV viewers
> are fleeing to cable programming, which now easily beats broadcast TV in the
> ratings. And those left to watch broadcast programs don¹t stick around for
> the commercials. Remote controls, VCRs, and the growing popularity of
> personal digital recorders are rendering the 60-second TV spot a quaint
> black and white video clip.
> 
> In some ways, however, the dinosaurs of the early TV era are remarkable for
> their longevity. The network Big Three dominated an earlier time under rules
> crafted by the US federal government in 1952. By perversely applying a
> doctrine of ³localism,² Federal Communications Commission regulators ended
> up killing a fledgling fourth network then operating - DuMont - and
> precluded new competition for decades. This was achieved via spectrum
> policy, denying entrants the licenses they needed to compete.
> 
> This audaciously anti-competitive gambit was couched in the language of high
> principle. Excluding all but a few was said to serve the ³public interest,²
> providing not only for ³localism² but for ³fairness² and ³educational²
> programs, to boot. Even as FCC regulators railed famously against the ³vast
> wasteland² that their cosy network triopoly had wrought, as did FCC chairman
> Newton Minow in a 1961 speech, the Commission moved to block alternative
> media providing higher quality programs and a broader range of consumer
> choice. Minow¹s FCC moved to suppress the emergence of cable TV, which
> regulators declared could never be more than a niche fill-in for
> broadcasting. ³Educational² goals were threatened, it determined, if cable
> ³siphoned² viewers.
> 
> But consumers wanted more video programmes, and entrepreneurs sought
> innovative ways to deliver them. Cable TV ­ ³spectrum in a tube² ­ was a
> regulatory bypass, recreating the transmission capacity FCC policies denied.
> It too was blocked by FCC barriers; when it won deregulation in the late
> 1970s, new programmes were soon unleashed, and most US households subscribed
> by 1988. By then, CNN had achieved the impossible: in just seven years, it
> had become a profitable, mass market, 24/7 all-news network ­ just what
> regulators had declared impractical and virtually illegal. Liberalising US
> TV rules literally changed the world. When, in 1991, CNN cameras captured
> Boris Yeltsin jumping on a Soviet tank, an empire was toppled ­ and a ³vast
> wasteland² buried.
> 
> But the first generation cable success of CNN was not an equilibrium. New
> rivalry came, once more, in the form of new spectrum. Digital satellite TV
> systems launched by DirecTV in 1994 and EchoStar in 1996 were greeted as the
> ³death star² by cable incumbents, as they beamed 200-channel video bundles
> to subscribers. Cable, scrambling to respond,spent $80bn to upgrade their
> systems. The unregulated capacity competition triggered a new content boom.
> 
> One upstart to gain carriage in 1996 was the Fox News Channel. It made an
> overt ideological appeal with its ³Fair and Balanced² slogan, hitting CNN
> and the broadcast networks as slanted left. In contrast to news shows that
> interviewed Ralph Nader activists as default experts, FNC featured talking
> heads from the (Republican) Heritage Foundation. Critics cried foul,
> portraying the new channel as a right-wing front ­ further advancing Fox
> News as ³fair and balanced² and attacked by elite purveyors of opinion.
> 
> Fox News now garners more than the combined audience size of CNN and its
> sister network, Headline News. But FNC (owned by Rupert Murdoch¹s News Corp)
> receives only 25 cents per month for the average subscriber in homes it
> serves (about 80m), below the 40 cents paid for the CNN/HN tandem. In new
> carriage agreements, Fox is reportedly asking for at least 50 cents. This
> shows a stunning turnaround: Just nine years ago, Fox News paid cable
> systems over $300m in aggregate (or $12 per new subscriber) to gain initial
> carriage. ³Fair and balanced² had to pay to play.
> 
> The gold discovered in these hills is prompting innovative counter measures
> from both established networks and entrants such as the network headed by
> former vice president Al Gore. The battlefield extends to radio, where the
> meteoric rise of conservative talk shows (following the abolition of the
> Fairness Doctrine in 1987) has triggered counter-counter liberal talk, in
> the form of Al Franken¹s Air America.
> 
> Today¹s markets deliver diverse choices far beyond what the ³public
> interest² in broadcasting delivered. With the transition to the
> post-broadcasting television world ninety-percent complete, courtesy of
> households paying for cable and satellite delivery, it is time cancel the
> 1952 TV Allocation Table ­ the longest run ratings bomb in US TV history. If
> station licensees were given the right to use allotted frequencies for their
> highest and best use, over-the-air broadcasting would quickly migrate to
> more efficient platforms, and TV band frequencies would be redeployed for
> mobile telephony and broadband ­ wireless services customers yearn to enjoy
> and are willing to pay for. Once the radio spectrum is made available for
> productive use by market competitors, additional generations of innovative
> video content ­ and free speech - are yet before us.
> 
> This writer is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy
> Research
> 
> 
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