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Went to (most of) this tonight. Some people made some good points ... some people simply missed the boat. Almost all stammering about what a huge misstep it would be to relax media ownership a bit more. Someone needs to explain to one woman that KOMO is NOT owned by Disney (although its network IS). Couple people blamed the media for the war in Iraq, and a few similar cases --- the rest all pretty mainstream arguments.
I'm a bit surprised at my ambivolence about ownership changes. I left a comment card for FCC saying it's not OWNERSHIP that concerns me but the complete relaxing of rules that has hurt media. If stations have no responsibility for what they air, then it's likely going to be lowest cost crap. An owner that is responsible can have 6 signals and put great, responsible programming on all of them. An irresponsible owner can have one signal and put crap on it ... which scenario hurts the community? So my comment explained that things like measuring news content ... airing both sides of any issue ... minority hiring and/or minority content are issues that used to be monitored; but once those rules went away we lost most of the responsibility of decent journalism.
Some opined that minority ownership does not adequately reflect minority population ... but look at Fisher's purchase of a minority-owned television station that was doing little more than clearing NBC shopping content. If a station had a mandate to include some minority content ... EVEN if it got buried at 3am, I submit that's still more valuable to community than info-mercials and given things like TIVO, etc. the content can still be time-shifted. To me, that's a better service than suggesting we force ownership on a business that may or may not pencil out in 8 months.
I'm not suggesting we force ALL stations into a "Public Radio" boring content shoehorn. But some stations should probably be licensed with expectation that they are jukeboxes and won't be doing a ton of community coverage ... but perhaps THOSE should be limited by owners. If an owner does a great job of serving a community, I'm not that worked up if they want to share overhead with a newspaper, etc.
But if an owner is left unchecked, they will absolutely gravitate to lowest common denominator ... cheap operation with bare bones content. If someone else could do a better job with that same license, then the other candidate deserves a shot. If the large owner wants to keep the license, they can spend a little more time looking at what they PUT on the air and earn the license with each renewal ... and no harm done in my mind.
Andy Skotdal from KRKO was, as of the time I was leaving, the only person supporting cross ownership of electronic and print media. I think he implied that having a paper in the community that is co-owned by a media holding company may be serving community better than watching the paper fold and go away and providing no service whatsoever.
I'm a bit surprised at my ambivolence about ownership changes. I left a comment card for FCC saying it's not OWNERSHIP that concerns me but the complete relaxing of rules that has hurt media. If stations have no responsibility for what they air, then it's likely going to be lowest cost crap. An owner that is responsible can have 6 signals and put great, responsible programming on all of them. An irresponsible owner can have one signal and put crap on it ... which scenario hurts the community? So my comment explained that things like measuring news content ... airing both sides of any issue ... minority hiring and/or minority content are issues that used to be monitored; but once those rules went away we lost most of the responsibility of decent journalism.
Some opined that minority ownership does not adequately reflect minority population ... but look at Fisher's purchase of a minority-owned television station that was doing little more than clearing NBC shopping content. If a station had a mandate to include some minority content ... EVEN if it got buried at 3am, I submit that's still more valuable to community than info-mercials and given things like TIVO, etc. the content can still be time-shifted. To me, that's a better service than suggesting we force ownership on a business that may or may not pencil out in 8 months.
I'm not suggesting we force ALL stations into a "Public Radio" boring content shoehorn. But some stations should probably be licensed with expectation that they are jukeboxes and won't be doing a ton of community coverage ... but perhaps THOSE should be limited by owners. If an owner does a great job of serving a community, I'm not that worked up if they want to share overhead with a newspaper, etc.
But if an owner is left unchecked, they will absolutely gravitate to lowest common denominator ... cheap operation with bare bones content. If someone else could do a better job with that same license, then the other candidate deserves a shot. If the large owner wants to keep the license, they can spend a little more time looking at what they PUT on the air and earn the license with each renewal ... and no harm done in my mind.
Andy Skotdal from KRKO was, as of the time I was leaving, the only person supporting cross ownership of electronic and print media. I think he implied that having a paper in the community that is co-owned by a media holding company may be serving community better than watching the paper fold and go away and providing no service whatsoever.
LITTLEBOYBLUE said:
Are there any large clusters, anywhere, where one owner manages to do a good job with everything station in the cluster? My opinion is that the best operators generally can manage several stations in a market that are pretty good, with the remainder of the cluster varying from mediocre to "complete waste of spectrum." Successfully managing that many stations is apparently quite a challenge...
Aside from that, the issue is that when an irresponsible owner ends up with a cluster of six stations, the result is six really awful stations. Conversely, that same owner under the old rules wouldn't have been able to ruin more than two stations (one AM and one FM). The other four stations will owned by at least two other companies, which increases the likelihood that a market will have at least a couple of well-run stations.
TexasTom said:
I agree with you ... I wasn't ADVOCATING that we allow 6-10 stations per owner; was just making the point that if an owner COULD do a decent job with multiple signals it would be preferable to a bad cap where everyone does a bad job. I definitely think there is a point of diminishing returns ... at some point you just can't effectively manage "x" stations and make them all WORTH something (as you point out). But I also think there are "good" operators ... in Seattle, I'm still impressed by what Belo has done with their assets. KONG, while not setting the world on fire, at least airs news content at times KING does not ... and is used to couple news programming when KING can't dodge network. Other than KCTS, they're also the last MAJOR playor to keep Public Affairs in the radar on a voluntary basis (UP FRONT) ... where KOMO dumped Town Meeting a few years back (one of my fave Sunday evening rituals).
I'd also be happy if the TV regulations were relaxed and PBS picked up the slack ... but when Congress threatens to slashe their budget (some would accuse those budget cuts based on left-leaning programs that were NOT cut by CPB when asked) we can't consider that an option. Then again, Canada has shown us that a "public" channel (CBC) can be just as vulnerable to business foibles as the private operators. Not sure there's a good answer there ... but I'm a bit concerned that everyone is scurrying around chasing the WRONG end of the problem. Keep in mind at this point the FCC thinks it did us a service by leveraging huge fines on CBS et al because of that old superbowl show. No one would argue that if CBS had PLANNED the event they deserved the fines, but FCC was quick to jump on that "public perception" bandwagon.
It's all VERY frustrating to me. Big players are not delivering on the commitment of a license .. small players can't afford to compete ... and one day someone will EFFECTIVELY find a way to merge print and electronic assets so it really makes sense (print = in-depth coverage, electronic = immediate but with both using reporters and researchers who understand the story and apprecaite its depth). Those who govern only want the solutions to LOOK right ... partially to the public and partially to "their base".
Meanwhile...all my fave shows get axed within 4 weeks of their debut because they aren't pulling their share on the network!!! Dang.....
K
Kelly
Guest
So are both of you proposing that the Commission regulate programming? In my view that is a slippery slope.
For a reminder of how it can sound/look, next time you're up in Vancouver BC, watch TV, or listen to only Canadian stations for a while.
For a reminder of how it can sound/look, next time you're up in Vancouver BC, watch TV, or listen to only Canadian stations for a while.
Kelly said:
Not really ... I was just a happier camper when the whole issue of getting a license was not just like going to Kinkos and running one off. At renewal you had to show stuff like making an effort to include minorities, had to show that you gave some attention to news/public affairs, had to show you weren't completely biased, etc. In other words, you had to show that you had some RESPONSIBILITY for the license and were doing more than acting as a repeater for some format that eminates in Denton, TX.
I'd love it, for example, if talk stations had to do more emphasis on balance ... so maybe you do conservative mornings and liberal drive (!!) ... or music-intensive stations still had to think of creative ways of bringing issues in front of people without trashing the format in the process (think of how MTV/VH-1 did "rock the vote" for example) ... or news commitment had to be more than 20 second update on Britney's panty-less Los Angeles romps. Stations weren't forced to do any programming compliance (like CRTC insists), didn't have to do the "Canadian Content" %'s (also a Canada thing) ... but DID have to show that if their company edged out 5 other applicants for the license that it was because the company that got the license was capable of doing the best job with it.
To me THAT is what we lost with the "all bets are off" Telecom '96 and what we will lose if the focus is only on OWNERSHIP. I'm just asking that if someone is granted a "franchise" on something like 810 AM or 96.1 FM that it goes by the same kind of scrutiny a franchisee would face if they got the rights to the Wendy's in Totem Lake. The Wendy's has far less power to influence people's thinking but likely has far more regulation on how it uses the brand.
K
Kelly
Guest
But isn't that regulating programming? Where do you draw the line? Sounds like if it were up to you, then there wouldn't be "right or left" leaning radio? Whatever your view on talk radio, it seems like a massive step backwards to regulate opinion.
Everybody on this board always complains of how vanilla everyone sounds, but imagine how things would sound if the government regulated it? It's bad enough that judges are determining what is obscene based on "when they see or hear it".
All the hype about "serving in the public interest" always has been a bunch of B.S. How many assertainment meetings have all of us attended, then threw together some schlocky public affairs program to run Sunday morning before the rooster crowed and called it "in the public interest"..palleeze!
Everybody on this board always complains of how vanilla everyone sounds, but imagine how things would sound if the government regulated it? It's bad enough that judges are determining what is obscene based on "when they see or hear it".
All the hype about "serving in the public interest" always has been a bunch of B.S. How many assertainment meetings have all of us attended, then threw together some schlocky public affairs program to run Sunday morning before the rooster crowed and called it "in the public interest"..palleeze!
The circle on the argument might be that more intense local ownership will yield more local programming without government mandate. It's interesting that the Eastside Journal was recently purchased, not for the flagship paper (which apparently is on a 3-week death watch) but for the small community papers they also own. So maybe the next phase is stations clusters again being broken up for individual local owners or regional owners.
LITTLEBOYBLUE said:
You're more impressed with KONG than I am, apparently. About the only decent things on that station are the newscasts and Oprah/Dr. Phil repeats in prime time -- otherwise, the station's schedule looks to me like a dumping ground for third-rate syndicated fare. It would be nice if they tried to do a little bit more with the daytime and early fringe periods on that station.
LITTLEBOYBLUE said:
But the major reason why the small players can't afford to compete is because the government has allowed the big players to define the playing field. This has happened partly as a result of the massive ownership consolidation coming out of the Telecomm Act, and partly out of weak enforcement of antitrust laws which has allowed massive vertical integration in the industry. Break these big companies up and we'll no longer have five companies defining the playing field -- and, surprise, we'll discover that the small players will once again be a viable part of the market.
Kelly said:
It's a mystery to me how you got that out of our posts, since those posts were focused on *ownership* regulation, not *content* regulation. That's an interesting leap...
Regarding the quality of the programming that can exist under a more regulated environment, I'll note that some very compelling programming came out of both radio and television broadcasters in the eras prior to the wholesale deregulation of the industry that started in the early eighties. Even back then, the regulation was more heavily aimed at ownership issues and technical rules than it was at regulating programming -- something that the FCC has always seemed to be somewhat wary of doing.
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