U.S. Non-Com Radio: Separate and Unequal

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

The First Amendment says we all have the right to freedom of speech. So yes, people have a right to having their views and opinions heard on the media.

I am not a lawyer and I have never pursued this line of thought and researched it. You have written something profound here. In all the shouting, pushing and shoving going on in the world of politics, religion and who knows what else, most people like to say: "I (bold, emphasized, first person singular!) have Freedom of Speech. It is in the Constitution!"

And you come along and add the two elements that are implied but usually left out.

"WE ALL have the right to freedom of speech."

If society starts skwusing down on us and I go to the authorities and say: "I have something I really need to say." and they instruct me that there is a 640 acre barren field about 13 miles from town, and that I may freely say whatever I like at 3:00 A.M. out in the field.... that does not meet the full meaning of Freedom of Speech.

Apparently the time is upon us to pursue the argument that Freedom of Speech not only is available to the one producing the communication, but there is also an implied Freedom to hear/read/absorb Speech.

And if government has produced a system of licenses for broadcasting that makes it impossible/impractical for me to HEAR the speech I want to hear, that system must be flawed, and in violation of the Constitution.

Bring on the hearings, Baby!

 

[TheBigA]

"WE ALL have the right to freedom of speech."

Exactly. As I said, what makes the US unique is that our system of media is mostly owned by private, profit-making companies. What often gets caught in the cross-hairs is the battle between free speech and the profit motive. So if you remove the profit mottive, you have a better chance for free speech to take place. This may sound like a lot of liberal mumbo jumbo, but freedom of speech isn't something that just happens. It must be fought for every day. And there are all kinds of people in the process who want to interfere.

So I've read a lot of well-meaning comments here that public broadcasting would do better to operate without taxpayer funding, because then it wouldn't be subject to the scrutiny of Congress or taxpayers. My comment to that is: I'll take the scrutiny. I think it's important. We need a media service that isn't privately controlled, that IS owned and supported by the public, and DOES have to report to Congress and the people every now and then. I think that's a good thing, and wish commercial stations were required to do that as well.

 

[musichead1029]

There are several articulate and passionate positions presented here. I'll add a few comments.

When Congress instituted what became CPB to fund noncomm stations, the broadcast media were limited to AM, FM and TV. There are now many more media outlets available including the internet where anyone can start up a communications channel inside of an hour. Promote and program it effectively, and you've got your own soapbox. FM and TV, though ubiquitous, are limited in coverage, have relatively high costs of entry and maintenance, and are descending media with aging and shrinking consumer bases. The internet is ubiquitous, has a relatively low cost of access and is an ascending medium that attracts a broad age group including the young, many of whom avoid terrestrial radio and, increasingly, TV.

The system of determining and distributing taxpayer funds for public media hasn't changed much since the 80s due to entrenched political interests, few of them as genuinely concerned with the public as with their own jobs and salaries, and that won't change if those interests continue to get their way. In addition to all the good reasons for public media to fund themselves independently as cited in this thread, the easiest way to change the current system is to detach the taxpayer from it.

People have the freedom of speech, but they can't force anyone to listen. When media outlets were scarce, Congress, the CPB and the FCC tried to draft rules that would allow maximum access via the noncomm airwaves, but that didn't guarantee consumers. Good programming did that. Now with easy access and plentiful media, the issues that originally drove public media funding are moot. Effective media pipes are accessible to programmers everywhere and there are more pressing uses of finite taxpayer dollars than to fund the entrenched interests of descendant media who can ably fund themselves.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

People have the freedom of speech, but they can't force anyone to listen. When media outlets were scarce, Congress, the CPB and the FCC tried to draft rules that would allow maximum access via the noncomm airwaves, but that didn't guarantee consumers. Good programming did that. Now with easy access and plentiful media, the issues that originally drove public media funding are moot.

I commend you for putting forth a logical response in this discussion rather than parroting some typical political boiler-plate that we read so often on this topic.

My response would be that by the time the CPB was put in place, there was NOT a shortage or scarcity of outlets. Yes, there was the ability, the spectrum space to keep granting new outlets which have turned out to be OVERSUPPLY. We have the same vacuum in programming today that existed when CPB was created. No... we have a WORSE vacuum in programming today. The available advertising dollars are spread over too many outlets and far too many of the operators put drivel in the air, and when we complain, they reply that they cannot afford to do better, to do more.

I guess I am too picky. But the other night I was a bit sleepless so I turned on the radio and began searching for something that my mental capacity could wrap itself around and enjoy. Then I turned on the TV. I get something in the neighborhood of 100 channels. NOTHING there.

I ended up tuning in the local NPR station running automated classical music overnight and mumbled I guess this is the best it is going to get.

I don't know how deep your pocket book is, but I have concluded I don't have the financial resources to buy the toys that make internet available to me everywhere I go. In fact, the only place in my house where all the glorious <can you see the sarcasm on my face?> on line programming is available is in my "man cave" where the computer lives. If the programming is not available in my kitchen and in my garage and when I go out at prune the crepe myrtles and when I make my 3 mile walk down the winding country lane and back, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist.

There is content and programming that many of us want to hear that will never, never, never-ever be on traditional commercial broadcasting. Maybe CPB isn't the way to get it done. Tell us what is the appropriate vehicle.

 

[TheBigA]

Effective media pipes are accessible to programmers everywhere and there are more pressing uses of finite taxpayer dollars than to fund the entrenched interests of descendant media who can ably fund themselves.

Effective media pipes might be accessible to programmers, but they're not available to the public. The FCC itself has pointed out that more than 50% of the public doesn't have access to high speed internet. The theme of government regulation for the last quarter century, regardless of majority party, has been public access. Just because you're poor or in a rural area doesn't mean you can't have the same access as someone who is rich or urban. That's what this is about. Sure, there are probably lots of rich urban public radio stations that can survive without the federal money. But that's not how this decision is being made. The funding is being cut regardless of need, just as the funding had been given regardless of need. What's wrong here is the assumption that all radio stations, regardless of market size and potential audience, is the same. I think we all know that's wrong.

 

[musichead1029]

The FCC itself has pointed out that more than 50% of the public doesn't have access to high speed internet.

According to data we paid for, 5 to 10% don't have internet connections that support video or teleconferencing. That's broadband. But for lower bandwidth audio broadcasting, dial-up is all that is required. More people likely have access to dial up than terrestrial noncomm media, which CPB pegs at around 98%. I regularly listen to good sounding music streams at 32kBps.

Goat, if you have a wireless router or a long ethernet cable, you can put web radios in other rooms from the computer. Thousands of stations at your fingertips. I get good results from Grace and C.Crane models. Also, a low power FM transmitter can distribute your audio around the house to existing FM radios. As for that 3-mile walk, you could put a podcast or some music files on a file player for your pocket. It's more effort on your part, true - but you also get more variety.

 

[TheBigA]

It's fine to propose that people buy internet radios or low power transmitters, but that's not how this country operates. Right now, the FCC is proposing to use federal funds to make broadband available in rural areas, and to provide assistance for those who can't afford the monthly charge. That's taxpayer money coming from everyone's pockets to support a media service for a select group of people. Explain to me the difference between that and federal funding for public broadcasting?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

The FCC itself has pointed out that more than 50% of the public doesn't have access to high speed internet.

According to data we paid for, 5 to 10% don't have internet connections that support video or teleconferencing. That's broadband. But for lower bandwidth audio broadcasting, dial-up is all that is required.

We have created a system in this country to brings some kind of over-the-air broadcasting that does not require a subscription fee. In this thread and a handful of other threads currently active in Radio-Info about NPR, government funding, etc., one of the undercurrents of conversation in this: Why do some people get all the radio they can eat, while other people are on a starvation diet for radio.

I live at the south end of Appalachia and the place I call "home" is a part of Arkansas that is a parallel universe of where I live. I live about 10 miles from the Telco Central Office and DSL the last time I read up on it can be installed on "copper circuits" up to about two miles away. Fortunately, just down the road about half a mile there are some gray boxes that look like overgrown bee-hives. The phone guys refer to them as "Slicks". They apparently fiber the DSL out to the slick and copper it over to my house. I don't have to drive very far until I run into neighborhoods that don't have a SLICK. All they have is SOL.

Is that report saying 90% of the people have an internet connection that will handle video and teleconferencing, or is the report saying 90% of the people live in an area where that level of Internet is available... if you have the finances to pay for it... which may include paying to phone company to bury new line a quarter mile or so?

Goat, if you have a wireless router or a long ethernet cable, you can put web radios in other rooms from the computer.



As for that 3-mile walk, you could put a podcast or some music files on a file player for your pocket. It's more effort on your part, true - but you also get more variety.

I understand all that. I'm a pretty Geek sort of guy. But I haven't found a long ethernet cable that I can hook to my car and make that 22 mile hike to down where I socialize and shop. I'm still focused on the origin of this thread where we discuss what is available on non-com or public radio and what can we hope for.

The Podcast world is basically built around music. That works very well. If I want to load my mp3 player with public affairs talk programs, Bob Edwards Weekend, lectures I can download from Emory University in my area, etc, managing an MP3 players gets to be a MAJOR headache. The little machines want to SHUFFLE everything because they assume MUSIC is all people want, and they don't want it in the same order. Try to buy an MP3 machine with what is called a "bookmark" feature. If I am listening to a 30 minute talk segment and I run into one of my neighbors and we stop to converse, after "x" minutes of PAUSE the thing does an auto-shutdown. So when I resume walking, I get to listen to the first 22 minutes of the talk segment all over again to get to the last 8 minutes which I missed. Some time last summer I threw the thing in the drawer and said: "The hell with it! It isn't worth the hassle."

I bought the little FM transmitter but it won't cover the entire (modest sized) house. Certainly will NOT reach out to the flower beds and the garden.

And my wireless router will cover the entire (modest sized) house... if the wind is blowing the right direction. Have you walked into a retail store lately and tried to have an intelligent conversation on the subject of: "Which one of these routers will cover my house?" Try to find a specification on the packaging where they give any clue to that question.

Like I said: I'm a GEEK kind of guy. Built a couple of radio stations. I was System Administrator of a main frame computer system with terminals in five buildings scattered over 20 acres. etc. etc. etc. If I have trouble getting Internet based content to show up in my ears where ever I want to have it, what chance does Joe and Molly Sixpack who are totally non-technical have of making it work?

The communications industry may have convinced the government that suitable Internet is available to 90% of the people, but that is "theory". Joe and Milly will tell you it isn't so.

 

[musichead1029]

It's fine to propose that people buy internet radios or low power transmitters, but that's not how this country operates. Right now, the FCC is proposing to use federal funds to make broadband available in rural areas, and to provide assistance for those who can't afford the monthly charge. That's taxpayer money coming from everyone's pockets to support a media service for a select group of people. Explain to me the difference between that and federal funding for public broadcasting?

There's no difference. It's wrong to force U.S taxpayers to pay for non-essential services, especially when we can't pay our existing bills. That includes public broadcasting and attempts to create a new entitlement out of broadband service. People can live without these services if they can't afford them. Part of bringing federal budget expenditures into line with revenues is going to have to involve breaking the entitlement mentality some have when it comes to non-essential services.

Goat, it sounds like you have the experience to give me a couple of tips on technology. We subsidize telephone, electric, welfare and probably job-creation (which we're not really that good at in the public sector) for those who qualify in rural areas (and everywhere else). Essential services. For the luxuries, like all Americans, you're entitled to shop for the lowest price. Check Amazon and e-bay online at the library.

 

[TheBigA]

It's wrong to force U.S taxpayers to pay for non-essential services, especially when we can't pay our existing bills.

The FCC has a strong case that says high speed internet is an essential service. As for not paying our bills, there's no guarantee that cutting domestic services will lead to us actually paying our bills. Balanced budget amendment, anyone? Whose idea was it to start a two front war? Not anyone at CPB. Why should domestic services suffer in order to force democracy on Iraq? Let them fight their own revolution.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

We subsidize telephone, electric, welfare and probably job-creation (which we're not really that good at in the public sector) for those who qualify in rural areas (and everywhere else). Essential services. For the luxuries, like all Americans, you're entitled to shop for the lowest price. Check Amazon and e-bay online at the library.

I would propose to you that there is no clear-cut highly-visible boundary between luxuries and essential services.

Let me borrow a term from the audio editing and photo editing processes. DITHERING. When two different images or sound elements sit there side-by-side, the boundary is never precise. Through math processes the software creates a fuzzy boundary between the two. The better your software, the more coherent that boundary APPEARS. But when you expand the image or the audio waveform, you find this carefully calculated transition area that is a bit fuzzy.

Politics and economic theories have areas of DITHERING.

Congress is hell-bent on defunding Planned Parenthood. That is a LUXURY that people should pay for if they want it. We will save the taxpayers money. Or will we. When women who cannot afford the LUXURY or are not disciplined enough to seek out the service, end up in the emergency room with a mis-carriage of a pregnancy they didn't want, and delivery complication of a pregnancy they didn't want, the TAXPAYERS will pay more for these emergency services than Planned Parenthood would have received. Those numbers are debatable. That's the area of DITHERING which is either very hard to discern, or impossible to discern. But shouting the slogan: If people want luxuries they should pay for them! does not make the dilemma go away, does not make the long term cost to the public treasury go away.

The whole fight over the Health Care Bill passed late last year includes the claim from the opponents that health care is optional. Let those who willing to pay, those who can pay enjoy the benefits. Everyone else can go suck a green persimmon! So we have a poor guy who doesn't get his diabetes looked after like he should. When he does go he sees the only doctor in his neighborhood who will treat him under Medicaid. The poor doctor struggling to make $80,000 per year because Medicaid pays 60-cents on the dollar and gives half-way care. Then one day the pain hits, the man passes out. He is rushed to the hospital where a $500,000 a year doctor amputates the leg which could have been saved if the man had received proper care on the front end. So we saved a lot of money by not giving the man a LUXURY.... primary medical care. But then the man slides right through the area of DITHERING and is now in the hands of the surgeon... which the taxpayers will now pay for because a rotting leg with gangrene is not a luxury item but is now an "essential service".

Life is not simple. Life is not a series of decisions based on black vs. white, off vs. on, night vs. day. This whole thing of communications and what is a luxury and what is essential service is one big puzzle where the puzzle pieces are hard to identify because they all have dithered edges. Somewhere up in the hollows of Eastern Kentucky in the coal fields may be a 5 year kid living in a hand-me-down trailer parked on a ledge on the side of the hill whose daddy mines coal... when he can get work. We'll call the kid Carter. What if it turns out someday that Carter is the Einstein of our era and he gets a degree in pharmaceutical research and 40 years from now he creates the cancer cure of the century. If public policy doesn't put Internet into Carter's hands he may never understand that his brain works and that he is curious. Instead he will get a 9th grade education like his dad, and do odd jobs in the coal mines the rest of his life. Yes, we will spend a lot of public money in communications and educations and turn out thousands of ho-hum students who go on to lead ho-hum lives, but across the nation there may be 20, 40 or 100 "Carters" waiting for an opportunity to find out if their super brains can live up to their potential.

Meanwhile up in Louisville or over in Charleston WV or down here in Atlanta, there are boys and girls who will be given Corvettes and Camaros to drive to high school and get to go to the University of Kentucky or University of Georgia or Vanderbilt on family money, a LUXURY they can afford, and some will go back home and spend their life as branch manager of the bank in their hometown. They will not go into the history book for inventing a cure.

Tell me how all that fits into your neat Rush/Hannity/Boortz verbiage about essential services vs. luxuries. We can get carried away spending on things that are truly luxuries and bankrupt our nation, or we can get so squeaky-tight on spending that we bankrupt our nation because we end up flushing too many great brains down the toilet in the Kentucky coal fields and the barren plains of Kansas and the inner-city of Detroit and the Bayous of Louisiana. Its a mindset like the Fundamentalists of my youth who taught us
not to dance,
to not play cards,
don't smoke and chew,
and don't go with the girls that do.
Today we have political Fundamentalists who are scared to death we are going to spend a few dollars on... on.... ON A LUXURY!

There will be boys and girls who go on to be doctors, generals, scientists, writers of classical music, diplomats to foreign nations because we saw to it NON-COM PUBLIC RADIO was available to them.... at a price they can afford: FREE.