It is not often that I find myself passionately on the same side of an issue as the likes of Frank Blethen and John Carlson, but that’s the Bizarro World alternate universe I’ll find myself in later today as I join them at Town Hall voicing opposition to the proposed loosening of the FCC’s media ownership rules. This is the FCC’s sixth and final public hearing on media ownership rules, and to show you how much the Republican majority on the commission fears a public backlash, they scheduled it with only five days notice.
All the more reason to fill Seattle’s Town Hall to the rafters. 4PM to 11PM, 8th & Seneca, Seattle.
If you want less localism, less original reporting, less diversity and less independence, then by all means stay home tonight and watch Deal or No Deal, or Friday Night Smackdown. But if you care about maintaining the vibrant and independent media that is final guarantor of our democracy, then I urge you to join me tonight in expressing righteous outrage.
Goldy,
HA is a living testimony AGAINST your POV. An independant, feisty, take-no-prisoners combination of entertainment, advocacy, and, in it’s loosest sense, “news.” Certainly, but a few years ago, such a forum wouldn’t or couldn’t have existed.
Blogs are the new independent media, while Blethen’s Times and Hearst’s P-I continue to become irrelevent and obsolete.
As for TV, radio, etc.? Satellite and subscription services are where you find the originality these days. If I don’t like Deal or no Deal or Friday Night Smackdown, I change the channel or watch a DVD. Invariably, when I do change the channel, it’s to something that couldn’t have existed but a few years ago.
Whether it’s watching Madmen on AMC or something on the History Channel or Big Love on HBO, I’ve got so many more choices today than I did years ago when it was simply KOMO, KING, KIRO, KTNT, Channel 13 (if you could get it with an antenna), the “educational channel” (mostly really boring UW lectures) and AM radio.
Blethen is in this to preserve a family business. Carlson to curry favor on the left and look erudite (sorry, John, but it’s true). You, on the other hand, have everything to gain and nothing to lose by mergers and consolidation since they’ll simply drive more people to the Internet and blogs.
Make changes in the market work for you, don’t just reflexively fight against them.
I do want you to succeed…Why wouldn’t I? Too much fun hanging here.
The Piper
The news media has to be diverse.
I agree there is much more diversity now. And blogs are a lot of fun. But blogs still are mostly rambling commentary on THE NEWS. If we don’t have local news, diverse news, all we are going to have is comments on Deal or No Deal, or Friday Night Smackdown, Corporate Pravda, and some vague rumors on something somebody heard but nobody has any authoritative sources.
It’s like saying all the other blog have be bought out and all you have left is HA. That’s it. No other diversity.
Won’t make a difference if we show up. BushCo does what it wants.
@2…BJ…
As the format grows, it will mature, change, and improve.
You old enough to remember the early days of TV? All live all the time, and crazier than you-know-what?
As Clint Eastwood says in Heartbreak Ridge, “Improvise, overcome, adapt.”
The Piper
This is definitely an issue that cuts across partisan lines. What other issue would I ever find some agreement with Lou Guzzo on [cue lightning strikes]?
Big John @2
You guyz hate Bush so much that EVERYTHING is his fault?
How big lib media is controlled by W. is beyond me.
Yeah, you know the same media that runs negative stuff about the man 24/7? Just like here except with commercials.
There is something very special about our guy Frank – he endorses Bush, then cluck-clucks about the wars and corruption that inevitably followed from putting a crony capitalist frat boy and proven criminal in the White House. Then he goes apoplectic when Bush dishonestly trashes Frank’s beautiful Western Environment, and especially Puget Sound. And he turns deep purple when Bush threatens to make it easy for Hearst to sell out to the Mormon radio and TV stations and crush his little rag.
All because Frank didn’t want to pay inheritance tax for the business that he did nothing to earn.
Frank, what’s 55% of a bankruptcy proceeding?
5 “Big lib media”????
Yeah, right…I forgot Tim “Toady” Russert and Bob “Sellout” Woodward are considered “liberals” in our new distorted political universe. And Rush, O’Lie-ly, “Big-Hair” Hannity and Ann “Kill-em-all” Coulter are moderates.
6 Not that I think Frank Blethen is any great prince of virtue, but in fact he did quite a bit to “earn” the heritage of his family. In the same way, he’s apprenticed his kids since they were in diapers to carry on running the Times after he’s gone, and Seattle will be better off if they’re allowed to do so.
If you don’t think so, go to virtually any other city the size of this one and peruse a copy of the sole surviving NewsCorp or Gannett rag they’re stuck with.
Friday Night Smackdown is tonight…cool!!!
@3 Here’s what won’t change: It costs millions of dollars to staff a newsroom, and if you don’t have it, you’re consigned to commenting on whatever “news” those who do have it see fit to give you.
@5 News flash for WingNut (TM) idiots: All the shit that’s happening isn’t Clinton’s fault anymore.
11 Not that it ever was.
It does seem strange that Blethen is on the right side of this issue. But I guess he really is afraid of Hearst (even though with the current joint operating agreement, he is pretty safe from Hearst putting him out of business).
“You guyz hate Bush so much that EVERYTHING is his fault?”
Well, Sam, perhaps. But it is nothing, nothing I tell you, in comparison to Clinton hatred-osis, a pathology that may well be studied in medical school decades from now.
I mean really, accusing Hillary Clinton of ordering the snuffing out of cats for some bizzaro political gain? Where does it stop? That she inhaled and killed some dust mites?
Piper writes: “As Clint Eastwood says in Heartbreak Ridge, ‘Improvise, overcome, adapt.'”
Not exactly. The big players are trying to bend the rules in their favor. Piper and these guys tend to overlook that the making of the rules is a political decision, and subject to the (gasp!) whims of actual democracy.
The air waves belong to the People, and there is this little thing called the Sherman Anti-trust Act….been on the books for over a century near as I can recall.
Piper: “Carlson (is in this) to curry favor on the left….
Oh, please stop. You’re embarassing yourself. What a ridiculous (and totally unsubstantiated) claim.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....lo10m.html
It hasn’t been a good week for you donks has it. When dems act like repubs you know they are in trouble. I can’t wait till 08.