The “Commission,” in this case, is the Federal Communications Commission, and if this sounds familiar, it’s because it is.
Twice before — on March 7, 2003, and just last year, on November 30, 2006 — hundreds of area residents jammed auditoriums to testify overwhelmingly in opposition to a Republican-dominated FCC’s attempts to further weaken ownership limits on broadcast television and radio properties. In each case, the crowds testified only before the two Democratic commissioners; the three-person Republican majority was MIA. But those crowds were broadly representative of a national movement for media democracy that in only a few years stymied former FCC Chair Michael Powell’s deregulation bid, preserved net neutrality, and stopped a telecommunications lobby “reform bill” widely expected to pass the Republican Congress in 2006. In last year’s hearing, local testifiers against deregulation spanned an unlikely ideological range, from Reclaim the Media’s Jonathan Lawson to Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen, from KVI Radio host John Carlson to UW President Mark Emmert.
This time, FCC Chair Kevin Martin, architect of the latest (big) industry deregulation scheme, is bringing the whole Commission to town to “prove” to them that Seattle really doesn’t care all that much about this arcane stuff. Which is why, despite the entreaties of local Congresspeople (who wanted four weeks), he has given exactly five business days’ notice for this unprecedented local hearing. The hearing was announced late in the day Friday, November 2, timed for the least-read and -viewed news time of the week. The hearing itself will also be on a Friday night, from 4-11 PM November 9 at Town Hall, 8th & Seneca near downtown Seattle.
For the first two hearings, a significant number of people traveled from throughout the region, from California to Montana to Alaska, to make their opinions known to the FCC. The short notice and inconvenient time seem particularly designed to suppress regional testimony. Seattle area supporters of media democracy will need to stand in their stead. The FCC is hoping for a sedate dog and pony show that will ratify its ideological desire to give the public’s airwaves to the biggest companies and highest bidders (think Murdoch), regardless of content. They are looking to ram this through before opponents can get organized.
Our job is to be organized. And show up.
In a significant way, we already are organized. Much has changed since 2003, when the FCC first came to town. Nationally, the media democracy movement that barely existed five years ago is now a potent political force. Locally, newspaper lovers dodged a bullet when an ongoing court bid to dissolve the Times’ and P-I’s Joint Operating Agreement was going so badly for the Times (which initiated it) that the JOA was extended instead. But King County’s other daily paper, the King County Journal, was dissolved in the last year, and the 2006 purchase of the Seattle Weekly by the country’s largest “alternative” weekly chain led to the effective dismantling of its news department. Among the companies owning the 30 or so major local radio and television stations, only Fisher Broadcasting (KOMO TV/radio, KVI and Star 101.5 radio) is locally owned.
I have a personal stake in this, of course. I was a columnist and editorial board member at the Weekly for eight years, until its shift in editorial direction. Plus, a media company I started over 20 years ago is now owned by Clear Channel, which is also the nation’s largest owner of radio stations, with over 1,200. When Clear Channel started, the FCC allowed a maximum of 14 stations per company nationally.) Now Clear Channel, CBS, Entercom, and Sandusky own five radio stations each in the Seattle area alone.
Ultimately, though, my personal stake is the same as everyone else’s: I want to know about decisions being made that might affect my life, and I don’t trust Clear Channel or CBS or Belo or Entercom or any of the other companies controlling our TV and radio dials to tell me what I need to know. I don’t like the idea of media monopolies on information. The same is true of the music I listen to or the entertainment programs I watch. The number of people who access radio or TV programming through satellite or their computer is still minimal. And so the FCC’s proposed ruling — which would, for the first time, allow radio, TV, cable, and newspapers in the same cities to all be co-owned by one company — is a recipe for a media monopoly on local news, entertainment, and culture.
November 9 is our chance to tell the FCC what we think of the idea. If you care about a free flow of information in our democracy, please turn out, and let them know what you think. Whether they want to know or not.
Communications is an field where disruptive technological innovation seems increasingly likely to render traditional media obsolete, or at least less important. It’s critical to keep the internet open.
That’s why we need a King County prosecutor who will protect our freedoms by supporting the death penalty for subversives!
On Election Day 2006, the internet went down at 10 AM and stayed down until after the polls closed. This prevented campaign and GOTV workers from communicating by e-mail all day. I called AOL and they said their system was up and the problem was at Verizon. I called Verizon and they said they were “trying to fix it.” Yeah, right! They managed to “fix it” after the polls closed. Like, 30 minutes after. Damned strange coincidence. And, of course, we didn’t hear anything in the media about this mysterious failure of the internet with its extremely suspicious timing.
The phone company should be hanged for this! We need to elect a Democrat to the PAO so we can get grand jury investigations of these subversive plots. Any corporation found guilty of disrupting communications on election days will be executed!
I’m practicing writing like Ann Coulter so I can make millions, too! I need the money.
Rush had dittoheads, so I’m calling you people assheads, if that’s okay with you. Okay, I hope you assheads don’t believe what Geov has to say without doing your own homework first. Look up the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Look who signed it into law. Read about how an “FCC study found that the Act had led to a drastic decline in the number of radio station owners.” Yep, you can thank a Democratic President for that act. Oh, and I love how Geov leaves out Bonneville, his friend Goldy’s employer, from his list of evil station owners. Smart boy.
BS@4 – I realize that a Clinton fixation is common among conservative types, but it is just not the case with anyone else. Clinton was the best conservative president we ever had, but the fact that he signed off on this does not make it right.
And yes, the process of media consolidation has been going on for a long time. It makes fighting back all the more important.
It is pretty incredible that this has become a partisan issue for you. One would think that conservatives would be the first to line up for opposing all the media being owned by large companies trying to tell you what to do.
Now fascists and dictators seem to hate the free press (and the law and lawyers by the way). Maybe that should tell you something about first principles….
I’m a Democrat. (By the way, it was a Democrat who commited the worst act of terrorism the world has ever seen by dropping two nuclear bombs on civilian cities). Now here’s where you got confused about me being a conservative. When I see a fellow Democrat not being even-handed, or not telling the whole story, I alone have the courage and honesty to stand up and say something, while everyone else remains silent. That’s why I have very little respect for Goldy. He’s not against the act, he’s against the party. A very crude example… If a Republican does wrong, he’s outraged. If a Democrat does wrong, he remains silent. (most of the time). He even brags about it, saying he’s a partisan. Or he makes excuses for the Dem., saying what he did is not really the same thing.
Here’s my deal. I speak out in both cases. And when I see a fellow Democrat remain silent, or just tell one side of the story, while you assheads sheepishly nod along to whatever is being blogged about, I stand up, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr., and speak out against what I see as a lie or injustice.
That’s why when Geov made his post partisan, I urged all you assheads to educate yourselves first, before passively accepting his one-sided spin.
BS… you’ve got your head up your ass. How the fuck do you make this out to be a partisan post? There’s barely a mention of party in the post.
There is broad, bipartisan opposition to the proposed rules (at least locally,) and largely on the same grounds. How often do you find me, John Carlson and Frank Blethen on the same side of an issue, huh?
You come back and tell us when you’ve been beatified.
@4 BS I didn’t list Bonneville not out of veneration for Goldy’s employer, but because they (like Fisher) have “only” three local radio stations, not five. Duh.
And yes, Clinton pushed through – not just signed – the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and before that it was Reagan who kicked off the deregulation wave we’re still riding. The telecom lobby has long been considered the most powerful in DC (which, considering military contactors and the pharmaceutical co’s, is stiff competition). So there’s plenty of blame to go around with both parties, historically speaking. But it’s Bush’s appointees who are still flogging this dead horse even after the FCC’s own (suppressed) staff study showed the benefits of local ownership. That’s not partisan, just how it’s been. And as I noted (and Goldy reiterated in the comment above), locally the opposition has been pretty bipartisan. You’re the one who seems to have partisanship on the brain. Not everything fits in that box.
For a long time, I’ve suspected that what motivates the Blethen family in all this is the survival of the family business, not the sanctity of the free market of ideas and information.
The whole snit smacks of protectionism. Had there been a Federal Buggywhip Commission at about the time the internal combustion engine replaced the horse as the transportation impetus of choice among Americans, we’d still be flogging Ol’ ClipClop, and the I-90 commute would consist of squishing one horse apple after another.
How many of us really rely on traditional sources for our news and entertainment any more? And how many among the general public really give a rip? Honestly, it seems like a lot of this is an intra-familial bitch designed more to keep certain sinecures secure than it is about any high falutin notions of the survival of democracy and Western Civilization.
The media business is just that: a business. What’s happening in that business isn’t all that different than what’s happened in scores of other businesses. Mergers, acquisitions, consolidation, change, mistakes, de-acquisitions, breakups, occasional bankruptcies, human error, bad judgment, and life just goes on!
In the meantime, we all much about on the Internet, new stuff crops up all the time, and despite the best efforts of both regulators and the regulated, the marketplace continues to confound them both.
It ain’t that big of a deal…
The Piper
re 4: Republicans have a Boehner in congress, so I’m calling you LOAD — I mean, if it’s OK with you.
Turns out this “quickie” hearing notice was issued just hours after the FCC received a request from Maria Cantwell and Jay Inslee specifically asking for such meetings to be held with a minimum four weeks’ advance notice. Under the circumstances, it looks like Martin is lifting his middle finger to them and to the citizens of the Northwest. It also makes one wonder whether the Corrupticans are trying harder than usual to grease the skids for some new media takeover by an out-of-town interest.
It might also be pointed out that after overinvesting in the Fisher Plaza development and early adoption of all-digital technology, Fisher Broadcasting has been struggling for several years. There have to be several organizations licking their chops over the prospect of taking them over. How’d y’all like KOMO to become a Clear Channel operation, or better yet, the second Fox affiliate in the area?
@9 (sez) “How many of us really rely on traditional sources for our news and entertainment any more? And how many among the general public really give a rip? Honestly, it seems like a lot of this is an intra-familial bitch designed more to keep certain sinecures secure than it is about any…”
Right… we’re all “too smart” and worldly-wise to need local/multiple ownership of media… and “the proles” are too stupid to care about what they hear- becuz they don’t get it, NOhow? So, let Murdoch &/or ClearChannel own it all… we’ll still be ab;le to read Roger Rabbit (& you) on the internet… and call Delilah with our midnight Willy Nelson requests… how sweet! ^..^
If they get to consolidate ownership, I suppose the NEXT thing will be ClearChannel’s request for a “Media depletion allowance” for all the spaces visible from the freeways that don’t have billboards on them… ^..^
The FCC (& everyone with a signal, apparently) wants NO licenses granted to local venues for micro-power FM stations, even though, when we finally get our next big Quake, it’s likely to be that these are the ideal emergency broadcast suppliers who will be of the most value to their locale- because they’ll be operated by LOCALS- who know what’s happening locally, and how best to cope, locally… & by Locally, I mean “Neighborhoods” and “cohesive geographic units” (eg Magnolia, Bothell, South Park, Vashon Island, Lake Forest Park, Skyway, etc). Also, if events turn disastrous, it’s a lot easier to jury-rig a 20 watt micro station than one of the behemoths, should a tower go down, etc… ^..^