What’s wrong with the world…
… is the media.
I am writing about America, but this problem is world-wide.
Remember the massive sibling envy PBS used to have about the BBC? British TV taxes, remember, were designed to protect delicate British sensibilities from crass American drivel like "The Honeymooners", "Gunsmoke", "All In The Family" and "Laugh-In".
In the Sixties, the BBC protected them by airing "Benny Hill".
In the Nineties, the BBC protected them by inventing "reality" TV.
Hmph. Compared to Benny Hill, Rowan and Martin were Sophocles and Aeschylus. And "Jackass", with its honest, spoofy, testosterone-laden stunts and jokes is probably a thousand times less dangerous to the general public than "Big Brother" or "Extreme Makeover".
Glenn Reynolds debates with Robert McChesney (whoever he is) here over the future of the media. McChesney acquits himself poorly, but he is especially so in this passage:Our media system is not a "free market" because it is built largely upon extraordinary government subsidies. The government has been in the middle of building our media system from the beginning. Perhaps no other industry this size has anywhere near as much direct and indirect government support and involvement. Consider the value of monopoly licenses to radio and TV channels or monopoly cable TV franchises. Or consider the value of copyright protection, a government created monopoly privilege. We are talking tens of billions of dollars in annual subsidies. The list goes on and on.
Hmmmm. One might well note that if we include copyright as a "subsidy", so too are property rights and civil and criminal courts. The government provides copyright. No one is required to copyright their work, or to cough up dough when he or she writes something; we are not even required to enforce our copyrights. If someone violates my copyright, I pay for my lawyers out of my own pocket to recover damages. Hell, copyrights even expire.
Some subsidy. And probably why copyright is so successful.
"The value of monopoly licenses to radio and TV channels… monopoly cable TV franchises".
Easy one first: it has always been a staple of local government in the U.S. that municipalities, counties and states may provide water and sewer services. Cable services are the exact same thing. Cable TV brought both the 24 hour news cycle and the art house films directly to America. I know I first saw David Lynch’s Blue Velvet courtesy of HBO. Cable TV, precisely because it was not broadcast, vastly expanded the middle layer between public and private realms. No cable TV supplier controls the cable market in any single U.S. state.
Some monopoly. And, again, thanks to the kind of technical innovation that invented cable, we now have Dish Network and other satellite TV services. Cable is not even a local monopoly anymore.
And what kind of subsidies does McChesney think cable TV gets?
Finally, the allocation of the radiowave spectrum. This is indeed a job for the FCC (or something like it). Radio, satellite signals, GPS, the airplane, military, police, fire and hospital services, shortwave, Citizen's Band radio, television, cell phones: either an FCC or a public/private corporation would to have to exist do its job.
Outside of the (rather mediocre) job of frequency allocation, the FCC has had a poor record. The Fairness Doctrine of the pre-Reagan era, now receiving new Democratic interest, was an ill-conceived relic of the Twenties and the era of ABC/NBC/CBS and an ideological straitjacket that would be utterly out of place in the era of cable TV, let alone the Internet.
(And the Internet/ARPAnet, let us remember, was a DARPA project to save on expensive computer time by sharing military research data more effectively. Email, the Web and podcasting were all almost accidental benefits. Subsidizing the mass media was not on the Pentagon's short, nor even long, list.)I am not opposed to government subsidies. I think they are unavoidable.
We could tell.Like Madison and Jefferson, who instituted enormous printing and postal subsidies to spawn a vibrant press, I believe they are the price of building a democratic media culture.
Allow me to burst this bubble. The U.S. Postal Service was inaugurated to allow individual Americans to communicate to each other in the interest of subsidizing wealth creation and nationwide ties and patriotism. A press, vibrant or otherwise, was a side effect of this subsidy.
This is my entire point: any U.S. subsidy program must, for fairness, liberty and democracy, be aimed at persons: we, the people, in other words. Some ninny with a printing press is also allowed this subsidy as a side effect.The problem in recent times is that the policymaking process has gotten so corrupt that the giants firms that dominate media and telecommunication give back very little in exchange for the bounty bestowed upon them. We hear a lot of PR hokum about brilliant entrepreneurs and free markets. But huge corporations like AT&T and Comcast were created based on government monopoly licenses. Their "competitive advantage" comes with owning politicians and regulators, not serving consumers. They are doing everything they can to use their domination of politicians to lock in control over the Internet, and make it their private fiefdom. They want to terminate the egalitarian genius of the Internet, Glenn, which captivates both of us. These firms would not know a free market if it kicked them in the butt.
"They are doing everything they can to use their domination of politicians to lock in control…." Honestly, I was waiting for him to burst into a Springtime for Hitler aria about the dirty Jooooos!
"But huge corporations like AT&T and Comcast were created based on government monopoly licenses." So… to prevent monopoly control of media... we need… to create more… monopolies?? To… save freedom… we must… control it?
The Internet, Mr. McChesney, has built in prioritizing protocols and control bits : ToS (now DSCP) and IP header options. Allowing the backbones to take advantage of this would hurt nothing.
Mr. McChesney would end freedom for his provincial ideas about equality. I point, as always, to freedom as the truer guarantor of equality before the law.
I am writing about America, but this problem is world-wide.
Remember the massive sibling envy PBS used to have about the BBC? British TV taxes, remember, were designed to protect delicate British sensibilities from crass American drivel like "The Honeymooners", "Gunsmoke", "All In The Family" and "Laugh-In".
In the Sixties, the BBC protected them by airing "Benny Hill".
In the Nineties, the BBC protected them by inventing "reality" TV.
Hmph. Compared to Benny Hill, Rowan and Martin were Sophocles and Aeschylus. And "Jackass", with its honest, spoofy, testosterone-laden stunts and jokes is probably a thousand times less dangerous to the general public than "Big Brother" or "Extreme Makeover".
Glenn Reynolds debates with Robert McChesney (whoever he is) here over the future of the media. McChesney acquits himself poorly, but he is especially so in this passage:Our media system is not a "free market" because it is built largely upon extraordinary government subsidies. The government has been in the middle of building our media system from the beginning. Perhaps no other industry this size has anywhere near as much direct and indirect government support and involvement. Consider the value of monopoly licenses to radio and TV channels or monopoly cable TV franchises. Or consider the value of copyright protection, a government created monopoly privilege. We are talking tens of billions of dollars in annual subsidies. The list goes on and on.
Hmmmm. One might well note that if we include copyright as a "subsidy", so too are property rights and civil and criminal courts. The government provides copyright. No one is required to copyright their work, or to cough up dough when he or she writes something; we are not even required to enforce our copyrights. If someone violates my copyright, I pay for my lawyers out of my own pocket to recover damages. Hell, copyrights even expire.
Some subsidy. And probably why copyright is so successful.
"The value of monopoly licenses to radio and TV channels… monopoly cable TV franchises".
Easy one first: it has always been a staple of local government in the U.S. that municipalities, counties and states may provide water and sewer services. Cable services are the exact same thing. Cable TV brought both the 24 hour news cycle and the art house films directly to America. I know I first saw David Lynch’s Blue Velvet courtesy of HBO. Cable TV, precisely because it was not broadcast, vastly expanded the middle layer between public and private realms. No cable TV supplier controls the cable market in any single U.S. state.
Some monopoly. And, again, thanks to the kind of technical innovation that invented cable, we now have Dish Network and other satellite TV services. Cable is not even a local monopoly anymore.
And what kind of subsidies does McChesney think cable TV gets?
Finally, the allocation of the radiowave spectrum. This is indeed a job for the FCC (or something like it). Radio, satellite signals, GPS, the airplane, military, police, fire and hospital services, shortwave, Citizen's Band radio, television, cell phones: either an FCC or a public/private corporation would to have to exist do its job.
Outside of the (rather mediocre) job of frequency allocation, the FCC has had a poor record. The Fairness Doctrine of the pre-Reagan era, now receiving new Democratic interest, was an ill-conceived relic of the Twenties and the era of ABC/NBC/CBS and an ideological straitjacket that would be utterly out of place in the era of cable TV, let alone the Internet.
(And the Internet/ARPAnet, let us remember, was a DARPA project to save on expensive computer time by sharing military research data more effectively. Email, the Web and podcasting were all almost accidental benefits. Subsidizing the mass media was not on the Pentagon's short, nor even long, list.)I am not opposed to government subsidies. I think they are unavoidable.
We could tell.Like Madison and Jefferson, who instituted enormous printing and postal subsidies to spawn a vibrant press, I believe they are the price of building a democratic media culture.
Allow me to burst this bubble. The U.S. Postal Service was inaugurated to allow individual Americans to communicate to each other in the interest of subsidizing wealth creation and nationwide ties and patriotism. A press, vibrant or otherwise, was a side effect of this subsidy.
This is my entire point: any U.S. subsidy program must, for fairness, liberty and democracy, be aimed at persons: we, the people, in other words. Some ninny with a printing press is also allowed this subsidy as a side effect.The problem in recent times is that the policymaking process has gotten so corrupt that the giants firms that dominate media and telecommunication give back very little in exchange for the bounty bestowed upon them. We hear a lot of PR hokum about brilliant entrepreneurs and free markets. But huge corporations like AT&T and Comcast were created based on government monopoly licenses. Their "competitive advantage" comes with owning politicians and regulators, not serving consumers. They are doing everything they can to use their domination of politicians to lock in control over the Internet, and make it their private fiefdom. They want to terminate the egalitarian genius of the Internet, Glenn, which captivates both of us. These firms would not know a free market if it kicked them in the butt.
"They are doing everything they can to use their domination of politicians to lock in control…." Honestly, I was waiting for him to burst into a Springtime for Hitler aria about the dirty Jooooos!
"But huge corporations like AT&T and Comcast were created based on government monopoly licenses." So… to prevent monopoly control of media... we need… to create more… monopolies?? To… save freedom… we must… control it?
The Internet, Mr. McChesney, has built in prioritizing protocols and control bits : ToS (now DSCP) and IP header options. Allowing the backbones to take advantage of this would hurt nothing.
Mr. McChesney would end freedom for his provincial ideas about equality. I point, as always, to freedom as the truer guarantor of equality before the law.