"O Newton, where art thou?"
By Gordonskene Wednesday Feb 18, 2009 6:00pm
With all the talk these past few weeks about the Fairness Doctrine and the latest debate on Broadband use for rural areas, I was reminded back when the FCC actually meant something - an agency whose job it was to protect the interest of the American People and the airwaves from the lunatic fringe, the special interests and the misguided. Listening this morning to Morning Edition and an interview with former FCC economist Michael Katz, he managed to bring home in big bright letters the concept of what we have lost over these years of deregulation, incompetence and ignorant hubris, I thought back when Newton Minow spoke to a gathering of National Association of Broadcasters in May 9, 1961.
I'm wondering if it's too late . . . . .
Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. It has an inescapable duty to make that voice ring with intelligence and with leadership. In a few years, this exciting industry has grown from a novelty to an instrument of overwhelming impact on the American people. It should be making ready for the kind of leadership that newspapers and magazines assumed years ago, to make our people aware of their world.Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today's world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind's benefit, so will history decide whether today's broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or to debase them.
If I seem today to address myself chiefly to the problems of television, I don't want any of you radio broadcasters to think that we've gone to sleep at your switch. We haven't. We still listen. But in recent years most of the controversies and cross-currents in broadcast programming have swirled around television. And so my subject today is the television industry and the public interest.
Like everybody, I wear more than one hat. I am the chairman of the FCC. But I am also a television viewer and the husband and father of other television viewers. I have seen a great many television programs that seemed to me eminently worthwhile and I am not talking about the much bemoaned good old days of "Playhouse 90" and "Studio One."
I'm talking about this past season. Some were wonderfully entertaining, such as "The Fabulous Fifties," "The Fred Astaire Show," and "The Bing Crosby Special"; some were dramatic and moving, such as Conrad's "Victory" and "Twilight Zone"; some were marvelously informative, such as "The Nation's Future," "CBS Reports," "The Valiant Years." I could list many more -- programs that I am sure everyone here felt enriched his own life and that of his family. When television is good, nothing -- not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers -- nothing is better.
But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.
You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials -- many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.
Is there one person in this room who claims that broadcasting can't do better? Well a glance at next season's proposed programming can give us little heart. Of 73 and 1/2 hours of prime evening time, the networks have tentatively scheduled 59 hours of categories of action-adventure, situation comedy, variety, quiz, and movies. Is there one network president in this room who claims he can't do better? Well, is there at least one network president who believes that the other networks can do better? Gentlemen, your trust accounting with your beneficiaries is long overdue. Never have so few owed so much to so many.
Why is so much of television so bad? I've heard many answers: demands of your advertisers; competition for ever higher ratings; the need always to attract a mass audience; the high cost of television programs; the insatiable appetite for programming material. These are some of the reasons. Unquestionably, these are tough problems not susceptible to easy answers. But I am not convinced that you have tried hard enough to solve them.
I do not accept the idea that the present over-all programming is aimed accurately at the public taste. The ratings tell us only that some people have their television sets turned on and of that number, so many are tuned to one channel and so many to another. They don't tell us what the public might watch if they were offered half-a-dozen additional choices. A rating, at best, is an indication of how many people saw what you gave them. Unfortunately, it does not reveal the depth of the penetration, or the intensity of reaction, and it never reveals what the acceptance would have been if what you gave them had been better -- if all the forces of art and creativity and daring and imagination had been unleashed. I believe in the people's good sense and good taste, and I am not convinced that the people's taste is as low as some of you assume.
My concern with the rating services is not with their accuracy. Perhaps they are accurate. I really don't know. What, then, is wrong with the ratings? It's not been their accuracy -- it's been their use.
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but did it not start out as a newspaper, that was passed from home to home, with people adding their own "news"?
Did what start out as a newspaper?
what TV used to be like but my hubby and I never watch tv any more. One in a great while we will watch Mystery or Masterpiece Theater but as for the rest, you can have it.
Television had a vision the Newton Minnow alluded to but somewhere along the way it was drowned in a sea of the mediocre.
Too bad because it could have been a wonderful learning tool. But capitalism prefers we stay in the dark. Wants us uneducated and afraid. Wants to sell us products to make us forget how dumb and afraid we are.
Now we have the internet and someday you young people out there will be writing about how great the internet was until it was commercialized beyond redemption and you are left with old reruns of You Tube.
On the other hand, maybe the television screen is only a reflection of the shallowness and ignorance which surrounds us.
A whole bunch of somebodies killed the dream that could have been tv, don't let that happen to the internet.
I last had TV back in '97 or '98. Once I got onto the internet I began to lose interest, and once the few shows I liked started showing up here and there to download, I never looked back.
There were a few reasons. 1) There's little on TV that I consider paying such exorbitant amounts of money for. 2) Having been on the internet for some years now, I find the one-sided, passive imbibing of images that is television much too soporific for my taste; I prefer the interaction of the web. (There's a reason Harlan Ellison dubbed television "The Glass Teat", you know.)
And last but certainly not least, 3) I find I'm much happier without the constant stream of fear, paranoia, bigotry, incitement to gluttony, and all-around coprocephaly that pollutes the tube. (Seriously, within a few weeks of disconnecting my TV cable, I felt lighter, happier, less fearful, and far more comfortable in my life than before. I even started looking people in the face on the street!)
De-regulation fucked up our lives in countless ways, and the fate of television was hardly the least of them. But as many have said, TV was never that good for us, anyway. The very act of sitting and staring at a machine, with no output of energy or even thought, will rot your brain down to the stem.
No, gracias!
He mentions catering to the public's needs rather than their whims. Nice. Very prophetic.
But what then is our recourse, if broadcasters don't care about the needs of their audience? Talk radio is a slave of the ratings system, caring nothing for the public good. Rather, they cram a narrow political view down the throats of millions without dissenting opinion. It's sad. There are no responsible broadcasters out there in television or radio.
What's the alternative? Government controlled radio? Restrictions on what these stations are allowed to do? Equal airtime for dissenting opinions? I really don't know the answer. I shudder to think of the government forcing broadcasters to straighten up. It smacks of censorhip to me. I don't think the answer is the fairness doctrine.
I live in rural Texas and there's a network broadcasting here that makes Rush Limbaugh seem down-right sane. I'm serious. There is so much irresponsible "journalism" on the a.m. dial. In fact, I listen to it out of a sense of morbid curiosity; always disbelieving that anyone would actually take this nonsense seriously.
Has anyone ever been to Hannity's website? He's a parody of himself. I'm surprised he can get anything done over the noise of the flapping american flags behind him. He's irresponsible, unhinged and totally cynical with his blatantly jingoistic schtick. And it is a sctick. He's an entertainer and a charlatan. He always has a smug grin because he knows that even he doesn't believe half the crap that he talks about. It's unnerving that a certain segment of our population can't see through these people.
As much as I hate right wing talk, I hate government interference with free speech even more.
here in Austin, I "ran" the a.m. radio dial here and found Sean Hannity ON FIVE DIFFERENT RADIO STATIONS at the same moment. He's terrified of the idea of a new Fairness Doctrine. I believe if he wants to continue to SPEW his brand of PARTISAN HATRED AND NEGATIVISM he should be broadcasting on a commercial satelite system where his rabid partisan followers would PAY FOR THE OPPORTUNITY to tune in to his VILE... and NOT get it on Federally licensed, PUBLICALLY OWNED broadcast airwaves.
He spent A YEAR trumping his STOP HILLARY EXPRESS... which became the STOP OBAMA EXPRESS last summer. Where is the socially redeemable value in that? There was never any meaningful discussion of issues or personalities... only a constant drum beat of ANTI LIBERAL PROPOGANDA. I think his brand of political commentary is SO MEAN SPIRITED AND VITRIOLIC... it's no better than audio PORN and should be banned from free public broadcast forums.
Thank you for saying it should be banned from free public broadcast forums.
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech. You'll never stop the influence of crappy thought by banning it, but only by countering it with reasoned argument and facts. As soon as you get out the banhammer, the idiots will just wave your actions around as proof that they MUST BE RIGHT because they've been OMGOPPRESSED!!! And you've got pretty much the opposite effect you were looking for.
"I think his brand of political commentary is SO MEAN SPIRITED AND VITRIOLIC... it's no better than audio PORN and should be banned from free public broadcast forums."
So who decides what is mean spirited and vitriolic? You? Some government drone sitting in an office?
Free speach for me, but not for thee.
And when someone strays off the corporate path, they suddenly find themselves in the 12:00 a.m time slot. Regardless of their ratings.
Despite its move to cable and satellite; television and radio started on the public airwaves and owes its existence to it licenses to broadcast. A few regulations seem appropriate. For instance we could (in conjunction with voting reform) make paid campaign advertising in the media strictly off limits. Instead any candidate capable of demonstrating a certain percentage of support among the population to run for public office would be given free and equal airtime to state his or her positions and an independent organization (League of Women Voters?) would conduct timely debates formatted by themselves and not the candidates in prime time for the very highest offices while candidates for lower offices would debate on channels especially set up for this purpose with appropriate advertising of each debate on the major stations as Public Service Announcements (PSAs).
Speaking of PSAs where have they been? When was the last time you saw a reminder that you have to stop when making a right turn on red? We need little reminders in our lives about courtesy, laws, community activities and where to go for help.
What would be wrong with setting aside time for dissenting opinions? What would be wrong with creating an entire network of dissenting opinions?
Television today has no vision at all. Not for the future of our country or our planet. I don't consider staring at the bottom line to be visionary.
"my subject today is the television industry and the public interest."
I think it's highly revealing that the term "public interest" is seldom heard today, in the way it's used by Minow. He means something honorable, anti-commercial and anti-Limbaugh-esque manipulative.
The idea of TV as a force for positive social progress has been snuffed, stuffed and replaced by the 24-7 shriek-box we live with now.
I would say that the back when "F.C.C. meant something" is a double-edged statement at best. The history of the F.C.C. in the selling of bandwidths, and in fact every step of the way in the television establishment as a corporate entity, is a well documented mixed-bag. Be that as it is, the text from above is a reminder of what could have been - serious speeches from people engaged with a new culture not out of fear, not resorting to religion and morals and intolerance as the measure, but to simply address us, stating "..it never reveals what the acceptance would have been if what you gave them had been better - if all the forces of art and creativity and daring had been unleashed." Literally wow. Find such speeches today that aren't broken into soundbytes and audience-friendly plug-ins...
Isn't he the one who called television "the vast wasteland"?
the quote is in there. Yes, he said it.
of the ratings system, if a program has news posted on a logo or banner, it should broadcast the news without bias.
Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero just rips into FOX News. This is an instant classic. Fox noisehead gets ripped a new one.
If only we had people in all of government like him.
God bless him!
can't we start new car companies for less than we are bailing out failed ones?
nuff said
So TV hasn't changed except it's gotten worse, way worse. Good thing we have the internet to help us see that fact in full relief - may we keep it free from the control of the corporate monsters.
what wouldve killed a show back in the 70s now makes it a hit
so to combat the fact that there are fewer and fewer viewers, networks have turned to "reality tv" which is neither real, nor unscripted (and the writers of unscripted tv are treated like slaves)
however, in order to escape the reality of the world, those who continue to watch tv, flock to these shows
it wasnt that long ago, chuck barris was ripped in the press for creating this sort of crass tv...now we hearken back to those programs as "the good old days"
not only has creativity dried up in tv, but it has also dried up in hollywood, where the remake and sequel is now the norm, not the exception
and forget radio
unless congress moves to change licensing regs and break up the media monopolies, the future of free broadcast is not very bright
If you want free radio, get your ham license. But then on (80m at least) you'll hear lids echoing Rush and /head.
But... if you get involved in you local emergency management group (those that are training to take care of your ass the next earthquake/storm) you'll meet some (albeit sometimes strange) good hearted people that care about your community. And I've worked with people from the far right and left there. We both set aside our politics (hell, it never comes up) and try to do the best to help out our neighbors when the shit hits the fan. Hell, you don't even have to be a radio geek. Check out this link and get your liberal ass involved:
https://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/
You'll meet the best people in your community that way.
Let's not quickly forget D. Feinstein's attempted contribution to reversing internet freedom: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02...
What she tried to do is destroy the idea of equality on the internet with EVERY site having the same bandwidth allocation, and instead let the speed be chosen by the content providers so some sites are slow and others fast.
And she's a democrat?!?
First, a disclaimer: I've worked in the ISP and satellite business for over two decades. I was a broadcast radio engineer back in the 70's and 80's. I grew-up in a town where there were only three TV stations (CBS, NBC/ABC (they chose which network to air each hour) and the PBS station.)
THIS IS NOT THE 60's! (hell, we had a maned spaceflight program back then getting people to other celestial bodies.) and it is not the 90's when most of the very few computer owners were more than glad to dial-up to their local BBS. Even in '95 the town of 60k that I lived in had only 9 dial-up lines available for the Internet, and that was shell access only.
Now we have this idea that we NEED broadband access to the Internet. No, we just need access to the Internet at an acceptable speed (56k still give you text faster than you can read.) There is no "right" to getting your information quickly or to have it in a video format. Given even 1200 baud I could keep up on the news (and the news on sites like this, just not the video which is mostly waisted info.) And if you feel you NEED broadband, then you can get satellite access (you might have to cut some trees) for under $100/month. I remember paying $179/month for ISDN at 128k and being a god among geeks.
The fairness doctrine was for back when there were VERY limited outlets for information. We don't have that now. Sure, some stupid fucks listen to Rush, et al, but they could, if their little minds would let them, use the Internet to explore their beliefs. They won't, they are the sheep. And all we (on the left) are saying, by bringing up the fairness doctrine, is we want a cut of the sheep. I don't know about you, but I want citizens, not sheep.
what was so wrong with the gas lamp?
the world is changing
the reason to expand broadband access and to assist in making it affordable will allow business to expand, as well as changing how people recieve both information and entertainment....which will also be a boon to business
the internet has already had an impact upon how the music biz works
no longer does a talent need a record company to promote itself
no, a myspace and youtube account will do just fine
then, cut your own stuff and get it on itunes for download
its not as sexy as getting a record cut, but it made a kid like soulja boy a millionaire
56k may be alright for sending email and reading blogs, but as i am in the tech biz, broadband has been a boon to me
i no longer have to go to clients to assist them...i can connect to them remotely...which has allowed me to setup clients on service accounts
i have clients with offices hundreds of miles away...but with a click of a mouse...i am there
and we are lagging behind both europe and asia in coverage and expense...and that is just wrong
I was a Sr. Network engineer for Amazon.com with only an ISDN line at home, I was able to do anything I needed to keep their ass up. You can still move audio just fine over 128k (most broadcast remotes are ISDN, with a voice quality back channel.) And like I pointed out, there is nowhere in the US (unless you have line-of-site issues, which can 99.99% of the time can be overcome) that you can't get access via Hughes or BlueWave. Sure you have a geo-hop of delay playing games, but we're talking about content transfer here.
If you're in the "tech biz" then all you really need at home is 56k to ssh into your servers and routers. And I'm not talking about EVERYONE going to 56k, just those that are out in bum-fuck-nowhere looking for a damn T3 and not willing to pay more than $50/month for it.
It's like being back in the 50's and asking the telco for a 48 line trunk circuit at your Kansas farm. They would do it but you'll have to pay...very much.
Most of the 'net is bloat. And unrestrained bloat will kill any system (look at Windows OS, and some of the later Linux OSs.)
The message here is to at least learn how to get by with less, in this case, less bandwidth. My backup is ham radio (google D-Star) and my bumpersticker reads: Ham radio: No infrastructure required. Even if the Westin Building in Seattle drops (MAJOR telco/'net hotel) I can still get text, albeit slow, to anywhere in the world.
Linux is not an OS, it's a kernel. FreeBSD is an OS and is starting to get a bit bloated. Try OpenBSD for a cleaner (and much more secure OS.)
AM radio is talking itself into irrelevance, nobody listens to that junk except the choir and they're a dying breed as well.
This is censorship, and just because you don't agree with their views doesn't mean it's ok. Maybe enforcing FCC laws when they "jokingly" incite violence or voter fraud is needed, not the fairness doctrine!
Exactly. And if you look at who advertises on AM radio you'll see who the market really is (dumbfucks.)
Why censor? Nobody seems to look at the fact that the left, liberal or progressive voice is censored by the very ones that are screaming that their free speech would be censored. If they prevent another view from being heard they are censoring. Rush and Hannity are the biggest whiners.
Ok, market forces aside, the government does not participate in censoring what comes on AM radio based on political content. Let's keep it that way!
Plus:
SMART PEOPLE DON'T LISTEN TO AM RADIO, that's why it's so biased, the truth doesn't need someone to explain it to us. The real whiners are the ones who think they need to quell their opposition. Freedom of speech isn't affected by technology, or should we extend these laws to the internet?
Hey Gordon
Congratulations on your new blog. FIngers crossed and wishing you the best of luck. Here's to keeping the people we love running smoothly.
I agree that our current choices of broadcast outlets makes the fairness doctrine an inadequate method of content enforcement.
Whether Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction was real or not, it's not in our best interests to full-time regulate content.
like the sun dear
upon high
we'll return dear
to the sky
and we'll banish the pain and the sorrow
until tomorrow
goodbye
Thanks for the nice words! They're always appreciated, and so are any requests.
I'm getting my land legs together here. But so far, it's a lot of fun!
Stay tuned!
Is it just me, but did the early 60's shows seem to have a sheen the others lacked?
As soon as color TV became the norm, and they tried (badly) to acknowledge the changing times, that sheen was lost.
wtf
NOW will not be televised.
Spoken 48 years ago and it is as timely and current now as it was then.
I was always quite proud when the announcer came on the TV to review the Fairness Doctrine. Literally, I always thought is was one of the cornerstones that separated us from the USSR (during the cold war).
I think the fairness doctrine stifles speech as it requires that certain speech be said even if "one" (e.g. a certain cable news network) doesn't want to air that speech. If a network wants to be utterly one sided, then that is allowed under freedom of speech. It's up to other venues of information to get its message out.
Further, truth is not served with "fairness and balance." If one "side" is a lie then it doesn't matter if it's balanced with an opposing view.
I would advocate much more strongly for an "Accuracy Doctrine." No news to be reported until it has been verified and news organizations should be held accountable for telling the truth in its reporting and commentary. Just as broadcasters are fined for swear words, they should be fined for inaccuracies and forced to correct them in as prominent a manner as the lies were told in the first place (e.g. no lying in prime-time and correcting the lies in over-night).
You're stretching. They don't argue for opposing news stories based on facts, but on opinions and editorials.
It also doesn't apply to cable, blogs etc., so there's an alternative to regular broadcasts which are seen as intrusive in nature on PUBLIC airwaves.
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