The Fight For The Future of Media

1. As fars as whether or not broadcasters effectively respond to local needs, I probablly was already leaning towards no and this chapter just served to reinforce this opinion. A great example in this book was when someone at the hearing in San Antonio conference said that their was a terrible flood in their town and the TV's were down and when they tried to tune in to the radio to find out more about the flood they could only find stations that were playing music. There was no flood warnings given and the people had no idea what waqs going on. This is beacuse these stations were all clear channel staions that were broadcast throughout the country and therefore had no knowledge of the flood. This is just an example of how people need local radio stations and TV sations so that they can find out about what's important to them. The sam thing happens with TV. Time Warner has become one of the remaining giants of the cable industry and viewers are only allowed access to the stations that Time Warner chooses. For example, Time Warner does not offer NFL Network as a result of a financial dispute with the NFL. There are certain games that are only shown on the NFL Network. I am from Buffalo and Time Warner is the only cable service offered. If the Buffalo Bills play a game on the NFL network than none of Time Warrner's Buffalo costumers will be able to see the game. They are not meeting the local needs of their costumers and this happens in cities all over the country. Later in the chapter it talks about how internet providers are attempting to get rid of open acces rules which would give them greater control over what we are able to access. Internet providers could then bar access to certain sites, or prevent the usage of certain spam blockers or filtering technologies etc. This would mean higher prices, fewer choices, and a complete loss of control for users. All of this shows how the needs of small communties don't matter to these media giants as they are only concerned with making money and bettering themselves rather than their users.





2. There are certainly types of local programming that should be provided that currently aren't. With all of the mergers and consolodation in the cable industry the focus is shifting away from localism and toward nationalism. This again is because it is more profittable for these large companies. When the city of San Jose wanted to back out of its cable deal with Comcast, Comcast said their actions were illegal and attemted to file suit against the city. The suit filed so Comcast then took away the public access channels and used them for something more profittable. At the public hearing in San Antonio, many people said that they wanted to see low powered radio stations within their community that were controlled by their community. They didn't want to have to listen to the national clear channel stations rather they wanted a say in the content they were provided. Again with televison, most local news staions share the same channel with a huge national network, such as ABC and News 7, and the local stations are often bumped in favor of national programs. For expample most local news is either on very early in the morning or very late at night, and if there is say a football game that runs long, sometimes the news gets bumped all together.





3. One public service oriented project is Utah's $470 million UTOPIA project (Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure agency). If Utah's cities could raise the money, then businesses in homes would be provided with fiber optics and cable that would deliver data up to 100 times faster than what they are currently offered. Another example can be seen in Jim Baller, legal counsel for the Missouri Municipal League. They want to encourage state and local governments to get involved so they can reach their goal of a rapid deployment advanced and affordable telecommunications services for all Americans. He feels that it will take a major legislative battle before the states are able to demonstrate the benefits of a more public-utility approach toward telecommunications. Another example can be seen in the Prometheus Radio project in Philadelphia, which helped to set up LPFM (low power fm radio) stations at a rapid clip. This group serves to provide a medium for local listeners that honors the interests of community groups and provides them an outlet for their needs to be met. This grass roots effort has gotten the FCC to listen many non commercial radio stations throughout the US.