More material from "What Price Media Consolidation?" held September 28, 2005 at Drexel U. in Philly.
Welcoming Remarks (Excerpted) by Jonathan Rintels
Executive Director, Center for Creative Voices in Media
"What Price Media Consolidation?" What's the deal with that title anyway? Are we trying to come up with a number? Maybe some of us who feel injured or wronged can then seek damages or reparations?
No.
What price do we put on the song that's never sung? On the news that no one hears? What price do we put on the documentary that doesn't exist about the weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist? Or if that documentary does exist, like our friend Robert Greenwald's "Uncovered: The War on Iraq," it can't get past the gatekeepers and chokepoints in the concentrated mainstream media, and it can't get on public television, so we must resort to showing it at House Parties and passing it around from hand to sympathetic hand, like the samizdat clandestinely circulated by the opposition in the old Soviet Union. And so its facts and arguments and truth must take added years to trickle out, as they now are trickling out. When we calculate what price media consolidation, do we include the extra limbs and lives lost?
What price do we place on never seeing a quality television show that has the power to change the way a nation thinks -- like a "Roots" or "An Early Frost" about AIDS or an "All in the Family" -- but can't get made today because the conventional wisdom of the conglomerates is that all television is for eighteen year olds and they don't do history or "issues?" I don't know what price to put on that. I do know we are all the poorer.
What price does our country pay when people are so turned off by mindless slogans, horserace journalism, and televised shouting matches passing for news that they don't vote, don't care, and seemingly drop out of our democracy? What price do we pay when research shows more people get their news from Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, and David Letterman than from the news itself?
How do we put a dollar sign on the hard reporting we don't see because the conglomerates fear it will only get them into hot water with the government they are constantly beseeching for more - more spectrum, more monopoly franchises, more stations, more licenses, more mergers, more barriers to entry, more protection against real competition, more, more, more.
When dead bloated bodies float face down in the flooded streets of a great American city, and only then does the television news finally gin up the courage to declare, "Washington, we have a problem," after which they then engage in an orgy of self-congratulation for "speaking truth to power," what price are we paying?
"Concentration of power in any medium - particularly one which is, for all intents and purposes, the gatekeeper to three out of every five U.S. television homes - is to be feared and must be curbed." By their eloquence, you can probably guess those words aren't mine; they're Jack Valenti's, spoken in 1990, before his bosses bought up all those television networks, concentrating power even more.
But today, of course, it's "No worries, Mate," as a certain Aussie media mogul might say, because we have the "500 Channel Universe." That concentrated corporate power is no longer the gatekeeper to sixty percent of television homes. Thanks to their gobbling up of once independent cable networks and their freezing out of new independent networks, that concentrated corporate power is now the gatekeeper to seventy five percent of television homes. As Senator Byron Dorgan said, America's media today is made up of "many voices, few ventriloquists."
But, "No Worries, Mate." We have the Public Broadcasting System. But many critics believe PBS has been neutered by those who demand that its programs be "fair and balanced" - Fox News-style - and has replaced investigation, opinion, depth, and controversy with antiques. Some now say PBS is itself in danger of becoming an antique. What price do we pay for that?
And since we are here in Philadelphia, let's take special note of Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator and one of our media's most voracious and ferocious ventriloquists. In addition to using its monopoly money to build the grandest skyscraper in the city for its headquarters, it is also leveraging its gatekeeper power in cable to buy up the media content it distributes through its cable, as its failed hostile bid for Disney and its successful bid for MGM demonstrates. Comcast's goal: you can watch anything you want on Comcast, as long as it's owned by Comcast.
Still, "No worries, Mate!" When - if - we all get broadband, the Internet will change all that. The Net is an Infinite Channel Universe. But today, according to the FCC's recent broadband report, 94 percent of Americans with broadband receive it from either a telephone or cable company. Who's the nation's largest broadband provider? Comcast, the same Comcast that wants to control all the content it delivers over its pipes. The recent Supreme Court decision in the Brand X case, an underwhelming name for an overwhelmingly important case, gives Comcast and now the telcos that power. They can now substitute their own websites - or the websites that pay them tolls and tribute -- for the one you mistakenly thought you wanted to visit.
Will the Internet really change everything? Or will it ultimately also be "consolidated" by the few conglomerates, bringing us an even greater concentration of gatekeepers, toll collectors, and choke points? What price will we pay for a closed proprietary Internet controlled by a few giant broadband providers when Americans today are forced to rely on the Net's openness to receive unfiltered information from independent sources?
"No Worries, Mate?"
Mate, I am very worried!
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time now to ask, "What Price Media Consolidation?" And whatever that price is, how can we -- as creative artists, as consumers, as Americans - how can we stop paying it?
Thank you.