Their only fear is that the nationwide movement for media justice will awaken in time to inform and arouse the American people as it did 2003. A parade of pot-bellied naked corporate thieves are hoping nobody notices the crime scene or their progress to and from it, until it's too late.
The FCC and the Emperors of TV Have No Clothes
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
“...this is a country of laws, as the elite like to tell us, and FCC decisions, no matter how transparently undemocratic and crazy, are indeed the law.”
Every now and then, the powers that be overreach themselves with a move so transparently greedy, self-serving and counter to the public interest that even with platoons of pundits and absolute control over the media they know they are absolutely unable to publicly justify themselves. One such moment occurred in 2003, when the Federal Communications Commission gave the green light to any of the half dozen Big Media corporations to own virtually all the TV and radio stations in any US market, along with its daily newspapers.
The people who made this decision, and those they made it for were not stupid people. They knew it was utterly impossible to craft any reasonable “it's for your own good” explanation for unbridled monopoly in media that an ordinary citizen, no matter how conservative, how far to the right, could listen to without laughing out loud. So they just shut up. After all, this is a country of laws, as the elite like to tell us, and FCC decisions, no matter how transparently undemocratic and crazy, are indeed the law.
For several months leading up to and after the FCC's June 2003 decision to allow monopoly control of radio, newspapers and TV in every local US market the issue simply vanished from TV, radio and the newspapers nationwide, with the exception of a few noncommercial broadcasters like Atlanta's WRFG Radio, and the Pacifica network. But while the barriers to free expression in broadcast and newsprint were high, the internet offered a means for news and analysis of this truly awful and indefensible FCC decision to reach the public, and for the public to discuss it. In Atlanta an open meeting on media consolidation called in part by Rep. Cynthia McKinney, now the Green Party's presidential candidate attracted hundreds, was broadcast live on WRFG-FM, repeated a couple times, and re-broadcast nationally on the Pacifica network and its affiliates. Citizens in other regions were inspired to educate themselves and each other, and call their own local public meetings. Activists at the national organization Free Press, which had scheduled a national conference on media reform in June of 2003 took the lead in using the internet to stitch pockets of local indignation together into some semblance of a national movement. Despite the national news blackout, the FCC and Congress received millions of letters, phone calls and emails, and millions of signatures on petitions demanding that the rule be rescinded.
“...the case for even less public service, less news, less local input, less variety and less accountability in media was one that simply couldn't be made by anybody with a straight face.”
Although we like to think of the US system of governance as democratic, thousands of governmental bodies wielding vast powers over our lives are deliberately crafted to be profoundly anti-democratic, their day to day decisions and rule-making insulated from the public. Port and airport authorities, the Federal Reserve system, local and state taxing bodies, the federal judiciary with its lifetime appointees, and the private corporations that now conduct intelligence gathering military functions are all examples of the people-proofing of government. So is the FCC.
Fortunately the case in favor of media consolidation, the case for even less public service, less news, less local input, less variety and less accountability in media was one that simply couldn't be made by anybody with a straight face. The advocates of more media diversity, more localism and less monopoly spanned the breadth of the nation's politics from right to left and everywhere in between. Washington DC press conferences were held in which national spokesmen for the religious right stood cheek by jowl with some of their most adamant foes demanding more, not less local ownership of radio, TV and newspapers, and openly mocking the feeble case in favor of the FCC's pro-monopoly ruling.
Thanks to the deliberate insulation of the FCC from the public will, and the national news blackout of the issue of media consolidation, it took a vast amount of pressure to cause both courts and the congress to ultimately overrule the FCC not once, but repeatedly on this issue. With its heavy lifting on this issue, Free Press gained experience and credibility as a national public-interest media organization, which has been put to good use standing up for a free internet, for low-power radio and spawning a broad media justice movement that sees the ties between print, broadcast media, low-power radio and TV, and the internet.
Thus it was that in 2003, the overreaching greed of Big Media, and the willingness of activists to respond gave birth to the current media justice movement as we know it.
“no local entrepreneurs, no unions, community organizations, colleges, universities or other noncommercial, nonprofit broadcasters have any hope of gaining access to the new stations”
Back in 1996, both the Newt Gingrich congress and the FCC were perhaps just as insulated from popular will and the the people's interest as today, and just as subservient to the dictates of corporate broadcasters. Though now forgotten, it was well-known at the time that the advent of digital TV meant four to ten times as many TV channels. The top priorities of commercial broadcasters in the transition to digital TV were
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to avoid any public accountability for what they did with their existing channels, and
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to give themselves all the new channels without the issuance of new licenses, which might attract public attention to the otherwise opaque and obscure rule-making process.
The broadcasters paraded before Congress and the FCC. They promised more local news, more educational and cultural programming, more localism, more choices, more diversity of programming and viewpoints on the air, just as they had at the dawn of cable TV, but only if they were awarded all the stations with no public service obligations, and no public fuss or bother --- the usual corporate idea of a “free market”. The FCC, the Congress and President Bill Clinton gave them the nod, and that was that.
So it is that when the transition to digital TV occurs in February of 2009 and the number of TV stations multiplies by from four to ten times, no local entrepreneurs, no unions, community organizations, colleges, universities or other noncommercial, nonprofit broadcasters have any hope of gaining access to the new stations. All the new stations will be the provate property of the folks who already have broadcast licenses, with no obligations to do local news or public service, or educational or even local programming. The existing broadcasters get this gift of public spectrum, thousands of TV channels conservatively valued at $80 billion, for less than what a family in Wilmington NC pays for the yearly state tax on a used Ford --- for nothing. And they get it without the bother of new station licenses being issued, since that might attract undue public attention, with people inquiring about why someone else doesn't get a crack at them.
In the years, since, this brazen theft of publicly owned digital broadcast spectrum has gone almost entirely unnoticed and unchallenged. A handful of public interest organizations like the Leadership Council for Civil Rights have spoken up, the LCCR at one point noting that some three thousand or so days had passed without Congress taking any action modifying the outright gift of the digital airwaves to broadcasters with no obligations for public service, localism, news or diversity whatsoever. Just as Big Media in 2003 actively concealed their naked power grab in hundreds of media markets by refusing to report on it, Big Media, its FCC sock puppets, recently joined by Ketchum Communications, a PR firm hired by the FCC to explain the facts of the digital transition to the public have actively conspired for more than a decade to conceal from the public the handover of vast amounts of digital spectrum to commercial broadcasters. And well they might.
Should the facts become public ---
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that although the broadcast spectrum is public property, current licensees will get all the new channels;
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that the new channels come at no cost whatsoever to broadcasters, although they are valued at more than $80 billion;
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that the new channels come with no obligations to do news, local content or public service;
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that local entrepreneurs, schools, colleges, unions, local civic bodies, local women and minority broadcasters are all denied any chance at the new channels;
that broadcasters have no new programming to put on the new channels, and even have a positive disincentive to, since it might compete with existing programming;
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the only broadcasters with responsible and accountable plans for the use of the new channels made available by the digital transition are noncommercial and public TV stations
a public uproar every bit as vast and potent as the one in 2003 could easily be sparked, provided the media justice movement itself is not asleep at the switch.
The hijacking of digital TV by corporate broadcasters is a parade of pot bellied, butt naked thieves to and from a crime scene in broad daylight. It is an enterprise whose only hope of success (for the thieves) is that nobody notices, nobody asks questions, and nobody departs from the official script on the digital transition, which is all about making digital TV converter boxes available (or not) so that the public can continue to be consumers of whatever broadcasters put out there. The only stories the FCC and broadcasters have to justify themselves on this one are even less convincing than the ones they relied upon in 2003. As in 2003, their only defenses are silence and misdirection.
“Only a robust and raucous national public outcry --- a collective howl of “STOP! THIEF! -- can, as it did in 2003, reverse this instance of Grand Theft Digital”
With more than 1700 existing broadcast TV licenses set to multiply from four to ten times, more than ten thousand new digital TV channels are in play. Big Media has engineered an FCC rulemaking process invisible to the public which deals them all under the table to the only players invited to the game --- Big Media. How many community arts and civic organizations across the country could benefit from new TV stations? How many unions? How many local entrepreneurs, blacks and Latinos? How many local government entities, fire departments, colleges and universities, how many excluded communities? In a sane society, the advent of ten or twenty thousand new channels should herald a public discussion of how to revitalize a public media sector, how to ensure local news is broadcast to local audiences, how to extend educational and public service programming to new and old audiences, and how to get new faces in front of and behind the camera, and how to make digital TV serve the public interest.
The hijacking of digital TV is settled law already, though it has not yet been consummated. The actual handoff does not occur till February 2009, except in Wilmington NC, where the official handoff of digital real estate to broadcasters will be finalized on September 8, only a month from now.
Only a robust and raucous national public outcry --- a collective howl of “STOP! THIEF! -- can, as it did in 2003, reverse this instance of Grand Theft Digital, by demanding localism, and a new, transparent licensing procedure for the new digital TV channels. Given the resources of the media justice movement and the experience of 2003, and the transparent weakness of the broadcasters' case, it certainly can be done. But will it?
Big Media, the emperors of TV are on parade with no clothes. The only questions are how much longer it will be before the media justice movement, and the American people notice. The clock is running, and after the theft is done, it will be vastly more difficult to undo.
Other Black Agenda Report articles on the hijacking of Digital TV include
Grand Theft Digital
Communities Excluded, Public Deluded in FCC's Secret Gieveaway of Thousands of Digital TV Channels
For a brief historical background on the formation of the profoundly undemocratic and people-proof US media landscape, we recommend
The Black Stake, and All Our Stakes in the Media Justice Movement
Bruce Dixon is based in Atlanta GA and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com