Telluride

Univision said to OK record FCC fine

What the shit is this shit? I mean, really. It's not TV's job to educate our children. That's what school is for.

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filtherton

I think the fcc is supposed to ensure that the public's airwaves are used for the public good. I think that the presence of educational television could qualify as serving the public good and if there were more of it i would definitely watch more television.

That being said, i do think the fcc sucks, but for different reasons.

ubertuber

Come on now...

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Baraka_Guru

Umm... the education of a society does not come purely from school. Why else would we have public libraries, museums, art galleries, theatres... and, uh, television, etc.? I realize that television is not a primary source of education in a classical sense, but these regulations are in place because of how much television programming is exposed to young children.


Three hours a week? This is a much lower standard than it was in the U.S. before Regan gutted educational programming regulations of the FCC in the '80s. What else would explain those lame "lessons" at the end of shows like He-Man and G.I. Joe? This was an optional thing that broadcasters did to appease angry parents when all the real education disappeared. Apparently, this kind of thing happens when you prioritize ratings over optional educational integrity.

Three hours a week shouldn't be that difficult for a big broadcaster.

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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Dilbert1234567

FUCK THE FCC!

that is all.

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ASU2003

I couldn't have said it better.

Bill O'Rights

Three hours a week should not be that difficult to achieve. The overall quality of broadcast television has declined to the point of absurdity.

How pathetic is the programing lineup when you can't find three hours of...something to point to, and claim it as "educational"?

The FCC sucks? Yeah...probably. And probably for a billion reasons. But I'm not convinced that enforcing some sort of quality standards is one of them. Three hours a week? C'mon...you have to almost be trying to air nothing but crap.

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"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

roachboy

i dont understand this thread.
i mean, it is not as though the fcc under bush has not been a problematic organization--but i really am not sure that i understand how the op illustrates that, or even begins to speak to it.

this part of the article (thanks uber) DOES point to one of the problems with the retro-fcc: the ludicrous "faith in the private sector" and belief that "less regulation is better" in a context of accelerated concentration of ownership of mass media:

if you are interested in checking out a website full of information about how and why the conservative confusion of "free markets" in media with concentration of ownership (when they look at a reality dominated by concentration, they see "market forces at work") is really not good for any of us, go here:

http://www.prometheusradio.org/

caveat (a) i have friends who work for this group
caveat (b): the site is organization chronologically and so is a little confusing to navigate if you are looking for their major position papers, etc.---check out the main links on your left as you look at the page--ownership, spectrum reform.
prometheus is a group geared around low-powered community radio--what would now still be called pirate radio as a function of the fcc's ridiculous rules for licensing etc. their main claim is that concentration of ownership is resulting in a flattening of perspectives--pro-corporate, pseudo-local infotainment is squeezing out space for a diversity of perspectives and orientations relative to communities. they have had considerable success.

from this viewpoint, the thread is wholly misdirected: what it seems to be motivated by is objection to the fcc's curious kiddie-kontent rules, which can only come from a position that views all state regulation as a bad thing: the problem is much more the absence of regulation, the abandonment of anything like a sense that, in a democracy (even a shallow one) diversity of information is fundamental in favor of a "free-market" ideology that, in the end, is just an enabliong condition for concentration.

beneath this is a more general problem of whether conservative "free market" ideology as made operational in the real world and not in econ 101 diagrams results in anything beyond more concentration of ownership...and what are the effects of concentration? do you want them? well to answer that, you'd have to think about these relations.

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politicophile

Roachboy,

I don't understand why an objection to FCC content restrictions is necessarily an endorsement of privatization/ownership concentration of the broadcast industry. Isn't it possible for left-of-center folks to hold the first position without also holding the latter?

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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

roachboy

politco: in principle, you're right there'd be no necessary contradiction.
i was reacting mostly to the op here, tho, whence the strangeness in the way my post is framed.
from there, the question became how to bump the discussion toward something more broadly-based about the fcc, its policies of the past 6 years (at the least) and their implications.
dunno if it'll work, but that was the idea.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Paq

been my motto for years..

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shakran

the FCC does suck, but this is one of the few things that they didn't screw up on. The airwaves are considered public property and TV stations get licenses to use it on the condition that they provide public-good programming in addition to the crap they put on most of the time. I mean, they have 165 other hours of programming to do what they want with. Why do we think the FCC sucks because they're saying for just 3 hours a week they should put on something educational instead of a rerun of Cops?

And you'd be shocked at what qualifies as educational. Teletubbies counts, so it's not like they even have to put any effort into it.

Dilbert1234567

No it's wrong; the FCC was created because originally there were few options in broadcast. published papers were not subject to the FCC because there was such a wide variety of papers out there, so even if some were filled with offensive material, you could still get your news else ware. These days, we have hundreds of channels; there is no longer a reason for the FCC. If you don't like the content, change the channel, there are plenty of options in regards to young children, and you must realize that if a kid wants to bad enough, they will get to anything they want.

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filtherton

The FCC does a whole lot more than tell broadcast television what they can and can't put on tv. Though it might be interesting to see what would happen if your computer wasn't required to not interfere with your cell phone reception, i don't think it would ultimately be a worthwhile experiment.

I don't think that most of the companies who are currently regulated by the FCC would benefit from the FCC not doing what it does.

kutulu

This is crap. The sole purpose of a TV station is to make money. To do that, they have programming. TV has minimal educational value (same with most 'educational' toys and video games) and in between that they toss marketting at the kids. Fuck, the shows themselves exist to market the product line for the TV show. Have the kids sit down and watch Dora, then take them to the store so that they can wear Dora pajamas, sleep in their Dora sheets, use Dora soap/grooming products, dry off with their Dora towel, get dressed with their Dora clothes, put lunch in the Dora lunchbox... see where I'm going? It's sick.

People plop their kids down in front of the TV so that they can get a break from them. They actually believe that the kids are getting some sort of educational value out of it and in reality all they are getting is a lesson in what to buy.

We do our best to limit our daughter's exposure to TV. She has the rest of her life to be influenced by marketting.

Bill O'Rights

That's a whole 'nother evil, kutulu.

Yeah, I get tired of the barage of Dora, Thomas the Tank Engine, Arthur and Clifford merchandise being thrust at me...and my kid. That's the marketing end of it, though. That's good ol' capitalistic making-a-buck.

All I'm saying is, is it so damn hard to air 3 hours of "educational" programming per week? I don't think that it is. And, if it is, then it damn sure as hell shouldn't be. Look...I like mindless junk TV as much as the next guy. Hell, I actually look forward to Tuesday nights so I can watch NCIS. But, along with the junk, there has to be some quality programming to go along with it.

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

kutulu

It's totally not too hard to have 3 hours of educational programming. However, as pointed out earlier, 'educational' programming includes crap like the Teletubbies. It is a useless metric. Unless they want to rigorously define what constitutes 'educational' quality AND do something to restrict the barrage of marketting during that time, then it is pointless.

Don't get me wrong, I watch plenty of TV myself and would watch more if we hadn't made a decision to limit our little one's exposure (I don't want to give the impression that I'm this guy).

shakran

There's plenty of reason for the FCC. Television content regulation is actually only a very small part of what the FCC does, although it is the most visible. Without the FCC your cell phones, FRS radios, cordless phones, wireless routers - -all of 'em would probably stop working because there would be no regulation as to what frequencies various devices were allowed to use or how much power they were allowed to put out. So, for instance, some jackass could build a FRS radio, put it on the same frequency as a cell phone, and then have it transmit 50watts of power (currently they're limited to 5). End result? Every cell phone anywhere near this radio would instantly stop working.

You know that little notice printed on every electronic device you own that says it can't cause interference with any other devices? That's the FCC that makes that rule. Without that, manufacturers wouldn't bother to shield their stuff because that would be expensive, with the end result that everything would be putting out and receiving massive interference to and from every other device.

FCC regs keep TV stations that compete with mine from installing a 5 million watt transmitter that burns through our frequency and knocks us off the air. They prevent them from installing active jamming devices to knock us off the air. All of this would almost certainly happen if the FCC weren't there to police it.

In short, the FCC actually does a LOT of things VERY well - - from a pure frequency regulatory point of view, it's a very vital and a very good service.

The problem is that the FCC has also expanded to include decisions that should be left to elected officials. The FCC used to be purely regulatory - -they enforce the "hardware" rules that I discussed above. Now, however, they're essentially making laws without the consent of the governed. Their biggest blunder is not that they require educational programming, but that they are so lax in their other TV content and ownership regulation. Used to be you could only own 1 TV station in a market, and only a few nationwide. What that meant was that the viewers were guaranteed to get a local voice that informed them of the issues they needed to know about. Now that megacorporations are allowed to own scores of TV stations and networks, we not only have companies who's HQ's are on the other side of the country dictating how we run our newscasts, but we also have an inherent economic conflict of interest. GE is not going to be very happy if NBC (who they own) comes out with a story that reflects poorly on the corporation. THIS is the kind of bullshit we should be angry with the FCC about.

cyrnel

Amen. And good luck rolling it back. The acquisitions were ready to go before the rulings happened. Indeed, I recall a brief market panic when the closed-door sessions were exposed and the deals were in jeopardy. From concept to approval to press whitewashing, the change was a fiasco of big money and deregulation gone amok. The bizarre lack of coverage by media with a conflict of interest should have been a clear enough sign to torpedo the deal. That it went through is a tragedy for our system by its leadership. Even partisan nutjobs should have known better.

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shakran

Oh hell no. The horse is out of the barn and running down the road at this point. It's VERY unlikely things will go back to the way they should unless the citizens rise up and flat out demand it, which of course they'll never do because not enough of them has any understanding of this issue.

Yup, this is one of the instances in which the press clearly failed the public. But I will say this much - it's not our fault. WE wanted to report on it. Our bosses would have fired us if we did. And unfortunately, back then the internet wasn't nearly as popular as it is now - - -if we'd had blogs back then I think enough of us could have gotten the word out despite our bosses and we might have actually been able to put a stop to it.

Dilbert1234567

ok i retract my statement that there is no need for the FCC, and replace it with "there is no need for the FCC to regulate broadcast content of any kind, we need more personal responsibility."

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Bill O'Rights

While there is a very large Libertarian part of me that wants to, and does, agree with that statement...I look around, and I just don't see a hell of a lot of that going on around me. To a large degree, I suppose, people deserve what they get. For the rest of us, I guess there's always PBS...

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

desal75

You can find a lot of very high quality and informative TV. Just don't try looking on NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, or MyTV.

When PBS isn't showing boring British sitcom's with too much canned laughter they still have quite a bit of good stuff as does some of the cable channels.

When I really want something that will educate me as well as entertain me I pick up a book though.

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roachboy

there is a prometheus position paper (in draft form--anarchists...) available here:

http://prometheusradio.org/spectrum_...mmunicate.html

that argues against the need for existing regulation of station frequency allocations on the grounds that (a) they were developed in an outmoded technological regime (b) that they are already bypassed by any number of new technologies (wi-fi being the edge phenomenon) (c) existing regulations unduly favor corporate entities and by extension corporate control of the airwaves==against this, the paper argues that (1) that the airwaves are a common good (2) that community radio should be able to broadcast without fcc intervention because:

as a political issue, diversity of media outlets=>diversity of information streams->good for democracy
as a matter of power, diversity of media outlets=> diversity of control, putting communities on something like an equivalent footing with the corporate entities that currently control--and i mean control--information. if the older arguments about interference/spillover no longer obtain (pace digital recievers as much as new transmitter technologies) and if the airwaves are redefined as a common good, then it would follow that existing fcc control over licensing--and by extension over who gets to broadcast--are outmoded, unnecessary and worse contribute to an authoritarian style of information control.

i dont see the problem with this paper, it's arguments, etc.

as for tv: i do not understand why anyone views television as an information source. it could be one--but in the states, with its commercial orientation, it isnt--it is an advertising delivery system. "information" about the world functions primarily to deliver a demographic to advertisers. children's content delivers children as a demographic to advertisers.

as for pbs: it is a sad shell of its former self--thanks republicans (the watershed moment came under the reagan regime, with the far right accusing pbs/npr of being biased to the left--which is crazy, but whatever--using this as a wedge, the reaganauts threatened to yank funding unless reactionary views were given more equal footing--and so things have since been. but not everything is grim--pov is still a good thing because it airs independent documentaries--and many npr outlets stream bbc news, which is far better than anything put out anywhere here in the land of advertisement delivery systems.

i dont think people deserve this, btw.
i dont think what people either want or deserve is a variable even---the american system of broadcasting is geared entirely around selling shit. this follows from the ludicrous assumptions concerning capitalist markets and quality of information--and american television is a good demonstration of the flaws in these assumptions. they are legion.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

Yes. Kids shouldn't be watching so much TV, they should be reading. Reading and critical thinking skills are becoming abysmally weak.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot