Random Thoughts on the Televisionariat

In left wing circles, it's an article of faith the reason the mainstream media are so awful is the increasing concentration of ownership. But how much does this explain? The point is usually treated as self-evident, not something to be proved. As one observer notes
"partisans of the concentration thesis, armed with their ominously tangled cross-ownership maps, have little to say when asked just how these sinister interlocks explain content. Did People magazine run "investigative" pieces on the "consciousness" industry in the days before Time merged with Warner and both ate up CNN.


Just what are we nostalgic for - the days of David Sarnoff [Shag notes: the former head of RCA whose company tried to steal credit for the invention of FM radio from Edwin Armstrong and eventually caused the latter to commit suicide in 1954] or perhaps William Hearst"?

... We certainly had less state interference in everyday life as a whole forty years ago but we also had the south-east Asian war which only ended after twenty years of slowly developing public opinion, capital punishment, and "medical" oppression of homosexuals. Compare this to the rapid escalation of opposition to empire in this century. The current decline of CBC radio (Canada's state network) has very little to do with the presence or absence of advertising. Commercialism certainly contributed to the decline of television but people have been complaining about the "vast wasteland" since the nineteen fifties. Today the same complaint centres around the strange but obvious fact that the "choice" provided by cable and satellite provides more and more of the same stuff. Passivity breeds it own problems. Whether you are viewing Monday night football or the Metropolitan Opera you are watching not doing. This is one reason Shag particularly objects to claims that the Internet is contributing to illiteracy. A thing over which we have some control must certainly be an improvement over being a mere "antenna" for prolefeed. This might be a bother to politicians and religious nuts with their crocodile tears over "free choice". These complaints seem to rise or ebb with their ability to undermine that choice for anyone they don't like and can't argue with. Such people resemble the civic politician in the movie Pleasantville. Their sleaze imbibes and amplifies the weaknesses and fears of ordinary people. Personal honesty and courage aided by democratic experience, self reliance and a moral desire to see other people as valuable and interesting is our weapon against them.

Also check this item from Eugene

LE REVUE GAUCHE - Left Analysis And Comment: Don Newmans No Spin Zone