As if Channel One, which force-feeds kids adverts masquerading as infotainment over a closed-circuit TV system hard-wired into schools, wasn’t bad enough. BusRadio hits the children up with ad-patter on their way to and from school. And since the kids most likely to be found on a school bus skew younger than Channel One’s target demographic, one might say BusRadio softens students up for later Channel One exposure (the companies are not linked in any way that I can tell, except for the exploitation fetish, born from BusRadio founders’ earlier success in this regard). Continue reading “Drive-Time for Schoolkids”
Category: Journalism
FCC To Investigate Fake TV News
Sometimes enough well-documented bitching does produce results. A month and a half after the Center for Media and Democracy released their study of stealth PR on local TV newscasts, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin ordered the Enforcement Bureau onto the case.
Fines for violations (of which CMD documented several dozen) start at $32,500 and can be multiplied by up to a factor of ten. So far, the excuses offered up by those stations caught passing off video news releases as some sort of “journalism” have been quite underwhelming. Perhaps this will make the radio/TV station license renewal process more meaningful. One can always dream.
DIYmedia in San Francisco
Just found out I’ll be making at least one presentation at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference in San Francisco, August 2-5. I am not particularly comfortable in conference environments (especially academic ones), though Lawrence Lessig is keynoting, which should be cool.
Save for a day-trip a few years ago, I haven’t been to SF since the NAB Meets Media Democracy protests in 2000. This time around there’s friends actually living there. Maybe there’s a way to sneak in a station tour (or two) as well. Anything to avoid the schmooze.
Take Your Money, Set It On Fire
AlterNet is running a two-part feature on the need for better progressive media in the United States. The sentiments are nice, but they replicate old and tired refrains that money will fix many ills.
First comes a piece from Rick Gell, wherein he laments that if only progressive America had a television network of its own to rival the majors, everything would be better in the political world. Specifically, progressives need a for-profit television network, as the corporate sector is where all the money is.
Gell says we need to wake up and stop believing that “progressives are still the back-to-the-country, anti-automation, communal-living hippies of the sixties and not the Starbucks-drinking, iPod carrying, SUV-driving people many of us really are.” That’s the first hint of a problem. The Starbucks-drinking, iPod carrying, SUV-driving people like Rick aren’t really progressives – they’re Leadership Council Democrats, who sully the term “progressive” by appropriating it. Progressivism represents a way of life, not a lifestyle descriptor. Continue reading “Take Your Money, Set It On Fire”
Pervasive Fake News Documented, FCC Shrugs
Yesterday the Center for Media and Democracy released Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed. It tracks the use of some three dozen video news releases (VNRs) by television stations across America.
The use of VNRs is serious business. Companies and other special interests pay PR flacks (usually former journalists) to essentially produce generic television reports, which are then freely fed to TV stations nationwide.
Television reporters and news directors like VNRs because they’re easy fodder with which to fill a newscast, meaning fewer reporters to pay and less work needed from everyone involved. Companies like VNRs because they get free commercials masquerading as journalism. Continue reading “Pervasive Fake News Documented, FCC Shrugs”
Crashing Propaganda: The Miami Model
I’d been fixing to generally ignore this story but it’s been syndicated far and wide. When my mom said she read it on page two of the hometown daily the extent really sunk in. It’s a propaganda coup for the broadcast industry.
The main thrust, that pirate radio stations interfere with airplanes, gets hammered home quite nicely. In this particular case, involving a station in Miami that squats two FM frequencies, it should come as little surprise. In fact, with 20+ pirate stations operating in the Miami area alone, you are bound to encounter some problems with interference, in-band or otherwise. Continue reading “Crashing Propaganda: The Miami Model”
Don Rumsfeld, A Father of FOIA?
In a recent appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld remarked that he was a cosponsor of the Freedom of Information Act during his 1960s stint in the House of Representatives. This is a claim made, as it was here, to parry a critical question about the Pentagon’s penchant for unjustifiable secrecy.
It was, however, the first time I had actually heard it leave his mouth. Given the other things to come out of there, I was compelled to verify for my own peace of mind. Indeed, S. 1160 was co-sponsored by then-congressman Rumsfeld, who hailed from west-suburban Chicago. He sat on the House’s Committee on Government Operations, through which the bill was unanimously endorsed on its way to a full vote. He also spoke on the House floor in support of it. Continue reading “Don Rumsfeld, A Father of FOIA?”
DTV Spectrum Appropriated For Non-DTV Uses
You may have heard, as part of the sales pitch for transitioning broadcast television from analog to digital, about the capability of a single DTV channel to carry as many as six distinct program streams. DTV would thus be good for the consumer because it would result in an expansion of viewing choices.
Think again: meet MovieBeam. The service, developed by Disney, uses “unused portions of [DTV] signals” to deliver movies on demand to subscribers. Users pay a fee for the special set-top box used to receive and decode “rented” movies, and then pay between $2-4 per movie. Users have 24 hours to watch their chosen flick before it is automatically deleted from their box. Continue reading “DTV Spectrum Appropriated For Non-DTV Uses”
CBC @ NYC GMC
Next weekend is the New York City Grassroots Media Conference. There’s a massive lineup of panels and workshops now, one of which will involve a tactical discussion on microradio. This has piqued the interest of a producer from Dimanche (Sunday) Magazine, which is aired on the CBC’s Première chaîne.
She’s putting together a feature on microradio and is interested in speaking with anyone who might be attending the NYC GMC and has microradio experience. Chantal Francoeur is also no snitch: she’s willing to conduct interviews in any manner which will best preserve the subject’s anonymity, if this is desirable. E-mail her directly if you might be willing to share thoughts on what microradio means to you.
NPR Punts on Godcaster Proliferation
This week NPR’s All Things Considered aired a story on the plight of WAVM, a 10-watt FM radio station run by the local high school in Maynard, Massachusetts. The station stands to be forced off the air by Living Proof, Inc., an evangelical broadcast outlet based in California. WAVM is the only local radio station available in Maynard and enjoys wide community support.
NPR’s Andrea Shea got totally hoodwinked about the interloper kicking WAVM off the dial.
Shea set up WAVM’s vulnerable situation by mentioning the demise of the 10-watt Class D FM station license, calling WAVM one of the “predecessors of today’s low power FM stations.” She says the FCC did away with Class D licenses in the 1970s the after the FM band “became crowded.” Continue reading “NPR Punts on Godcaster Proliferation”