Please read the message below. It is exactly the kind of collaboration
between activists and academics some of us had in mind for OURMedia.
Clemencia Rodriguez
Associate Professor
Department of Communication
University of Oklahoma
610 Elm Avenue
Norman OK 73019 USA
405 325 1570
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: media scholars-- get out your red pens! FCC consolidations
studies need critique...
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 21:45:11 -0500 (EST)
From: [log in to unmask]
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Dear Friends at the Union for Democratic Communications:
As you may have heard us mention during the conference, there is a key
proceeding a the FCC now that deserves your attention. On January 2nd
and February 3rd, comments are due at the FCC regarding their plans to allow
a new wave of consolidation of media ownership.
If the industry has it's way, the same transnational corporation could
legally own all the media in your town- up to 8 radio stations, a TV
station, the daily newspapers (or both daily newspapers) , the
alternative newsweekly, the monopoly cable provider franchise, the satellite
provider. They might own the magazines you read and the music you listen to
as well. And they just might be the owner of the nuclear power plant down
the road, too!
Radio today lays in ruins after 6 years of deregulation. Thousands in
the industry have been replaced by computers and local service has been
forsaken in favor of satellite driven jukeboxes. The largest radio
license holder in the US, Clear Channel Corporation,thinks of itself not
as a radio company, but as an advertising company.
We urge you to speak your mind about these developments. TV, Cable, and
newspapers will soon follow in the footsteps of radio, leaving our media
to sink to ever deeper depths of shallow commercialism. As citizens, we
can demand more. As communications scholars, you have a key role to
play.
The FCC has released 12 studies. The gist of the conclusions of these
studies is that all is copasetic, concentration of media has not hurt
diversity in media content, so it will be fine to eliminate any
remaining restrictions on cross ownership and open the floodgates for bigger
and bigger media.
You are the best people that we have left to stop this. By scrutinizing
these studies, finding their empirical errors, and pointing out how they
skirt the substantive questions at hand, you can help activists who are
fighting hard to stop the next wave of media consolidation. We do not
have the analytical skills to make a full response to these questions- but
you do! When you see them, you will see the sort of scholarship that is
being used to set the policies of our media future. Your scholarship can be
a powerful countervailing force to the armies of industry lobbyists.
The due date for comments is January 2. The due date for reply comments
is February 3rd.
Here is a link which can be followed to find out more about the
ownership proceeding.
http://www.fcc.gov/ownership/
And here is a link to the studies:
http://www.fcc.gov/ownership/studies.html
And here is a link to Center for Digital Democracy, which has great
resources on the intellectual debate regarding concentration of media
ownership.
http://www.democraticmedia.org/
In a week or so, we will finish our web tool which will help maximize
the impact of your comments.
Please let us know if you plan to work on this project... we will be
happy to share our non-academic perspective on the most important issues at
stake. We encourage you to include this current issue in your curriculum
and will happily help think about ways that examination of these issues
can further your students educational experience.
Thank You,
Pete Tridish
Prometheus Radio Project
--
_ _
pe'tre dish (n): a squat, cylindrical, transparent article of laboratory
glassware, useful in observing resistant strains of culture in aetherial
media.
[log in to unmask]
www.prometheusradio.org
Prometheus Radio Project
215-727-9620
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