I recently wrote about why Viacom/CBS's chairman Sumner Redstone thought he was making a good bargain when he sacrificed Dan Rather, his star journalist, in order to curry favor with the Bush administration. "The Scoop on CBS: Why Redstone sold Dan Rather for 20 Pieces of Silver"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3539083Those who watched every major television and newspaper in the US (except McClatchy) beat the drums of war to Iraq should not be surprised to learn that the Bush administration FCC has been handing out favors---and playing some blackmail, too---with all the corporate media giants. This game probably started as far back as 2000. It would explain the gleeful way that so many reporters went along with "Gore is a liar" and why the TV news acted the way they did on election night 2000 and during the aftermath in Florida.
Each news empire is different. Each has something that it needs from the "anything goes as long as it makes some company money" Bush FCC. Since I hear that CNN had a major "let's make fun of Dan Rather" fest this morning, I decided to move on to CNN next.
In 2000, AOL wanted Time-Warner (parent company of CNN). It badly wanted to merge all that cable broadband with all that internet access. However, the Clinton FTC said "Hold on there, boys. That is some media giant you are putting together." And the Clinton FTC laid down some rules, one being that the new AOL-Time Warner had to allow other internet service providers (ISP) to use their broadband.
http://www.drinkerbiddle.com/files/Publication/d44aad4f-f3e0-4164-9809-6e6d52d20a0f/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/888015ac-1903-45ce-a352-9308b8329a69/Cook_AOL_TimeWarner.pdf The FTC alleged AOL And Time Warner (through its majority owned Road Runner ISP subsidiary) to be horizontal competitors in a market for broadband internet ISP service. The FTC did not, however, seek divestiture of either AOL or the Road Runner product. Instead, the FTC required AOL-Time Warner to open Time Warner cable modems to ISP competition. Again, the remedy is likely to have been palatable to AOL in light of the company's position that ISPs should have open access to customers using the internet via broadband hardware connection system.
Let me repeat that last line. "Again, the remedy is likely to have been palatable to AOL in light of the company's position that ISPs should have open access to customers using the internet via broadband hardware connection system." According to this document from early 2001, the whole time that AOL and Time-Warner were pleading for this very worrisome merger, they were swearing on a whole stack of Bibles "We
believe in open broadband access. We promise to let other internet service providers use Time-Warner's broadband cable. We would never abuse our market share to stifle the competition. No, sirre!"
Ha! What a difference a change of administrations makes. Good old Michael Powell, the same FCC chairman who attempted to let Viacom-CBS and NewsCorp each own up to 45% of the nations television, came in and said "Who needs competition among internet service providers? Two is good enough!"
Here, in March of 2002, the FCC announces its intent to step in
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/News_Releases/2002/nrcb0201.html To decide...
3. Whether, in light of marketplace developments, it is necessary or appropriate at this time to require multiple ISP access.
4. The role of state and local franchising authorities in regulating cable modem service.
The FCC said that the ultimate resolution of this item will promote broadband deployment, which should result in better quality, lower prices and more choices for consumers.
In other words, the FCC had decided it was time for a couple of mega-providers to make more money. By 2003, this was how affairs were standing in the world of broadband ISPs. The artcle is called "Time Warner Could Strangle the Internet"
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0103-10.htm Open access did not happen by chance but rather by regulation. Many years ago, the Federal Communications Commission required that, for a reasonable fee, local phone companies allow their wires to be used by rival ISPs to provide Internet service.
The result was robust competition. More than 7,000 ISPs sprang up nationwide. Competitive, low-cost service ushered in rapid growth. Open access ensured that the Internet developed as a diverse, free-flowing and democratic medium.
<snip>
Rather than extend open access rules to broadband, the Bush administration issued regulations last March that allow cable companies to lock out rival ISPs. A few months later, the administration proposed lifting the open access rules for DSL lines as well.
This means that just two companies - Time Warner and Verizon, which offers DSL - could control Portland's broadband service for the foreseeable future.
<snip>
Lack of competition means higher prices. Even worse, the lack of nondiscriminatory open access rules will allow broadband providers like Time Warner to inhibit or block access to certain Web sites.
Another excellent summary of this history can be found at
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ilaw/mexico_2006_module_10_accessOf course, AOL-Time-Warner-CNN is not in this business for ideology. They are in it for the money. And power. From June 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/bush-official-in-shoutin_b_53801.html * There is no competitive marketplace for Internet access in the United States. More than 95 percent of residential high-speed lines are owned by telephone and cable companies. That is a rigid duopoly by any standard. (Source: FCC)
* The result of duopoly control is higher prices for slower connections to the Internet. Compared to citizens in other developed nations, Americans now pay 10 to 20 times as much for far slower Internet services than those offered by modern European and Asian countries. (Source: Broadband Reality Check II)
* A full 37 percent of ZIP codes have one or fewer choices of a wired broadband provider.
One thing to keep in mind about the Bush administration FCC, except for NewsCorp, which is 100% faithful and therefore gets treated with kid gloves one hundred percent of the time, corporate media giants have to expect the stick sometimes, as well as the carrot. It keeps them motivated to stay on their best behavior.
Back in 2005, AOL-Time-Warner and Comcast decided to buy and split Adelphia, sharing the millions of households it served so that they could both get larger. Business as usual, right? Not necessarily. As this Wall Street Journal article points out, the FCC suddenly started acting like an FCC, asking questions it had never asked before.
http://www.mediaaccess.org/news/2005%20News/1208%20Wall%20Street%20Journal.pdfIt took the FCC 404 days to decide the fate of the Adelphia acquisitions. An unheard of length of time for the Bush administration's anything goes FCC.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6352881.html?display=Breaking+NewsBut maybe not so strange, if you consider that this was the run up to the 2006 midterm elections. While some have speculated that then FCC Chairman Kevin Martin held the acquisition's hostage, because he was steamed about "a la carte cable" (here is a link
http://blog.vdc.com/vdc/2007/03/martin_a_record.html ) I think it is even more likely that the Bush administration was playing the same kind of blackmail game with CNN that it had been playing, successfully, with CBS for so many years.
In the wake of Michael Powell's revelations about the administration's double dealing on the subject of federal media ownership rules, many news organizations (except for the ever faithful Newscorp) had broken ranks. Katrina had been especially bad. CNN's Anderson Cooper had made much over the fate of NOLA. Did the FCC decide to drag its feet over a cable merger and did it pretend to consider the question of ISP access for the first time to teach CNN a lesson? Or to make sure that the 24 hour news network would be willing to cover all of Karl Rove's
terra scares before the 2006 midterm elections? Wolf Blizter's "Situation Room" became the
Terra Scare du Jour . The low point was reached in the fall of 2006, when, based on the flimsiest of sources, he hyped the coming terror attack on a football game that even the FBI said was bogus. The network even went so far as to hire Glenn Beck on May 3, 2006.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200605030014 In July, 2006, the FCC finally relented, and AOL-Time-Warner got its Adelphia acquisitions.
Now, why should CNN and its parent company AOL-Time-Warner care which party is in power in Washington? Maybe because Democrats support positions like this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/fcc-commissioner-takes-br_b_53111.htmlThe commissioner joins other prominent politicians and decision makers, including presidential candidate John Edwards and Sen. John Kerry, who are joining the call for more open, neutral and competitive Internet marketplace in America
The outcome of the auction and ultimate use of these new airwaves have revolutionary consequences. This valuable slice of airwaves could beam cheap, high-speed Internet signals to every park bench, schoolroom, workplace, and home in America. It could deliver essential wireless services to communities that have been overlooked by the cable and phone incumbents, which control high-speed Internet access for more than 96 percent of residential American users.
In the months before the 2004 election, John Kerry supported universal broadband access. Since the election, he has fought hard for open internet access and net neutrality---two things that are anathema to a company like AOL-Time-Warner which has worked hard to become one of the two heads of the phony "free market competitive system" we have now. Just as CBS had every reason to pray for a second Bush term, so did CNN---and guess who sat on its Ohio exit polls along with the rest? Guess who pretended that there were no long lines at Black polling places in Ohio, no caging of Democratic voters, nothing to see there move along? Hell, Michael Powell's lie probably did not even bother AOL-Time Warner since it was not in it for television market shares. It wanted to control the internet.
While CNN did nothing as scandalous as CBS did to Dan Rather, they were just as bad as the rest of the corporate media when it came to the 2004 general election. Here is a fascinating Paula Zahn transcript from Sept 2006. It is the first one I pulled up at random with a "Kerry, Swift boat vets, CNN" search. Zahn calls Kerry a waffler, links him with the Dan Rather 60 Minute piece about Bush being AWOL ( which is denounced as a media hoax) Swift Boat Vet ads are run several times during the show under guise of discussion. All in the same program.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0409/22/pzn.00.htmlHas its hard work for the Bush administration paid off? You bet! From CNN's own Money:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/31/news/companies/twx_analysis/index.htm Time Warner Inc., the world's biggest media company, capped off a roller coaster 2006 with fourth-quarter results Wednesday that were in line with most forecasts on Wall Street.
Time Warner (Charts), which owns the second-largest cable company, the Warner Bros. movie studio, AOL and cable networks such as CNN and TBS, posted revenue of $12.5 billion, up 8 percent from the same period in 2005 and matching Wall Street's consensus estimates, according to figures from Thomson First Call. (Time Warner also is the parent company of CNNMoney.com.)
<snip>
Time Warner posted healthy gains in revenue and operating profit in its cable and television networks businesses in the fourth quarter. Cable was particularly strong with sales up 58 percent and operating profits increasing by 26 percent in the quarter.
During a conference call with analysts, Parsons said Time Warner Cable planned to launch several new products in 2007, including commercial phone service for small businesses and wireless phone services.
Imagine how different those numbers could have been, if a different FCC with a different philosophy had said "Monopolies--even those disguised as duopolies--are bad for the United States economy. We are going to have to bust you up, AOL-Time Warner, the way we once broke up Ma Belle. No hard feelings." AOL Time Warner might not be the world's largest media company.
Sigh. We can only dream.
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