Big Media Steals 5,100 Digital TV Channels

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:



Published on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 by the Black Agenda Report
Big Media Steals 5,100 Digital TV Channels
by Glen Ford



On February 17 of next year, 5,100 new digital TV channels are scheduled to become operational. Every single one of them is stolen.

The biggest theft of the public airwaves in U.S. history is nearly complete, a crime perpetrated in semi-secret, that transfers a brand new universe of the digital broadcast spectrum into the possession of wholly undeserving corporations. As a result Blacks, other minorities, unions, community organizations and all other non-rich societal stakeholders may be shut out of the main streams of television for the foreseeable future.

The Congressional Black Caucus and most of what passes for African American “leadership” have done virtually nothing to thwart the scheme to gift corporate media four high-quality digital TV channels for every single full-power channel license they currently hold. Where science has made possible a new age of programming possibilities - a chance, finally, to create islands and archipelagos of meaningful news, information and cultural TV programming that serves and reaches all the people - corporate-bought politicians have snatched away the prize. Acting as agents of the broadcasting industry, rather than representatives of the people, Congress awarded the already filthy rich a digital TV bonanza valued at $80 billion. It is an unearned gift of a priceless resource made possible by digital technology’s capacity to deliver far more information than analog technology. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is overseeing the mega-theft.

Ironically, corporate media, already in possession of 1,700 highly profitable, full-power TV channels, doesn’t know what to do with its 5,100-channel windfall. But the industry is united in its determination to keep the channels out of anyone else’s hands. Such is the nature of monopolies.

This historically unprecedented heist of the airwaves has been hidden in plain sight. By now, everyone that owns a television set knows that something big will happen early next year, that viewers who are not hooked up to cable or already own a digital converter box might find themselves without a TV signal when stations shut down their analog broadcasts and switch to digital, on February 17. Far fewer people are aware that the digital changeover will multiply the number of broadcast channels four-fold. And most Americans will be totally shocked to learn that these thousands of additional channels have already been given away - stolen, really - further enriching the corporations that have turned American commercial TV into a “vast wasteland.” ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/30/10708/

[Lex]

1. Lots of countries have long switched to digital

how did they handle the switch differently than the US if you know?

Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_television_deployments_by_country

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. We all knew something fishy was going on when they announced the whole "we're all going digital"

stuff.

[Lex]

3. Here are the countries that have made the switch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_television_deployments_by_country

[navarth]

4. Wait 'til they steal the internet.....then we're screwed completely.

And we'll get no help from the sleeping masses. Bread and Circuses.

[AndyA]

5. I can remember when cable first became available.

Everyone subscribed to it to get away from the commercials. There used to be a time when many cable stations didn't air commercials, the subscribers to the cable system paid the bills.

Now, we still pay to watch cable, but commercials are forced on us as well. Thank goodness for video recorders that can be fast forwarded through commercials. Advertisers are wasting their money in my house. We start watching shows when they begin airing, but pause during the first commercial break. Then we do something else for 15 minutes, and come back and finish the show, zipping past commercials.

We finish the show at about the same time the show ends, but we didn't have to sit through commercials.

The FCC, just like Congress, does not have the people's best interest at heart. They are looking out for corporations. We need to fire them all and start over.