Thursday, December 27, 2001
I'm taking a little holiday break so there won't be any big posts until Jan. 3. In the meantime here are some links to explore:
The FCC is accepting petitions to deny the merger of DirecTV and Echostar/Dish Network direct satellite TV providers. The FCC has a page dedicated to the merger.
Previously on mediageek: Satellite TV Consolidation
For an incisive daily analysis of the news media check out Danny Schecter's News Dissector's Weblog. Danny is the editor of Mediachannel.org.
The Nation's Jan. 7 issue is called "The Big Media and What We Can Do About It," including articles on making a media reform movment, by Robert McChesney and John Nichols, and the cultural effects of the media cartel, by Mark Crispin Miller.
The Globalvision News Network is gearing up to provide "a news service that unites an international network of local media partners to syndicate global news and information from the 'inside out.'"
posted 12/27/2001 12:56:27 PM [link
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Friday, December 21, 2001
The LA Times reports that "Freenets Getting a New Lease on Life." It's good to see that after the bottoming out of the "give it away for free, make money later" concept there are still some freenets around, because it's clear that the need still exists. My local freenet, Prairienet, has had some hard times, too, but is still around--somewhat stablized by being associated with the University of Illinois School of Library and Information Science. As a side note--it's due to projects like these and getting to know a lot of LIS students that I've come to have a great deal of respect for librarians as promoters of civic life.
posted 12/21/2001 11:43:57 AM [link
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Thursday, December 20, 2001
The Uncovered Causes Behind "Riots" & "Chaos" -- People Use Indymedia to Report from the Streets of Argentina
The streets of Argentina's cities and towns have been erupting in protests and rioting the past few days over the economic austerity policies the gov't has implemented in order to qualify for more loans from the In't Monetary Fund (IMF). In the face of such massive popular protest this afternoon the country's president resigned. The mainstream press is reporting the story, but primarily as a domestic matter--so many injured, so many dead, which leader is to blame--rather than as a story about the process of globalization, where the Argentine people are being forced to take on rules imposed extra-nationally rather than being allowed any democratic agency in their own economic policy. What's also left out is any sense of what the situation means for the average Argentine (who isn't a gov't official, and isn't in the ruling class).
This is an instance where the Indymedia Center paradigm comes through, as the Argentine people themselves have the opportunity to speak directly to a world audience. This post to the global Indymedia site gives one person's perspective and experience on the unrest. Indymedia is also trying to put together a list of articles and documents providing background into this situation. Because it's an open system, anyone can contribute to this list. Integral to the nature of the web, there is great value in providing coherent pointers to news and information, in addition to providing that very information.
By their very nature Indymedia Centers are not connected to power -- they are not in the rolodex of government officials, they do not get invited to press briefings. They cannot provide the latest news of the powerful. But they are connected to those who lack this power -- which is most of the population -- and present the challenge that they're thoughts, actions, experiences and ideas are important and noteworthy. Especially in a situation like what is happening in Argentina, those people are making themselves known, and arguably what's going on in the street is as or more important than what's going on in the houses of government.
Unfortunately for us mono-lingual Americans, the language divide means that we have to wait for translations of the up-to-the-minute posts from the Agentina IMC -- I guess that's the price for linguistic chauvinism. Luckily the IMC in the heavily latino city of Los Angeles is coming through with translations of some things. Nonetheless, it is also unfortunate that most of this information is unknown to those who don't get their news from the Internet, or even those who don't stray too far from their Yahoo or AOL home page. It's an indication of what can be done, and how far there is yet to go.
posted 12/20/2001 06:07:13 PM [link
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Salon's Eric Boehlert continue's to prove himself to be one of the best mainstream journalists covering the media business in the US. His latest article takes a multifaceted look at the declining music industry, identifying several indicators of the decline--lower CDs sales and radio industry losses--and digging for causes--mostly record industry recalcitrance. He also writes a shorter companion piece on the demise of the single, despite apparent demand for them by both consumers and artists themselves. The industry killing the single because it prefers to sell $19 full CDs rather than $3 singles is just one example of its stubbornness as it forces its will onto the people who produce and consume their wares, even if that's really not such a hot business idea. If you can't buy that one song you heard on the radio and you don't care about the other 12 songs on the CD, then where do you turn? You download it.
I can't help it -- I take a perverse pleasure in seeing the recording industry and the commercial radio industry screw themselves royally. Unfortunately the artist and employees of these countries take it the hardest, when it really should be management getting their salaries and compensation packages raided to pay the salaries of those who would be laid off as punishment for their shitty, myopically self-serving decisions.
posted 12/20/2001 05:34:49 PM [link
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Got them consolidation blues: Comcast agrees to buy AT&T's broadband cable TV outfit, says it wants to get into local phone service to its new base of 30 million customers.
posted 12/20/2001 12:01:17 PM [link
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Wireless Broadband Internet Gaining Steam?
Yesterday's SF Chronicle has an article, "COMMUNAL BROADBRAND; Neighbors sharing high-speed Internet access via wireless networks is popular and controversial"--the title pretty much sums it up. The wireless freenet project in Champaign-Urbana has been ramping up lately, though I haven't had the time to be directly involved. I know those guys have had success sending a directional beam house to house over a distance of almost a mile, so plans are now underway to set up nodes for omni-directional wireless broadband access, connected to each other by directional wireless.
Last night at 9pm PST Boingo Wireless unveiled itself. It's a company which aims to aggregate local and regional wireless broadband service and resell it, so that customers can get wireless all over the place with just Boingo as their provider. A cool idea, I reckon, though I still prefer the *free* model, though I recognize that in the modern economy finding wireless freenets can be a hit-or-miss operation, whereas the Boingo service promises to provide much more predictable and closer to ubiquitous access. This may indeed be something which helps push wireless broadband forward, and maybe even can peacefully coexist with the wireless freenets. The freenets are aimed more at serving neighborhoods, giving users access in their homes, yards, and streetcorners, whereas the Boingo service seems to have its sights aimed at having everywhere service--something that's possible, but more difficult under the freenet model, mostly due to the need to organize so many nodes.
One caveat to the Boingo idea that I already see is that the company is just an aggreator and completely dependent on other small providers to actually deliver the service, which could lead to all sorts of customer service nightmares. Would Boingo have to give refunds if a given local provider goes down? Of course, the upside is that Boingo doesn't have to first spend billions on infrastructure before it can roll out service.
There's also a CNET article on the new company.
Previous posts on wireless:
Wireless freenets 9/26/01
Infoworld says: 'Parasitic grid' wireless movement may threaten telecom profits; I say: so be it. 8/28/01
Make your own DSL 8/27/01
Study Says Cable Modems Will Outstrip DSL--Does this Feed the Media Monopoly Monster? 7/17/01
posted 12/20/2001 11:47:55 AM [link
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Monday, December 17, 2001
"The Revolution Will Be Photocopied" is an article in the Sept/Oct Utne Reader on the Underground Publishing Conference. A little too short to really give a good taste of it, the article nonetheless provides a snapshot of what the event is all about. I'm pretty certain the shortness is the result of Utne Reader editorial constraints and not the choice of the author, Chris Dodge, who also is the Street Librarian.
posted 12/17/2001 07:54:01 PM [link
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Why We Need Alt/Indy Media
Guerrilla News has an interview with one of the best muckraking journalists working today, Greg Palast, a Canadian ex-pat living in Britain and working for the Guardian. In this interview Palast explains how North American media won't touch truly controversial investigative reporting when it gets too close to corporate and political power, which is why he has to be in the UK to do that kind of work--even though there journalists don't enjoy the same constitutional 1st Amendment rights that are supposed to guarantee journalistic freedom in the US. For Palst it's not a matter of observation or conjecture--he's experienced having stories killed from the very top of media companies. (via the News Dissector Weblog)
posted 12/17/2001 04:29:11 PM [link
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Thursday, December 13, 2001
A Pacifica Resolution (again)
Yesterday the plaintiffs in four lawsuits against the Pacifica National Board came to a settlement agreement with the Board that basically mirrors the resolution the Board passed in late Nov. to transfer power to an interim board and re-establish democracy within the network. This agreement is legally binding, under a judge's supervision, and so should be more likely to stick than Board's own resolution, which as I noted Tuesday seemed to be slipping already.
Comments from various folks in the movement to reform Pacifica have been pretty optimistic. Here are some excerpts.
The SavePacifica camp says:
"The agreement brings to an end two and a half years of legal, political, and community struggle following an illegal change... in the method of selecting Pacifica's directors, who had formerly been elected by the local station boards."
In an e-mail sent out across many community radio e-mail lists, Carol Spooner, one of the plaintiffs and leaders in the Pacifica reform mov't said:
"I am deeply happy -- feeling almost serene for the moment. Everything that we could have accomplished through the legal process, I
believe we did accomplish -- I believe we got everything we need in order to restore Pacifica."
Juan Gonzalez, former co-host of Democracy Now, relased an only slightly more cautious statement:
"We never deluded ourselves, however, about such a settlement, knowing that in this, as in any bargaining process, the 'devil is often in the details'.... For perhaps the first time in U.S. history, a people's movement of listeners, employees and political activists succeeded in wresting majority control of a radio network away from a small corporate clique that had illegally seized the reins of power several years earlier. "
And Common Dreams features this report on the resolution from the Houston Chronicle (via machination).
posted 12/13/2001 04:14:26 PM [link
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Meta-blogging? Intertwining Grassroots; Connecting the Blogging World
I generally try not to turn mediageek into a weblog about weblogging, since plenty of other webloggers do that. While I do not deny the growing impact of the weblogging mov't, I also think that the more you blog about weblogging, the more you insulate the community, since such posts are of interest to fairly small (albeit growing) group--namely, webloggers. In maintaining this weblog I hope to reach a wider audience than just people in the know about weblogs. Folks who may be interested in the content you post may very well not care that it comes from a weblog, and so lots of meta-blog posts can end up being just so much boring and useless info to those folks. (I need synonyms! How many times can one use the term "weblog" in a single paragraph?)
That said, I do think that weblogs do fall into the rough rubric of grassroots media, and do merit some mention on mediageek at times when either some very important news pops up, or there reaches a critical mass of interesting happenings that can be budled together into one post.
In the last year the weblogging community has become more interconnected through the development and use of various tools. Indices and search engines like Daypop and BlogFinder provide more precise exploration for blogs than a whole-web search like Yahoo. Since a huge component of weblogging is linking, a blog enthusiast at the MIT Media Lab devisedblogdex to track what webloggers are linking to. Looking at this index reveals that memes spread across the weblogger space of the Internet pretty quickly, as a wide variety of bloggers pick up from other bloggers links to news and whatever weirdness is hot. Each day blogdex ranks all of the links on all of blogs in its database by how many blogs link to them.
Today I found out about a new feature being implemented on blogdex that's just in beta now, called the "social network explorer." When you give it a link it shows you what other weblogs link to it. But the most interesting feature is that it also returns a list of blogs that blogdex thinks are similar ("blogdex also recommends"), similar to the recommendations that Amazon returns based upon your browsing and buying habits. This feature is still in evaluation mode, and so has no input interface. To use it put in this URL:http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/socnet/index.asp?ego= followed by the URL of the site you want to see connections for. So, for mediageek, you'd put in: http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/socnet/index.asp?ego=mediageek.org
Though one comment to the blogdex newsblog observes that the "blogdex also recommends" sites don't seem very similar, I found that several of the links to be pretty appropriate. The top link is for machination.org, self described as: "a weblog digging up indymedia and independent thought in the 'mainstream'." It's a website I'm glad to have found, and not sure I would've encountered otherwise. Though it makes me wonder what the algorithm is behind this matching feature. Did it do simple word matching -- like matching "indpendent?"
The interweaving links, rampant sharing and elaborating are a few things that set weblogging apart from more conventional webpages, and especially set it apart from the mainstream media. While CNN or the NY Times will put links to outside information, they are nonetheless very concerned with keeping you on their site -- keeping their sites "sticky." Those sites don't want to direct too much traffic away from the site (noting that Google nonetheless does quite well at directing traffic away). Webloggers do not necessarily have that concern, largely because they're not big profit enterprises. If they make any money at all -- as Blogger and Metafilter are trying to do --
they only do so to make back hosting costs, or help keep the webmasters alive for all the time they dump into their sites.
This doesn't mean that I don't think webloggers shouldn't make some money for their efforts. If more webloggers could weblog for a living (or part of a living), then we'd probably see even richer content. But I do argue that weblogs really don't adapt well to big-profit areans, since some of their basic principles of existence don't jive well with the received wisdom of making a profit on the web (such as it is). This is more than a simple knee-jerk "money and profit ruins everything good" argument--although in the modern world it's hard to make a BIG profit and stay true to founding principles (if those principles were not tied to profit in the first place). Rather, the success and utility of weblogs relies on their ability to be lean and quick -- that's why meme spread so fast. Their very idiosyncratic nature -- because they tend to be personal operations -- is also one of their greatest strenghts. It's very hard to turn this into a big profit enterprise (though Martha Stewart might argue otherwise). We'll still have to see where it all goes, but for right now I'll enjoy the ride.
posted 12/13/2001 01:57:59 PM [link
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Wednesday, December 12, 2001
NPR Investigates Newspaper-TV Duopolies
A report aired on today's Morning Edition examining the cross ownership of different media outlets in a given market, since the FCC is looking into revising or killing rules that limit such cross ownership. Click here to listen to the segment in Real Audio.
The report was reasonable if not particularly incisive. It focused a couple of markets with heavy cross-ownership, such as the Tribune company in Chicago which owns a local cable TV news station, a news paper and a radio station, and looked at what economic advantages owners get from such combinations. Then it also gave time to critics, such as one guy in Milwaukee who noted that the local daily also owns TV and radio, which allowed the owner to lobby heavily and successfully for a new baseball stadium.
One thing that always gets left out of these discussions in the mainstream press is the ability or, really, the necessity for the media to be a check on itself. That is, if a local TV station doesn't seem to be programming or acting in the public interest, isn't that something you'd expect the local newspaper to look into? How likely is that to happen if they have the same owner? And if these different outlets share a lot of their news staff, then you're really just getting pummelled from all sides by the same perspective -- a definite cut in diversity (such as it is in the contemporary media environment).
The NPR piece notes that FCC Chair Michael Powell thinks that these cross-ownership limits are particularly inappropriate for the nation's largest media markets, such as New York City, where there are multiple newspapers and at least a dozen broadcast TV stations. In such an environment having one duopoly might not make a big difference, but what if all media outlets are part of a cross-ownership deal of some kind? What if every TV station owner also had a newspaper, or radio station, or several? Then your overall diversity of ownership and voices gets quickly fractioned. What results is a small cartel of large media owners in a market who each have little incentive to check up on each other, lest one make itself a target and sour the waters for everyone. And this is on top of the effect on small, independnet operators who will be squeezed out of the market due to the cross-owned outlets being able to offer better ad rates across several media properties, forcing those small operators to sell or fold. Tell me again how the free market is supposed to be friendly to the independent businessperson? Do we really want our local media to be Wal-Marted?
Previous posts on cross-ownership:
FCC Creates Media Ownership Working Group
Lighting-fast Deregulation and Consolidation: FCC Approves Fox/News Purchase of Additional NYC TV Station
Damn It's Gettin' Thick: Disney Prez Says Local Ownership not Necessary for Good Local TV News
Congress and Industry Butt Heads over Ownership Limits
posted 12/12/2001 01:18:23 PM [link
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Tuesday, December 11, 2001
(Relatively) Short Pacifica Update
So much is going on at the embattled Pacifica radio network and I really don't want this topic to dominate the mediageek newsblog. Thus I'll just post a bunch of short updates when a critical mass of news is gathered. For those who don't want to wait for me to post, you can get things more directly from the Pacifica Campaign and Save Pacifica.
In late Nov. the Pacifica Network's national board reached an agreement to transfer power to an interim board which would work at democratizing the network and solving long-standing problems. Apparently that transition hasn't been going so smoothly, and so plaintiffs in four different lawsuits lodged against the Pacifica national board are now set to have a "Mandatory Settlement Conference" with the pre-trial judge today, in the hope of mediating a solution. These suits were on the brink of resolution at the beginning of November when Pacifica backed out. Those lawsuits allege illegal and anti-democratic changing of Pacifica's bylaws which made the national board completely self-elected, disenfranchising the five radio stations that make up the network, and their listeners which donate a large proportion of the network's funds.
As all this is happening, the most recent Arbitron ratings show that the audience at four out of five of the Pacifica stations is shrinking, which is ironic since the prevailing rationale for why Pacifica management is undertaking such radical changes is to increase audience ratings and attract more well-heeled listener/donors.
And now, today, there are reports that Utrice Leid, the executive director of Pacifica, has resigned. Leid is best known for being the station manager at Pacifica's NYC station WBAI where in Dec. 2000 she oversaw the firing of several long-time staffers and volunteers in what has become known as the Christmas Coup.
Previously: I tried to lend some perspective to the corporatization trend in noncommercial radio that has caused so much suffering at Pacifica, in the not-so-subtly titled post Pacifica, pacifica, pathetica... and public radio.
posted 12/11/2001 06:48:41 PM [link
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Monday, December 10, 2001
Broadcasting and Cable is reporting that the radio industry and the recording industry reached an agreement over royalty rates for radio stations to stream their music on-line. This brief report doesn't disclose any of the details, but does note that the Copyright Office is under no obligation to accept the terms, even though the Office sponsored the arbitration. This deal has no impact on web-only music streaming.
I'm actually itching for the details because I want to know if noncommercial broadcasters have been given a break of any kind. Previous details about early negotiations gave the impression that royalties are to be based on percentage of profit or ad revenue, which for a noncommercial station would effectively be a percentage of $0. I have my doubts that the recording industry would be willing to settle for zero, so I'd like to know how much they'll expect from noncomms. If it turns out to be reasonable, this may allow a rejuvenation of non-profit and community stations taking to the 'net.
Previous posts on this topic:
Digital Media Distribution: Is the Honeymoon Over? 10/10/01
Is Streaming Worth It for Public Radio? 10/4/01
How hard can you beat digital music until it's all underground? 8/31/01
Webradio -- a Slight Return 7/6/01
Independent Music? 2/13/01
posted 12/10/2001 02:52:39 PM [link
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Friday, December 07, 2001
DIY Net-Radio Provider Shuts Down
CNet reports that Live365.com, which provided free and low-cost streaming audio hosting for just about anyone, has shut down, citing problems with their broadband Internet provider. CNet says they didn't get a comment from Live365, so it's unknown what the specific problem is.
This is just another chink in the 'net radio armor, as the once ballyhooed on-line radio revolution fizzles out due to high costs and recording industry gouging. It seems that maybe serving out 1000+ 56kbps mp3 streams wasn't such a cheap thing to do after all.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see net radio become a significant force for grassroots broadcasting, but the simple fact is that the basic facts of streaming media have been overlooked in the rush to see it as the next big thing. In a dense urban area you can service thousands of listeners with a 100 watt FM radio station that costs just a thousand dollars to set up and pennies a day to operate. To serve just a hundred listeners with a low-fi mp3 stream (around 24kbps) you need to have 2400kpbs or 2.4mbps of bandwidth -- equivalent to around 2 T1 lines, which currently go for around $1000 a month each. Do the math. If you don't mind serving a small simultaneous niche audience (like 10 or 20 simultaneous listeners), net radio can be pretty good, but if you want to reach any sort of mass (like the big boys do), then it's gonna cost big bucks. An operation like Live365 made it artificially cheap because they were absorbing the cost, and likely not making a profit--like so many dot-cot-bombs did. Even if you wanted to break even on the enterprise, you'd have to charge something, like FreeSpeechTV was forced to do earlier this year.
However, on the brighter side, one way the Internet has succeeded in enabling grassroots media is by providing a convenient way for audio programs to be exchanged and archived. These programs don't have to be listened to in real-time, becaus they're intended for download, and so the simultaneous server and bandwidth load can be mitigated. Mostly these programs are intended for and played on radio stations which serve as the final broadcast medium, so the download demand is lower than if they were serving the listeners directly from the server. A good example of this model in action is the A-infos Radio Project.
posted 12/7/2001 12:44:16 PM [link
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Wednesday, December 05, 2001
Some updates to the DIY Files today...
posted 12/5/2001 01:06:56 PM [link
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And yet, more cable modem....
@Home announces that it will stay on for three months and then shut down in Februrary 2002, after getting a $355 million cash infusion from its cable system partners (except AT&T). My local cable company, Insight Communications, says it paid out $10 million out of the $355 total, since it's only got 75,000 customers using @Home. Insight says its looking for a broadband provider to take over in February.
Meanwhile, my girlfriend's parents who live in Denver told us last night that their cable modem service has been out since the weekend, since their cable provider is AT&T. AT&T promises to have them back on line by next Wednesday. It's a good thing these companies don't provide electricity and natural gas!
posted 12/5/2001 01:06:22 PM [link
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Tuesday, December 04, 2001
More Cable Modem
David Coursey from the ZDNet Anchor Desk takes AT&T to task for their role in screwing up Excite @Home and says this an example why there needs to be regulation on Internet service. Wondering why the FCC never stepped in, he asks the keen question, "Since when has a bankruptcy court been the place where telecommunications policy is decided?"
I both agree and disagree with Coursey's position. I agree from the standpoint that really crappy and greedy corporate policy led to lots of folks getting screwed out of a communications utility they'd come to rely on. But I've also come to have very little faith in the regulatory will and efficacy of the FCC. At it's best the FCC will comply with the law, but can be truly weasly with regard to its own regulatory policy. In order for the FCC to be an effective watchdog for public and consumer interest in Internet service there has to be clear laws dictating those protections, otherwise the Commission will likely take the path of least resistance out of the line of fire, especially with Commissioner Michael "simplistic free market" Powell at the helm.
posted 12/4/2001 11:42:06 AM [link
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Monday, December 03, 2001
Mainstream Props to Indymedia?
Lynn Steffens posted to the Chicago IMC a review of the July/August issue of the venerable Columbia Journalism Review, entitled "Mainstream Columbia Journalism Review Takes a Look at IndyMedia; Finds Merit." I looked for the article in question in the on-line edition of the CJR and found it in the Sept/Oct. edition, rather than the July/Aug edition as the review says.
posted 12/3/2001 12:00:12 PM [link
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Those Wacky Cable Modems
I had a bit of a panic Saturday morning when my cable modem was down. I thought to myself: "those bastards at Excite @home and their creditors!" That afternoon service came back on and I felt a swell of relief. I must admit, I'm a cable modem junky. For those few hours when I thought my service was sunk, I thought about how much I would be willing to pay for DSL--which is newly available in my area for a reasonable price. Later I found out that AT&T's cable customers got screwed as Excite pulled the plug on them, mostly because AT&T has been assholes about it. In fact, the saga of AT&T is amazing, going from the largest company in the world in 1980, still remaining strong after being broken up, then screwing it all up in the 90s. All mostly due to corporate arrogance and lack of direction, I reckon. And here in Champaign-Urbana we just narrowly escaped disaster. AT&T used to be our cable company (our 3rd in five years) but then sold to Insight, a small regional company. Unlike AT&T, Insight is having "positive negotiations" with @Home.
But it still sucks being dependent on these stupid and self-destructive corporations. Please explain to me how AT&T or @Home runs their affairs any better than the federal goverment, as the right-wing laissez-faire corporatists would have you believe. (and don't even get me started on Enron... $31.2 billion in debt that it can't repay?)
posted 12/3/2001 11:14:56 AM [link
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