Congress Poised to Kill Community TV

[dogday]

Congress is about to strike a blow that would eliminate the last remaining policy insuring local oversight of communications companies. A GOP-led effort on behalf of the telephone lobby (principally Verizon and AT&T), also backed by many Democrats, is about to toss in the dustbin the longstanding policy enabling cities or counties to negotiate a "franchise" agreement with companies that provide cable TV service. A key House committee is poised to pass legislation that would strip away the rights of communities to have any say in how phone and cable networks serve them in the digital era.

As Verizon and AT&T roll out their broadband Internet and video services, they wish to remove any obstacle to securing lucrative revenues from signing up customers from the wealthiest parts of the country. The phone giants complain that current law requires them to negotiate with each town (as cable TV currently does) to develop a unique deal that benefits the community, and that giving local officials the authority to have an oversight role is slowing down their business plans.

With the backing of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and in exchange for some likely Tom DeLay-style quid pro quo that will give the GOP lots of "Baby Bell" campaign cash, legislation is being rushed through Congress. Local oversight is to be replaced by a "national franchise" that will permit the most powerful communications giants in the Internet era--large cable and phone companies--to operate without regard for local concerns. Under the bill (co-sponsored by House Commerce Committee chair Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas, and Bobby Rush, a Democrat from Illinois) phone companies could engage in a form of economic redlining, serving only the most affluent parts of town; the current local franchise system prevents such discrimination. Communities would not be able to enact any consumer safeguards, such as privacy protection; the bill would permit our very corrupt Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to set such protection rules.

While the proposed legislation does require phone and cable companies to pay annual fees to cities and also to provide public, educational and governmental (PEG) access channels for local use, it freezes in time PEG capacity--setting aside only a handful of public channels while placing off-limits the enormous potential of broadband cable systems to serve the public interest. Under the proposed national franchise plan, cable companies would be able to opt out of their current agreements, leaving local officials and residents powerless at the precise time when digital communications services are playing an ever-growing role in our daily lives.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060508/congress_kills_community_tv

Congress Is Screwing The People Of The United States

[OneBlueSky]

1. the major Democratic campaign theme should be . . .

"Government Of the PEOPLE, By the PEOPLE, For the PEOPLE" . . .
(first popularized by a Republican president, btw) . . .

unfortunately, it's highly likely that most elected officials -- Republican AND Democrat -- would not and could not support such a notion . . .

a true government of, by, and for the people would seriously derail their corporate gravy train . . . and we can't have that, now can we . . . :sarcasm:

[dogday]

2. Congress is shutting the people down

Public access, internet access, better wake up before it is too late.. We are being sold out by our own people....

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. God forbid that anyone should "slow down a company's

business plans." :sarcasm:

[nashville_brook]

4. greed preceeds irrelevancy (warning: this might piss some off)

television is not a human right. we can live just fine without it. i haven't had cable for years. every so often the husband will sign up to catch a season of a show in progress instead of watching the DVDs later -- we pay the freaking 100 bucks a months and NEVER WATCH THE IDIOT BOX. then we cancel it.

before the internet, i would have argued this differently. i would have said television is the only way people can stay connected. now, i think it's how people stay tranquilized. the FCC hasn't done it's job in decades. i say fuck 'em.

it sucks that greed will ruin this form of media -- but maybe it's evolution.

[Hidden Stillness]

5. We the People are Being Erased From Representation in our Own Society

"Congress," (or actually the corporate lobbyists who own the Government now), are starting to organize several plans now, that will be huge changes, and only part of which I have read anything at all informative about. "Strangely," the corporate media is censoring the information about what it is doing here. There are going to be huge changes of many kinds, all of which will add up to the end of the public's involvement in any part of the process, and all of which will consolidate propaganda capabilities in a very few global corporate hands.

Cable corporations will not have to provide public access, local government announcements, college course broadcasts, etc., (many already cut that, which I did not even think was legal; the cable provider I am with now has a channel for Public, Educational and Governmental Access programming--and there is never anythnig on it; pisses me off). They are pushing this "ala carte" thing that will kill the smaller channels that you may never have heard of and discover only after you have the service; they are planning an alarming scheme to kill completely open broadcast TV, as of 2009, so that you will have to have cable, as the TV will have no over-the-air signal to pick up anymore, and will be blank. I can't get any information on this outrageous scam. This general trend has been going on for many years now, starting with that bastard Reagan, killing the Fairness Doctrine and the first attempts to cut the public's right of access--networks no longer had to broadcast anything from independant producers, etc. Then came the dear friend of corporate lobbyists, Clinton, and the refusal to regulate anything meaningful or stop any mergers or ownership monopolies, etc., at all anymore.

What makes this so important is that now, it is not our culture anymore; we actually have nowhere to go for a public forum for the public good. It is mind-control coming straight from your boss, the bank, or the Republican dirty tricks committee, now bigger than ever. We do not have the larger, general influence over the way our citizens will be educated for the general good and their own, as opposed to the corporate world's endless, short-term-utilitarian smear and disinformation campaigns that only make us ignorant, and sometimes make us slit each other's throats. If you don't think people are actually any better than this shit, just notice how both the devil Bush's and the devil Cheney's approval poll numbers have plummeted, into the unreachable depths, as soon as people got any accurate reporting on what those two bastards are actually up to! It was the instantaneous reaction of a Nation taking control of its destiny. Take away the ability to get any real information past the corporate censor, and we will never be able to react.

Searching around a little bit, I found a group called Alliance for Community Media, www.alliancecm.org/ , that is really good. They have a page "About Community Media--Quick Facts on Media Access," that is really good. The problem, of course, is that this process is so far along, that we the people do not have the access or influence all by ourselves anymore, to affect things, and this was due to both Republicans and the corporate lobbyists of "D"LC, Inc. If we can't stop some of these corporate consolidations, soon we will not even have a democracy, an economy, or any recognizable government. It will all be them.