Goodbye to Free Television
I’m not a huge fan of network television, or television as a whole for that matter, but I’m also not a fan of the government using tax dollars and public property to give huge gifts to big business.
As part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Congress has stipulated that analog television stations, or “free” TV, would no longer be able to broadcast after February 17, 2009. Although the law passed by the narrowest possible of margins in the Senate. Vice President Cheney had to cast his tie-breaking vote to pass the measure.
The law fits in with the Deficit Reduction Act because the government will auction off the analog airwaves to increase our capacity for emergency broadcasting, a gap highlighted by the aftermath of 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina. The government will keep some of the frequencies for emergency purposes, and then auction off the rest of the soon-to-be obsolete to increase revenues and reduce the deficit.
The only other reason Congress has given for this move is that the Japanese are way ahead of us in television technology. But the Japanese have been way ahead of us in just about every aspect of technology for a long time, so why is it suddenty a national priority to push American television into the digital age?
Because the Corporate media giants told them to. “It’s just about the best Christmas present that I can think of coming to the tech sector from the public policy process,” said Janice Obuchowski, executive director of the High Tech DTV Coalition.
Manufacturers will stop making analog television sets and broadcasters will stop broadcasting the analog signals. This means that anyone who wants to watch TV with have to get cable or a satellite dish. Furthermore, if you can’t afford a new digital TV, you’ll have to get an adapter for your old analog TV, which may or may not work. This will no doubt result in windfall profits for big media, which is increasingly being controlled by a dwindling number of giant corporations.
What appears to be a revenue raising measure is really a massive gift to the small number of companies that already have a huge amount of control over our mass media. Congress is pretty much finishing off the process begun with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. While we were sleeping, the Republican-controlled Congress, with the blessing of the Clinton Administration, gave a huge gift to the United States’ media giants – the national airwaves. This gift has made corporate media entities countless billions at the expense of the taxpayers who, up until that point, collectively owned the airwaves.
But that’s not all the government is doing for the media giants. Under the guise of fairness for all, Congress has set aside $1.5 billion with which underprivileged Americans can purchase vouchers with which they can purchase digital converters or get basic cable service.
And there’s more. The government is only setting aside $5 million dollars for educating the public about the digital transition. According to Jeannine Kenney, a senior policy analyst for the organization, that’s not nearly enough. Since the media companies are going to be making the profits, shouldn’t they be the ones educating the public?
Not only is the government handing over the proverbial keys for the family car, they’re helping to pay for the gas with taxpayer money.
This will bring us only more of the same control of media that we’ve come to loathe. An even closer relationship between the government and corporate America means even less public discourse and an even tighter grip on the American mind. While we paid for this control the first time by giving away the rights to public airwaves, now we’re making the airwaves obsolete in favor of a better deal not for the American people, but for the media conglomerates.
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Technorati Tags: network television, Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Vice President Cheney, Hurricane Katrina, High Tech DTV Coalition, Clinton Administration
Filed under: Politics on February 6th, 2007
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