A family-owned hipster vinyl store in the San Francisco Sunset District sells more cassette tapes every month. Independent bookstores are thriving. And computer security expert Bruce Schneier is working with states to implement hacker-proof paper ballot systems before the midterms.
This got me thinking about Mark Kurlansky. And the FCC, the word “variegated” and our out-of-shape rights.
I. Kurlansky’s ‘Technological Fallacy’
Lewis Lapham asked author Mark Kurlansky on a podcast (which I transcribed at my site) why his book “Paper: Paging Through History” began with a prologue to what he calls the “technological fallacy”:
MK: That's because I kind of went through kind of an evolution working on this book. It's my 20th book. I don't think I've ever written a book where I've so changed my thinking as I did on this book. …
I also came to realize particularly when talking to people in the computer field, that paper wasn't dying out at all. I mean I also learned this from my own field, in publishing. …
MK: And they [ebooks] just got to a certain level and they leveled off. Because people like to read books some people like to read some books in hardbook and some books in electronic and ... I came to understand. I started thinking about history and it's really very unusual for a new invention to appear and kill off something else. That rarely happens. It usually just creates an alternative. Now it may over a thousand years go in that direction, but, hell, the candle business is a multi-billion dollar business.
A new invention usually just creates an alternative? It’s rare for a new invention to appear and kill of something else? Someone tell Wall Street. And hedge fund newspaper owners and antitrust regulators.
This brings to mind a cloud hanging over us that I trust will remain suspended indefinitely. Or will dissipate temporarily if we perform (unlikely) a overdue periodic reckoning with what happened some time back with the FCC, the FTC and Congress.
Further back than last November, when the FCC rolled back Net Neutrality. Further back than last October, the FCC deregulated TV ownership caps and enabled joint-sales agreements, positioning Sinclair or another singular corporation to embark on a nationwide, consolidation shopping spree.
The cloud hanging over us worthy of a periodic, overdue reckoning concerns one event further back than that.
II. FCC History
One very quick backstory: Robert Short Jr.
In 1980, one fifth the population of Syracuse New York was African American, but it had never had a black-owned radio station, according to the book Fighting for Air. Robert Short Jr, who’d worked in accounting, and paid off his house, jumped at the chance when, in 1988, the FCC opened the 30-day bidding for a broadcast license and reports hinted they were pressured to consider an African American owner in his area.
Short Jr. knew the application process would be hard, but not that hard. He knew it would be expensive, but not that expensive. The application process lasted six years. “The legal fees alone were over $100,000; then there were engineering studies, research, consulting, FCC filing fees. I mortgaged my house. I got cash advances and maxed out my credit cards. I borrowed money from my parents and my siblings. I risked everything. The big companies [competing for the license] dragged out the process to weed out the small players. And if you drop out, you lose everything you put in.”
Somehow FCC awarded Short Jr. the bid. He had to find new investors which took about a year and
in May 1995, Short Jr. built WRDS 102.1 FM from scratch and went on the air. At first he filled time with nationally syndicated personalities like Tom Joyner. But “this mattered to me” Short Jr. said and he filled the schedule with soul music, localism, civic affairs programming, a “station-sponsored Unity Day” and “within a year, people know who we were.”
1996
When the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed into law, the “playing field changed right beneath our feet” Short Jr. said.
“I was competing against some big companies before, but it was relatively fair battle because they couldn’t monopolize the whole advertising pie. “
Clear Channel bought seven stations in his market. Its operating costs were “unbelieveably” low, “because they moved their stations together, turned them into juke boxes with voice-tracking technology and syndicated programs — which they also owned! — and they had one general manager oversee the whole group.”
Clear Channel also bought up billboards and theaters and talent booking agencies in the Syracuse area.
Short didn’t give up easily:
WRDS 102.1 FM was more than a business for Short. Both his dreams of running a radio station and his commitment to enriching the cultural life of Syracuse’s African American community made him reluctant to sell out even when the advertisers pulled back their purchases.
When fees spiked for Arbitron ratings service, to which Short subscribed so that his sales representatives could deliver the same market data to advertisers that Clear Channel offered, he was forced to pare down the staff.
But Short’s partners were less willing to endure regular beatings from the ruthless giant that dominated the Syracuse market, and they persuaded him to sell WRDS to another competitor, Radio Corporation (later renamed Galaxy Communications) in 2000, after only five years on the air.
Radio Corporation converted WRDS-FM into WZUN-FM, switched from the urban format to light rock, and when that failed, experimented with two other styles of programming. Clear Channel took advantage of changes in WZUN’s format to convert one of its own stations to the urban contemporary style. It played similar music to WRDS, Short said, but the conglomerate’s approach to station management was completely different.
“They don’t line up special programs to get the kids into basketball games. They don’t have anyone going into the schools. They do zero community work. They don’t give our community a voice. They don’t want us to have a voice. They just want us so they can sell ads.”
- From Fighting for Air, Chapter 3: Clear Channel Comes to Town.
On a recent CNN interview, the clip of which I cannot find, the day of the shootings at the Parkland high school in Florida, one of the less-known teens faced the camera and told the anchor something I’ll never forget: “you have to understand. Our lives up to this point have been run like a corporation.”
Those teens have social media, but lately they must wonder if social media just wants them so the company can sell ads.
Yes, a few of the teens get a voice. Emma Gonzales makes national news. But that leaves a lot of teens unheard save for the likes they get on their screens.
A periodic reckoning of what happened to radio after 1996 might not be a bad idea.
III. Variegated
Tim Snyder gives periodic lectures on YouTube extending the work from his book “On Tyranny.” One lecture struck me more than others, and a specific section that I transcribed on my site (video at link) relates to this conversation.
Snyder describes Media vs. ‘Variegated Media’
...The Russian attack on the US took place primarily through the media. And it gives us a chance to ask what has actually happened to our media in the last decade.
In fact even the fact that I’m using the word media, and you’re all nodding your head media media we’re thinking we use the word media … that itself reveals the basic problem.
Because what has happened we’ve shifted from being a country where there were lots of regional and local newspapers which provided you know an imperfect but nevertheless a shaded a variegated a specific view of daily life of people. We’ve shifted from that to something else. We’ve shifted to this place where there is one media. And we’re for it or against it. Or whatever.
I mean something very specific here. A decade ago, the US still had a great deal more local press than it did now. In the late 2000s the local press began to suffer. After the financial crisis of 2008, roughly 40 newspaper men and women were laid off every day. On average. In 2009. By 2010, the industry had basically cratered. Now why does this matter so much? Why does it matter that there is not a local newspaper here or a regional newspaper there?
It means that people shift from thinking of “journalism” as something done by people who they know. Because they see them at the city council meeting or they see them at the PTA or whatever. People shift from that idea that journalism as about life. To another idea. Which is that there’s not really journalism. There’s just the media. There’s just television. There are the networks. And what do the networks cover? This is important.
Networks cover international news. They cover what happens on the coasts. They cover DC. They cover NY. They cover LA. If you’re in Oklahoma, and you’re watching one of the networks your face appears pretty much only when there is a natural disaster. Now that’s a slight exaggeration but it gets at an important truth.
When you clear away the local news, what you’re doing is you’re opening the way for the fake news. Because if journalism starts to become the media it starts to become something distant and abstract something not about you, you’re only one step away from beginning to believe the things that really aren’t true. Right? If news becomes distant, then the next step is the news becomes fake.
Now why does this have to do with Russia? Because amazingly the same thing happened in Russia just a few years before. There is also not local news in Russia. There is also not regional news in Russia. The way Russian news works is everything is huddled around a few television stations. And the television stations give Russians all across that massive country an idea of who the enemies and the friends are. An idea of what the conspiracies are supposed to be.
A tweet today from a New York Times reporter covering a Trump rally said this:
IV. Our Out-of-Shape Rights
We still have rights — the airwaves like the parks belong to the public. And we have a right to appeal to the FCC and Congress when a licensed broadcaster is not serving the public interest. This could include localism — it’s hard to know, these rights are so out of shape we forgot what they looked like. But people exercised them as recently as the last decade.
The Economist in 2016 devoted an entire issue to the possibility of reviving an antitrust spirit. That’s not a liberal rag AFAIK.
There is more backstory to fill in, in upcoming diaries I plan to do so.
Please spread the word about Kurlansky’s “Technological Fallacy” because it could mean something for our democracy. Thank you.