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Bob Goldfarb on Media


Thursday, September 25, 2003
    Scrutinizing the BBC

    The BBC is getting it from all sides.  The Hutton Inquiry is investigating a BBC reporter's allegation that the government "sexed up" an intelligence report on Iraq that it submitted to Parliament, and the broadcaster faces questions about whether it's entitled to have its charter renewed in 2006.  As The New York Times headlines today, "The BBC Loses Bit Of Its Luster."

    Even the BBC's classical-music radio network, Radio 3, has come under fire.  As the Independent newspaper reports, a member of the House of Commons has complained that "there appears to be less and less music and more talk," and he dislikes the non-classical music now aired late at night.  The Independent's own music critic, Bayan Northcott, feels "they have lost any nerve to challenge their listeners and lead them. They are always trying not to offend so that people keep their sets switched on."

    To an American listener, these concerns about Radio 3 seem almost laughable.  I consult with classical-music radio stations for a living, so I listen to a lot of them.  Compared with virtually any classical-music station in the U.S., Radio 3 is more adventurous in its music.  Today's programming from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., for instance, included a Bach cantata, a piece by Steve Reich, Itzhak Perlman playing an arrangement of the Yiddish folk song "Der Rebbe Elimelech," and Turkish choral music, as well as more conventional choices like a Vladimir Horowitz performance of Chopin, and Nigel Kennedy playing the Chausson Poeme.

    Its presenters (as they call them) have been criticized lately for being chatty, but to my ears they are extremely well-informed, concise, accessible, and to the point.  According to the Independent, when "Discovering Music, a studio-based discussion and music programme, [changed] into Charles Hazelwood Discovering Music, which features an audience chipping in, there was bound to be trouble."  I lisened to an episode of that series that explained the sonata form, and it was more overtly educational than almost anything on classical radio in the U.S.  It's all relative, isn't it?

    The reason American classical-music stations have narrowed their playlists and dropped most of their educational programming is that it became untenable to broadcast to less than 1% of the population, as they had been doing.  Radio 3, whose budget dwarfs that of all of National Public Radio, reaches only about 0.7% of the population, while commercial competitor Classic FM routinely attracts 4 or 5%.  (Admittedly, Radio 3's budget is so large in part because it employs hundreds of musicians, and commissions a lot of new music.)  Considering the amount of public money it consumes, as well as the competition, it's a wonder that Radio 3 has kept its integrity so well.

    posted by bob @ 12:48 pm | Permanent link
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
    The Mysterious Economics of Digital Cable

    Today's Wall Street Journal reports that cable-TV subscribers don't value digital cable as highly as expected.  The rate of customers signing up for the service has slowed, and every month 5% of those who ordered digital upgrades decide to disconnect (some for unrelated reasons, to be sure).

    The question is, why don't the cable companies offer permanent--not just introductory--price incentives for digital service?  As the Journal explains, it actually *benefits* the cable operators considerably when a household switches to digital service, because digital delivery takes up a tenth (!) of the bandwidth of analog.  And the capital investment in upgrading the cable systems has largely been recouped through high-speed Internet business.  Yet digital cable costs $10 - $15 a month more than analog, which is bound to discourage customers.

    In a rational market the price would come down, but most cable companies enjoy local monopolies and can keep prices artificially high if they want.  If they're risk-averse, and they probably are, they would want to keep their existing cash-flow rather than lower prices (and lose revenue) in order to attract new customers.  But I'm just guessing.  I'd be curious to know what the Journal thinks.

    posted by bob @ 6:36 pm | Permanent link
    "Censorship"

    There are billboards around town--my town, anyway--that advertise the new NBC series "Coupling" by showing its handsome cast naked, their modesty protected by strategically located props.  The ads set the stage for the re-enactment of a three-act morality play that has practically become a public ritual.

    This drama typically opens as creators daringly unveil new work that challenges contemporary mores.  In Act II, there is an outcry against the alleged affront to taste and morality, countered by charges of censorship by the protectors of free expression.  The last act brings some minor or symbolic action, and then both sides claim vindication.

    In this season's version of the drama, NBC has explicitly admitted "trying to make 'Coupling' as provocative as we can within intelligent boundaries."  KSL-TV, NBC's affiliate in Salt Lake City, decided not to broadcast the show because of its content.  Then a local viewer wrote an approving letter to the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune declaring, "Apparently the industry has no intention of screening the type of shows that would appeal to family and family values.  Have the media and our society become amoral?"  Right on cue, Tribune columnist Vince Horiuchi calls the station's decision "censorship," complaining that KSL isn't "allowing the viewers to make their own choice."

    In the end, another local outlet agreed to air the show, so viewers actually *can* make their own choice.  But the columnist is happy because he can portray KSL's decision as censorship, and NBC is happy because the show will be aired in the Salt Lake market.  The curtain falls.

    This  "drama" may work on the symbolic level, as a fight between good (free expression) and evil (censorship), or between morality (keeping sex off prime-time network television) and immorality (greed).  The problem is that the stereotypes don't really apply here.  This particular show--which I haven't seen--can't possibly be a turning point in television standards, considering what's already acceptable in prime time.  And local affiliates don't necessarily carry every show distributed by a network, so it's not censorship when a station passes on a particular show.

    If you ask me, the real question is whether the series turns out to be popular enough to justify its high ad rates (6th-highest on television).  That will tell us more about the state of America's values than any invocation of amorality or censorship.

    posted by bob @ 11:05 am | Permanent link
Monday, September 22, 2003
    Infotainment (Part 3)

    An essay in the October Harper's by Gene Lyons makes the argument that "today's Washington press corps has grown as decadent and self-protective as any politician or interest group it is supposed to monitor."  How?  "Big-time political journalism has become a subdivision of the entertainment industry, and news itself a form of politicized 'infotainment.'"

    Nothing is new about that observation except the word "politicized," and thereby hangs the tale.  Of course TV news is intended to be entertaining as well.  Lyon's novel proposition is that "reporters and pundits can achieve a sublunary, albeit quite lucrative, kind of stardom by appearing on TV and copping an attitude."

    The piece takes as its point of departure the recent book by Eric Alterman entitled What Liberal Media, but that's just the beginning.  Where Alterman worries about the power of conglomerates, Lyons is more concerned about reporters, editors, and producers who keep a news story alive by rearranging evidence to support its premises.  He also believes that members of the press corps elevate their personal feelings about presidential candidates (e.g., ridiculing Al Gore as a nerd) above their journalistic obligations--which makes them more entertaining on TV and furthers their own celebrity, at the expense of public service.

    He may overstate the case, but Lyons is right to warn us about the power of the pundits.  Power corrupts, but we may not notice if it's entertaining enough.  A lot has been written about the threat to the free exchange of ideas from media concentration.  But if the most famous journalists were truly to become as self-interested and decadent as Lyons claims, that would pose a much greater danger to democracy than if Disney et al. were allowed to own a few more TV stations.

    posted by bob @ 6:01 pm | Permanent link
Sunday, September 21, 2003
    Rewriting Radio History

    I always admire Alexander Stille's erudite pieces for the "Arts & Ideas" page of the Saturday New York Times, and yesterday's entry, about media as a tool of rebellion, was as thought-provoking as usual.  Unfortunately its account of the early days of American radio was misleading because it relied on a tendentious source.

    Stille, drawing on an interview with Mount Holyoke professor Daniel Czitrom, declares "it wasn't until the 1920's, when large national broadcasting companies like CBS and NBC emerged, that government took firm control of radio and issued licenses to private companies."  Actually the Department of Commerce began issuing licenses in 1920, well before the proliferation of radio stations and radio receivers.

    Then Stille goes on to repeat Czitrom's claim that "by 1937...88% of the wattage power were in the hands of NBC and CBS."  That's seriously misleading.  The networks didn't control the stations; each local affiliate controlled its own programming.  Indeed, CBS and NBC had to sell themselves to each affiliate (aside from the handful they owned) because they needed the outlets to reach their audience.

    These seemingly minor mistakes are important because they are used to support a broader suggestion: that government regulators, in virtual collusion with big business, choked off independent voices and "blunted much of the subversive potential of radio."  On the contrary, regulation in the United States originally was a response to the need for technical coordination, not a way to stifle noncomformists.  The implied comparison with broadcasting monopolies in other countries is unfounded.

    There's no doubt that dissenting voices can mobilize revolution in oppressed societies, as Stille observes.  But it's a mistake to think that the United States bears any comparison to them.  The real obstacle to subversive radio in the United States, then as now, is that the public is mostly not interested in listening to it.

    posted by bob @ 7:16 pm | Permanent link
Saturday, September 20, 2003
    Infotainment (Part 2)

    Los Angeles Times media columnist Tim Rutten writes today about Arnold Schwarzenegger's novel media strategy in his campaign for governor of California.  He announced his candidacy on "The Tonight Show," and lately has chatted with Oprah Winfrey, Larry King and Howard Stern...but not with political reporters.  And Schwarzenegger is the leading Republican candidate.

    Why is his strategy working? Democratic political strategist Bill Carrick told Rutten, "Most people today are suspicious of institutional filters, including so-called serious journalism.  They think they're getting direct access through Larry and Oprah, and, in fact, they think that information is more valid than having reporters tell them what Arnold did or did not say."

    He's right, and it's a revolutionary development in American media.  The journalistic enterprise has been predicated on the idea that a reporter is a surrogate for the reader/viewer, a tribune serving the public's best interests.  If voters would rather bypass such intermediaries, then news outlets will not be much valued as "impartial" sources of reliable information.  Instead, consumers will increasingly turn to strongly-characterized voices they personally like.

    Schwarzenenegger has been talking with entertainment personalities rather than the stars of TV news, but that may not an important distinction.  The big difference is the campaign's decision to act on the public's mistrust of intermediaries and appeal directly to TV viewers through personality-oriented interviews, to the virtual exclusion of traditional journalists.  This may not be a watershed moment in American history, but it's a milestone in the changing relationship of the public to the media.

    posted by bob @ 8:48 pm | Permanent link
Friday, September 19, 2003
    That's Entertainment (Infotainment?)

    Sitting in sunny Southern California I feel remote from the ravages of Isabel, although my friends on the East Coast have been telling me just how serious it all is.  Its main impact on me is as a media event, so I felt immedate sympathy for Howard Kurtz's piece in today's Washington Post.  He rightly asks why otherwise sensible reporters get soaked in the rain to report on the hurricane when they could convey the same information from a dry, heated studio.  The answer, of course, is that it's more entertaining.

    One of the sacred premises of television news--the medium through which most Americans are informed about current events--is that it is a terribly serious enterprise, critical to the democratic process and public safety.  The debates about media ownership are just one example of how of this is an article of faith.  It may well be true, but television is also our most pervasive entertainment medium, and that inevitably affects the form and character of its content.

    That's why ritual denunciations of the frivolousness of television news are beside the point.  (I'm not talking about Kurtz.)  TV isn't purely a public service, nor is it purely show business.  It has elements of both, and its success depends on striking the right balance between the two.  News directors know that, of course.  That's why TV reporters won't come in out of the rain.

    P.S.: Kurtz also quotes a couple of delicious obervations about the storm coverage from the blogs of Andrew Sullivan and Gregg Easterbrook that are, respectively, funny and informative.

    posted by bob @ 8:15 am | Permanent link
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
    The Romance of the Small

    There's a piece in the September-October Columbia Journalism Review about Low-Power FM radio (LPFM) that is remarkable mostly for retailing a lot of popularly-held prejudices as if they were true.

    For starters, author Laurie Kelliher tells us that LPFM stations "are voices that have either been pushed out of the radio spectrum or never invited into it": civil rights organizations, environmental activists, church groups, school districts.  Well, churches and school districts have owned radio stations for a long time.  San Francisco NPR station KALW is owned by the S.F. Unified School District, and Chicago's public station, WBEZ, was put on the air by the Board of Education.  The Pacifica Foundation, longtime advocates of civil rights and preserving the environment, controls major stations in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and Houston.  And church-based broadcasters are everywhere.

    The truth is that anybody who paid a filing fee could apply to the FCC for a radio frequency back before the AM and FM bands filled up.  And lots of unconventional people and groups did: evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (KFSG, Los Angeles), the founders of alternative stations from St. Louis to Seattle, and even two friends who started a classical radio station in their apartment in Syracuse, New York.  The suggestion that certain "voices" were excluded is an appealing myth.

    Kelliher is also selective in her history when she reports that the birth of the low-power FM movment dates to a 1-watt license issued in 1987.  The FCC granted numerous 1- watt and 10-watt licenses to high schools and colleges as early as the 1960's.  Perhaps the man she credits with starting the movement--who broadcast from a housing project about police brutality--better fits her narrative than his more prosaic antecedents.

    According to Kelliher, "the appetite for [the stations] speaks to a growing need in this country for community."  There's a failure of logic here. The fact that someone puts a radio station on the air only indicates that they have something to say, not that anyone necessarily wants to listen to it.  And why is the audience for an LPFM station more of a community than the people who listen to a country-music station owned by Clear Channel?

    Clear Channel, predictably, is the whipping boy in this piece for all that is wrong with radio: "Exhibit A for opponents of media consolidation."  Why?  "Many of its broadcasts originate in locations other than the cities where they are heard, saving Clear Channel considerable money."  Kelliher apparently thinks that radio for some reason ought to be local, and she's entitled to her opinion, but that's not what most listeners care about.  Given the choice, radio audiences would rather listen to Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh or Dr. Laura from a distant city than to someone closer to home.  And, why is it an argument against consolidation that it saves money?

    Kelliher quotes a Maryland LPFM entrepreneur who says, "We thought if we could celebrate our community, we would make it stronger."  That's the language of the Zeitgeist; no wonder Kelliher embraces it.  But not many people really want to listen to "a mix of gospel, jazz, and alternative music...[plus] programs dedicated to local and national environmental issues,...land-use and zoning issues."  Another station has a Board of Directors that "includes members of the local Mexican-American, Native-American, African-American, and Hmong communities, and "its studio is often crowded" with station volunteers.  Those are revealing details, because they point to a focus on what's going on inside the station, not on the station's impact on its audience.

    Kelliher is not alone in feeling that the mere invocation of community, diversity, "struggle," "making a difference,"  etc., are enough to justify an undertaking.  But those are symptoms--like her admiring reference to the show "Democracy Now!", and her manifest sympathy for environmental causes--of a political bias as well as a cultural one.  That's fine; we all have our biases.  But a different reporter might have portrayed LPFM as an outgrowth of political activism or community organizing, rather than as a response to trends in the media.  And why was Kelliher unable to find anything at all negative about the whole phenomenon of LPFM?   Presenting a completely uncritical picture is the role of a press agent, not a reporter, and certainly not of the Columbia Journalism Review.

    posted by bob @ 9:33 am | Permanent link
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
    MSNPR

    Timing is everything.  NPR's new mid-day news magazine "Day to Day," the flagship for its West Coast production center in Culver City, California, debuted just as the recall election became front-page news across country.  That immediately allowed the show to cover national issues with a distinctive California angle, just as it set out to do.  The hour is also leavened by material from Slate, the Microsoft-sponsored online magazine with a knack for finding gifted and original writers.  The show has quickly proven a success.

    But it's part of a trend that can have unhappy consequences for public radio in the long run.  Many public radio shows are produced at different locations, and naturally each of them separately tries to stay on top of the day's leading issues.  The editorial staffs of "Fresh Air" in Philadelphia, "Morning Edition" at NPR/Washington, "The World" in Boston, "Diane Rehm" at Washington's WAMU, and "Marketplace" in Los Angeles, all have the same reasons to cover the day's top stories.

    So, on my local public radio station this morning, a story about the California election on "Morning Edition" was followed by a "promo" (promotional announcement) in which Alex Chadwick urged us to tune in to "Day to Day" for the latest developments on the California election.  Then Warren Olney--raising the specter of "political chaos"--promised to discuss the California election today on "To The Point."  Public radio is beginning to resemble cable TV news channels, where one big story is always being beaten into the ground.

    NPR's newsmagazines still do cover a very wide range of stories, and public radio--so far--has usually avoided the sort of obsessiveness that typifies the cable news channels.  I hope they have the foresight to keep it that way.

    posted by bob @ 8:06 am | Permanent link
Sunday, September 14, 2003
    Greed and Other Sins

    You can tell that we're still a Puritanical society by the language we use to talk about behavior.  Prejudice isn't just unfair and mistaken and harmful--it's "hate."  And when people earn a lot of money, it's "greed."

    In a column on the front page of the Business section of today's Sunday New York Times, Gretchen Morgenson is certain that "executive greed" and "cupidity" are the reasons that stock options are used as an incentive for managers to boost share prices.  She cites three instances of "holdouts" against the conventional wisdom that such incentives can lead to manipulation of stock price, as if simply describing these examples constituted a damning indictment of the whole practice.

    She smugly calls corporate executives "graspers," without troubling to explain why their employers would compensate executives this way if it's such a bad idea.  One company spokeswoman explains that the purpose is to "align the executive management with the interests of shareholders"; Morgenson dismisses this as "that tired old saw."

    From her tone and her argument, Morgenson must share the popular belief that top corporate managers are motivated mostly by the desire to siphon off corporate funds for their private gain.  But 2002 (the year of the transactions cited in the article) was not 1997, and most companies are not Enron.  There are good reasons that companies are now less enthusiastic about tying stock options to rising share prices, but it doesn't follow that every executive who benefits from such arrangements is presumptively corrupt.

    Morgenson may be telling her readers what they want to hear.  But substituting pop-culture prejudice for dispassionate analysis is a poor excuse for journalism.

    posted by bob @ 3:43 pm | Permanent link
Saturday, September 13, 2003
    Barbs Fuel Turnaround

    Today's mixed-metaphor award goes to the Los Angeles Times.  Saturday's edition, page E 17, headed the "jump" in a piece about the gubernatorial recall election with the words, "Leno's barbs fuel turnaround."  [Unfortunately (?) it doesn't appear in the online edition.]  The story is that Jay Leno joked about California Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante, the leading Democratic candidate in the recall election, and Bustamante's popularity soared.

    Mixed metaphors reveal how certain expressions have become so ingrained in our discourse that we don't hear their literal meanings any more.  The headline shows yet again how election campaigns are forever described in terms of sporting events, with reversals and setbacks and recoveries and, yes, turnarounds.  The turnarounds, in such narratives, have simple causes ("fuel")--in this case, the publicity afforded by the jokes on "The Tonight Show" ("barbs").  It's easy to forget that nonmetaphorical turnarounds don't consume fuel, and that barbs wouldn't be a very efficient source of energy.

    This wouldn't be so important if there were a wide range of metaphors applied to elections.  In our press, elections are mostly treated as horseraces.  In horseraces, the contenders win or lose based on their own speed and stamina, and the audience doesn't participate.  In elections, candidates are elected by persuading a plurality of voters to support them, their programs, and their principles.  It would be nice if the language of journalism preserved the difference.

    posted by bob @ 11:06 pm | Permanent link
Friday, September 12, 2003
    More on the Recording Industry

    This weekend we ought to find out if the Warner Music Group (part of AOL Time Warner) and the Bertelsmann Music Group will go through with their much-talked-about merger.  Meanwhile, Vivendi--which is spinning off a lot of its entertainment assets to NBC--is holding on to its Universal Music Group, mostly because no one wants to buy it.  Both circumstances are conspicuous signs that it's a bad time in the record business.  Revenue used to go up dependably every year; since 1999 it's declined 14%.  And we all know why: file-swapping.

    So what's the loss if the record-industry giants merge or shrink?  It may surprise you, but the answer is: risk-taking and creativity, and--most importantly--the marketing muscle to bring that creativity to a wide public.  Sure, a famous artist can put up a Website and sell CDs direct to the public.  No one needs a major distribution company for that.  But what about emerging artists that nobody's heard of?

    The major labels are in the business of taking chances on a lot of recordings in the hope that just a few of them will be big enough hits to pay for the whole enterprise.  Because they are the dominant players, the Big Five can buy the advertising and the store placement and can promote radio airplay so that the general public knows about emerging artists.  Without the majors, a new band or an undiscovered singer-songwriter couldn't get national exposure except by some fluke.  Every once in a while a CD can take off by word of mouth, but usually it's the result of a big label's investment and publicity.  If the labels don't have risk capital any more, marketing on that scale is not going to happen very often.

    This reality is often dismissed by popular opinion, because the record business is the industry the public loves to hate.  I wouldn't be surprised if Montgomery Burns on "The Simpsons" left his job at the nuclear power plant to become the CEO of a major record label: in the popular culture, the music business is the last redoubt of the grasping evil capitalist.  But it is also the engine that brings new talent to a wide audience.  Who will do that if the big labels can't?

    posted by bob @ 2:52 pm | Permanent link
Thursday, September 11, 2003
    Whither Classical Radio?

    Atlanta readers had a chance earlier this week to ponder the fate of classical-music radio, thanks to a savvy and extremely well-informed article in the Journal-Constitution by Pierre Ruhe.  He's particularly well-suited to the subject, being a veteran of NPR's "Performance Today" as well as a leading music critic.  His immediate topic is local outlet WABE, but he widens his scope to look at the erosion of classical-music radio around the country as well.  He reports that the number of stations that play classical music has dropped from 312 to about half that many over the last ten years.

    In commercial radio the reason is straightforward: the format doesn't make as much money as other formats, and for-profit companies have no incentive to sacrifice many millions of dollars a year for the sake of playing this music.  (The outstanding exception is the owner of Los Angeles classical station KMZT, a man named Saul Levine.  Every year for more than a decade he really has given up millions in foregone revenue, all for the sake of keeping his station classical.)

    But why is it happening in public radio?  Here's a case in point.  The statewide public-radio network in Mississippi dropped 5 hours a week of classical music in July, in favor of special-interest talk shows like Chef's Table, Zorba Paster On Your Health, You Bet Your Garden, Infinite Mind and Savvy Traveler.  On weekends, jazz and bluegrass have taken the place of 5 more hours of classical music.  All of these new shows are demonstrably *less* popular than classical-music programming on weekdays.  So why the change?

    It may be based partly on a misunderstanding of research findings. It's a commonplace of radio research that listeners say they want "variety"--but what they mean by that is, they actually want more of the programming they personally like.  The truth is that most listeners like a station to be predictable and consistent, not varied.  Airing specialty shows about cooking, gardening, and travel *doesn't* attract more listeners.  In fact, it can drive many of them away.

    There's also a misconception that bluegrass and jazz are more popular than classical music: some people assume that music created by common folk must perforce have wider appeal than classical music.  In reality, jazz and bluegrass consistently attract a lot *fewer* radio listeners than Beethoven and Brahms.  The bottom line is, the Mississippi public has lost a sizeable chunk of classical music on the radio, and for no good reason.

    Sadly, few listeners object any more when yet another station replaces classical music with talk or with a different kind of music.  So many people now assume that this fight has been lost that they don't bother to complain.  Maybe that's the worst news of all.

    posted by bob @ 10:16 pm | Permanent link
Friday, September 5, 2003
    Myths and the Record Industry

    The Universal Music Group--the largest of the Big Five "majors" in the music industry--has announced big price cuts for their most expensive releases.  Everyone reacting to the news agrees on one thing: that this proves they were right all along.

    There are those who say that the record companies have deliberately overpriced their product ever since the CD was introduced.  After all, a blank CD costs only 15 cents...why should a music CD cost $18.98?  That's a silly line of reasoning; one might as well ask why a soft drink costs $4.95 in a restaurant when it costs only pennies to manufacture.

    The answer in both cases is, you have to pay the people who create it, promote it, and bring it to you.  But one of the enduring myths of our pop culture is that businesses habitually conspire to fix prices out of pure greed.  To believers in that myth, the price-cut by Universal is in effect an admission that the company could make a comfortable profit with a much lower price.

    Then there are the people who think the record industry is run by a lot of clueless guys in suits who don't understand that downloading files is where it's at.  To them, the price-cut seems to be an overdue response to the easy and inexpensive alternative of getting music over the Internet.  They believe that buying records in stores is a hopelessly retro idea, and that the lower prices are part of a vain attempt to shore up a technologically backward delivery system.

    Here's what I think.  The big music companies still depend on retail stores for most of their revenue, and that--not venality or stupidity--drives their decisions.  Record stores have been in serious trouble for years; Tower Records' selloff of assets is just one vivid illustration.  The loss of retail business would be very damaging to the labels in the short term, which is why they have supported CDs more than audio files as their medium.  And because the stores are in no position to absorb smaller margins on their sales, prices have climbed.  Universal's new prices may be better for consumers, but they will hurt retailers, especially the smaller ones.  That's what makes this such a departure, and a risky one at that.

    And that's why the other "majors" haven't followed Universal's lead in lowering prices.  Unlike the airlines, where every empty seat is perishable and represents lost revenue, the other record labels can afford to wait and see.  If their consumers will keep paying high prices for their product, or if Universal doesn't offset what it is losing in unit revenue with greater volume, the others may *never* lower their prices.  The "I-told-you-so" crowd will, no doubt, somehow see that as vindication too.

    posted by bob @ 9:55 am | Permanent link
Tuesday, September 2, 2003
    Anger in the News

    Anger, it seems, is news.  Today's New York Times reports--with a front-page "reefer"--that "anger in Israel's Arab community" resulted in riots in October 2000.   In the same issue, a story about Undersecretary of State James Bolton reports, "On topics from Iran and Iraq to Syria and Cuba, he has shattered diplomatic niceties and stirred anger within the ranks."   And the AP, in a story on the Times' Website today, refers to "the anger Shiites feel against Saddam and his Baath Party."

    The Times isn't alone.  A couple of weeks ago, NPR referred to "Iraqis angered by the lack of electricity, fuel and jobs, provoking violent protests against U.S. and British troops."    Today's Washington Post headlines an AP story, "U.S. Muslims Promise To Express Anger at Polls."  And a Chicago Sun-Times column today carries the headline, "Readers rise in anger over broadcast news."

    The question is, why is anger newsworthy?  There's an unstated subtext here: that anger is justified, ipso facto.  Journalistic convention now treats anger as if it were a hurricane or a drop in the Dow-Jones Industrial Average: an objective phenomenon whose importance is generally agreed upon.

    Yet we know that it's not.  U. S. Muslims may be angry for good reason.  But a headline like "Speeding Drivers Rise in Anger Over Being Ticketed" wouldn't make sense anywhere but in "The Onion."   Motorists may indeed be angry at getting tickets for speeding, but that's not news because we don't see their feelings as defensible.  Yet anger in Iraq apparently *is* news, simply because it exists.

    Journalists who report anger as news are implicitly denying the possibility of unjustified anger.  (Either that, or these journalists tacitly sympathize with the anger they report, which would be even more troubling.)  They also imply that anger is a legitimate, even desirable, way to participate in a dispute.  Maybe this belief is a by-product of the pop-culture feeling that sincerity implies truth.  Wherever it comes from, it obscures more than it illuminates.

    posted by bob @ 2:37 pm | Permanent link
    Murdoch and Media Consolidation

    The September issue of The Atlantic Monthly reminds us again how indispensable James Fallows is as an observer and chronicler of media.  His piece about Rupert Murdoch entertainingly argues that the News Corporation mogul is motivated first and foremost by the desire to make money, not by a mission to promote his own ideology.  It's an argument that flies in the face of the popular culture, but I think he's right.

    The flap about Clear Channel and the Dixie Chicks is a good example of what the public would *like* to think.  After a member of the group made disparaging remarks about the President, rumors went flying that Clear Channel--as the nation's largest owner of radio stations and concert venues--had used its muscle to squelch the Chicks, for political reasons.  The exact reason for this alleged suppression was murky, but supposedly Clear Channel wanted to show its loyalty to the Bush Administration in exchange for unstated favors later on.  The problem is, there's no evidence that Clear Channel did what it was accused of doing.  The rumors were believed because people wanted to believe them.

    Many also believe that Rupert Murdoch, who is thought to be a conservative, must be planning to use his outlets to promote his opinions.  It's true that his company subsidizes "The Weekly Standard," the journal of the neoconservatives who are so influential with the current Administration, but the magazine is hardly typical of the News Corporation.  "American Idol" and "When Animals Attack," Fox Sports and the films of 20th Century Fox are intended for one purpose only: to attract enough consumers to make money.  Even the loudmouths on the Fox News Channel can tilt to the right only so long as that's what America prefers to watch (which, clearly, it does.)

    Clear Channel and Fox are both publicly held companies, which means that they are largely owned by pension funds and investment funds which demand a high rate of return on behalf of individual investors.  Their CEOs don't have the luxury of indulging their private preferences; they each have to protect their share price, no matter what their own political beliefs may be.  Public opinion seems never to have grasped that the 19th-century plutocrats who once ran big companies are dead and buried.  Publicly-held companies are beholden to the majority of Americans who own their stock, and their actions can best be explained in terms of gaining market share and boosting cash flow.

    In that connection, Fallows makes a fascinating point that is rarely remarked upon.  The News Corporation's strategy involves "vertical integration"--owning not only the content, but also the means of delivering it (TV stations, cable channels) and the distribution infrastructure (satellites).  A lot of companies have foundered on that strategy in the past: it hasn't made financial sense for newspapers to own forests, and Apple made a near-fatal miscalculation in choosing to control the hardware that carried its revolutionary operating system.  If Murdoch's business strategy has an Achilles heel, that may be it.

    But if Murdoch is right, and if News Corp. has outflanked his media competitors in infrastructure, what's the connection with the FCC plan to liberalize the rules about ownership consolidation?  Public opinion fears that Murdoch would use the ownership of more stations to narrow the debate of public issues, believing that diversity in ownership is related to diversity in points of view on the air.  Murdoch is therefore seen as trying to monopolize the delivery of news.

    Television in America used to be a true oligopoly, with 90% of the viewing dominated by ABC, CBS, and NBC.  At that time, however, a single company could own only 7 TV stations in the whole country.  Was political debate more robust than now?  No--because a profusion of small owners of network affiliates *doesn't* result in more varied points of view.  Networks and syndicators supplied almost all the content then as now.  And conversely, having fewer owners of network affiliates doesn't diminish the range of the debate, because--again--ownership doesn't much influence the points of view that are aired.  There are far more national news voices now than in the 1960's, in spite of the consolidation that has already taken place since then.

    Murdoch's Fox Network broke the old oligopoly by establishing the first viable "fourth" network.  Other players like Time-Warner and Barry Diller's company have also added to the diversity of program sources in television.  In a different narrative, Murdoch could be seen as the heroic pioneer who broke the lock of the Big Three on American television.  So why did Common Cause and other organizations take out a newspaper ad about Murdoch that, as Fallows reports, declared 'THIS MAN WANTS TO CONTROL THE NEWS IN AMERICA'?

    It's not because he possibly *could* control the news in a country where, on television alone, there's strong competition from CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS (never mind newspapers and the Internet).  And it's not because he would have any more access to the marketplace of ideas if more of his existing affiliates were not just affiliated with, but also owned by, Fox.  It's because of a completely unfounded leap of faith which assumes that consolidation of ownership would narrow the range of public debate.

    Almost every national business has room for approximately three big players, whether it's big-box discount stores or office-supply stores or book retailers.  There's nothing insidious about the fact that media ownership is tending in the same direction; it's not a Rupert Murdoch plot, or a Bush Administration conspiracy to subvert the democratic process.  The scariest thing about the way television is evolving is that it reflects what viewers actually want to see.  The fault lies not in our moguls, but in ourselves.

    posted by bob @ 1:15 pm | Permanent link
    The Pose of Objectivity

    My earlier comments about the bias in a Los Angeles Times article (August 9, page E1) drew a perceptive response.  I had written, "And if that weren’t enough, Perloff has 'the hearts of some artists,' reports the Times, while 'Clear Channel [is] a company that its critics call impersonal and conservative.'"  Using that quote as a springboard my reader carries the argument further:

    "Here, the writer has hidden an opinion as a fact with the phrase 'its critics call' -- well of course they do! Unnamed critics can be found to say anything, and need not explain themselves.

    "He uses the phantom of those critics, who are not even quoted but merely alluded to, to state what is evidently no fact at all, just his own opinion. This gets by the objectivity censors (if there are any) because, well, yes, surely someone has called Clear Channel impersonal and conservative. (Look, the author just did so, so it's true!) Thus it achieves the imprimatur of objective truth when it's really subjective at best, gossip or innuendo at worst.

    I am not asking for more objectivity, but rather honest subjectivity. The idea that making an opinion into a fact by technical means makes a piece objective is exactly why I hate the ruse of objective journalism. I'd much rather have the author say Clear Channel IS impersonal and conservative, and explain why he thinks so."

    Amen.  The larger, enduring issue is the pose of objectivity that is tacitly assumed by mass media.  The citing of opposing views--even when the opinions are unattributed--can lend the appearance of balance to an account that demonstrably is seriously biased, like the L.A. Times story that started this discussion.  "Objectivity" in journalism is another name for a subjective viewpoint that will be blandly acceptable to the mainstream consumer.

    posted by bob @ 2:03 am | Permanent link

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I'm a consultant in the arts and media, specializing in classical-music radio and recordings. My professional expertise ranges from marketing to management to artists and repertoire, but my enthusiasms embrace just about all the mass media, with a particular emphasis on the arts. More


About Media Res
Society and culture in the age of the Internet are more exposed than ever before, subject to examination and investigation instantaneously and ubiquitously. But we human beings still haven't outgrown our capacity to overlook the obvious, or to believe what we want to believe no matter what the evidence to the contrary, or to mistake our narrow prejudices for high ideals. This blog will look at the interrelationships between the media, culture, and society from different angles, maybe with a few surprises now and then. More

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One of the greatest success stories on the Web must be Jim Romenesko's daily roundup of media industry news, under the aegis of the Poynter Institute.  Crisply written and totally in touch, it's indispensible. 

For news about radio I check the home page of the industry publication "Radio and Records." 

The weekly NPR show "On the Media" takes a consistently fresh look at the media, and the Website makes it easy to listen to segments of the show if you don't find it on your local public radio station.

Among the best media critics around is the Los Angeles Times' Tim Rutten, who writes its "Regarding Media" column twice a week.

And some of the most entertaining and penetrating coverage of the media comes from satirist Harry Shearer on his weekly radio program "Le Show," originating from the fertile ground of KCRW Radio in Santa Monica, California and broadcast nationally.  Current and past shows can be heard online through the Website.

To keep up on current books, performers, and issues in the arts, I listen when I can to Leonard Lopate from New York's WNYC.  The media are not the main focus, but the show is brilliant, always timely and well-researched, and with terrific guests.  As an interviewer, Lopate is in a class by himself: curious, witty, articulate, extraordinarly well-informed, a superb listener.  It's one of life's great mysteries that his show is not broadcast nationally, but at least it's streamed on the Web.

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