Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiFCC Anounces 80 City 'We're Not Listening' Digital TV Tour
All most of us know about the transition to digital TV are two things. The first thing we know is that some people will need converter boxes on their old TVs to receive the new digital broadcasts. The second thing we know is that digital broadcast technology will enable high definition TV. As far as corporate broadcasters and the FCC are concerned, that's all we need to know, and those are the boundaries of legitimate public discourse.
What the FCC and broadcasters are actively concealing from the public is that digital broadcasting technology enables thousands of new digital TV channels on the public broadcast spectrum, all of which broadcasters have allocated to themselves without the inconvenient public scrutiny issuing thousands of new station licenses might have attracted. Thus minorities and women, local entrepreneurs, colleges and universities, community, civic and labor organizations and local governments who otherwise might acquire a portion of the new digital TV channels and used them to broadcast local news, arts, information and public service in hundreds of US markets have been frozen out of the chance to serve the public over the public's airwaves without even the bother of public explanation or debate.
Utterly captured by the private broadcasters it is supposed to police and regulate, the FCC has been tasked with selling this piece of grand theft digital as a public service, and farmed out the job to the notorious PR firm of Ketchum Communications.
According to PR Watch, Ketchum Communicaitons are past masters of corporate disinformation, responsible for a string of suspect activities including
-
drafting ads for tobacco firms denying the links between smoking and disease, and promoting the myth that low-tar cigarettes are somehow less deadly;
-
co-ordinating PR for the KOOL Jazz Festival, intended to pretty up the name of Big Tobacco;
-
running fake business-funded science organizations toutling the "safety" of pesticides, hormones and food additives;
-
spying on, smearing and facilitating the firing of pro-environmental FDA scientists;
-
recommending, as early as the nineties, the labeling of environmentalists as "terrorists", and the suing of investigative journalists, and conducting a 30 city PR blitz against an EPA report on the health effects of dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals ever made;
-
covertly hiring TV host and syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams to discredit public education and shill for the administration's No Child Left Behind Act, and manufacturing dozens of fake video news releases which were distributed to hundreds of TV stations where they were broadcast as news.
Predictably, Ketchum's elaborate "public education" campaign on digital TV makes no mention of any obligations broadcasters might have to serve the public over publicly owned spectrum. It is calculated to confine public input on the DTV transition to those things the public must to in order to passively consume whatever commerical broadcasters decide to give them.
As part of this campaign, the FCC has announced plans to send staffers and commissioners to 80 cities across the country in what looks suspiciously like a "Not Listening Tour" between now and February 18, 2009. With few exceptions, FCC staffers and commissioners will be totally unprepared to explain their complicity in handing over the digital airwavces to commerical broadcasters who not only don't have programming for the new channels, but who will probably squat on the new frequencies till some profitable use appears. For the most part, the FCC won't be entertaining questions about why broadcasters are not obligated to broadcast news, local public service or other local content on the new channels, or why consumers ought to prize high definition TV over high quality content. The FCC will be talking. But it won't be listening.
Back in 2003, the FCC's OK of unlimited consolidation of print and broadcast media inspired a wave of public revulsion which almost nobody predicted, and almost nobody in the mainstream print and broadcast media reported. Nonetheless, it resulted in millions of letters and emails to the FCC, millions more signatures on petitions to Congress, and consequent intervention by the courts and congress nullifying the FCC's decree. It also resulted, to hear some tell it, in the formation of a self-aware movement for media justice in cities and towns around the country. If such a movement really exists, this may be its defining moment.
If there is indeed a movement for media justice, when the FCC commissioners and corporate PR flacks from Ketchum and the NAB fan out on their "Not Listening Tour" to 80 cities between September and February 2009, aiming to misdirect public attention on the digital TV question, citizens and communities will give them an earful, whether they're ready to hear it or not. Just as in 2003, the FCC decision and congressional legislation to privatize the entire digital TV spectrum are a train already on the tracks and in motion. Only a vast public outcry can derail them.
A new Congress and a new administration in and of themselves are absolutely no guarantee that the transformation of public digital broadcast spectrum into the unregulated private property of existing broadcasters who have failed the tests of localism and public service every day for decades, will not be consummated in February 2009. While Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are both well aware of the issues involved in the digital transition, neither seems willing to question this theft of public property.
Barack Obama's chief advisor on telecom affairs, a black attorney who has so far raised the Obama campaign at least $500,000, presumably from broadcasters and their lawyers, is William Kennard. As the FCC's general counsel from 1993 to1996, and its chairman from 1996 to 2001, Kennard is arguably one of the fathers of this monstrously crooked deal, and of the disastrous Telecommunications Act of 1996. Upon leaving government at the beginning of the Bush administration, Kennard became managing director of media buyout operations for the bipartisan Carlyle Group. With the Bush administration having moved the ball downfield for broadcasters the last eight years, commercial broadcasters expect their interests to prevail over the public's no matter who runs Congress or the White House.
Below are the first round of cities and dates slated for the FCC's "We're Not Listening" tour. If Ketchum Communications, the FCC and the National Association of Broadcasters, and the mainstream media can confine the story, and restrict the public conversation to converter boxes and high definition TV, a vast realm of public digital property will pass into unaccountable private hands, for nothing, and maybe forever. But if citizens come out, speak out and act out in the presence of each other and the FCC's corporate flacks, then maybe - just maybe the Congress, the courts, the FCC and a new administration will have to listen. Whether they want to or not.
Announced cities on the first round of FCC's Digital TV "Not Listening Tour"
-
Anchorage, Alaska
8/27/2008
Fairbanks, Alaska
8/28/2008
Baltimore, Maryland
9/8/2008
San Francisco, California
9/11/2008
Austin, Texas
9/18/2008
Houston, Texas
9/17/2008
Memphis, Tennessee
9/19/2008
New York, New York
9/27/2008
Boise, Idaho
9/29/2008
Atlanta, Georgia
9/29/2008
Missoula, Montana
9/30/2008
Helena, Montana
10/1/2008
Bozeman, Montana
10/2/2008
Billings, Montana
10/3/2008
Nashville, Tennessee
10/7/2008
Charlotte, North Carolina
10/16/2008
Denver, Colorado
10/16/2008
Seattle, Washington
10/20/2008
Spokane, Washington
-
10/21/2008
Yakima, Washington
-
10/22/2008
Portland, Oregon
10/23/2008
Chicago, Illinois
11/20/2008
Phoenix, Arizona
12/29/2008
-
The complete list of 80 cities to be visited by the FCC between now and February is here. The "We're Not Listening" FCC Tour logo is free for anyone to use, and can be found here and here.
29 Comments so far
Show AllThis IS one of the biggest fights in US history, and NO blood need be shed. To wrestle control of these resources from those who would continue to defile and debase them would be a double win.
Take some stream/energy/profit out of the Evil/Republican/Corporatist/BuschCo/Neo-CON world...and if we're smart- go like crazy onto those airways with the HUMAN TRUTH we must all deal with and enable...
as we are human beings and not just Americans, or Canadians, or any other similar (though not un-important)label that can too often dim our real identity as HUMAN BEINGS. Full Stop.
This story highlights where we need to take the fight. Its the 'real' story thats ofcourse being submerged by the incessant 'election' stories that takes up 99% of the Media spectrum. Does anybody remember how utterly destructive the Clinton Telecommunications Act of 1996 was ? This could be even worse. Complete Media domination by large Corporations as is currently the norm should and must change for a modern Democracy to survive. We need to act immediately and everyone MUST protest it in every conceivable form. We need to take back our air (in this case wire ) waves. It belongs to us.
1. QUESTION: Who shepherded the 1996 Telecommunications Act through Congress -- the Act that gave away to a handful of multinational media giants, free of charge, **$50,000,000,000** worth of "publicly owned" digital spectrum rights?
ANSWER: Al Gore.
2. QUESTION: Which political party has allowed more and more "publicly owned" media power to find its way into fewer and fewer private, corporate hands?
ANSWER: The Business Party, ie., the Denmocratic-Republican duopoloy.
3. QUESTION: Who has absolutely no intention whatsoever of reversing this trend?
ANSWER: Barack Obama and John McCain.
It's irrelevant who opposes it now because this issue is so radioactive due to opposition from a broad grassroots movement from the NRA and the Christian evangelicals to the National Organization of Women. In spite of the FCC's attempts to concentrate ownership their plans have been derailed again and again because of this movement. Even a staunch so-called market oriented conservative like Trent Lott has been outspoken against concentration of media ownership. The last FCC Chair, Michael Powell, crossed the public on this issue and it cost him his job. This is what a movement is all about. Make the issue too radioactive to go against the wishes of the public and the politicians will cave or lose in the next election.
Dixon sez: "Utterly captured by the private broadcasters it is supposed to police and regulate, the FCC has been tasked with selling this piece of grand theft digital as a public service ... "
***
I have trouble visualizing the FCC as "captured" in this scenario. More like running, with dramatic slow-motion effects, hair streaming, through a verdant field of flowers and into the waiting arms of its corporate lover.
Follow the Benjamins.
I have never subscribed to cable or dish, and probably never will. but recently purchased the converter box. Dixon's concern about the back door manner in which the sub-frequencies have been made available to commercial broadcasters appears valid.
I could not get a decent feed of the D-Day Denver webcast last night and would have appreciated its availability on one of the several stations that are now available under the local broadcasters using the HD converter box.
The other night I was out and about and had a remote for a dish TV set in front of me. I noticed that the number of stations was well up in the three digits. I won't be surprised to see the same availability via broadcast TV and the sub signals. Maybe Maine and Texas will have something worth saying to each other.
Here is a link to some free software called Mythtv. It makes tv watching SO much better.
You can watch your shows any time you want, it automatically skips the commercials. If you find something (maybe) worth saving you can burn it to dvd.
www.mythtv.org
I've been using it to record and watch the corporate news broadcasts for several years now. I find that in 30 min of news there are 10-12 min of ads. 1 min of previews and really only about 2-5 min of "real" news. I usually spent about 10-15 min watching ABC, NBC and CBS nightly news programs.
I am going to let my satellite Subscription
run out, which it will at the end of this month..
I personal watch very little TV as I am usually at work or working around the house, so I won't miss it all..
I get most of my information off the internet and what can't get there I will get of the radio - which is still free!
Television is vast a waste land of commericialism and state propaganda..Constantly push the ideolgy of more is better.. It's gets tiring!
Edward Bernays, one of the founders of the field of public relations and a principal architect of the American Way PR campaign of the 1930's,claimed that in a “democratic society” we are and should be “governed, our minds . . . molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
The term is Brainwashed!
I have owned a digital wide-screen LCD TV now for close to 3 months. I was luke warm to the idea of digital HDTV. I wasn't even sure I would be able to receive the signals over the air with out the aid of cable or satellite clearly because digital TV operates by capture effect. If the HDTV signal is strong enough you get the image and sound sharp and clear and it its weak it either pixilates and audio drops off intermittently or it drops out altogether. The picture also will pixilated in the areas where there is a lot of motion. This stood out quite clearly when I was watching the swimming events during the Beijing Olympics and area on the screen where the water is murky pixilates. Some images will be fuzzy looking when you observe them close up to the screen.
So I set it up and it works except I don't get the local PBS affiliate in digital. With many digital TV's you can't just manually add in the digital channels even if you know they exist. They have to be added using the HDTV's own digital scanner. OK, so I live without PBS in digital for now. I hope I can receive my local PBS affiliate when analogue goes dark on February 17th, 2009.
OK now I'm going to talk about the additional HDTV channels the broadcasters picked up. Several things I've noticed that are particularly curious. First these additional channels are simul-casting the same program in a lower resolution, they are running old local programming from years ago, more infomercials (GREAT! ;)) or they are running mostly useless weather information. (Though not entirely given that I live in Houston and Gustav is projected to enter the Gulf by Sunday) What a loss for community broadcasting. This technology could be used for a labor channel, woman’s' channel, human rights, a renewable energy channel and so on. (Please I know that the commercial broadcasters call the shots)
The next thing I noticed is that not all the digital channels are HDTV. The secondary channels of the major network affiliates (ABC, CBS, NBC) are for sharpness of picture the digital equivalent in resolution of their analogue counterparts. So they are not exactly superior in image quality. Ghosting has been eliminated but it has been replaced by digital TV's sensitivity to weakened signals. You can't tell when the signal is weak unless it pixilates so you have to go to a menu and bring up the signal meter which resembles the bar meter on a cell phone. The goal is to illuminate all the bars to get the best picture. I've worked with ham radio short-wave, vhf and uhf gear but orienting the antenna to get optimal picture is a black art.
The last thing I find particularly galling is that the extra digital channels are organized so that they look as if they actually belong to the licensed legacy broadcaster. They show up on your screen for example in the case of our local ABC affiliate Channel 13 as 13-1, 13-2, 13-3 and so on. This implies that these extra digital channels are property of the legacy broadcaster. There is absolutely no technical reason that the additional digital channels that have been added on should be organized in this way. The numbering scheme can be reordered by reflashing the HDTV's firmware.
Now I will address the Department of Commerce DTV cards. They are designed to soften the blow of the inevitable public anger once the change over has occurred. First you call the number to get the card. You are asked if you have cable or satellite subscription service and if you do you are disqualified. These two services change over to digital in 2011. If you don’t own either (As I do by choice) then you get the card and you have to wait to receive it. When you receive it you have 90 days in which to purchase a converter. The card only covers up to a $40.00 purchase but the boxes cost $60.00 typically. Then, you can only purchase a converter box that is approved for use with the card. Be careful which one you buy. Most of them are no name junk brands. I have looked up the features and quality of the boxes in consumer reports and to my estimation the Zenith DT-90 converter boxes (I am not an employee, do not own stock in or receive remuneration from Zenith) seem to give the best balance of features and performance. I will be those Zenith DT-90 boxes and I hope they will not breakdown the moment the 1 year or 90 day warranty expires.
That’s my experience with HDTV so far. I’m under whelmed by its promises as of this writing.
what, is stuff still being broadcast over the air? personally i haven't had cable for more than a year. netflix is the way to go. also there's a lot free stuff that gets streamed vover the internet.
each time i go out of town and check into a hotel i watch some TV. It just reminds me why i cancelled my subscription.
To solve the problem throw away your TV. Then you can have a life free from all the bullshit propaganda that fills our airways. Kill your TV and free yourself.
Hoa binh
Or you can just change channels.
Ever notice how even the left uses the word 'kill' all the time when it suits them.
----------------------------
"It is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be" -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
I'm still left wondering what's the point of all this. Why are corporations not even making it aware to the public, yet not using the channels yet? What do they have in mind?
We are being taxed so 'they' can sell us converters to use our own TVs?
I have UNPLUGED my (expensive) TV set for over a year now. There's nothing but mindless commercials and the evening NeoConNews. I'd rather have Big Brother dispose of my idiotbox. I get to skip all the political insults and lies...
I have an analog TV and get cable, whether or not I really want it, through my condo building's bulk purchase. Fine. My cable service (Comcast) recently went digital and I was only able to get the low numbered primarily-local channels, which were still being sent analog. To get the full range I was paying for, I now have to rent digital receivers, one for each of my two TVs. I waited 6 months to hook up one of them and 13 months to hook up the other. Comcast claims that I cannot purchase the receivers, but I see them on eBay. What a scam.
I thought about buying digital TVs so I could get rid of the receiver rentals, and decided if I'm getting new TVs I might as well make them HD, right ? Yah, until I found out that to get HD I'll have to rent set-top boxes from Comcast ! I'm screwed either way.
I'm just sticking with my current setup. I mostly watch factual shows (science shows, news programs, documentaries) and films (fave channels are TCM, IFC, and Sundance). HD would be nice but I'm not going to buy new TVs and still be stuck with rental boxes from Comcast.
Btw, the ads for the digital conversion drive me crazy ! They say if you have cable you don't have anything to worry about. What they don't tell you is that sooner or later (mine was sooner), your cable service will be digital and you'll have to rent the digital receivers ! The ads make it sound like you will not have to do anything, ever. Gross deception there.
EZE: Your idea is right-on.
Even in this forum, and I include myself, we have NO idea what's been and IS BEING stolen in our names of late. This phony war that's "lost" from our treasury unaccounted for billions, this give-away of TV bandwidth to maintain a highly effective tool for manufacturing consent and ensuring that "the sheep" remain in a semi-somnabulistic state so that the murdering-thieves in charge continue "business as usual." The levels of diabolical misuse of resources overt and covert are beyond cognition...
I encourage readers to check what Catherine Pitts has to say about the skullduggery that constitutes the true state of the US economy. If anyone thinks that topic is not connected to the control of media, their anal retentive need for categorization is obscurring their vision of the whole web of deceit that's come over America, slowly, and only now in such demonstrably monstrous form that none (but those totally hypnotized) can ignore or deny it. Her incisive research and analysis can be found at: www.Solari.com.
TruthTeller, I have the impression that you are a corporate shill, or immensely ignorant about the corporate takeover of our "democracy". Which is it?
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Don't forget that the TV channels get to broadcast "public announcements" of this change on constant rotation, instead of broadcasting the regular instalments of other "public announcements" which are always of dubious quality anyway...
TruthTeller -
Just like guns, liquor, and cigarettes; the thousands of new channels of themselves are neither bad nor good, they are things. It is the harm caused to our children, our society, and our ability to make a free and informed choice when these channels, promoting the greed, and the money worshiping ideology of their owners are unleashed into your homes and every new digital billboard across the globe, without the consent or informed discussion by honest represenatives of the people of this nation which concerns me most.
Politics is ephieral, Television is reality...
Television, radio and the internet now control how you make decisions.
Resistance is futile....
For anyone with sense, its the other way around. You make decisions on how you control television, radio and the internet and what you let into your house.
----------------------------
"It is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be" -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
Well written. Its really a huge free-for all grab. (Don't forget Sony and all the other equipment manufacturers of televisions and broadcast equipment filling the local stations)
In the meantime, consider NOT upgrading your television. This is the perfect time to take it out of your life and out of your home-for good. The way things are right now, there are many, many problems with digital TV. In Denver, the opening of the recent Olympics were not shown due to rain. Yes, RAIN, as it downgraded the program/satellite feed. There is little standardization within cable companies and broadcasters. You might well pay big bucks for that great new flat panel, but chances are good that the picture may be the same-or worse.
Then its the Grab itself. Totally stealing from the public--and what do we get? The "Party" line, no real debates on anything. Nothing but BS from these guys.
Too bad. DTV has such great possibilities for our citizens and democracy. Oop, I forgot, this is Fascist America.
At best, don't upgrade. At worst, buy upgrade to watch your movies and alternate programming.
That would suck.
I use my TV to watch Free Speech TV. I use my TV to watch Democracy Now. I use my TV to watch news from overseas. I use my TV to watch Bill Moyers on PBS (about the only decent thing there). I watch my TV for a lot of cool stuff that I might not learn anywhere else.
TV is a tool. Use it properly and its very useful. Why someone would want to put out perfectly good and useful tool out into the trash bin is beyond me.
Don't throw the TV out, just change channels.
----------------------------
"It is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be" -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
Samson, you will not be effected because in order to get FSTV or Democracy Now you have to get it over cable or satellite. Those don't go digital 'till 2011.
One answer is to issue equal shares of non-transferable stock in the public airwaves to every American. Make broadcasters pay the public directly for the lease of each of thousands of new digital channels.
And thousands of new channels is a bad thing because?
Because the already-established TV networks and corporations are getting the channels for free, where they can broadcast whatever crap they want (or it seems they have no plans for them yet), instead of the new channels being sold to them, or better yet, made available for local and real public use.
Yeah, but they are over-the-air broadcast channels. Who the heck watches TV through an aerial antenna any more. Everyone watches sat dish or cable. So, even if they started these new channels, they still have to get them on the cable systems. They could do that today if they wanted to, just without the hassle of broadcasting over the air.
Sure, they can broadcast on these channels all they want. But no one would be watching.
----------------------------
"It is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be" -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
I don't use cable or satellite and its by choice. I see cable when I go over to my mom's house for the holidays. It reminds me why I cancelled my cable subscription over 16 years ago just like another comment that was made on the list.
"Who the heck watches TV through an aerial antenna any more. Everyone watches sat dish or cable."
Wrong, I know a lot of people who use aerial antennas. I know more people who use an antenna than I know people who use cable or sat. I would ask who in their right mind would pay the high cost of cable or sat? Based on what I've seen there's no more than half a dozen channels offered by cable or sat that's worth a flip. All the other channels are nothing but junk.
Rickster