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FCC Spreads Digital Disinformation on TV Transition
Thanks to corporate media's longstanding refusal to report on itself, along with a multimillion dollar campaign of public disinformation paid for by the FCC on behalf of commercial broadcasters, high-def TV and converter boxes are all most of know about the switch to digital TV. Last Monday, September 8, Wilmington NC became the first community in the nation to cease analog TV broadcasting and switch entirely to digital. Existing broadcasters gathered to rejoice at the prospect of hundrds of new digital channels which they receive free of charge, with no noticeable public interest obligations, and for which they don't even have programming.
Black Agenda Report was there to ask broadcasters and the FCC some of the questions real journalists should have posed.
The airwaves used by cell phone companies, along with radio and TV broadcasters are by their very nature a scarce and limited resource legally recognized in the US and every country on the planet as public property. Radio and TV broadcasters in the US are licensed and permitted to use this scarce and limited public property to make vast and private profits on the legal condition that those broadcasters must serve the public interest.
In practice this is a meaningless condition, ill-defined and never enforced. No radio or TV station in 75 years has had its broadcast license yanked for failing to serve the public interest. Nonetheless, the Federal Communications Commission does exist and is charged with safeguarding the citizens' interest in the broadcast airwaves which are, in theory owned by the public.
A major concern of the FCC these days is the transition from analog to digital television. The FCC has spent millions of dollars on a supposed campaign of public education on the transition from analog to digital TV, a campaign some say exclusively serves the interest of commercial broadcasters while deliberately omitting vital information the public needs in order to determine
whether broadcasters are using the public spectrum in the public interest, and whether the switch to digital TV benefits anybody except broadcasters.
Last Monday Wilmington NC became the first city in the nation to cease analog TV broadcasts in favor of digital TV. Black Agenda Report, with the help of the Communications Workers of America was on hand last in Wilmington NC, where we questioned FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, FCC Commissioner Michael Kopps, local broadcasters and representatives of the National Association of Broadcasters, and ordinary citizens on those matters covered neither in the FCC's massive PR campaign on digital TV, nor in the mainstream reporting on the digital TV transition, such as,
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why nobody but existing broadcasters were offered any of the tens of thousands of new TV channels made possible by digital TV,
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why thousands of new stations will come on line in a few months but no new broadcast licenses will be issued, and
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whether the FCC will enforce any requirements on broadcasters to use the new channels for news, educational and childrens programming, or locally produced content of any kind.
We began by asking FCC Chairman Kevin Martin what difference digital TV would make in getting broadcasters to serve the public interest, and why no minorities or other possible new players who might have been interested in operating a local broadcast TV station never got a chance at any of the thousands of new TV channels.
This video is about 8 minutes long. A somewhat longer version will be posted later today on the Black Agenda Report YouTube channel.
Times and Places of FCC's Digital TV "We're Not Listening" Tour Still Not Available
The FCC commissioners are fanning out across the country in an 80 city 'We're Not Listening" tour, carrying the corporate-friendly "consume-and-be-happy" and "shut up and watch" messages to a community center or auditorium near you. Trouble is, the FCC is unable to tell audiences in major cities like Atlanta, where this reporter is based, where they will be a scant ten days in advance.
So, yes, the FCC IS coming to your town to tell you about the blessings of digital TV. The calendar dates are posted here. But you'll have to keep calling them at 1-888-225-5322 till they decide to tell you just where and what time. Maybe it's because they really aren't that keen on hearing from the public after all.
For more information on the digital transition, see these Black Agenda Report articles
Big Media Steals 5,100 Digital TV Channels
The FCC and the Emperors of TV Have No Clothes
Communities Excluded, Public Deluded on Digital TV
and the blog dtvredalert.org
- Posted in
36 Comments so far
Show AllSome real idiot invented those transmission boxes. They make rabbit ears hard to tune. Then they cut out, the screen stops moving and the sound stops coming through, often at a critical point in what you are watching. 30 years ago a network cut the last minute of a big football game in order to show the start of "Heidi". Imagine that happening a bit every single day for you.
After February 17 of next year you'll be forced to suffer through all this until maybe if Congress rushes through some kind of quick technical repair.
- - -
Oh, the embezzlement of a trillion dollars of the public's airways. Yeah, the FCC did that too. I say make every commercial station pay ever-increasing fees for every channel until about 10% of them cry uncle. Then we'll know exactly what the market can bear.
On February 17, my TV set will become solely a DVD player. I will not buy that converter box or invest in another TV. I'm turning off the Propaganda Box. The TV makes me sick these days anyway, and I'll happier without it. Good riddance.
"...why thousands of new stations will come on line in a few months..."
And what the bloody f**k are we gonna do with "thousands" of "new stations" when the hundreds already available basically suck?
Meanwhile, the author fails to mention another major reason the Fed is forcing us to switch to digital - analog TV sales died, cause Sony and the other manufacturers produced sets that lasted 10-15 years, (my Magnavox is 16 years old and as good as new.) The only way to save the industry was to literally force us to buy new TVs - and we bit without a second thought.
Wake up America! This is your golden opportunitiy to cast off the shackles of TV serfdom. When February arrives do not buy a new HDTV and do not obtain a converter box. Just stop watching the stupid thing (except for videos).
Watch the broadcast industry squirm as they have fewer and fewer eyes and ears to expose to advertisers. Watch big business squirm as fewer and fewer people consume their worthless wares.
Then demand a government funded (paid for with tax-payer dollars as well as licensing fees paid by other broadcasters) community based broadcasting alternative out of the control of big businesses, their foundations, and think tanks.
Poet
I see a gold mine here in the form of sharing marginalized LIFE alternatives with a public that's not been privvy to them. IF a network started up that had entirely HOLISTIC ideals and ran programs that educated the public on healing mind, body and spirit... it would GROW.
One way to finance such a concept would be to have a daily MASSAGE program, that showed techniques, perhaps had individuals explain the therapeutic results of massage, and this particular show would be financed by a small annual fee from every registered massage therapist (at their discretion).
Programs about holistic types of food: from gardening to preparing meals (there's a whole food network, but not devoted to more vegetarian and healthy dishes) could be aired, and likely paid for by holistic food companies.
I would envision progressive political discussions, perhaps one hosted every night at 8 P.M. And I'd like to see a midnight mystic: that segment hosted by an astrologer one night, someone who's done some research into the after-death process, a bona fide psychic, etc.
Holistic types of therapies that teach people ways to strengthen their bodies and immune systems, or utilize alternative therapies would also be part of this "package."
If you notice, there are sports networks, fundamentalist religious networks, shopping networks, and the usual fare... but the THING conspicuous by its absence are the world of alternatives seen at holistic fairs and in the spiritual/new age part of many book stores.
It's time for a network that brings all the fringe developments, even with respect to new green fuel technologies, into public view.
Siouxrose,
You have good ideas! I love yours on massage, healthy food etc. My wife has RA, disc problems etc. I know some things. But a regular show helps establish a schedule.
There is nothing dedicated to the diverse cultures in America. There is not one dedicated to the knowledge of science, except in a very general way. There are zip that discuss issues in a meaningful way, including alternative thinking, without derision.
I'm surprised there are no cable stations connected to street cameras, microbreweries, city council meetings, on and on.
This is what he discusses
Maybe,
If we demanded that a small portion of the "new" bandwidth be reserved for free or low-cost broadband, then anyone could create their own web-based blogcast for almost any special interest.
The problem is bandwidth... it's all been hijacked. We were not given a choice as to how it was allocated. Like the Treasury, this resource has been stolen.
It is true that such a change of zeitgeist can help to turn the tide of our slipping humanity but even trusted experts on this human crisis agree that the other half of the change will happen within ones person as a natural bi-product of a newly emerging consciousness. This inner work is actually delayed through too much attention on the zeitgeist and it's power of persuasion and direction for human change.
This externalized obsession as fix for our problems, can lead to the same result we already have, for whenever we are fixated upon something in the external as savior, we are still confronted with the selfsame sacrifice of our own internal compass to that external solution.
I'd rather my tax money went to dispose of my idiot box rather than to "convert" to yet another level of insults. I unpluged it last year and haven't missed it one bit.
Maybe the local library will have the evening news on VHS like the old "Movietone" films...
The advertisements for the upcoming change drive me crazy, they say "if you have cable, you don't need to worry". Yah, you need to get a digital receiver or your TV won't work ! Comcast here in Chicago did their digital conversion and my analog TV only picks up the low-numbered local channel plus a couple of other national channels. So I am now renting a digital receiver. I had a really hard time convincing friends and family who had not yet experienced the cable conversion that they too would need receivers for their analog sets, they kept seeing those ads and reading articles that promoted the misinformation.
Btw, I would love to purchase digital receivers so I can stop renting them from Comcast. Comcast claims I can't do it. How can they force me to rent ?
Don't watch television - - - at least not too much of it. Read Marie Winn's book "The Plug-In Drug" and discover what too much tv does to the human mind. One of the reasons this nation is in such dire straits, why political discourse is no discourse but a Punch 'n Judy show at best can be directly attributed to the most lethal legal drug in the USA.
It depends on what you watch. I love watching interesting films (I'm not talking mainstream drivel), documentaries, and science programs. I like watching the BBC news, Democracy Now, and other alternative sources of current events info.
Poet is correct. We the American sheeple need to SHUT DOWN BIG MEDIA and the best opportunity is to not purchase the digital receiver. To do so otherwise means that you are going along with the remake of 1984 !
Also,
THE REAL PROBLEM IN AMERICA - THE BIGGEST DRUG ADDICTION KNOWN TO MAN
You Can Keep Blaming George W. Bush Or Liberals, Or You Can Start Dealing With Reality
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v3i6tv.htm
After reading Fredericks link Leea has a fantasy of talking about the real world with her neighbors while gardening and watching the kids all play games they made up that involve exercise and imagination.
Wow that was an awesome link, and sooooo true. It is amazing what one puts aside for television, and I think that the biggest area of life that is sacrificed is one's relationships with each other, life, and spirit.
People are so drugged by the escape from any truth or challenge they might otherwise face which leads to the development of a strong and integral human being.
I think my brain waves may be different or something as a consequence of not being a watcher, and instead being a participator. I know my body is different.
Many people will ramble on about what is wrong with the world, and they spend most of their free time, watching a false and very narrow sliver of that world through a box that is nothing but imagery that carries another persons secondhand view of the world. All this while being covertly told what to buy, buy, buy.
I have no doubt we can blame T.V. in a large part for the total loss of common sense that is pervasive in this country and leading to things like economic collapse, and the total disappearance of any mainstream and truly inspiring leader.
However I do think that t.v. may also be emblematic of another, deeper problem facing humanity at this time. It has to do with our consciousness, how it is limited by it's old patterns, and what new patterns must emerge for us to make it past this point.
I only subscribe to "Limited Basic" cable now. I get the broadcast stations, 4 or 5 (I'm not sure) shopping channels, 4 Hispanic Channels, CSPAN 1 and 2, something thay call E and the golf channel. I sometimes watch the PBS channel and I do love CSPAN. I can do without any of them by using my internet connections. I refuse to add anything else to my TV in oprder to see more crap that needs to go away. I do watch movies - particluarly liking foreign and documentaries. TV is just junk for the most part.
I guess it depends on where you live.
From my So. California location I can get three PBS station over the air. I got the converters (2 coupons per household), installed them, and now I get 10 PBS channels.
Granted, two of them are 24-hour children's programming (which is a scary concept), one is all in Spanish (Bill Moyers... dubbed!), and one seems to be nothing but cooking shows. But that's still 3 new channels of documentaries, nature, arts and news from PBS & BBC.
I lost one local station completely to low signal strength, and have occasional disruptions similar to when a DVD goes haywire. But they're only broadcasting digital at 40%-60% power now. In February it will go to full power.
But the picture is sharp and noise free. The sound is terrific (especially for music programs), and my neighbor's ham radio broadcasts no longer show up as snow on channel 4... and it's all without cable fees!
I agree that a heist has been pulled in terms of public access. But that's correctable.
The technology itself is not to blame.
Kevin Martin is such a dick. I dont have digital and I dont see any difference. We need to bring back the Fairness Dcotrine. What about people that only have a radio?
As I posted before, the new system has a MAJOR design flaw. It will not be 2 months before the whole system is taken down piece by piece.
Coffeelover,,,,,,,
I hate digital!!! The little boxes that interrupt my programs whether DVDs or TV, and leaves me frustrated and unable to watch my choices -- I really liked the old VHS because the tapes lasted FOREVER, or at least a lot longer than the digital upgraded, outmoding current players scam and then not necessarily being able to watch it even then...cuz there's bound to be some new upgrade -- and all the waste of all this electronic equipment being abandoned into the enviroment -- com'on!
Yeah - its all about Corporations making more on our already bowed backs and be damned about the quality of the product or the environment ---
I love my foreign films, my VHS, and when the TVs switch, what I can't get I won't miss - I have a LIFE!!! Or -- omg -- I can read a book!!! wooo hooo!
Umm, no, VHS tapes do NOT last forever. In fact, they degrade slightly with every playback. DVD isn't obsolete, MPG video isn't, and disc-based formats never wear out. The computer you are posting on now is a far more capable and versatile video machine than a VCR, and less likely to wear out. Digital content is like water, it conforms to any container you put it in. Stored on discs, kept on hard drive, or zip drive, or on the internet, it's all the same zeroes and ones. It can be converted from format to format with a few mouse clicks and the right free software. Any modern computer has all the hardware you need already built in.
The counterweight to "constant upgrades" is "backwards compatibility". Not only do the new Blu-Ray format players still play DVDs, they actually "upconvert" the content, digitally enhancing the picture to better than what they were originally made to display. By contrast, nothing can help old, clunky and fragile VHS be anything but old, clunky VHS. You can't upconvert it, you can't reformat it, you can't copy it, you can't back it up, you can't upload it or share it or reburn it. It's a technological dead end.
Digital is freedom. In fact, digital is by it's nature so free that the corporations spend millions trying to create artificial shackles for it to preserve their monopoly. It's a battle they're not winning. That's why they spend so much money and energy suing their customers, because sharing and distributing digital content is so easy virtually anyone can do it. They have to intimidate people to try to stop them, because they have no power to actually prevent anything. Copy-protection schemes are getting broken before they even get implemented, the hackers already have them scouted and are ready for them when they hit the shelves. And they do it for free, rendering millions of dollars worth of "security" obsolete on the day it's introduced.
Please, educate yourself before you spout off about technology you don't understand. Digital content has been a stake in the heart of monopolized corporate media since it was first introduced, which is why the corporations have fought against it tooth and nail every step of the way. It's already broken the back of the recording industry, and has given strong competition to traditional news media. Video is next.
Television is outdated. It grows less relevant all the time. Digital is the future.
DOG LEG: Thanks. (I wrote you a long post but I can't remember on which CD article!) In any case, I think you are REAL writing skill.
This network could have so many amazing, CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING programs... there could be a VET show that works with natural remedies. Yoga. Perhaps even a meditation show... where people meditate together.
This idea came to me, and I don't mind putting it out here... if it catches, it'll be a wonderful thing! Desmond TUTU is a true teacher of the HEALING medicine of forgiveness. In French the word TU means YOU... so my idea is TUTO Y TU, where at TWO A.M. and 2 P.M. people consciously commit to meditation, and envision healing their own most traumatic relationship, past or present. In this manner, an invisible set of bridges, or networks of LIGHT will form. These make for a grid that invites in more help from higher planes of existence. (Any who think earth and our people are the top of the cosmic paradigm, will be pleasantly surprised when they once again cross over, i.e. leave their limited bodies and the sensory framework that goes with it.)
If this caught on, and LOTS of people meditated on healing and forgiveness thoughts, it could really help to alleviate the ENERGY behind so much conflict.
I would also see on this NETWORK cool shows about how to travel without leaving a footprint... to exotic places. My friend Dennis camped in the rain forest off of Kuai (Hawaii) for weeks, and ate the natural fruits. Other campers even left him a nice supply of Pacalolo.
Imagine if the technology existed to have a debate show taken from a PROGRESSIVE context, where people could call in from all over the world.
Natural cosmetics, foods, exercise products, clothing, hemp clothing... all of that can advertise to support/pay for the air time. Again, these topics are what's missing from media. They may show up as small eccentricities practiced by offbeat characters in movies, but they are NOT allowed it would seem to go mainstream.
Once again, thank you for seeing with me, the possibilities. Years ago I dated a brilliant lawyer but he was so locked into certain limited beliefs. I used to use this phrase like a mantra with him, "Don't limit possibility!" That was before ANOTHER WORLD IS (and boy is it!) POSSIBLE! (World Social Forum).
Imagine having on this network the likes of Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, John Dean, Chomsky, Nader and other luminaries speaking without mass media censorship? The air waves are the fastest means for altering thought, and they have been co-opted entirely by "the dark side," i.e. forces that serve Mars and Mammon.
We are not purchasing a converter box. This is our chance to break the TV habit. We never subscribed to cable and now, I guess, we are opting out of basic TV, passively.
No gods, no kings
My family has not had t.v. in our house for over ten years now. We do watch movies, and our children always got to watch t.v. as a special treat when staying with grandma or other family members.
We have high speed internet and you can watch shows and just about anything else now from there.
Everyone should get out of the habit of watching t.v. it's a vote for disinformation that is cast daily by many Americans including progressives, liberals etc.
Theft of channels? Of tv that I don't watch anyway?
How can someone steal something that I have no use for?
The American public can do without all the crap that passes for broadcasting these days while actual good shows are being canceled or having their budgets cut.
Tune Out, Turn Off, TV!
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
allisone51:
Agree, I still have VHS hooked up. I enjoy cooking and like to record from the Food Channel. I watch it one time the tape over it after I write down what I need. As for the rest of the shows, well I watch but reading by the fire that with the cool temps at night won't be long in coming works fine for me. Minus temps in some areas last night. Maybe one more camping trip up north before the snow flies. Nothing like a walk in the forest in fall. The colours are better than digital and the sounds and smells as well.
Ahhh, the smells. :-) I live in downtown Chicago, whenever I am out in more rural areas, I'm like a dog with its head sticking out of the car window, sniffing away and enjoying every second. Except the freshly-manured fields.
my other thought about the new change over is media control. If you shut down the local stations then you have a disconnect from that local news that maybe more liberal than main line media. I watch the news at night on the antenna that is local and has local events I like to know about. Plus in an emergency a local station on antenna maybe your only link to the outside. FIMA is screwing up in Galveston and the media is NOT even allowed in the video what is happening. No local news coverage again just the spoon fed Gov control again. For 3 days now CNN has shot their report from the same location. A TV crew can go anywhere a generator to supply power can be set up.
Control the media you control the people
HP--
Whether local or national, the news is controlled by large corporate advertisers--that's why no matter which news you watch it is controlled by the mantras "if it bleeds, it leads" and "if it shocks, it's on top".
For less than $20 you can buy a weather radio from a discount store and have the same emergency information that toutinely interrupts broadcasts--they even have them with switches that are automaticaly tripped to turn on the radio when an emergency bulletin is broadcast.
Poet
I keep hearing about 'new channels' - and yet all we get are a larger choice of the same old re-runs of yesteryear. Thank goodness for the 'off' switch.
Hello to all CD readers:
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Basically you need a computer P4 3gHz or better and a tuner card ~$135. PCHDTV 5500 is the best for DTV http://www.pchdtv.com/
www.mythbuntu.org is a prepackaged operating system with everything you need except for a little effort and patience.
Check it out and you will be glad that you did :)
Lot of luddites here... interesting. I'm not sure many of you actually get it.
The "new channels" aren't new. What's happening is a conversion from a floodlight to a laser, basically. Same amount of light, much narrower and more focused beam. The amount of bandwidth required for one analog signal is sufficient for scores of digital signals. The existing broadcast networks aren't getting anything new, they just now have the ability to pack much more into what they have, if they choose to use it.
Individual broadcasters still hold license to the same frequency bandwidth they had before, but now they're able to send many discreet signals in the same bandwidth because digital is so much more precise. There aren't new channels, meaning more bandwidth has been created from nothing. There are new -potential- channels because each digital signal is so much narrower than the analog signals they're replacing. There are no new channels, the existing channels are being subdivided into many smaller signal paths.
Should that mean a redistribution of bandwidth? Probably so. But networks aren't cheap. Even back when we had UHF and three dozen potential channels, few of them were filled. Broadcast TV is expensive to run. Could the existing cable networks go broadcast now, with redistributed channels going to them? Quite possibly, and perhaps they should. If the cable companies don't block it, perhaps they will. Potentially, hundreds of broadcast channels could break the back of the cable companies and eliminate wired delivery. It's the technologically correct thing to do, but it's always hard when an established business model gets outmoded by new technology. The typical response is to lean on government to protect their niche, rather then let them become obsolete.
Regardless, the kind of bottom up, people oriented content is not going to find a home on television and ideally it shouldn't. Broadcast media is inherently a top-down proposition because of the expenses and infrastructure involved in making it work. It's just not practical.
The ideal delivery medium for people-driven, user-generated content is right at your fingertips. You're using it right now. There is nothing that television can offer, even with all the "new" channels, that can compete with the internet. Television is a one-way, non-interactive medium only suitable for video and audio on a preset schedule. That's not good enough. The internet can deliver text, audio, video, images, and files all on demand, and can provide live real time interaction and the uploading of user generated content. The expense and requirements for setting up a "station" are low enough almost anyone can do it. And there's no limit to how many there can be, no bar to entry based on numbers.
Even digital television is poorly equipped to compete with the internet. In the realm of user-engaged digital democracy people here want, there's no chance that DTV can offer the functionality they need. The internet can and does get the job done in ways television cannot possibly hope to match. All TV can deliver is studio-generated audio and video on schedule. That's all. Why would we even want that, when what we have with the internet is so much more flexible, inexpensive, and feature-rich?
Stop looking at television. It's the past, outmoded. We don't need it. We already have something far superior. We're ahead of the game. We just need to wait for everyone else to catch up.
High Karate:
People will buy what they want and can afford. You say about high speed, well I am in the country and have dial up, that right dial up service. Yes at times I would like high speed but in another way this limits my time on the computer. I can get high speed but dialup is 20$ a month, my computer I have is used, I could go buy a 1000$ computer if I wanted but guess what I don't give a shit if I do. In fact I had computer trouble and hooked up my old computer that is OVER 10 years old. It uses WINDOWS 95. Guess what, I had no problem posting on CD or looking up the news. Newest fastest isn't always the best if you don't need it.
I have to laugh about this.
People say turn off the TV, but then they run to their computers and sit looking at a 15 to 20 inch screen for hours. What is the difference people? Plus the more I read it isn't good for you to sit in front of a computer for hours. Sorry I will flip on the TV as life is better on a 50 inch screen.