RE: Freedom of the Press in danger?

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RE: Freedom of the Press in danger? - 7/1/2007 9:22:04 PM

Marc2b

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Joined: 8/7/2006
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quote:

This presupposes that a free market is the best guarantor that each citizen will have access to the broadcast media content he wishes to consume, doesn't it?

No it does not. I’ll say it again, the freedom to try is not the freedom to succeed. The freedom to speak is not the freedom to be heard.

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All across the United States there exist groups of people who would like to listen to music programming beyond what the local markets presently offer. Given the economics of broadcasting over a limited bandwidth, the free market has determined that todays typical programming will prevail. This typically presents stations which on any given day play from a list of 20 or fewer recent releases, or some package of "oldies". These are formats which appeal to the most lucrative demographics, evidently. Depending on the size of a market, a tip of the hat may be given to a few other slightly less juicy but still lucrative demographics.

Every person who is not a member of any of those key demographics is more or less abandoned by the free market, when it comes to radio music programming., as it seems to me. Do you disagree?

Tough shit (see above). Society doesn’t exist to bend over backwards and kiss each individual’s ass. My favorite brand of ice cream is Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cup. I can enjoy it because enough other people enjoy it to make it profitable for Ben and Jerry’s to produce it. If enough people stopped buying it so that it was no longer profitable to produce it, then I wouldn’t be able to bye it anymore. Should the government step in and force Ben and Jerry’s to produce it (losing money in the process) just to satisfy my desire?

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The free market so far never has assured that each of us can choose what want in terms of broadcast music, insofar as I can tell or remember.

Again, tough shit.

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The lowest common denominator tends to be served

That’s just a condescending way of saying the majority tends to be served.

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and then some cherry-picking goes on in terms of giving niche service to those best able to reward advertisers.

Oh. So the free market can serve minority tastes (some of them, at least).

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I think that with some care a useful analogy can be drawn to the presentation of polictically oriented programming.

People who are unattractive to advertisers will not have programming produced and presented to them by the free market. This is so in regard to music and it is so in regard to non-political talk programming. Should we expect the picture to be altogether different and ever-so-much fairer when the free market is put in charge of providing forums for political speech with enough variety that each citizen can choose what he prefers?

We should expect that the majority will be served with some niche markets as well. As for those who are pissed off because their ideas don’t command a large enough audience – TOUGH SHIT!

quote:

Your contention, Marc, that the free market will let everyone decide what sorts of programming they will hear seems pretty naive, even pollyannish, to me.

I’ve made no such contention that everyone will decide. My contention is that the free market will decide the programing based upon the preferences of the majority. The preferences of the majority is at the heart of democracy. Yet there are those who are so indignant that the majority preference goes against their preference that they seek to use the power of government to rig the outcome against the majority.

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Not that I'm agains poly, mind you. But then again I don't hear many radio stations offering programming targetted to that demographic.

Because they are not a very large demographic. So I guess they are shit out of luck. But let’s stop pretending that radio is the only communications market. I think you’ll find that the poly lifestyle has found alternatives. Say, for example, the internet. The Fairness Doctrine is being pushed by the Left because they’re pissed off that the Right dominates talk radio but it is not like the Left doesn’t have alternatives to political communication now, does it? The Left is hardly under represented in television, the print media, or the internet. Indeed, why did the Right flock to talk radio? Perhaps they felt under represented in other communication venues and found an alternative. But rather than find alternatives, some people would rather whine and demand the government rig the outcome for them.

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A notion which I feel needs stress in this discussion is that citizens who are unattractive to advertisers are just as much citizens, and just as much co-owners of the airwaves which commercial broadcasters use to make their millions. It is almost axiomatic, especially in the face of broadcast bandwidth limitations, that some groups will be systematically underserved or even abandoned outright by the free market in broadcasting.

Exactly who’s definition of "served" are we going by here? Who decides what constitutes the people (or a segment thereof) being "served?" I would like the free market to decide. Others want the government (by which they really mean themselves via the government) to decide.

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I don't see a perfect resolution.

Good! Because there isn’t one. That is the first thing people need to realize about "solving" any problem. Solutions are rare. Trade-offs are the norm. The search for the perfect solution always results in no solution if not in making the problem worse. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

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I don't know what would constitute the fairest use of these public resources. It does occur to me that during the decades when the previous rules were in place, no political persuasion seemed to get a lock on this commonly-owned resource.

If you mean when the Fairness Doctrine was in effect, the reason no political persuasion had a lock is because there was virtually no political talk radio. Broadcasters shied away from it.

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In addition, during that interval political power moved back and forth between the major parties pretty frequently.

And when each political party held sway, they used the Fairness Doctrine to harass any political opposition that managed to get on the radio.

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If the notion of presenting opposing opinions was really so dangerous to democracy as some some here imply--not that you've made this implication, Marc, I wonder why democracy didn't whither and die when indeed there was some good faith effort to present a listener or viewer with paired, opposing views which they might freely evaluate and choose between.

Democracy may not have withered and died (because there were alternative media) but talk radio practically did. So, rather than having limited choices (and all choices are limited) radio listeners had no choice. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

< Message edited by Marc2b -- 7/1/2007 9:35:08 PM >

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