Category: Cable TV

Posted on By Adonis Hoffman, Esq.

Big Media’s Now Moment

Amid the deadly coronavirus and unfolding social justice movement, America stands at a momentous crossroads.  Following the tragic death of George Floyd at the knees of the police, a multiethnic, multigenerational mass of righteous protest is demanding police reform in cities across the nation. 

Captains of industry, in response, have hedged their corporate reputations on hefty pledges to promote African-American economic equality.  In stark contrast, the president remains defiant to convention and defensive of status quo law and order.

Chronicling it all in real time for the world to see has been the mainstream media.  Broadcast and national cable, in particular, have experienced a renewed relevance and a reborn sense of mission as the justice movement gains more sweep, scale, and seriousness.  This has been especially meaningful for local TV, which needed to burnish its credentials with American viewers.  Like many in America, journalists have discovered what heretofore has been absent from countless reports of black death-by-police.  Transparency.  Equity.  Empathy.

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Posted on By Guest Author David L. Cohen

The Challenge of Harnessing Change in a Global Economy

As the news media know better than anyone, the great story of our times is change – dramatic, accelerating, and often disruptive change.

The key question is whether our economy, our educational institutions, and our system of democratic self-government can harness this change for everyone’s benefit – or whether the tidal wave of change will overrun us.

To meet the challenges of change, we must think big and act boldly.  Our growing divisions, however – our self-selecting news bubbles, the tribalization of our politics, the noxious contempt each side has for the other – are making it harder to solve big problems.  The environment is certainly not conducive to serious dialogue or to constructive problem solving.

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Posted on By Adonis Hoffman, Esq.

Conflict and Compromise Await New Congress in Telecom, Media, Tech

A new era of American history begins when the 116th Congress convenes in January 2019 with one of the most partisan classes in modern history. Depending on which side of the aisle they sit, the members’ mission will be either to balance the ship of state or continue full steam ahead.

Conventional wisdom suggests there will be conflict. Optimists hope there will be compromise. The reality will be somewhere in between as the new Congress will have the opportunity to forge a unified path on things that matter to all Americans. With so many pressing policy issues facing the republic – immigration, healthcare, homeland security, and more – it is a stretch to think telecom, media, and technology (TMT) issues will top the agenda or lead the day.

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Posted on By Adonis Hoffman, Esq.

The Judge Who Holds Key to Future of Media

Federal Judge Richard Leon is not a household name, but he is one of the most powerful men in Washington. As senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Leon’s past decisions have altered the fate of some of America’s biggest companies, and his upcoming decision holds the key to the future of the media industry itself.

Leon made history in 2011 by approving the $38 billion Comcast-NBCU merger, positioning the new company as the largest cable and broadcast entity in the U.S. More importantly, his ruling established a hard-to-overlook legal precedent, which has influenced antitrust law and competition policy ever since.

Today, Judge Leon presides over yet another ground-breaking case with similar themes: United States v. AT&T and Time Warner. A mega merger valued at $108.7 billion, the deal seeks to marry a major content distributor (AT&T) with a leading video content producer (Time Warner). Beyond the litigants, the media and communications sector anxiously await the judge’s ruling, and with good reason.

First, the case marks the first time since the Carter administration (1977) that the U.S. Department of Justice has sued to block a vertical merger (i.e., between two companies that do not compete)…..

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Posted on By Patrick Maines

Progressives’ Anti-Merger Mania

The proposed merger between the cable systems of Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks has brought out the usual poseurs in opposition.  I speak, of course, of such as Common Cause, Consumers Union, and Public Knowledge (all of which are wrong in their usual and tiresome way, but not certifiable), and their more extreme kin, Media Alliance and Free Press.

As it happens, there exists a bridge between these armies of progressivism in the person of former FCC commissioner Michael Copps.  Since leaving the FCC, Copps has flocked to the aid of those organizations he favored when he was a commissioner.  So it is that the gentleman is now on the board of Free Press and a “special adviser” to Common Cause.

Which, of course, is why it’s important to know the kinds of things he’s saying about the merger.  Writing in Common Dreams (“Breaking News and Views for the Progressive Community”), Copps relieves himself of opinions like these:

This merger would create a new Comcast – a national cable giant with the ability and the incentive to thwart competition, diversity, and consumer choice….  >> Read More

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.  The full version of this article appeared in The Hill on Feb. 9, 2016.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

What Changed the FCC Chairman’s Mind?

On the occasion last week of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s passage of “net neutrality” regulations, Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Commission, announced that it was “the proudest day of my public policy life.”  It’s not known whether that statement is a reflection of how little Wheeler feels he’s accomplished in life, or an embarrassing attempt to take credit for something that was forced on him.

What we do know is that the regulation that passed with his vote – and those of the other two Democrats on the Commission – was not the much sounder one Wheeler initially proposed, but a radical version that carries within it opportunities for mischief and much worse than that.

So what happened to change Wheeler’s mind?  The most obvious explanation is the interjection of President Obama who, a few weeks before the vote, publicly stated his view that the FCC should subject Internet service providers (ISPs) to utility-like regulation.  This is the explanation for Wheeler’s switch held by most insiders, and there’s no doubt that these FCC commissioners, their notional “independence” notwithstanding, move like earlier ones to the music of their parties and the presidents who appoint them. >> Read More

Posted on By Patrick Maines

If It Walks Like a Duck….

The storms occasioned by the comments of "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson, and A&E’s suspension of him, mirror similar unhappy episodes in the media and on college campuses.  As noted here, and here, and here, and here, examples of similar instances of free speech intolerance are plentiful.

Indeed, colleges and the media, the two institutions that one would expect to be the most supportive of free speech and diverse opinion, are in fact among the least.

Because A&E’s decision was its alone, and not an act of government, this affair is not a First Amendment issue per se. Since the network owns the rights to the program it can do whatever it wants with it. But when such matters arise within companies that are part of the only industry protected by name in the Constitution, one would hope that there would be at least a rudimentary respect for the broader concept of freedom of speech.

This said, it’s understood that in an age in which speech police abound, anything done or said by an institution or individual may become the target of organized protests, and for the media this can mean campaigns directed at their advertisers. This, presumably, was a factor in A&E’s decision to suspend Robertson.

Even so, it’s hard to sympathize with the network.  For one thing, A&E’s apparent decision to air next season those episodes of the show already filmed before they banned Mr. Robertson smacks of transparent hypocrisy.

And then there’s this: Cable TV is filled with reality shows that feature everything from hog hunters and alligator slayers, to catfish noodlers and wilderness dwellers.  Were a magazine reporter to interview any of the stars of these shows on any subject touching on the socio-political, what percent of them  would say something as would give offense to someone?  Maybe all of them?

Of course that doesn’t bother networks like A&E, so long as these people don’t in fact speak about such things. Seen from this perspective, the casts of such shows are like performing monkeys, there to engage in their usual antics while the networks play the accordion.

Not for the first time, one of the most poignant comments to issue about this affair comes from Camille Paglia. As reported in the Daily Caller, Paglia sees in this kerfuffle another indication that “the culture has become too politically correct”:

To express yourself in a magazine in an interview – this is the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades. This is the whole legacy of free speech 1960s that have been lost by my own party.

One need not agree with Paglia about PC’s roots in order to agree with her about its corrosive effect on the culture.  With respect to matters of free speech, political correctness comes with a smile on its face but jackboots on its feet.

                                               

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

‘Breaking Bad’ Elevated Television

If you’ve been out of the country for the past six years, you have an excuse for being unfamiliar with Breaking Bad, perhaps the best show that’s ever been on television.

The story of Walter White, a humble high school chemistry teacher who, upon learning he has lung cancer, decides to team up with a former student to make methamphetamines, BB portrays the transformation of White from “Mr. Chips into Scarface,” as the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, describes it.

Fresh off its Emmy award as best drama series, a recognition that was too long in coming, the question now is when will we see another TV series that is as astonishingly good?  And another question: Why is it so hard for truly excellent programming to get air time?

In his book Difficult Men, Brett Martin recounts the lengthy and harrowing path traversed by Gilligan on the way to securing a deal with AMC, one of the several channels that comprise AMC Networks.

Martin tells the tale of Gilligan’s meeting with executives of the TNT cable network, who liked the show but were afraid of the drug-making aspect of it: “We don’t want to be stereotypical philistine executives, but does it have to be meth?  We love this, but if we buy it, we’ll be fired.”

Nor was TNT the only cable network that turned thumbs down on Breaking Bad.  So too did Showtime, HBO, and FX, meaning, as Gilligan put it, “there was no place left in the known universe.”

Elsewhere in his book, Martin usefully recounts the words of the AMC executive (Rob Sorcher) who decided to take a chance on the show: “We had had success with Mad Men,” he said.  “And once you’ve had that cookie it tastes good.  You want another one.  The decision to go another way, believe me, it was … terrifying.  But once you did, once you chose quality over everything else … you could do anything.”

At a time when so much video programming – film as well as TV – is demographically driven, PC themed, and/or scripted for cardboard characters, Breaking Bad is something very different.

Incorporating tremendous writing, directing, acting, and visuals, BB delivered a series that was marked by ambiguity, complexity, surprise, and sophistication.

As many have noted, in recent years the Emmy’s have been dominated by cable rather than broadcast network programming.  Indeed, both pay and basic cable channels have gained a reputation as the place to find smarter, edgier original series like Mad Men, The Sopranos, and of course Breaking Bad (despite the initial drug-themed hesitation about BB).  And this raises the question of why much of the best programming has been gravitating to cable.  

One explanation is that broadcasting is much more heavily regulated.  For this reason, programming that is marked by sexual or violent content carries greater risk for broadcasters than for cable networks.  And the risks involved don’t issue from government only.

A case in point is the Showtime program Dexter, a series that, though critically acclaimed, features both sexual situations and violence.  In 2007, CBS announced that it was considering broadcasting reruns of Dexter over the air.  In response, a conservative group, the Parents Television Council, warned CBS affiliates to preempt the show, and threatened the show’s advertisers.

As it happened, CBS edited the reruns down to a TV-14 rating and aired them on its affiliates, but only for a single season.

None of this is to suggest that violence equals excellence, or that excellence can only be achieved with the inclusion of violence – only that where violence is a necessary ingredient in the excellent telling of a good story, its inclusion ought not to preempt the airing of it.

For years now, many people have bemoaned the “dumbing down” of America, a phenomenon defined by Wikipedia as “the deliberate diminishment of the intellectual level of the content of schooling and education, of literature and cinema, and of news and culture.”

The popular and critical success of Breaking Bad demonstrates that there is both the talent and the audience for something better.

                                               

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.  A version of this article appeared in the online edition of USA Today on Sept. 29, 2013.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

After Aurora, Questioning Violent Programming (Again)

Very few columnists write as well, or as powerfully, as Peggy Noonan, and her piece last week in the Wall Street Journal titled “The Dark Night Rises” is no exception.  As with so many of Noonan’s commentaries, the strength in her column is not just in her way with words but in the fact that her opinions are well grounded in widely shared values.

So it is that when she alleges and bemoans the coarsening of popular culture, and the difficulty parents have these days in controlling the kind of things that their children get from the media, one guesses that few would disagree.

Even the ad hominem criticism in her piece – that Hollywood executives take care to insulate their own children from what they produce, and that they have “cabanas at the pool” at the Beverly Hills Hotel – doesn’t seem exorbitantly over the top given the thrust of her argument as a whole.

But when she suggests, by quoting from a writer at RealClearPolitics, that a “hundred studies have demonstrated conclusively that viewing violence on the screen increases aggression in those who watch it, children especially,” she is on shakier ground than she realizes.

In 2002, Jonathan Freedman, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, published a lengthy and devastating critique of this thesis titled “Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression: Assessing the Scientific Evidence.”  Some years later, Dr. Freedman wrote a paper on the same subject for The Media Institute.  That paper concluded with these words:

In sum there is no convincing scientific evidence that television violence causes children to be aggressive, or that any particular depiction of violence on television has this effect, or that it affects any particular type of children more than others … my conclusion is that either there is no effect of television violence on aggression, or, if there is an effect, it is vanishingly small.

Beyond the scientific literature, whatever its value, lie other aspects of the larger issue.  There is, for instance, the small matter of whether we, as a nation, should desire for everyone only that kind of programming that is fit for children.

And then there’s the issue of violence as a literary device.  Noonan is right to ridicule some past attempts by Hollywood executives to “rationalize and defend” what they produce.  But the problem with any wholesale denunciation of program violence is that it doesn’t allow much respect for programming that, though featuring violent portrayals, is terrific all the same.

A great case in point is the production, being shown on the AMC cable network, called “Breaking Bad.”  It is the story of one Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who, having contracted terminal cancer, takes to making methamphetamine.  “Breaking Bad” has, in its fifth season, become increasingly violent as Walter, in addition to his meth cooking, has become a murderer in the company of murderers.  So violent?  Yes.  But this is also one of the most brilliant series, of any genre, ever shown on TV.

It may be cold comfort to parents overwhelmed by the programs and platforms accessible by their children, but the only practical solution to the problem is parental oversight and responsibility for what their children watch.  Everything else – from exhortations to put the cultural genie back in the bottle, to governmental policies that attempt to circumvent First Amendment case law – is doomed to frustrate and to fail.

But that’s the thing about free speech. It’s not a prophylactic to be deployed against pictures, words, or ideas, it’s a necessary precursor to every other freedom.

                                               

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

D.C. Circuit’s ‘Net Neutrality’ Decision

The D.C. Circuit Court’s decision, while obviously correct, will not slake the thirst of anyone looking for intellectual arguments for or against the FCC’s proposed regulation of the ISPs’ network-management practices. Because the court ruled that the FCC lacked the "ancillary" authority it asserted, the body of the decision amounts to little more than a refutation of the respondents’ argument that earlier Supreme Court decisions provided precedent for the FCC’s claims.

The "legalistic" nature of this decision aside, there is something important here. It is widely surmised (and feared) that, thus rebuffed, the FCC will attempt to get to its desired result – network neutrality, as it’s called – by attempting to regulate ISPs, like phone companies, under Title II of the Communications Act.

But look what’s happening here. On the basis of claims of abuse so slim they’re very nearly invisible, the FCC has proposed to expand and codify that agency’s "Internet principles" in a way that guarantees its regulatory oversight of the freest, most democratic, and fastest-growing communications medium in the country. And for what? Because of fears that Internet providers might look for ways to insulate everybody else from the negative consequences of the actions of a relative handful of bandwidth hogs?

One of the intervenors in this case – Free Press, whose sole reason for being is the subjugation of the commercial media and communications companies to the yoke of government – coined the phrase "Net Neutrality: The First Amendment of the Internet." The reality, as someone put it, is that codified net neutrality is more nearly "The Fairness Doctrine of the Internet."

For now, nobody knows for sure what will happen next – whether the FCC, or Congress, will push ahead in the conviction that this too is an issue of such "transformative" importance the only thing that matters is getting it done. But in this, as in so many things, the wiser course would be to rethink the matter entirely. It rarely happens that government acts more efficiently than the marketplace, and net neutrality is almost certainly no exception to that rule.