Webs and Digits
The first decade of the new millennium has started out to be a tumultuous one. One prediction of chaos, however, did not occur. A widespread belief in the late 1990s was that a Y2K bug would disrupt and possibly destroy computer communications and other electronic media throughout the world. Such an apocalypse did not occur on January 1, 2000 (or on January 1, 2001, the technical but less dramatic start of the new century). The seminal event of the new century was the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City and the crashing of other hijacked planes into the Pentagon and into a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001. Another key event occurred the year before, in 2000, when for the first time in U.S. history the Supreme Court, voting along acknowledged party lines, effectively designated the new president by stopping a ballot recount in Florida and giving the deciding electoral votes to George W. Bush, who had a halfmillion fewer national popular votes than candidate Albert Gore. Following the 9/11 terrorist strike, the United States retaliated against what appeared to be the source of the attacks, the Taliban government in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama Bin Laden. More than 2 years later the media were reporting that Bin Laden was still alive and Al Qaeda was still active. By 2004 the media were able to obtain from the White House all documents that revealed who in government knew what and when prior to the 9/11 attack. Following the attack, the White House and Congress quickly passed antiterrorism legislation called The USA Patriot Act. The act permitted arrest and search and seizure without warrant, indefinite incommunicado detention without benefit of legal representation or informing the missing persons’ families about what happened to them, and secret court-martials and execution, among other things.
The beginning of the new century saw economic tumult, as well. The media broke stories about corporate pilfering in which executives of some of America’s leading corporations—including Enron and media giant World-Com—manipulated books and finances to personally abscond with hundreds of millions of dollars, resulting in bankruptcy for their companies, and loss of pension funds, jobs, and investments for hundreds of thousands of their employees and others throughout the country. The media reported unsuccessful attempts to obtain documents on secret meetings between high White House officials and some of these executives prior to the revelation of the scandals.
Stating that his action would stop an economic recession already under way, the president initiated an historically massive tax cut for American taxpayers; 80% of the tax cut went to the 10% of wealthiest Americans. Unemployment, however, continued to increase and the lack of available federal support resulted in the reduction of state and local health, safety, and education services and, in many instances, higher state and local taxes. Environmental pollution increased as clean air and water laws were modified. America was pressed economically as a budget surplus of trillions of dollars became a budget deficit of trillions. Rising unemployment affected the media industries, as well as others. As Broadcasting & Cable magazine noted at the end of 2002, “After years of steady growth, stations have eliminated thousands of jobs since 2000.” By 2004 the media were reporting that one in ten American families—35 million people—were living in poverty. President Bush urged war against Iraq as a threat to America’s safety. The media reported as the president’s justifications for war that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, was developing nuclear weapons, had ties to Al Qaeda, and had some involvement in the 9/11 attack. Subsequently, the media reported that none of these assertions was true. One notable example was conservative TV personality Bill O’Reilly, a strong Bush supporter who, in 2004, kept a promise to publicly apologize for his support of the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction if the claims proved to be false; he did so on “Good Morning America.”
Despite media reports of millions of antiwar protesters at rallies in the United States and in countries throughout the world, and the opposition of most of the United Nations, the United States and a few allies attacked and conquered Iraq in a few weeks. During the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq, more American servicemen and women were killed than in the war itself. The removal and capture of Iraq’s iron-fisted president Saddam Hussein opened Iraq to some new areas of democracy, although women, who benefited from strongly enforced equal rights under the old regime, but, as of May 2004, many of these rights had been removed under the new form of government.
The Iraq war benefited some companies in the U.S. economy. Although the media reported that many billions of taxpayers’ money went to the rebuilding of Iraq, they also reported that much of this money went to U.S. companies, with some of the companies, such as the vice president’s former company, Halliburton, and other companies close to the White House, getting contracts without competitive bids. In addition, the Iraqi oil wells gave some U.S. oil companies increased sources and income.
The FCC, under a new chair, Michael Powell, brought significant changes to the media industry in the first few years of the new century. Antimonopoly rules, almost entirely eliminated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, were further loosened. Fewer and fewer giant companies increasingly controlled more and more media distribution systems and stations. In 2003 the FCC discarded almost all of the few remaining restrictions on media monopolies, permitting any one owner to reach 45% (up from 35%) of the American TV viewing public, to own more than eight radio stations in some markets, to own not only two but as many as three TV stations in the same market, and to own a daily newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market. Despite efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to roll back the 45% cap, strong support of the deregulation by the Republican White House and threats of a presidential veto hampered the proconsumer congressional effort. At this writing some legislators were attempting a 39% compromise.
At the mid-decade, multiple ownership expanded even further to include broadcast networks and stations, cable systems, and DBS (direct broadcast satellite) systems. When the FCC approved the AOL–Time Warner merger in 2000, it created the largest media conglomerate. In 2003 General Electric’s NBC announced a merger with Vivendi, to be called NBC Universal, creating another media giant in a class with conglomerates such as Viacom and the Walt Disney Company. Six multinational companies, five of them operating principally out of the United States, controlled 90% of the television programming and advertising throughout the world. Carla Brooks Johnston’s 2000 prophetic book, Screened Out: How the Media Control Us and What We Can Do About It, reveals the extent and effects of media mega-monopolies.
In cable, Comcast’s purchase of AT&T Broadband resulted in an MSO (multiple system operator) that serves more than 21 million U.S. cable homes. Time Warner Cable had more than 9 million subscribers. However, cable companies began to feel the competition from the rapidly advancing DBS companies. In terms of total subscribers, satellite provider DirecTV was second to Comcast with 12 million homes at the end of 2003, and the Echostar Communications satellite service was just behind Time Warner with more than 8.5 million homes.
During the first decade of the 21st century, more and more people turned from the traditional media to the Internet for alternative reporting and ideas and, insofar as most of the traditional media supported conservative causes and personalities, for objective information. Many Americans were discovering websites such as Indymedia and FreeSpeechTV, and C-span gained viewers as the only cable or broadcast channel to provide live coverage of political events such as the massive protests in Washington, DC, and elsewhere against the Iraq war, racism, Arab American profiling under the Patriot Act, and other controversial issues.
Conversely, the mainstream media gave full and unrelenting coverage during the same period to such topics as the Laci Peterson murder, the Kobe Bryant rape allegation, the indictment of Martha Stewart on illegal stock trading, the arrest of Michael Jackson on child sexual abuse charges, and the breast-baring of Janet Jackson on nationwide television during the Super Bowl.
The increasing conglomeration of media ownership greatly increased the domestic and international role of U.S. entertainment and information. American media expanded global interaction and cooperation with other countries, although worldwide political animosity toward America grew as the United States withdrew from a number of international agreements. Although monopolies in general grew, one monopoly suffered a setback. In the year 2000 the federal courts supported the Department of Justice’s suit (under a Democratic administration that had ironically supported monopoly expansion in the Telecommunications Act of 1996) to break up Microsoft, which had used its already strong impact on the Internet to push for adoption of its systems of digital broadcasting. Technologically, as well as politically and economically, traditional means of media distribution and reception underwent huge changes at the beginning of the new millennium. The Internet slowly but inexorably began to complement and then to supplant television and radio (whether through broadcasting, cable, or satellite), and even film. More than 100 radio stations every month were joining the thousands already streaming their programs onto the Internet. In 2001 two companies began beaming digital radio signals into homes and automobiles. Radio moved forward in its technical proficiency with digital terrestrial broadcasting, incorporating a digital signal into its already existing analog channels. The FCC issued rule-making for an all-digital radio service. Despite the many video distribution services, radio continued to grow and was chronicled in two new books by one of the authors of this text, Sounds in the Dark:All Night Radio in American Life and Talking Radio:An Oral History of Radio in the Television Age.
Small radio stations whose limited signals similarly limited their numbers of listeners and commercial fees found that they could survive on the Internet, drawing audiences that can’t find comparable station formats in their own communities. The Internet increased as a new outlet for “alternative” and “underground” radio stations.
HDTV (high-definition television) and its digital component were expected to be available nationwide at the beginning of the new century. Although the FCC permitted some TV stations to postpone their changeover from analog, at the beginning of 2004 almost all stations were on the air with digital signals, with the FCC cracking down on those not yet converted. Nationwide availability of digital programming spurred the purchase and increasingly lower cost of digital receivers, paralleling the establishment and growth of new media services in the past. An NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) survey showed that 43% of American homes were likely to buy a digital TV set by 2005. In addition, the growth of plasma TV and phasing out of traditional cathode-ray tubes suggest that many current sets are likely to be replaced by flat-panel and rear-projection sets by 2010.
Digital video delivery on the Internet included pay-per-view and online purchase of programs. Television on the Internet was expected to radically change TV viewing patterns, and producers feared program pirating. Beginning July 1, 2005, digital TVs and other receivers of DTV broadcast signals have to be equipped with technology that prevents unauthorized retransmission over the Internet. The changes for viewers transcend picture quality. In a 2001 article entitled “The Future of TV” on the Technology Review website, Mark Fischetti wrote that “The future of television is just around the corner—and it ain’t HDTV. It’s a completely new viewing paradigm where you pay to be in control and see whatever you want, whenever your heart desires.”
Will the children of today’s college students look on current radio and television sets as dinosaurs relegated to the nostalgia collections of cat-whisker radio receivers?
The computer itself occupied an increasingly important part of video and audio entertainment, with video games replacing much of the time previously spent watching TV and listening to the radio. In a December 2003 New York Times article, Jonathan Dee stated that “video games are where movies were in the 1930s—on the verge of becoming the popular entertainment … as in the first days of television or radio or the movies, the form is the whole thrill, and its more than thrill enough.” Computer-assisted design (CAD) has made possible increased animated programs that manipulate images and reality, not only on the Internet, but on television and in video games, as well.
Public concern with the content of video games grew, not only with the violence per se inherent in many video games, but because the violence is directed at specific racial, religious, ethnic, sexual, and other groups. For example, in 2003 an American-Haitian organization took public issue with a video game whose object is to kill Haitians, and others objected to the increasing number of video games that promulgate and reward hate and violence toward other specified groups.
First page of lengthy directory listing DTV stations in early 2004.
Music—to the consternation of many radio stations as well as music authors, composers, performers and publishers—also became an increasingly important part of Internet use. Many students who would be irate if they had written a book or produced a film and received little or no royalties because their work had been pirated and circulated free among prospective audiences, or who would promptly sue if a business plan or scientific patent they had developed had been stolen by a rival company, depriving them of any compensation for their work, had no compunction about pirating copyrighted music downloaded from the Internet, sharing it with or receiving it from friends without paying any fee to the creators and copyright owners. This practice prompted congressional legislation requiring computer and consumer electronics makers to incorporate technology that would prevent downloading music or film that has been copyrighted. Suits by music copyright holders under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act forced hundreds of music pirates to close, levied a fine on the most prominent Internet pirate, Napster, and called for prosecution of individual student pirates. Responsible distributors such as Listen, Pressplay, and RealOneMusic Pass replaced Napster by paying legal fees for their music and establishing subscription bases for their individual clients.
According to the NAB, local broadcasters give the audience ample political coverage.
Courtesy NAB.
Concomitantly, the planned merger in late 2003 by two of the “Big Five” world music companies, Sony Music and BMG, would result in four companies controlling 75% of the world’s music: Sony and BMG, 25%; Universal Music Group, 26%; EMI, 12%, Warner Music Group, 12%; and independent labels the remainder.
The new millennium appeared to affirm the LCD (lowest common denominator) tastes of the American viewing public. While a few standby television sitcoms and drama programs, such as “Friends,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” the original “Law and Order” and its clones, and some new shows such as “CSI Miami,” continued to do well in the ratings, reality shows proliferated. Reality shows drove the ratings for broadcast and cable networks. The success of programs such as “Survivor” and “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire” spawned virtually every type of survival, deception, victimization, exploitation, and personal embarrassment show one could possibly imagine. Titles like “Joe Millionaire,” “Married by America,” “Average Joe,” “American Idol” and its clone, “World Idol,” the several “Survivor” variations, “Extreme Makeover,” “Paradise Hotel,” and “For Love or Money” not only dominated the airwaves but most got good ratings and generated good income. Reality shows are not all like the ones noted above, however. Court shows, such as “People’s Court” and “Judge Judy,” and some music and comedy-based programs also fall into the reality category. Some reality shows have been based on popular personalities, others on ordinary people, noncelebrities. One of the most popular of the former was “The Osbournes.” The appeal of such programs is primarily to young viewers, especially those in their teens and early twenties. In 2003, 30% of the favorite 30 programs among the most desired demographic, 18-to 49-year-olds, were reality shows. Some reality shows have been very short lived; others continue in their original form or as clones. For many viewers, however, a Boston Globe description of a new 2003 year-end reality program, “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance,” was, at least for some viewers, a penultimate description of them all: “A big, fat obnoxious show.”
Web radio receivers make their debut but disappear after Internet radio market flattens.
Courtesy Kerbango.
At the same time, high-quality programs that really dealt with reality—that is, the real economic, political, and social problems of the real world—either went off the air (e.g., “The Education of Max Bickford”), began to lose audiences after a high-rating start (e.g., “The West Wing”), or were churned by networks seeking short-term quantity rather than quality (e.g., “Boston Public”). Dramas in general, however, continued to get top ratings. Of the scripted shows on the seven broadcast networks in 2003, more than half were dramas, which occupied more than twice the air time allocated to sitcoms. Aside from the quality of any given show, blood and crime seemed most attractive to audiences, with the leading drama programs “CSI,” “ER”, and the inevitable “Law and Order.” Cable-originated dramas began to outstrip most broadcast-originated dramas in prestige and awards, most notably HBO-produced fare such as “The Sopranos,” “Six Feet Under,” and “Band of Brothers.”
Sitcoms continued to thrive as the legacy of “I Love Lucy,” although fewer sitcoms appeared to have the power and long-lasting success as classics such as “All in the Family,” “The Bill Cosby Show,” and “Seinfeld,” which ended its 9-year run in 2001 and was voted the number-one sitcom of all time in a 2001 TV Guide poll. Although “Seinfeld” was arguably one of the better programs in television history, it is important to note that contemporary poll results are determined by voters whose memories and judgments are largely limited to their comparatively young ages. Overall, fewer sitcoms were reaching the airwaves: The fall of 2003 saw 24 new sitcoms on the four major networks, compared to 46 in 1993. A few older sitcoms, such as “Friends” (which ended its run in 2004) and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” received critical honors as well as high ratings. An HBO-originated sitcom, “Sex and the City,” also fell into the high-honor category. Half-hour sitcoms continued to target the very desirable demographic groups of young people and women ages 25–49.
Infotainment continued to replace information on the many news magazine programs such as “60 Minutes,” “Primetime,” “Dateline NBC,” “20/20,” and “48 Hours.” Because these formats have become the principal force in network news, their increased reliance on personalities, feature stories, and scandals to attract larger audiences has raised questions about the objectivity and validity of television news as a whole, while also raising ratings and commercial revenue for these programs.
The ultimate in bottom line programming—that is, stations and channels devoted entirely to commercial selling—also grew in the new century. The adage that a broadcast license is a license to make money was unequivocally demonstrated by shopping channels, with QVC a prime example, its revenues challenging those of the major broadcast networks. Program content continued to be a divisive issue, with many First Amendment supporters critical of the FCC’s alleged crackdown on indecent programming and many civic and religious groups calling for stricter oversight by the FCC of allegedly offensive programming. The FCC, under pressure from Congress and the public, issued in 2001 a new statement of clarification of its determination of what is or is not indecent, with examples from complaints it has considered. Although relatively few complaints reached the FCC about alleged indecency in the context of a sitcom or drama or animated show (the latter impregnated in the 1990s by programs like “Southpark”), concern with the content of shock-jocks talk shows increased. Perhaps the most infamous example thus far in the new century was Infinity Radio’s “Opie and Anthony” program’s detailed description of two people having heterosexual sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Opie and Anthony were fired and in 2003 the FCC fined Infinity (owned by media giant Viacom and also the company had been fined millions of dollars before for the content of its Howard Stern and other programs) $357,000. Infinity challenged the fine. Few on either side of the issue were satisfied. Not to be outdone, CBS announced in early 2004 that it would try out a new one-hour prime-time television talk show hosted by Howard Stern. The subject of indecency in the media was covered in a 2003 book by the authors of this text, Dirty Discourse: Sex and Indecency in American Radio. Broadcast television prime time continued to lose viewers as cable viewing increased and in 2003, for the first time, surpassed in total viewers those watching the older medium. But the major players were still major and despite a continuing drop in prime-time viewers, increased their yearly revenues. In 2003 NBC remained the largest, with income of $4.46 billion, up 8.6% from the previous year. CBS’s revenues were $4.05 billion, up 10.3%; ABC $31.9 billion, up 10.4%, and FOX $2.24 billion, up 6.9%. Despite the economic recession that affected the country as a whole, broadcast network sales increased 9% overall. Of significance was the record cost of a 30-second commercial spot on the 2004 football Super Bowl broadcast: $2.3 million!
Cable networks also gained, with overall increased revenues in 2003 of 12% over the previous year. Some of the top cable networks were QVC, with $3.8 billion, an increase of 5.9% over the previous year; ESPN, with $2.87 billion, an increase of 35.2%; and HBO, with $2.2 billion an increase of 7.2%. Among those who owned and operated the most television stations in 2004 were the Sinclair Broadcast Group with 59 TV stations in 39 markets, Fox with 35 in 26 markets, Hearst-Argyle with 27 in 24, Tribune Broadcasting with 23 in 20, and Gannett Broadcasting with 22 stations in 19 markets.
Among leading radio conglomerates, Clear Channel Communications was the largest, with 1216 stations in 190 markets in 2003. Cumulus Media had 270 stations in 55 markets; Citadel Broadcasting, 216 in 44; Infinity Broadcasting, 185 in 40; and Entercom, 104 stations in 19 markets. Clear Channel led in revenues announced in 2003, as well, with more than $3.4 billion; Infinity was second, with more than $2.1 billion. All the other radio groups had revenues of less than $500 million. Some owners with fewer stations in larger markets earned more than some owners with more stations but in smaller markets. Popular radio program formats remained, as a whole, fairly steady. Average shares in 2003 for country formats were 13.3, with 9.8 for urban contemporary, 7.8 for CHR, 7.8 for Hispanic, 6.9 for adult contemporary (AC), 6.5 for urban AC, 6.4 for news/talk, 6.0 for soft rock, and 6.0 for album-oriented rock (AOR). Despite a renewed interest in big band music, especially by college students who rediscovered 1930s and 1940s dance styles, that format had only a 2.8 share. Christian and religious formats were at 1.9 and 1.7, respectively, and sports was last with 1.6.
Some of the specific aspects of the first few years of the new century discussed above are noted in the following yearly summaries.
2000
As noted earlier, the big news story of 2000, involving the media in extended coverage of the machinations leading to the ultimate naming of a president, was the presidential race, especially the vote in Florida. The media were blamed for faulty exit polling, and exit polling itself was vilified in many quarters after the media first announced that Democrat Albert Gore was the winner in Florida, but after extended litigation Republican George W. Bush was awarded the state’s electoral votes. In retrospect it appears that the condemnation of the media, in particular, the broadcast stations and networks, was unjustified and that the media did act responsibly in their initial reports. It was discovered that perhaps thousands of people who thought they had voted for Gore had their votes counted for other candidates because of an arcane, confusing paper ballot and because many people, particularly older people, had not pushed the voting hole in their ballot hard enough, resulting in incomplete or hanging “chads” and that thousands of African Americans who were likely to vote for Gore had been refused the right to vote at various polling places. It appeared that voting intention did give Gore the majority vote. Although some critics continue to condemn the broadcasters, broadcasting appears to have been vindicated and to have done its job accurately and conscientiously.
Conglomeration also saw key mergers in 2000. In 1999 the FCC had approved television duopolies and the big players lost no time in taking advantage of it. The AOL–Time Warner merger was approved by the FCC and resulted in a $180 billion corporation. CBS–Viacom merged into a $23.8 billion organization; AT&T and Media One’s merger, $69 billion. Radio’s Clear Channel bought AMFM and was worth $23.8 billion. News Corp (Rupert Murdoch’s FOX conglomerate) bought Chris-Craft, $5.3 billion. Univision, a Spanish language network, bought USA Networks, $1 billion. On January 1, 2001, Broadcasting & Cable magazine summed up the conglomeration frenzy: “The big got even bigger.”
Some of the big, however, were not so happy. Broadcast television networks continued to lose viewers. Despite this, however, all four major networks actually made more money. Total broadcast TV revenue reached a record $33.3 billion, a gain of 17% from the previous year. Broadcast’s principal rival, cable, also showed huge monetary gains, up 29% from the year before for a total of $17.4 billion. Cable’s increasing fees, however, lured an increasing number of TV homes to switch to satellite; the average hike for cable bills was 5.8%.
Programming moved in a number of new directions. Ethnic and lifestyle audiences not previously fully served were targeted. An all-news Spanish language radio station began in New York City. Not only more news programs, but plots and characters on television shows recognized the growing political and buying power of gay and lesbian audiences. Producers and cable and broadcast distributors continued even greater recognition of the potentials of the Internet and planned to go beyond just streaming programs into cyberspace. Film studios explored video-on-demand services, but were concerned about finding ways to prevent a movie-Napster from pirating their feature films for subsequent pirating via file-sharing systems.
Music programming intensified, aimed at teen and college-age audiences, and using formats and selections that concentrated on the Generation Y “gotta-have-it-now,” short attention span. Interactive music selection increased on the Internet. Pay-per-music, which helped artists promote their CDs, was not much competition for free, file-sharing pirated music.
Independent media centers have been established around the globe to provide citizens with noncorporate, nongovernmental perspectives on important issues and trends. We are already into global total interactive communications.
At the end of the year there were 4685 AM and 5892 FM commercial and 2140 noncommercial radio stations on the air. Commercial television stations totaled 721 UHF and 567 VHF, with 250 noncommercial UHF and 125 VHF. Low-power TV (LPTV) stations, often neglected (see the 1999 book, The Hidden Screen by the authors of this text), continued to outstrip the number of full-power stations, with 1756 UHF and 610 VHF LPTVs licensed. The two largest cable companies, AT&T and Comcast, which were to merge the following year, had 15 million and 11.7 million subscribers, respectively. Cox was third with 7.6 million. By the end of the year, the FCC had certified 255 eligible applicants nationally for the reinstated low-power radio licenses. Unlike the 10-watt stations abolished 20 years earlier, however, these were for 100-watt power with a radius of about 3 miles.
2001
The all-consuming event of 2001, the 9/11 terrorist attack, presented the media with a new test: covering an unexpected attack by an unannounced enemy on targets on U.S. soil. The major networks and stations responded by preempting virtually all other programming for 24-hour coverage of the attacks and their aftermath at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the passenger-aborted hijacked flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. The networks lost between $50 million and $75 million a day in ad revenues. The results of the attacks were graphic, some of it too graphic for the networks, but CNN and foreign news teams, including those from Canadian stations, showed the horror of victims leaping and falling from the highest stories of the World Trade Center to their deaths far below.
Audiences for direct broadcast satellite continued to grow in the new millennium. TiVo also debuted to make certain that viewers miss nothing.
Courtesy RCA and USSB and also the TiVo Store.
The country later discovered that the enemy was one we had supported and strengthened during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Broadcasting & Cable, politically conservative in its editorial policy, stated that “the shock at the intensity of the hatred toward the U.S. may be attributed to underreporting by TV news programs [of world attitudes towards America’s economic globalization and foreign policies].” The media extensively and intensively covered the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, its Taliban government, and Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama Bin Laden. While the destroying of the Afghanistan government and infrastructure was successful, Al Qaeda and Bin Laden escaped. Having learned how to manage public opinion in the first Gulf War, the Pentagon reinstituted control of journalists’ coverage and psychological attitudes by restricting them to “embedded” assignments with designated army units. Reports in the U.S. media differed in a number of substantial ways from reports of nonrestricted journalists representing the media of other countries. Reporting from Afghanistan was not easy for any of the electronic media, however, with the weather—sand, dust, wind-storms—frequently knocking out and generally corroding video and audio equipment.
CNN website on 9/11.
Courtesy CNN.
On the home front, a new FCC represented the philosophies of the new administration, with an immediate impact on several key areas of broadcasting. Deregulation moved apace. The key area was conglomeration. As Broadcasting & Cable magazine reported, “Powell’s FCC won’t impose public-interest conditions on industry acquisitions, mergers, conglomerates.” Key mergers included the consummation of the AOL–Time Warner deal. Viacom added cable’s BET (Black Entertainment Television) to its youth and pop music-oriented holdings such as MTV, VH-1, and CMT and its older demographic and ratings-leading network, CBS. Viacom also got FCC approval to own two national TV networks, CBS and UPN. AOL/Time Warner led the big media list, followed by Walt Disney, Vivendi Universal, Viacom, and News Corp. The leading television groups were FOX, Viacom, and Paxson, and the top 25 TV groups owned 44.5% of all U.S. commercial TV stations—up from 41% in 2000 and a huge rise from the 24.6% five years before, in 1996. The top 25 radio groups controlled 24% of all radio stations in the United States and got 57% of radio’s total revenues. In a couple of years AOL/Time Warner would change its name to Time Warner, attempting to revive its media rather than Internet image. Ted Turner, who in 2001 regretted that he had allowed Turner Broadcasting to merge into Time Warner and who was ousted as an officer when the latter merged with AOL, stated that in the near future he believed there would be only two huge surviving MSOs and only four or five programmers.
Another area the FCC dealt with was indecency. The new strongly conservative attitude in Washington opened the door again for Morality in Media and right-wing ideologues like Jerry Falwell to pressure the FCC with more success than they had had in recent years. At the same time, the FCC was pressured by broadcasters and by First Amendment advocates to act with moderation. Eminem’s song, “The Real Slim Shady,” was generally considered to be in violation of indecency standards. To capitalize on its popularity while avoiding FCC sanctions, stations played a cleaned-up version. The FCC, however, levied fines even for playing the cleaned-up version. A Kaiser Foundation study weighed in on TV drama and sitcoms, stating that two-thirds of all shows have sexual content. The FCC issued guidelines on its enforcement policy regarding indecency, described by its new chair as “a restatement of existing statutory, regulatory and judicial law … establishes a measure of clarity in an inherently subjective area.” The policy statement included examples from programs that the FCC considered indecent and from borderline examples that were judged not to be indecent.
Other programming also came under scrutiny, especially by the public. The surgeon general reported that while TV violence may have a short-term influence on behavior, it did not have long-term effects. The media went all out in covering the Chandra Levy disappearance, concentrating, however, on her relationship with Representative Gary Condit, which was reminiscent of the media frenzy in the earlier Monica Lewinsky–President Bill Clinton story. The most watched program during the summer of 2001—pre 9/11—was Connie Chung’s interview with Condit. As counterpoint to what some felt was broadcasting’s pandering, a cable channel, Trio, broadcast a 1949 TV presentation of one of America’s greatest theatrical productions with the original cast, Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”
News coverage, even before 9/11, underwent changes. Early morning, pre-breakfast news shows grew in numbers and audiences. The youth audience was targeted by CNN’s “Headline News,” which unveiled a new format, a fast-moving colorful multisectioned screen with simultaneous different news items, hypergraphics, and a new slogan, “Real News, Real Fast.” Whether it appealed to the computer-savvy generation or not, it wasn’t long before its frenzied nature began to turn off at least older viewers, and CNN modified the new approach. While newscasting largely continued the “if it bleeds, it leads” approach, TV backed off from carrying the execution of Timothy McVeigh, who had been convicted of an act of domestic terrorism: the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing in 1995.
Plasma televisions add a new dimension to home viewing.
Courtesy Sony.
Spanish-language programming and TV audiences grew. Television oriented to women grew, with the Lifetime channel the cable ratings leader and new channels Oxygen and WE moving up. The quality drama “West Wing,” which made a huge critical splash, sold its syndication rights to cable network Bravo for a record price of $1.2 million per episode. Conversely, some syndicators began to look to cable for their first-run shows. A first for a major TV network, NBC accepted liquor ads. An expected expansion of hard liquor advertising did not materialize and NBC dropped liquor advertising the following year.
The big programming news was the remarkable success of reality shows, such as “Big Brother,” “Fear Factor,” “Weakest Link,” and others discussed at the beginning of this chapter. “Survivor” continued to be milked by CBS, which readied the third season of “Survivor.” (As you read this, how many of the dozens of reality shows can you remember? How many are still on the air?) A new game shows cable network was aimed at younger audiences. More and more programs were put onto the Internet. TV expanded its experiments into cyberspace. VH-1 streamed albums onto the Internet before their release. One study showed that television viewing was the principal victim of Internet growth. Wide-screen digital TV began to have an impact on the market. Radio music station streaming increased even as the government cracked down on Napster.
Prime-time TV ratings continued to fall and for the first time in 10 years prime-time advertising minutes fell. Networks blamed the Nielsen rating system. In at least one instance the Nielsen system didn’t work: Its computers forgot to adjust their clocks to DST (daylight savings time) and, until the error was remedied, reported inaccurate information. The economic recession reached the media and layoffs at the networks pushed an increasing number of broadcasters into the growing ranks of the unemployed. Satellite services grew, providing additional competition for the beleaguered TV networks. DBS subscriptions were counted for the first time in comparison to cable. DirecTV was third overall, behind AT&T and Time Warner, and Echostar Communications was eighth. To even the playing field with cable, DBS was required by the courts to carry every local TV channel in the markets they served.
In radio, Rush Limbaugh reflected the success and dominance of rightwing talk shows when he signed radio’s richest syndication contract: $250 million for 8 years plus a $35 million signing bonus. (Two years later he would be exposed for illegal drug use.) Some sources talked about the reinvention of radio, as satellite stations proposed to offer at least 100 static-free stations with the debut of XM Satellite Radio. The top radio groups in 2001 were Clear Channel with 1202 stations in 189 markets and $3.5 billion revenue, Infinity with 183 in 41 with $2.3 billion, and Cox a distant third with 82 in 18 and $455 million revenue.
New audio listening options have drawn users away from traditional radio.
Courtesy Kazaa.
2002
Consolidation! Consolidation! Consolidation! Mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers resulted in fewer and fewer individual owners, larger and larger conglomerates, less and less diversity in programming, and more and more unemployment in the field as the fiscal bottom line became the determinant of media operations and development.
Comcast, following its acquisition of AT&T Broadband, was the largest MSO with about one-third of all cable subscribers, and it generated more than $1 billion in ad sales. NBC acquired Telemundo, the Spanish-language network. Expanding Viacom dominated television, not only through its two networks, CBS and UPN, but principally through cable network holdings, which included Nickelodeon and MTV. Viacom reached one-fourth of all U.S. viewers and, importantly, a fourth of the highly desired 18-to 49-year-old audience. Spanish-language television was the fastest growing advertising medium and prompted the subsequent merger of the two largest players, Telemundo and Univision.
Not everyone, however, was happy with the results of conglomeration. Unions representing media employees were unhappy with what they felt were fewer jobs, lower quality, fewer media outlets, less diversity, and higher ad prices. The Writers Guild argued that consolidation imperiled creativity. The Association for Local Television was forced to disband after 30 years, stating that most of the organization’s members were swallowed up by large conglomerates. AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and various record labels decried the giant broadcast groups, alleging that they exerted a form of payola by controlling so many outlets, making it difficult for new and independent artists to get air time and forcing them to go through and pay a small group of promoters.
Radio conglomeration was also criticized, with mergers having put two-thirds of all radio revenue into the hands of just 10 radio groups. One of the organizations fighting radio consolidation, the Future of Music Coalition, complained that conglomeration resulted in a “tremendous overlap of songs between supposedly distinct formats,” and told the FCC that radio format diversity had become a sham. Even Congress got into the act, blocking a proposed FCC auction of spectrum space that would have allowed a small number of the wealthiest companies to become even bigger.
AOL/Time Warner earned $38.2 billion in revenues; Vivendi Universal, $31 billion; Walt Disney, $25.2 billion; and Viacom, $23.2 billion. The top TV groups in 2002 were Viacom, with 40 TV stations covering 45.4% of all TV homes; FOX with 34 stations covering 44.7%, Paxson with 68 stations and 65.9% (many of these were UHF, which were counted as only half, resulting in an FCC figure of 38.1%); and NBC with 24 stations and 33.7%. In radio, Clear Channel owned 1238 stations in 190 markets with revenues of $3.2 billion, Viacom 183 in 41 markets and $2 billion in revenues, and Cox 79 in 18 markets and $430 million.
The television network audience numbers continued to fall, and for the first time cable reached a greater than 50 share of the audience, with broadcast television getting only 38.4 at one point in 2002, for the first time dropping below 50%. Nevertheless, NBC remained the top moneymaker among TV and cable nets. QVC, the home shopping network, crept closer, however, as cable’s highest net income producer. NBC celebrated its 75th anniversary.
The three-way fight among broadcasting, cable, and satellite intensified. Broadcasting’s prime-time ratings continued to suffer in comparison to those of the other two delivery systems. Cable subscriptions slipped after some 20 years of continuing growth. Satellite subs, at 18.2 million, were two-and-half times greater than they were just 4 years earlier.
The aftermath of 9/11 continued to impact on media programming, with the war in Afghanistan leading the news, and the public eagerly awaiting fulfillment of the president’s promise to capture the instigator of 9/11, Osama Bin Laden. In the meantime, the White House began pushing for a war on Iraq. Some media critics warned of a “wag the dog” scenario. As noted earlier, the mainstream media gave only cursory coverage to the millions of antiwar protesters throughout the world and echoed patriotic slogans in support of a war. They appeared to be more interested in covering the sniper killings in the Washington, DC, area.
Original cable programming got more public attention, winning Emmy and Golden Globe awards for several of its series, which included HBO’s “Sex and City,” Six Feet Under,” “The Sopranos,” and “Band of Brothers.” Television talk shows, such as Rosie O’Donnell and Sally Jessy Raphael, began to go off the air, replaced by the growing number of reality programs. The networks also began to push prime-time real-life documentaries as a form of reality show, with “The Osbournes” being a prime example. Indecency continued as a hot topic. Although Opie and Anthony had been fired because of their St. Patrick’s sex stunt, the FCC initiated an investigation into whether the station’s license should be revoked. The St. Patrick’s caper set up a louder chorus of concern, including in Congress, about broadcast program content. Cable was not immune from criticism as more and more of its programs were adding sex and raw language. Minorities and women were increasing their criticism of broadcasting’s “old white boy’s club,” which was reinvigorated by the demise of affirmative action in recent years. African American broadcasters, for example, called for rewriting all broadcasting ownership regulations as the only way, in a time of increasing consolidation, to open the way for minority ownership. In 2002 women held only 14% of the top executive jobs and 13% of board member positions at the major media companies. Eighty-four percent of the president and CEO positions at the top 120 broadcast and cable channels were filled by men, 16% by women. The National Organization for Women (NOW) accused the six major networks of catering to an “adolescent boy’s fantasy world” with what it called “a distorted and often offensive image of women, girls and people of color” in network programming.
Technology made strides in both television and radio. Sirius satellite radio made its debut as a competitor to XM and ended the year with 261,000 subscribers. XM ended the year with 1.36 million subscribers and planned to offer commercial-free music channels in 2004. The FCC mandated digital tuners in all television sets by 2007 as HDTV digital service became available in an increasing number of markets. Some broadcasters were looking at low-power TV as a way of reducing digital transmission costs. With increasing consolidation, increased automation reached into both television and radio control rooms, saving money and increasing profits by reducing personnel. Controversy arose about streaming TV and radio signals onto the Internet. Although broadcasters understood the long-range need to get onto the Internet, some TV executives wanted their signals kept off because they believed it diluted their current advertising base. Radio executives wanted Internet streaming, but were concerned that copyright royalty fees were too high. Nielsen ran into a buzz saw in Boston when stations dropped its service because they objected to the cost and distrusted the accuracy of the new people meter. It would be a while before they came to a new agreement. While this book does not usually list the prominent people in broadcast history who died in a given year, the man known as Mr. Television, credited with signal contributions to the rapid growth of early TV, Milton Berle, died at 93.
An index of XM Radio programming.
Courtesy XM Radio.
This was another year of vicissitudes. War, a blackout in the eastern United States, the disintegration of the Columbia space shuttle on reentry, continued media conglomeration and job losses, a failing economy punctuated by continued corporate looting of small investors funds, FCC virtual elimination of ownership caps, and, in two states in particular, Illinois and Massachusetts, final-second dashed hopes for at-long-last World Series bids by the Cubs and the Red Sox.
Despite the opposition of millions in America and most of the rest of the world, the United States invaded Iraq. After the president announced that the war was over, more American military personnel continued to be killed than had been during the war. The networks hurried to cover the war, but, as in the Gulf War of 1991, found it difficult because of the embedding of journalists with Army units. CBS newsman Dan Rather observed that “As journalists, we have to realize there’s a very fine line between being embedded and being entombed … there is a way to cocoon the journalists and place them in a position so they only report what the top tier of the military wants reported.” It became difficult for the media to give the public an accurate picture of what was happening. Broadcasting & Cable magazine noted that “It’s been hard … for the networks to find a focus; all those pieces of war footage from a small army of embeds never makes a whole pie.” As in the Vietnam era, those who were critical of the administration’s actions were called un-American, and some of the media clamped down on America’s tradition of freedom of speech in ways reminiscent of the 1950s McCarthy era. For example, one highly popular singing group, The Dixie Chicks, whose members criticized the administration’s war on Iraq, had their songs banned by many stations and were dropped by the Cumulus conglomerate.
Later in the year the media’s reportorial freedom was facilitated to enable them to report what the administration proclaimed as a key accomplishment of the war, the capture of Saddam Hussein. CBS radio reported it first to the American public. Dan Rather followed about an hour later on CBS television, staying on the air, as one newspaper noted, “an awesome six hours.”
Throughout the year media program directors and news divisions gave priority to significant events, even at the expense of entertainment program advertising revenues. In February it was the loss of the space shuttle Challenger as it reentered the earth’s atmosphere. In August the huge, extended northeast blackout precluded any reception that required electricity, although newsrooms had backup generators and continued their coverage. Battery-powered radios played a key role, enabling radio stations to provide information to the public on this largest power blackout in U.S. history. True to its bottom line, however, the media also went overboard with seemingly unending coverage of events such as the California gubernatorial recall and election, giving its headlines to a Hollywood actor whose publicity and image resulted in his election; to the disappearance and murder of a pregnant housewife; and to the return of a young woman kidnapped and reportedly held hostage by a cult-type figure. The electronic media, with the principal exceptions of C-span and some public broadcasting stations, gave less hype to the presidential election primaries. Radio showed its versatility by carrying, in early 2004, the first radio-only debate of presidential candidates since 1948.
In other programming areas, reality shows continued to dominate. At least two networks began to shuffle around their dramas programs, to find scheduling slots more conducive to their survival in the competitive waters of reality shows. The reality show “Survivor” was getting $425,000 for a 30-second commercial; two top shows, “CSI” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” were getting $400,000 for a 30-second spot. Key live sports events continued to garner the highest ratings and advertising dollars. CBS charged $2.3 million for a 30-second spot on the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast. While joining other broadcasters in complaining about government deprivation of some of their First Amendment rights, CBS did an about-face with other’s freedom of speech and refused to carry a paid ad during the Super Bowl from MoveOn (that called attention to the trillions of dollars of Bush administration budget deficit that future generations would have to pay for) on the grounds that it didn’t wish to air political ads. Nevertheless, it did carry a spot from the Bush White House. It refused, too, to carry a spot from PETA, an animal rights organization.
Ethnic programming grew. A new African American cable channel, TV One, was announced as a new competitor to BET. The millions of viewers who watched Spanish-language TV now could watch new programs in the most popular format, the novella or soap opera, oriented to their personal experiences. Competitors Telemundo and Univision both launched shows produced in the United States rather than in Latin America or Spain, reflecting their viewers’ lives in America. Their competition became moot later in the year, however, when they announced their intention to merge. Cable channels oriented to programming for women expanded, with Oxygen, WE, and SoapNet all showing gains of millions of viewers. But even their successes didn’t deter their joining the rush to cloning. WE announced its plans to add three new reality series. On a popular youth-oriented series, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” network TV had its first lesbian sex scene.
The shock-jocks and indecency saga continued. The FCC fined Infinity Broadcasting $375,000 for the 2001 Opie and Anthony St. Patrick’s sex caper and threatened to revoke its licenses for future infractions. The FCC also fined an Infinity radio station in Detroit the maximum amount for one indecency transgression on one station, $27,500, citing a show in which the host and callers allegedly described explicit sexual techniques and physical assaults on women in an “extremely graphic, lewd and offensive” manner. In early 2004 the FCC fined Clear Channel $755,000 for multiple airings of “sexually explicit” material on its “Bubba the Love Sponge” show. Clear Channel fired Bubba the Love Sponge.
In a ruling confusing to some, the FCC found that U2 singer Bono’s on-air use of the “F” word as in “this is really, really fucking brilliant” didn’t violate indecency rules and “may be crude and offensive but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities.”
The incident that sparked the greatest commotion, however, was one that the majority of the American public, in a survey, considered “no big deal”: singer Janet Jackson briefly baring a breast during the half-time entertainment show at the Super Bowl. It galvanized conservative groups, members of Congress, the White House, and the FCC, which received hundreds of thousands of complaints. Calls for new legislation included extending the fine for each indecent broadcast incident from $7500 to $275,000 and revocation of license after three infractions. A number of group owners and individual stations responded by cracking down on their shock-jock air personalities, some proclaiming a zero tolerance policy. Clear Channel removed the Howard Stern show from its stations. Other owners were not so quick to take action. Zeo Radio president Scott Thomas stated that “new legislation and government involvement will create a much more bland, less compelling radio experience for our country.”
The FCC was, however, consistent in its policy of expanding conglomeration. It removed more multiple ownership caps, allowing one owner to reach 45% (up from 35%) of the public, removed the cross-ownership newspaper-broadcast station ban, and okayed TV duopolies for smaller markets and triopolies (owning three or more TV stations in a market) in others. A federal court stayed the 45% expansion, and although the Senate voted for a rollback to 35%, the threat of a presidential veto placed the issue in temporary limbo. At the end of 2003 the House voted a 39% compromise. Consumer groups, including the long-active Media Access Project, challenged the FCC’s new rules and a federal court put the new rules on hold as the FCC filed its own counterappeal. One of the mergers consummated in 2003 was Rupert Murdoch’s (News Corp/FOX TV) acquisition of DirecTV.
In 2004 Comcast attempted a hostile takeover of Disney, bidding $66 billion. Although, at this writing, that deal has not yet been consummated, it indicated the trend that Murdoch predicted. He stated that in 3 years—in 2007—there would be only three huge media companies, his own News Corp, Time Warner, and Comcast. Murdoch did indicate that he thought several “very good and well run” smaller media companies, such as Cox Communications and Echostar, would remain; he specifically did not mention Disney, Viacom, NBC Universal or Sony, all major players at the beginning of the new century.
In further catering to commercial interests, the FCC banned noncommercial applicants from applying for nonreserved radio channels, restricting the noncommercial and public stations to the 20 channels reserved in the 88.1–91.9 FM spectrum. Conversely, in late 2003 the FCC gave TV stations that had not yet converted to DTV/digital just six more months to comply under threat of license revocation. The FCC also angered media companies by raising its regulatory fees for broadcast radio and television, DBS, and cable.
Many programmers who didn’t do well continued to blame it on the rating systems. The president of the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, Sean Cunningham, stated that “Nielsen’s diary/meter methodology is widely believed to under-report cable viewership by 25% to 50%.” The expansion and use of local people meters in a number of top markets (Boston, a holdout, finally agreed to a people meter contract) muted some of the criticism. Many broadcast TV stations and cable systems in particular experienced rating increases. In addition, the local people meters measure demographics to a much greater extent than the passive meters and diaries. DBS continued to gain on cable and broadcasting, adding 1 million subscribers in 2003 for a total of 10.6 million. Amid many broadcasters’ cries of gloom and doom, CBS celebrated its 75th anniversary. One note of real gloom was the death of a long-time radio and television stalwart performer, Bob Hope.
ANDREW SCHWARTZMAN
Media consolidation is good for business. But it may not be good for the public. There is no doubt that advances in technology have encouraged media companies to grow through acquisitions of smaller companies. Modern news gathering and studio equipment have greatly facilitated this process by enabling a handful of staff to operate several stations at once. Digital technology has also permitted much more effective management of advertising inventory for multiple properties, allowing sales staff to create “package deals” in real time.
Although media conglomerates have attempted to justify consolidation as allowing for the creation of more and better news and other services, study after study has confirmed the obvious: The efficiencies of conglomeration are not passed on to the public in the form of improved service.
The Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence holds that it is the public’s First Amendment right to receive information from diverse sources that is “paramount.” Thus, it may be necessary to require less efficient business models to ensure that the needs of the public are met. Interference in the normal operation of the marketplace is anathema to most economists and many politicians. However, it is hardly unprecedented. The United States long ago made a policy decision to preserve the family farm despite the fact that smaller agricultural producers are inevitably less efficient than their multinational competitors. The basis for this policy is an understanding that retention of family farms preserves an important element of American rural culture and values. Small broadcasters and newspapers may be the family farmers of the 21st century.
Courtesy Beverly Rezneck.
The political conservatism of the country’s political leaders and media owners appeared to impact programming. MSNBC fired one of the long-time leading liberal talk show hosts, Phil Donohue, and replaced him with right-winger Michael Savage to join other MSNBC right-wing personalities Alan Keyes and Pat Buchanan. The national trend was to more and more conservative talk shows, with the few liberal talk-show hosts being fired, resulting in late 2003 in the finding of not a single liberal talk show with national syndication. John Leland wrote in the New York Times that compared to Republicans and conservatives, Democrats and liberals have a “yammer gap.”
In 2003 two of the right-wing’s darlings of talk radio were caught with their pants down. Republican Party star commentator Rush Limbaugh had for years excoriated many individuals and groups who didn’t agree with him, and was particularly harsh with a holier-than-thou approach to lawbreakers such as drug users. It was revealed that he had been illegally purchasing and using drugs himself for years. And conservative Paul Harvey, in a moment of candid religious bigotry, said on the air that Islam “encourages killing,” spurring demands for an apology by civil rights groups. To counter the right-wing dominance of talk media, a new group, Progress Media, announced in late 2003 that it planned to buy stations in major markets for an Air America Network and institute liberal talk shows. Robert Kennedy, Jr., and author and comedian Al Franken were among the first hosts signed, with Franken commenting, in reference to competing with Rush Limbaugh, that “I’m going to try to do [the show] drug free.” In early 2004 one liberal talk program, “The Ed Schultz Show,” began syndication by Jones Radio networks in association with Democracy Radio.
Talk radio also experienced a long-standing gender gap, with relatively few women talk-show personalities. Few of these were syndicated. Of the local shows run by women, almost all were politically conservative.
Public radio received a huge boost in 2003 when the will of Joan Kroc, the widow of the founder of McDonald’s restaurants, bequeathed $200 million to National Public Radio (NPR). On the public television side, PBS announced that it will allow 30-second underwriting spots, up from 15 seconds. On a sadder note, one of its former mainstay performers, Fred Rogers (“Mr. Rogers”), died.
Despite advancing technology, conglomerate efficiency, format changes, economic losses and gains, perhaps one of the most significant comments regarding the state of the media, specifically television, came from Newton Minow who, as chair of the FCC in 1961, coined the phrase the “vast wasteland” in describing TV programming. In an article in the Federal Communications Bar Journal in 2003, Minow said that, if anything, the wasteland was now even vaster and that the FCC is to blame because of its laissez-faire attitude toward regulation and conglomeration.
In 2004 the following numbers of stations were on the air:
Where do broadcasting and the media go from here? Much depends on the political and economic trends of the country—trends that the media themselves can materially influence with their virtual control over the information and ideas available to the voting public. Conglomeration and monopolies are expected to continue to grow, barring the election of a proconsumer national government in 2004. Increasing citizen concern is expected to rally public interest groups in anticonsolidation efforts, including a bipartisan coalition already established by consumer advocate Ralph Nader with such disparate members as the NRA (National Rifle Association) and the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). Some media executives were concerned about the effects of conglomeration on the long-range future of broadcasting. Steve Robinson of the WFMT radio network reflected that concern, blaming the “blandness” of commercial programming in great part on near-monopolies. “We all know that one company [Clear Channel] owns one out of every nine stations in the country. They’ve managed to segment the demographics of the audience, but its hardly any more diverse.” Politics were expected to effect the media and broadcasters in a positive economic way, with an anticipated $1.6 billion spent on media advertising in the 2004 presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional campaigns. Spending is likely to grow in subsequent election years.
Radio programs need never be missed with the RADIOYourWay recorder. Performing much like TiVo, this device allows listeners to hear programs they cannot listen to in real time or have missed.
Courtesy RadioYourWay.
In programming, the reality program craze does not appear to be abating, as the networks had at one time suggested would happen. This craze is instead expanding with more and more variations for new shows, from the crude to the exotic, from the physical to the metaphysical, constantly announced by producers for broadcast and cable both. How many of these reality shows scheduled for the 2004 season on broadcast TV and cable networks are still on the air, or are ones you can remember?: “Average Joe: Hawaii,” “Airline,” “House of Dreams,” “The Real World: San Diego,” “Celebrity Mole Yucatan,” “The Residents,” “The Surreal Life,” “America’s Next Top Model,” “The Bachelorette,” “American Idol,” “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance,” “Todd TV,” and “The Apprentice.” A Boston Globe 2004 headline summed it up: “Networks unleash a barrage of [reality] shows more outlandish than ever.”
One new twist, for the 2004 election year, was a reality show in which contestants of varied political beliefs would be followed through a simulated presidential campaign with the winner, chosen in September, then actually running for president of the United States. Given the qualifications and performance of some of our elected officials, perhaps this new reality show is not as ludicrous as it seems.
In other programming areas, TV talk shows were expected to regain their former popularity after taking a backseat to reality shows for a couple of years. Satellite companies were expected to compete more directly with broadcasting and cable with original shows, such as Vivendi’s announced plan for a music channel on DirecTV. Internet entertainment programming and competition to the older media will continue to grow. Even in early 2004, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that people were increasingly turning to the Internet for information about the presidential campaign, moving away from traditional sources such as television network news programs and daily newspapers. Key demographics in the shift were young adults. Copyright owners of music—composers, authors, publishers—were expected to step up their efforts, along with federal legislation and court decisions, to stop piracy of their work. Recording industry suits against individual pirate downloaders appeared to cut song-swapping by up to 50% in early 2004. Intel, Nokia, Samsung, Toshiba, and Matshushita were expected to introduce a new technological system to deter file sharing.
Technologically, broadcasting and the media have already grown beyond the recent innovations of satellite digital radio and high-definition digital television. Convergence appeared to be an important next step, with an interconnected linking of all communication tools and systems. At the 2004 annual Consumer Electronic Show, Microsoft and Verizon, among other companies, unveiled new plans and products for “convergence” and “interconnectivity.” What will come next is anybody’s guess. But, even when it appears that technology has reached its peak, something new will certainly be developed—despite the frequent naysayers. In 1876 a Western Union memo commented on a new invention by Alexander Graham Bell: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as means of communications.” In the 1920s David Sarnoff’s colleagues responded to his recommendation that they invest in the new medium of radio: “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” Even computers, now the staple necessity of communications, did not have an easy time making it. In 1943 Thomas Watson, president of IBM, said: “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” And in 1949 Popular Mechanics magazine, reflecting the state of the invention at the time, predicted that “computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” In 1968 an engineer at the Advanced Computing System Division of IBM was introduced to the microchip and commented, “But what … is it good for?” And as late as 1977, Ken Olson, founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation, said “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” Communications technology will march on, despite the declaration by Charles H. Duell, commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents, in 1899 that “everything that can be invented has been invented.”
