“Broadcasting Needs to Party Like It’s 1999” writes Harry Jessell in TVNewsCheck. He ticks off the once-great broadcast conventions like the NATPE whose last year in Vegas was a shadow of its former self.

He looks forward to the 2010 NAB Convention in Las Vegas this April, and tells legacy broadcasters they need a good party, and laments how few station badges are at the shows these days. The comments are even more revealing. One wag says it should be renamed NANB, for National Association of Non-Broadcasters.

We’re now seeing the fruits of an organization that saw the handwriting on the wall long before its legacy members did, and was open and accepting of new media. I remember not long ago a broadcast industry that said non-linear editing would never work and a motion picture industry that said film would never die.

Legacy television broadcasters have nobody to blame but themselves. Like the RIAA and radio before them, they were in total denial about the changing media landscape. Instead of embracing digital technology, they cried poor and used their diminishing political influence to block its implementation.

So new delivery mediums simply built infrastructure without them, and now they’re on the outside looking in. YouTube is delivering 1080p while even legacy networks are still delivering content in SD.

We’ll be at the NAB this year, and while it might be fun to look at the big powerful transmitters, that’s not where the leading edge is, and the terrestrial folks ought to just accept it and move to the final stage of grief; acceptance.

Which I suppose is a good excuse for a party.

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It breaks down into three major categories:

1. The Former Media Monopoly — This includes the New York Times and MSNBC. You’ll find their exemption under U.S.C §431(9)(B)(i). Their howling has included some great moments in hypocrisy.

   The New York Times (whom you’ll recall as the petitioner who claimed the first amendment rights of its corporation had been violated in New York Times v Sullivan) opined: “Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights.” Since this was an unsigned editorial, this is a corporation complaining that corporations shouldn’t have first amendment rights. Of course, they’re exempted.

   Keith “You Sir” Olbermann, in a special comment assailed the decision with the personhood argument. His comment is actually a work for hire, the property of a corporation and disseminated by it; but of course, they’re exempted. If they weren’t exempted, they’d  be first in line with an amicus brief for Citizens United.

2. Those in Under The Wire — In 2005, the chilling effects to first amendment speech was clearly seen by the blogosphere. The Internet isn’t even mentioned in the media exceptions of BCRA, but the blogosphere wound up almost entirely exempted by an administrative decision of the FEC. As such, the FEC under another board, could change its mind. If it had decided otherwise in 2005, bloggers would have fought for first-in-line position to deliver amicus briefs along with legacy media.
3. The Exempted Political Idea Industry — This howling appears the loudest to those of us on a myriad of political action lists. This is another monopoly seeing itself lose power. Their exemption came through their ability to navigate the complicated work-arounds that resulted in the lawyered-up’s ability to express political opinions on behalf of the people paying them to do so. They’re the middlemen now cut out because anybody can go to a media distributor and buy time, or go to a computer store and buy DVD blanks and fill them with political commentary.

Poltitical contribution laws were out of step with the way media is changing. It resulted in Citizens United not being able to spew a load of crap, while Fox News does essentially the same thing every day.

It causes folks like Margaret McIntyre to be fined a hundred dollars for expressing her speech, while the Swiftboaters get awards.

The politically protected pundits can’t seem to agree what the effects of this will be. Perhaps we’ll hear nothing but corporate shills morn ’til night, perhaps we won’t.

But one thing it will do is change the game in a big way, because this decision gave a lot of freedom to a lot of people, and took away a lot of monopolies from a privileged few and its been those privileged few responsible for most of the noise that’s being made.

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A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and too little knowledge isn’t in short supply over at Olbermann Watch. They’ve started this video series they call “Great Moments in Broadcast Journalism.” But the November 11th edition (#426) may unintentionally undercut their point.

Their standard open includes Edward R. Murrow in what appears to be a reference to his legendary “See It Now” broadcast that rebuked Senator Joseph McCarthy. But the clip they include appears to be Murrow introducing McCarthy’s “equal opportunity” appearance which Senator McCarthy was offered and accepted under the Fairness Doctrine.

Do these right wingers really want to use an example of an exercise of the Fairness Doctrine as a great moment in broadcasting? Sure undercuts a lot of talking points.

Episode #426 goes on to present Olbermann skewering Carrie Prejean for her latest round of hypocrisy and lack of judgment.

But I’m left wondering  if the folks doing the clip selects over at Olbermann Watch know what they’re looking at, or understand what happened when the “See It Now” broadcast titled “A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy,” and a subsequent one the following week was originally aired. It wasn’t McCarthy’s rebuttal that caused the outrage, it was the original report that revealed the demagogue from Wisconsin for what he was.

Those broadcasts were met mostly with silence on the Hill, but there were several rabid anti-communists (perhaps red baiters is a better term) who attacked Edward R. Murrow with the same zeal the anti-Olbermann website exhibits daily toward Keith Olbermann.

McCarthy’s denouement came when the public started seeing McCarthy for what he was because they were exposed to a lot of his rhetoric, not only through the televised speech on CBS but because of the increased visibility the broadcasts brought him, which is very much like what is happening to Carrie Prejean today.

Maybe they need to edit their opening, or perhaps they really believe the great moment in journalism was the use of the Fairness Doctrine to allow Joseph McCarthy an equal opportunity to attack people for not being as good an American as he was.

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One of the most important cases regarding mass political discourse was argued before an unusual early session of the Supreme Court Wednesday last. The case is Citizens United v. The Federal Elections Commission (FEC), and the ultimate decision may rewrite campaign finance law. Common Cause is justifiably concerned, but they’re just not being honest about the fundamental issue that made SCOTUS revisit the whole question of campaign regulation.

This is first and foremost a first amendment question. You see that clearly in the amicus brief from the American Civil Liberties Union:

This case involves core political speech protected by the First Amendment, long recognized as a fundamental foundation of our democracy. Such core political speech enjoys the maximum possible protection under our Constitution. Yet a federal agency claims the legal authority to prohibit the broadcast of such core political speech. We submit that this Court should redouble its vigilance in protecting the fundamental freedom in this case so essential to our very democracy and self-governance, and our very nature as a free people.

It’s very possible, listening to Common Cause, that you wouldn’t even know the First Amendment is involved. If you joined their webchat expecting to hear the facts in the case addressed, you’d discover the words “First Amendment” never appeared in the discussion, though they did receive questions about it.

Here’s the problem:

U. S. C. §431(9)(B)(i)

The term “expenditure” does not include—

(i) any news story, commentary, or editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, unless such facilities are owned or controlled by any political party, political committee, or candidate;

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We tend to forget that the commercial model that brings us “free” television takes a toll on content.  We learned recently that AT&T may have given Conway, Arkansas groups lessons on how to vote.

Jeff Reisdorfer (@JeffSays) says this isn’t cheating and I have to agree, but its an excellent reminder that though American Idol claims its goal is to find and expose new talent, its prime directive is really to sell product. When one of those products is the votes themselves, and they’re willing to sell as many votes as AT&T customers are willing to buy, it makes the whole enterprise not very credible.

“Judge Judy” makes local stations’ adjacent commercial time particularly attractive to local ambulance chasers, soap operas were so completely designed to sell detergent that they even were so named. And American Idol does an amazing job, even in light of declining ratings, in selling texting to teenage girls.

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