television Archive

Space.com is reporting that Galaxy 15, an Intelsat satellite that stopped communicating with ground control last month, is threatening to interfere with an SES World Skies satellite. That company specializes in providing communications services to Europe and Third World nations.

Intelsat suspects that an intense solar storm in early April caused the unprecedented event. The satellite is alive, fully on and transmitting, but has left its assigned orbit and is not responding to intelligent signals from earth. They are by no means certain the solar storm caused the problem.

There is another possibility, however. In 2005, SatelliteGuys.us reported that the recently-launched then-PamAmSat’s Galaxy 15 would become a relay for Fox News. Starting in first-quarter 2006, Galaxy 15 has been subjected to a steady diet of Fox.

We only have about 40 years of experience with geostationary communications satellites relaying video content, and the toxic content of Fox News has only been sent to satellites since 1996. While solar storms may be the cause, IntelSat should investigate the effects of caustic content on transponders.

Considering the actions of the satellite (in its relationship with its neighbors) bear similarities to the actions of Sarah Palin, and the Arizona legislature, which we know have also been subjected to a constant diet of Fox News, more research is certainly warranted.

We first licensed AM radio stations in the 1920s, we were always mindful of a top tier of stations, the I-A clear frequencies with either one station holding a national monopoly on that frequency, or having a clear dominance against other stations that were very distant and usually daytime only. While this concept is gone, its legacy remains in high powered stations like KFI, Los Angeles and  WGN, Chicago.

The idea behind the nationally cleared channels was that the small rural communities would have a wide range of program choices, particularly at night which was prime time for radio during its first golden age. But we’ve moved so far away from that, that maybe our next policy should be to license a huge number of extremely small stations to encourage localism down to the city block level.

It would be a shame to shut down a service that has such a huge installed base of receivers, but it doesn’t look like the future for AM is very bright under the old model. Amplitude modulation (or AM) radio is the simplest most direct way to send a radio signal; its so simple that everything from car alternators to microwave ovens create unwanted static that is almost impossible to discern from the desired signal.

Stations were originally licensed to serve cities that now include hundreds of square miles of suburbs, so the noise problem got greater as the areas they need to serve got larger. This week, broadcast consultant Richard Arsenault floated a trial balloon: he wants to let AM stations increase their powers 4 to 10-fold. That’s just nuts. When you have too many people shouting in a room, the answer isn’t for them to all shout louder.

As a part of our digital conversion of television, we’re now considering paying TV stations to consolidate bandwidth, and do more with less. TV broadcasters generally don’t like it, but its not really their spectrum to start with. I think we should do the same thing with AM radio. Its already unlistenable in many areas; we’ve reached what the late FCC-commissioner James Quello called “one huge buzz.”

Let’s offer to pay AM stations to go dark. Lots of them are in a financial hole they can never emerge from, anyway. Then we license a whole host of small stations: 30-100 watts, with at least 50 miles between them; low-power stations that are the equivalent of the parking-help stations at airports.

The standard broadcast band isn’t worth much when it comes to transmitting data; its bandwidth is terrible, which is why audio broadcast on it sounds like a 25kbps mp3. Arsenault is right, we need a do-over, but not one that just makes the problem worse.

Filling the 60 minutes of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List is no easy task. For each episode, you need a story, access to interesting people, and a few staged events where you can acquire tasty video able to overcome the short attention span of viewers who move along a 200-channel universe with a touch of the remote.

This week, the Griffin show is acquiring raw video for an episode featuring Griffin as “lobbyist for a day.” She’s lobbying to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). But if there ever was an example of “I just play one on TV,” it’s Kathy Griffin as lobbyist.

Enter Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the DC LGBT organization that claims to be “a grassroots force of over 750,000 members and supporters nationwide.” As hearings take place in the Senate, HRC planned a rally at Freedom Plaza. As they describe it on their “HRC Back Story” webpage: “This week, Kathy Griffin is traveling to Washington to add her voice, by lobbying Members of Congress, meeting with veterans and mobilizing support.”

But there’s a backstory to the backstory, and that’s where the backchannel gets involved. The “rally” was little more than a staged event to provide tasty video for Michael Levitt Productions to sell to Bravo. Ordinarily, that little tidbit would do little more than sicken the attending activists sharp enough to see they were again being used. But Lt. Dan Choi, for reasons only he knows (but I suspect have to do with him being among the sharp ones), took some direct action.

Dan Choi and Kathy Griffin at HRC/Bravo Rally

He asked to speak. What he was told depends upon whom you believe. The HRC claims their president Joe Solmonese told Choi that it “wasn’t his sole decision to make on the spot.” Reports from the scene on the backchannel say Choi was told, “This is Bravo’s Show.” Choi cannot tell us, because he’s in jail tonight, and reports indicate he is not being allowed a phone call.

Griffin ultimately decided to ask Choi to the podium to speak, but I doubt she, her co-producers, or HRC are very happy with what he said. He told the truth about Barney Frank’s inside information that DADT wouldn’t be repealed this year. He pointed out that the White House was where the protest should be, and he asked people to march there with him. Griffin said she would.

Lt. Choi and Capt James Pietrangelo marched to the White House and handcuffed themselves to the fence with the help of Robin McGehee of GetEqual.org. About a hundred true activists went with them, but Solmonese of HRC wasn’t among them. The HRC’s excuse? He stayed behind because he “felt it was important to stay and engage those at the rally in ways they can continue building the pressure needed for repeal.”

Immediate repeal would help neither HRC nor Griffin. Though they’d both take credit for it, HRC would lose a reason to fundraise and provide free extras for video shoots that self-promote, and Griffin would have a stale show. Make no mistake, for Griffin, its about the show. Though she said she’d march with Choi, she stayed at the video shoot, tweeting a fawning misdirection when the backchannel called her on it. After all, Kathy Griffin isn’t really an activist. She just plays one on TV.

“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.

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.

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.

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;

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.