March 10, 2004

A Double-edged Sword

Sorry, I just can't get worked up about Howard Stern's yanking our morality chain or his departure...he's so tedious. I certainly agree with Emperor Misha on the slippery slope and reject the concept of a "decency clause" and/or government censorship of public bandwidth. The right-wingnuts clamoring for censorship suffer from an accute case of myopia and possibly a case of morality melvin chaffing. Atheists could use their argument to build a case against Christian radio-TV using public bandwidth ( They will sooner or later).

As His Highness points out; we're on public bandwidth and wouldn't the Left love to shut us up?

Stern's firing wasn't about decency, it was a pre-emptive strike to head off loss of ad revenue. The media companies have another governing concept: the bottom line. That's why it's called "the media business".

Just as Hollywood willingly blacklisted people HUAC fingered in the 50's to protect profits, media companies will scurry from their spideyholes and cover their asses...for a while...then the public forgets what offended them and/or the culture makes another shift and it's back to business as usual.

I find ABC News and NPR's rampant anti-Semitism far more offensive than Howard's juvenile antics or Janet's tit. Yet, I don't want NPR removed or some Fed goon or committee blue-lining their scripts. Just change the effin' channel fer Peet's sake! How hard is this?! There's plenty of choices...make one and STFU.

Posted by feste at March 10, 2004 10:41 AM | TrackBack
Comments

In a perfect marketplace, turning off the TV would result in less revenue for every channel i'm not watching.

As it is, i'm screwed. It is impossible for me to boycott MTV, without also boycotting ESPN, CNN, FNN, Discover, Nickelodeon, History, Weather, because of the cable monopoly.

So i boycott them all, and settle for the crappy $8.95/month service. I'd gladly tack on another $2 for ESPN, but thats not an option.

If the people who never watch MTV could stop paying for it, they'd go out of business within 3 months.

Posted by: Marty at March 11, 2004 07:00 PM

So what you are saying is that you don't buy the package with ESPN because you don't want to support MTV?

I assume you have CBS in your basic lineup?

Try looking up their parent company: Viacom

Entertainment is horrendously expensive to produce and distribute, companies diversify to spread the costs, so your approach is sort of like expecting Breyer's to make only your flavor of ice cream because you don't want to pay for all the others.

The end result would be no ice cream...or TV, radio, films, book publishing, music.

I am I happy with my cable company? No. Comcast sucks. But I've lived in countries with three govt channels...so I happily pay for the whole dreadful package and watch what I want.


Posted by: feste at March 12, 2004 01:39 PM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?