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deserves more respect
If only advertisers held it in the FCC's high regard
By Adam Guild
Frank Rich, in a thoughtful May 25 opinion in The New York Times, warned, fruitlessly as it turns out, against the Federal Communications Commission loosening cross-media ownership rules.
Using the new "Matrix" movie as an example, he showed how various AOL media properties have helped hyped the film and suggests that the Big Media-owned cable news channels were so fixated on the pending Iraqi invasion that they shunned other, more important news.
Rich concluded that consolidation of media ownership will continue the dumbing- down of news and will eliminate any chance that fresh perspectives from independent producers/writers/ filmmakers will get wide distribution.
But nowhere in his cogent argument does Rich mention the internet, although it seemed to be at the center of the FCC’s decision yesterday to ease cross-media ownership restrictions.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell clearly sided with the media companies who say the limits on media control, dating back to 1941, don't reflect new technologies.
“Technology,” says the Wall Street Journal, “has done an amazing job of leveling the playing field between large and small. Americans once had to leave town to find an alternative to the local paper. Today they can punch up the Sydney Morning Herald, South China Morning Post or any of 3,000 opinionated cranks on the computer.”
Isn’t this interesting?
On one side of the media-influence scales of justice are the Big Media-owned broadcast and cable networks, magazine companies, newspapers and radio conglomerates, and on the other is the internet.
Although no one would argue that the internet unto itself can counter-balance the weight of public opinion of all the other media consumed in the this country, it sits alone as the great equalizer.
And yet nobody wants to pay for it.
In the rush to prove itself as a viable medium the internet industry shot itself in the foot by offering too much for too little. Early on, subscribers flocked to free net access only to find busy modem signals and sudden disconnects. AOL flourished because it made it easy to get online, if not always reliably, at a low price compared to other media costs.
In spite of the internet offering perhaps the richest palette of easily accessible news and information in history, nobody really wants to pay for content, either. The apparent success of Apple’s buy-by-the-song music downloads won’t put much of a dent in file swapping, and who among us has not “borrowed” software from friends or colleagues in clear violation of licensing agreements?
While many advertisers have begun to see the internet as a viable medium, they, like consumers, would prefer to get it free or at very little cost.
While consumers whine loudly about paying $40 a month for broadband access, they eagerly step up to pay $100 a month for cable or satellite TV. I pay almost $700 a year for home delivery of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Between trade and consumer magazines, I’m spending at least $1,000 a year on subscriptions. Lots of folks are signing up for satellite-delivered radio, since I guess they can’t find anything of interest on the 35 or so stations their cars can pull in at any one time.
Network TV, the only medium that charges more and delivers less each year in terms of audience and quality programming, just removed a record amount of money from advertiser wallets in the upfront market. Yet their media agencies balk when the internet asks for a $50 CPM for ads that are actually delivered and actually seen.
It seems sadly ironic to me that the medium deemed revolutionary enough to change the FCC media ownership equation can’t charge consumers or advertisers for the value it is perceived to have in Washington.
June 3, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Adam Guild is President of Interep Interactive.
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