Local Control of Media & Supply-side Economics
As a kid growing up in this rural area of upstate New York, we could drive and pick up local radio stations from Binghamton, Cortland, Ithaca, Owego, and other areas. It did not matter whether the stations were AM or FM. The exception might have been with WENE as they reduced their power at night. So, with AM radio, we could pick up WKBW out of Buffalo, WABC our of New York City, or WQXR (classical music) out of New York City. We could even received Wheeling, West Virginia AM late at night. Try to do any of this today.
What do we get today? Driving to Owego, NY, on NYS 38 and encounter the “mountains” (hills”) north of Owego and few of the stations come in. When I once drove to a job at IBM Federal Systems Division (today, Lockheed Martin), I never ever remember losing a local station by the hills to the east of NYS 38. Today, we do.
We had a large antenna at the top of our home (2 stories plus a large attic). With this antenna, we could pick up Binghamton AND Syracuse television stations. That was VHF. We could put up a special UHF antenna to pick up additional (besides VHF 12) Binghamton channels and Elmira channels. Try to do that today and I am told it is near impossible. So we are stuck with only one source. Spectrum “cable” TV and Internet. We experience buffering and often a connection with Spectrum which reminds me of the wait we had for a 1950s vacuum tube television to power up.
Due to the hills here, we were one of the first areas, along with those in the hills of Pennsylvania, to get wired for cable television. Now we were able to receive clearer pictures, particularly on the local UHF channels, but also with ABC channel 9 (VHF) out of Syracuse. What a thrill that was!
But we had a choice. Either use cable television or use, possibly upgrade, our own antennas. Here we are in the 21st Century and, due to the FCC, we don’t have choices. How much money rolls into the FCC from the big corporate conglomerates, in order to give us this centralized supply-side economics? Your guess is as good as mine.
In those years, the FCC utilized the Fairness Doctrine of the late 1940s bipartisan effort, to moderate what was on the air. The idea, too, was to not allow one ownership in a local area of ALL the media. Boy, has that changed today. This idea was a smart idea so that one company did not own it all. The ownership was spread around to others. Seems to me that Gannett owned one of the local Binghamton stations (today Fox 40, which was once WINR Television and broadcasting the NBC network). Today, Seem to remember that the rules changed and WINR had to be sold. The result was NBC WiCZ 40 and WINR Radio. All done to spread the ownership around, rather than allowing big centrally controlled supply-side economics companies to own an entire market, as what is allowed today.
OK. So, the power of local television and radio broadcasts is reduced. Got ya! Yes, so we can have the all thumbs approach to more mobile phones, the bandwidth for local television and radio had to be reduced. All thumbs and access to nothing but Internet, fake and false news. Destruction of local news outlets, whether newspapers with local INFORMATION (not just news) in detail. Plus, the loss of local television and radio by numerous owners who could vary what the public received in news and entertainment.
Oh, sure. Now we have channel 12, but also MeTV. We have My 8 (whatever that is). All these additional ones are on top of CBS, NBC, ABC. It’s nice because the PBS television can add extra channels for kids, create TV, and perhaps others.
But try to receive this myriad of stations and channels here in “country bumpkin” land of rural Tioga County. There might just be a clearer line, with less hills, to Elmira, Ithaca, and Syracuse. Yet, the distance and the weaker channels preclude us from receiving such. And the FCC says Spectrum cannot put the additional channels out for us to receive. Tough rules based on what the supply-side economics corporations want from the top of their “divine right” stools.”
How many other rural areas face this obstacle in America? I don’t remember rural areas being treated like chopped liver (or stools of shit) in those years gone by, just because we had a less dense population.
All thanks to the Internet and mobile phones. I can recall that Spectrum in Florida denied us mobile phones three times. Three times we mentioned we needed the phones delivered to us in South Florida. Three times, we received acknowledgement that, “oh, yeah, we understand you have not yet moved to Melbourne, so w will send to your South Florida address.” That in a state where people are so mobile.
Never happened. By the third strike, one got rather angry at being treated in such a lousy manner. And here we are. In upstate New York with Spectrum and no other choices for Internet.
Mobile phones and Internet are more important than local television, radio, and newspapers. How perverted will America get, beyond just what I have described? It is disgusting.
And all the digital technology has moved outside the USA, while President Biden and the Democrats would like to do something about such a situation, from infrastructure to regulatory concerns. And what do Republicans do? Sabotage President Biden and the Democrats.
I just have to say all this because it disgusts me with regard to local control we once had when IBM was here in the Southern Tier. Now, it all flies out the window.
And we live happily ever after.
Tioga Herald 
TECHNOLOGY: It’s Humans, Stupid, Not Technology
Technology is a blessing and curse. The Internet is a blessing and a curse. With Spectrum Internet, it is all so slow in loading many items that we are back in the 1950s when it took minutes for a television to begin because of the vacuum tubes in the televisions. Mattered not whether there was an antenna on the roof or “rabbit ear” antenna indoors. The vacuum tube was slow in warming up. Besides, in the 1950s, there was NO cable television. That did not come into the homes, particularly in hilly areas like Upstate New York and Pennsylvania, until the 1960s. The signal was more reliable and not subjected to those who do the hacking.
In the 1960s and later, Castro, with his centrally planned supply side economics, figured a way to “jam” the signals he did not wish for his people to view. It was usually Miami and South Florida signals he jammed, but perhaps there were Voice of America signals he jammed as well(?). IT was not the technology, stupid. It was humans, stupid, who were running Castro’s island and did not wish for the people to have happiness.
In America, we face such “jamming” and removal of our happiness. Many times. Just recently, a favored streaming radio station was “jammed.” Yep. Jelly all over the place (NOT). It was taken off a Favorites list on one streaming service within Roku. When checking another streaming service, it was claimed, earlier this week, that this station would not be available on this other service until Saturday, March 20, 2021. Here we are, today, Saturday, March 20, and where is our favorite station on this streaming service. Returning to the original streaming service to discover if, “we’re back!” The results were that it was not there, but to search it, the station was found once again.
Technology and computers do not take a favorite station away from a listener. It’s humans, stupid. It’s humans, stupid, to do such a thing as this which is comparable to Castro (maybe Hitler book burning, too?) removing happiness of the people and pushing American citizens into a corner of helplessness in the process.
People have more important things to do with their lives than to try to work through such obstacles. With warmer weather here, perhaps we would like to do some outdoor gardening or cleaning up lawns after the snow goes away. Removing our happiness so as to push us into a corner and spend more time trying to solve the problems resulting from hackers. Repeat. Computers don’t just do this kind of crap alone. It takes humans, stupid.
We hear about nations such from South Korea to Taiwan to New Zealand to those on continental Europe where the Internet is not like what is being described here. Do they spend time with Trumpicans fighting with good people. Same thing here. People being pushed into a corner with technological crap of hackers and not having time to work with the things which are best for our lives. Why does the states like New York or Florida or the Federal government providing as good an Internet service as the other democratic capitalist nations provide? WHY? Those nations also have political parties which iron out differences, too. But what the Trumpicans are doing to control the Republican Party and gain a foothold in pushing for a dictatorship is disgusting, as they marginalize voters so they won’t vote and suppress many other voters so they CANNOT vote.
These people are vicious barbarians who cannot win elections unless they carve out voting districts by way of GERRYMANDERING. Gerrymandering has been around for a long time. But at least many states, even with gerrymandering, had a two-party system. Right now, Florida has a one-party state of Republican and has never had a Democratic Party governor since before 1998. The gerrymandering has done that.
Go ahead and say, “well New York State is the same.” BULLSHIT. George Pataki was NOT a Democrat, so at least there were a number of years when it went back and forth between Democrat and Republican. There was a day when Senator Warren Anderson of Binghamton headed the MAJORITY of Republicans in the New York State Senate and TYPICALLY, the Assembly was Democrat. Two-party system with more compromise than what there is today.
WE THE PEOPLE DEMAND:
(1) we rid this nation of gerrymandering
(2) we rid this nation of voter suppression
(3) we stop the marginalizing of voters by Trumpican dictatorial people
(4) stop the (please excuse the frustration and the resulting language) BULLSHIT of lies and coverups done by Trumpicans who hold people’s feet to the fire with retribution if they don’t follow the DICTATOR Trump (and Roger Stone and others)
(5) abolish the Electoral College and replace it with two voting times, one with all parties and the second one between the top two recipients of votes
(6) create capitalist competition through government regulation for the sake of SUPPLY AND DEMAND
(7) acknowledge the role which long term, not just egotistical short term, investments mean and encourage pooled lower-risk investments without a cap on percentage invested so wealthy bastards pay less into FICA (Social Security) and Medicare for all, due to LONG TERM investments in a CAPITALIST system; damn it all, don’t close your minds to what some of us are saying
(8) return to a two or more party system with STATES PEOPLE who are rational enough, on ALL sides, to know how to find common ground and lead this nation
(9) abolish PACs and lobbyists from Congress and government, and stop the trash of people with too much control over our legislators. The PEOPLE should speak, not the damn lobbyists and put Congress on the SAME THING the rest of the nation has for Social Security and Medicare (I said, FOR ALL)
(10) Reform the tax system so as to rid the paper shuffling number crunching business of tax accountants and lawyers, which TAKES AWAY from the productivity for REAL things for America, its economy and its people; sales tax and businesses have to hire people and it cuts into the overhead for the small self-employed business person; income taxes the same consideration as it is a regressive one penalizing Americans from making money or PROFIT (which is called “disposable income” – BULLSHIT ON THAT to those who mock those of us pointing this BULLSHIT out); there was a day when conservatives promoted the value added tax because it was a tax added as a value to every product and this did not mean small business has to account for it and cut into their profit margins; today, there is NO DAMN CONSERVATIVE who promotes this, so I say, you damn bastards are NOT conservatives, you are dictatorial neo-cons.
Wrapping this entire discussion together and we end up realizing that the FCC does a lousy job in regulating media and the Internet because they do it to favor their OWN industry, rather than have THIRD PARTY people who look on and regulate in line with CAPITALIST DEMAND AND SUPPLY. The consumer. As with Castro “jamming” signals for Castro’s benefit only, here we are with a return to the discussion about technology. It’s human hackers “jamming” demand-side access, stupid, not technology.
Category:
New Comments, Technology
Tagged with: