mediageek

Month: April 2003

  • Growing Awareness of the Media Monopoly Threat, But Will It Do Any Good?

    I haven’t blogged much about the ongoing media consolidation debate recently because it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere new, different or interesting. Yes, it’s still important but mostly it’s the same refrain: FCC Democrats Copps and Adelstein keep going to public hearings and advocating for more restraint; FCC Chairman Powell says he already has…

  • Catching Up & A Call To Mobilize Against Media Ownership Deregulation

    Not surprisingly, I’ve gotten behind in posting archives of the mediageek radio show. I just posted the April 18th show where my guests were media scholar Robert McChesney and Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive Magazine, who were a great help in getting listeners to call in during WEFT’s pledge drive. You can listen to…

  • E-stonia

    This AP article in USA Today takes a rosy survey of Estonia’s relative technological advancement, especially in comparison to other former soviet republics: “Dubbed E-Stonia by some, the country ranked No. 8 out of 82 countries in putting the Net to practical use in a recent World Economic Forum report. The country ranked No. 2…

  • Robert McChesney On This Friday’s Mediageek Radioshow

    Media scholar Robert McChesney will be my guest on this Friday’s mediageek radioshow (5:30 PM Friday at 90.1 FM for those of you in Central Illinois). It also happens to be pledge drive time at my station, WEFT, and Bob is a true pledge drive pro, so I’m very happy he’s offered to be on.…

  • State Bills to Mess With Our Communications Rights

    The good folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are keeping watch on a whole slew of state laws in the making aimed at massively restricting our rights to communicate electronically. The proposed bills generally prohibit four categories of activity: 1. Possession, development, distribution or use of any “communication device” in connection with a communication service…

  • News Headlines from the April 11 mediageek radioshow

    These are the news headlines that were supposed to be read on last Friday’s mediageek radio show, but some technical difficulties resulted in me not having them to read, and the show not getting recorded. But you can still read them. Stories include: Murdoch to buy DirecTV; The FCC, Indecency & Ownership; Clear Channel Drops…

  • You Read It Here First… Radio Stations Can’t Use Copy Protected CDs

    The Age reports that at least one radio station is unable to play the copy-protected promotional CDs they received from EMI because they use computers and automated systems to play CDs, not regular CD players, which are supposed to be unaffected by copy protection schemes. I predicted this might happen back in November 2001 when…

  • Somebody’s Reading

    The ‘geek got a shout-out in the current issue of In These Times magazine, in an article by Guerrilla News Network’s Stephen Marshall, entitled “Prime Time Payola”: In January, Sen. John McCainÂ’s Commerce Committee held two hearings that targeted, among other things, the issue of media concentration. At the first hearing, Michael Powell and his…

  • The World Press Views Pacifica’s Anti-War Radio (?)

    I thought this was kind of interesting and curious. The China Daily newspaper published an article today on Pacifica entitled “Rebel radio station makes ‘antiwar’ waves on air.” A little investigation turns up a similar story on the Islam Online website, only rewritten some and titled “Pacifica Makes Comeback As Anti-war Radio.” This version says…

  • Infinity/Viacom Radio Station in Detroit Fined for Sexually Violent Broadcast

    I’ll start by saying that I’ll always have some trepidation about indecency fines on broadcast stations, because there is always the lurking risk of the fines being leveled for political reasons, such as when the FCC fined community radio KBOO for playing a feminist rap answer to mainstream rappers’ mysogyny (and then later rescinded it…