Author: Paul
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How Big Is Too Big?
The Wall Street Journal conjectures: “The big-name exits [of media CEOs] indicate that time may be running out for executives who haven’t fixed the growing list of problems brought on by the conglomeratization of the entertainment industry. The departures also raise the question of whether the lumbering conglomerates make sense. … “For better or worse,…
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The Music and Tech Industries Climb Into Bed, and the House is Rockin!
Tech Industry tells Music Industry, “get the gov’t off our banks and we’ll let you hop on instead. We’ll screw the consumer together!” — “Lobbyists for some of the nation’s largest technology companies will argue under the new agreement against efforts in Congress to amend U.S. laws to broaden the rights of consumers, such as…
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Matthew Engel argues in this Mediag Guardian editorial that the much decried, but rarely sighted, liberal American media doesn’t exist, especially not in newspapers: “Most Washington reports consist of stories emanating from inside the government: these may (rarely) be genuine leaks; they may come from officials anxious to brief against rival officials, but that too…
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FCC Chair To Attend Another Public Forum
According to Variety, FCC Chair Michael Powell has agreed to appear at a public forum on media ownership being held at Columbia Law School on Jan 16. Originally only FCC Commissioner Michael Copps had agreed to attend this forum, while Powell only grudgingly gave in to holding one public forum on the issue in Richmond…
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New Low-Power FM in Macomb, IL
Congratulations go to Tom, Darryl and Duane for getting theri new low-power FM station WTND-LP 106.3 FM Macomb, IL fired up and on the air. Duane reports that they’re “running alternative stuff like FSRN and want to run various IMC programming including stuff from Urbana, Springfield, Chicago and other places.” I hope they choose to…
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LPFM on PBS
The story on low-power FM did indeed run on the Newshour last night. It’s surprisingly fair and not too harsh with the inevitable “who’s listening?” question. Also, I was glad to see that they didn’t take the angle of trying to make the low-power broadcasters look like a pack of nuts and misfits — instead…
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Public Access and the Fringe
The LA Times has a story about the more fringe content of some public access TV: “Stations nationwide offer the unedited whimsy of eccentric novice producers who will probably never be ready for prime time. Among the offerings have been the man in Michigan who went on the air with a penis puppet, the Manhattan…
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LPFM Story on Newshour (?)
I just heard through the grapevine that on tonight’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer there *might* be a story on a couple of new legal licensed low-power FM stations. Check your local PBS listings.
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More Vital Ephemera
Aj “Low Hug” Michel points me to a project compiling punk rock fliers from her old haunt: “Artifacts of the Improbable:Philadelphia Punk Rock Flyers 1978-1990.” Instead of a book, there are 2000 (!) compiled on a CD-ROM. Obviously too many for any one book, such a printed compilation would be more like an pictorial encyclopedia…
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Norway Says DeCSS Isn’t Piracy
A Norwegian Court ruled that the teenager that created the DeCSS program that decrypts DVDs so that they can be played on computers running Linux was not committing piracy, contrary to the claims of the US movie industry. Read more in reports from the BCC and the AP (via Wired). It’s nice to see some…