mediageek

Author: Paul

  • Consolidation Mambo

    Before the Thanksgiving holiday I compiled a few recent articles on media consolidation and the upcoming FCC review of ownership rules. I hoped to comment on them but didn’t have the time. But rather than let them get old and moldy I’ll link you to them in case you missed ’em: From the Nov. 21…

  • Catching Up – Consolidation Talk

    On Monday the Times published its take on the media consolidation vs. diversity question — its title gives away its overall slant: “Fewer Media Owners, More Media Choices.”… Of course, the article is framed as a battle of regulation vs. deregulation — which as I’ve ranted before, is really an innacurate and overly simplistic view…

  • thanksgiving mediageek break

    In case it hasn’t been obvious, I’m away from the mediageek desk on an extended Thanksgiving Vacation through Portland, OR and New Jersey. I’ve been staying away from the usual media news haunts, and will have to catch up when I get back. My one media related venture was to the Independent Publishing Resource Center…

  • Hey Look! Zines are Cool! (Slow News Day in DC?)

    The Washington Post’s Magazine Reader stumbles upon Zine Guide and gets all aflutter about ‘zines: “Zine Guide makes my heart swell with patriotic pride. It makes me want to wave the flag. It gives me warm, fuzzy feelings about my fellow Americans, who are, it reveals, a delightfully diverse, eccentric, quirky, cranky, compulsive, obsessive and…

  • Activists Picket Minnesota Public Radio Over Pro-War Slant

    From the Twin Cities IMC– The Flying Pickets group continued to protest the continual Pro-war, Corporatization and corporate control of the media [by picketing Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul]. … Even more telling however, was the reaction of workers, reporters and volunteers of MPR to the protest. Many agreed that the media in general,…

  • Next 2 mediageek radio shows / Nov. 15 show on-line

    Friday’s program is now available for listening on-line. The feature is an interview with Don Schellhardt of the Amherst Alliance, along with the usual news headlines. The Amherst Alliance filed a motion with the FCC asking the commission to take a second harder look at IBOC digital radio. I will not be producing the next…

  • Conflict Over Israel @ Chicago Media Watch Conference

    The Chicago Reader reports on a controversy that broke out at the Chicago Media Watch’s recent conference, “Propaganda: War, Terror and the U.S. Empire.” According to the article, Sut Jhally, a communications prof at UMass, was invited to speak on how “the Israeli government is brilliantly manipulating American public opinion against the Palestinians.” But apparently…

  • Anti-WTO Pirates Jam Commercial Radio in Australia

    This takes some major balls — the Institute for Applied Piracy reports on Sydney Indymedia that they jammed commercial stations in that city for 10 minutes this morning with an anti-World Trade Organization report. A “mini-ministerial” of the World Trade Organization is meeting in that city this weekend. Recall that the anti-corporate-globablization movement really came…

  • FCC Approves Big Ass Cable Merger

    As expected, the FCC said “yeah, baby” to a deal between Comcast and AT&T Broadband, wherein the former will acquire the latter. This creates the largest cable company in the US, with twice as many customers as the #2 company, Time-Warner cable. Any cable subscriber with a brain (and who isn’t a major stockholder) has…

  • NBC TV Reporter Says Remain Critical of Media

    I guess mainstream TV news journalists are sometimes allowed to speak their mind. The Daily Northwestern reports on an appearance by Dateline NBC correspondent John Hockenberry at the McCormick Tribune Forum: He said viewers should be particularly critical of broadcast media after the Sept. 11 attacks. “In light of the paralysis of the government and…