| [Media] Mass media, the FCC, broadcast flags |
[Nov. 13th, 2003|03:32 pm] |
So, the male and I had an interesting conversation last night about the value of mass media in our lives.
Some of it was related to my thoughts in my previous entry--talking about our relation to television as viewers and as story interpreters. The majority of the conversation was related to what we are willing to pay, how much of our control over our viewing experience we're willing to give up, before mass media loses enough of its value to make it not worth the experience.
I was brought up in a household that didn't believe in paying for television at any level. Either we received the network over the air, or we didn't receive it. My father wasn't even willing to purchase a big antenna for the roof . . . we always used rabbit ears. That meant that there were times during my childhood when we barely had reception on the big three, because we lived too far from their broadcast antennas in the nearby urban area.
My college did not allow cable installation in the dorms. Since the dorms were cinder block construction, that mean that there was absolutely no reception within most dorm rooms (some of the sitting areas had big windows, and if you set up a television with rabbit ears near those windows, you could get the big three, Fox, and our local PBS).
Right now, we do pay for cable. That's because, even with a roof-top antenna, we only receive NBC over the air. For many years, we paid for the "life-line" cable package (networks and a couple of the "boring" cable stations like TLC, Discovery, History Channel). As of a couple months ago, we've got a full basic package, because the basic package with cable modem included is about the same price as life-line with cable modem. We wanted the cable modem, not the full basic cable.
We're about to move into one of the few cities in our area that doesn't yet have competitive cable. There's one cable company that's allowed to sell in the village, and the price they quoted us for what we have now is more than twice what we're paying. The company doesn't offer life-line service, and the basic cable alone is almost fifty bucks. (Apparently, the village's contract with the cable company expires a week after we're supposed to be closing on the new house. I certainly hope they require the company to open its network to competitors, or at least force them to be competitive with Comcast's prices.) There's a good chance that we can get an Internet connection through another service (there's a company that might be setting up remote DSLAMs in the village; with a remote DSLAM within 3 miles, we could get DSL). We need some further information to know if that other service will be viable.
There is also all these other problems coming down the wire--the forced switch to HDTV, the control flags on digital broadcasting, etc. There's the concept of the "social contract" that's being pushed in lawsuits against PVRs that allow consumers to record programs without commercials, or even to simply digitally switch over them 30 seconds at a time. This social contract stance that's being held by the media companies says that when consumers sit down in front of a television to watch a show supported by commercials, we enter into an implicit contract to watch those commercials. One media representative has even gone so far as to say that those who channel-surf during commercial breaks, or go to the bathroom, are stealing from the networks. Their stance is that consumers should be required to watch all commercials, and technology should offer them possible methods via which to enforce that requirement. That the implicit social contract needs to be mandatory, not voluntary.
Do I think that the media companies will be able to go that far in their control of consumers? No, I don't. There's enough of big brother in that stance that it'll need to be mollified. But look at the issues brought up by the approval of the broadcast flag for HDTV. As all television and video hardware transitions to the HDTV standard, the question is going to be, what are we going to be allowed to record for time shifting or archival purposes? Why wouldn't "no record" become the default flag for airing purposes? I think there's a good possibility that it will, at least for a while.
We record a good percentage of what we watch, because we're young professionals in fields in which overtime is basically mandatory. Newspaper articles have been obsessing over where the males, 18-49, have gone to during prime time. Most of the ones *I* know are working straight through most of prime time, rather than playing video games or surfing the Internet. They're afraid for their jobs, their homes, their families. Their jobs are a lot more important than television.
But many of them are taping the must-sees. We tape probably eight to nine hours worth of prime time during a normal week. If we were unable to tape those programs, we wouldn't be watching them. That's the straight truth. If we're prevented from taping them, then the media companies are putting those programs into direct competition with our jobs and our families. Among the people I know, those programs will lose that contest. Hell, they're already losing, and Nielsen's happily tracking it.
The conclusion we came to last night is that mass media is only worth it for us if it stays at about the same cost, with the same convenience factors as it has now (of course, we do understand adjustments for inflation, and that wasn't a factor.) We're not even sure that cable television is worth the price required at the new house. If mass media moves to a pure pay-for-play model, or even advertisement-required model, it's going to move right out of our lives.
An example that's currently applicable in our lives: when movie ticket costs around us shot up, we began to see fewer movies and only go to matinee shows. When the big theatre eliminated matinees on Fridays and weekends, we went to even fewer movies. Since the two big theatres have started airing minutes of obnoxious advertisements prior to films (I'm not talking about trailers, I'm talking about frickin' advertisements) we've all but quit going to the movies. No, the advertisements didn't make the obvious costs go up, but they certainly didn't make ticket prices go down. They made the annoyance factor go way up, to the point where they became the final straw. We can wait for the movies to come out on DVDs, and if the DVDs start forcing us to watch advertisements before we watch the movie, the DVD industry can go shove itself as well. Movies are fun, but they're certainly not necessary. Television and music are also fun, but not necessary.
Our biggest fear now is electronic books. A few years ago, I was looking forward to the emergence of electronic books. Now I fear them . . . because the digital format will allow the idea of a pay-for-play model to emerge in that industry as well. Think that publishers aren't thinking about it? They certainly are. This "advantage" of electronic books has been discussed at industry conferences for several years now. If we lose television, are we going to lose literature too? |
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