From the Writing Archives

 

On this day in 2007, I reviewed a great media book about the dangers of media consolidation, a subject that is near and dear to my heart, in the Beachwood Reporter. Even though the media landscape has changed dramatically over the past  15 years, if you can find the book out there, it's still highly recommended.

“Fighting for Air”

Reviewed by Rick Kaempfer

 

As a long-time radio veteran, and someone who has followed the story of media consolidation as closely as anyone in the country, even I was appalled by the details of the Minot, North Dakota train derailment story from the introduction of Eric Klinenberg’s “Fighting for Air.”

According to Klinenberg’s excellent narrative, local officials tried to contact the radio stations in Minot to declare an emergency because a toxic cloud five miles long, two and a half miles wide, and 350 feet high was heading right for town.

There was only one problem with this plan.

Clear Channel owned every radio station in town, and all of the programming was coming from elsewhere. There wasn’t a single person in any of the radio studios to answer the calls, and therefore, there was no-one to alert the public about the impending danger.

By the time the cloud had dissipated, one man was dead, and more than a thousand people needed medical care. If Minot’s radio stations hadn’t been consolidated and downsized, the town could have been easily evacuated before the slow-moving cloud reached the town limits.

And that’s just the introduction of “Fighting for Air.”

Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist from New York University with a reporter’s gift for uncovering the stories behind the stories, methodically chronicles the effect of consolidation on every medium since the disastrous Telecommunications Act of 1996; including network and local television, network and local radio, mainstream and alternative newspapers, and the Internet.

Why does radio suck now? Klinenberg explains it.

Why does 24-hour cable television news cover so little news? Klinenberg explains it.

Why does it seem like we have more media options than ever, yet less information and entertainment? Klinenberg explains it.

He effectively and meticulously presents evidence of the cost cutting that follows all big media mergers, and shows how that has led to decreased news staffs in every medium. That, in turn, has led to a country that only appears to have more information available, while it actually has far less.  (What’s more terrifying than an uninformed electorate? An uninformed electorate that actually thinks it’s informed.)

He shows how the increased power of these few media corporations has led to several big stories being buried in the broadcast media; including, and especially the effect media mergers have had so far, and the fact they are trying to get even bigger and even more powerful as this book went to press.

He chronicles the complete disregard the current FCC (and the one headed by former FCC Chairman Michael Powell) has for public, professional, and scholarly opinion about consolidation.

The arguments against media consolidation are clinically enumerated by Klinenberg, most convincingly in the sections about the loss of local news and information. The arguments that were presented by big media before the Telecommunications Act of 1996 are also thoroughly and convincingly proven to have been far off the mark. For instance, instead of the 1.5 million new jobs promised, 500,000 have been eliminated.

So what is the argument for further deregulation? I thought this was the funniest quote in the book. In a report often quoted by former FCC Commissioner Michael Powell: “The real danger to Americans is that outdated and unnecessary FCC restrictions will limit improvements in media markets and technologies, limiting the benefits that they can provide.”

Got it? They aren’t making enough money to improve technologies. If you just let them own it all…they’ll work harder at making it better.

Is there honestly someone in the world who believes that? Certainly no-one who has ever worked in the media. So why aren’t members of the broadcast media (who would personally be most harmed by further consolidation) coming out to aggressively point out how ridiculous this argument is? Simple.

To tell the truth about your corporate media bosses is to commit career suicide.

To tell the truth about the FCC is to bring down the wrath of the FCC on your bosses, which is an even more effective way of committing career suicide.

“Fighting For Air” isn’t the first book to tell this story, but it’s probably the most impressively researched and well written.

My only quibble with Klinenberg’s book is his assignation of political motives to some of the big media CEOs. In my experience, these guys don’t have a political agenda as much as they have insatiable greed. Scratch the surface of an apparent political agenda (even Rupert Murdoch’s), and you’re bound to find just another money grab.

At its heart, however, “Fighting for Air” tells an important truth: The big media corporations have completely abdicated the public interest obligations required as a precondition of operating the public airwaves, and the FCC, which was founded to keep an eye on this above all other things, is helping them do it.

I guess it takes a sociologist to tell the real truth about the media.

But at least he tells it well.

 

Rick Kaempfer was a Chicago radio producer (Steve Dahl & Garry Meier, John Records Landecker) and host for twenty years. He is the co-author of the Radio Producer’s Handbook (Allworth Press, 2004), and the author of the upcoming satirical novel about the broadcast media “$everance,” available in April on ENC Press (www.encpress.com/SEV.html.) He calls the writing of that novel “a cathartic experience.” Rick covers the media regularly and is a frequent Beachwood contributor.