Semester in Thought

Throughout the semester we have covered many different forms of media, all of which have given insight to many industries that I had previously not though too much about. Instead of trying to summarize everything that I have learned, I have decided to review one of the common elements that we have gone over for every chapter. That is to analyze and dissect the democratic elements (or lack thereof) to different forms of media and their industries. Here are some of the topics that I felt were most interesting, also those that seem to bring about the most conversation in the sense that everyone may have a different opinion.

Telecommunications Act of 1996 – De-regulating:
This act was pushed through by congress in what seems to be a fairly quiet manner considering the extreme outcomes and effects for media conglomerates and consumers. This de-regulated so many aspects of media, particularly allowing regional phone companies, long-distance carriers and cable operators to compete in one another’s markets. This was said to allow for more consumer control, lower prices and to increase competition among conglomerates, but it seems that really it had the opposite outcome. Huge media conglomerates were able to buy each other’s companies and combine services, whence locally we have the Comcast bundled services, telephone, Internet and cable services. What this has done on a local level however would be considered to be a monopoly, not giving consumers choice. As we discussed this in class, few students could say that they had more than one choice for digital cable and internet services other than going through satellite service instead, and this is not only the case here in MN, but throughout the entire nation. As a consumer, I don’t like this very much, I don’t feel as though I get to “price shop” or choose based on what company I feel has the best services to offer, it is kind of hard to do when there is only one and little room for any smaller companies to grow when they would be competing against a much larger competitor.
This has not only been the case with cable, Internet and telephone providers, but also holds effects to the radio industry as well. In this the FCC eliminated most ownership restrictions on radio, and as a result the number of radio station owners has decreased 34% since 1996. I do get tired of listening to limited radio stations, almost all owned by the larger corporations like CBS and Clear Channel having many programs nationally syndicated. I don’t mean to sound like I am bashing on the large corporations or our congress for that matter, these are some of the outcomes from this act that makes us think and question where the democratic process fell short here, I know that as constituents we certainly didn’t vote on this, nor do we have the money and power of the corporate conglomerates that helped lobby for these changes.
I feel that overall, this act is just one large example of the shortcomings for consumers in today’s world, and I didn’t even know about it until this class! One other idea that was brought up in class was the hopes from Internet Service Providers to do away with our current Net Neutrality system in which the internet is pretty much a free for all for anyone, meaning that it is not currently privileged. I also was not aware that the infrastructure for the internet in the United States is very poor, especially compared to countries such as China. The only way to repair this infrastructure is for someone to put lots of money into doing so. Apparently the Internet Service Providers have volunteered! But not without a cost, if they were to bolster the finances to fix the infrastructure they would want to change it to be a similar structure to cable, in that you would have to pay a little more to do things that are now free. The instance that was used in class was Amazon or Ebay. As it is now, anyone can bid on anything in order that they do it, however ISP’s want to charge people, so that those who pay more will have preferential treatment, or first dibbs over those who do not. I think that there could be benefits to this, but those would mostly be in the hands of the ISP’s.

Again, I don’t want to sound like I am an anti-large corporation crazy person or anything. But what I do want is to have more awareness to the possibility of changes such as this, or those that were already brought on by the Acts such as the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The idea of consumer choice, control and even freedom is something that should be talked about more amongst everyone, from all age and socio economic brackets. I would love to hear all of the opinions for or against some of these policies or potentials. I feel overall this class helped me become a more confident, aware consumer and I feel as though that is something that should be instilled in everyone, even though at times the amount of recourse that seems available might be limited.