Who owns the media you consume?

[reddread]

does the public own NPR? do they have obligations to the public interest?
do working people have a voice on "their" airwaves?
are there any conduits at the national level that are not owned by billionaires?
do you really place faith and trust in these resources?
just wondering.
I know they used to call it the "idiot box" but that was long before telecom deregulation.
what should they call it now?

[reddread]

1. Disney or Comcast?

[hunter]

2. The copyright holder owns it.

I don't do television or radio anymore, not since I got higher speed internet. No cable, no satellite, no broadcast.

My first news hit of the morning is generally http://www.bbc.com/news which is a very strange animal compared to U.S.A. news sources. BBC news has it's own glaring biases, especially with regard to international finance, but it doesn't make me nauseous. I can barely tolerate corporate supported NPR anymore; too often they seem to be Fox News for people who think they are too intelligent for Fox News.

I love going to the movies when I can afford them. Big money interests make some very entertaining movies. For example, I'm enjoying Disney's version of Star Wars. I would never record movies in the theater, even if the laws against that were milder than they are now. I wouldn't copy DVDs. Eventually authentic Star Wars DVDs show up in our home library; some of them purchased new.

My internet provider is a local company. It's now a DSL connection but originally it was a copper wire pair owned by the phone company, way back when the phone company didn't quite know what the internet was and they were not interested in being an internet provider themselves.

My wife and I have a large collection of CDs and DVDs. Mostly I pick them up in thrift stores. I own the disk, but not the copyright. If somebody doesn't want me to copy their work then I don't. (It's possible I may pushing the limits of fair use in a few of my DU posts, especially when I post YouTube videos, but I try not to make a habit of that.) We also have a large library of books.

Our house is full of art too. Some of it is our own art, some of it is thrift store art, and most of it is from friends, family, and local artists. My parents are artists who never made any big money as artists so they always had regular jobs until they retired. That's part of the reason it always makes me happy to purchase art from local artists whenever we've got some "disposable" income. My parents are those sorts of artists.

All my computer software is open source. It's written to be shared. I don't do Microsoft or Apple operating systems. My own stuff is mostly Open Source or Creative Commons.

Overall, except for going to the movies or renting movies for pocket change, I'm rather independent of billionaire owned "media."

If I was reworking the television and radio airwaves I'd require broadcast stations to be locally owned with 51% local content, including advertising. Sophisticated digital transmitters would allow anyone to "homestead" a radio station. A new radio broadcaster would simply buy a transmitter, decide how much power they are willing to pay for, and then the transmitter in cooperation with FCC servers would find an unused channel and claim it. Establishing a television station would be somewhat more complicated simply because television, even digital television, requires a greater chunk of the radio spectrum, but I'd still require similar rules about local ownership and content.

I don't like anything about today's radio and television so I simply don't pay much attention to it. Judging by the content, advertising for erectile dysfunction meds and such, it seems it's mostly old farts watching and listening.

[Gabi Hayes]

3. Skinner!