You Can't Do That on Television (?)

Winning their division, achieving a winning record for the first time since 2005, and the star power of Robert Griffin III got the Washington Redskins a lot of hype last year. Hype that led a lot of people, I think, to wonder, "can you say that on TV?"

Whether it is appropriate to even speak the team's name on broadcast television is part of a novel argument for changing the team's name, which was advanced in a letter to team owner Dan Snyder, signed by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and other former FCC officials.

As part of the FCC's mandate to regulate broadcasting, it has been granted the power to levy fines for indecency. And the letter argues that casual use of a racial epithet in reporting might fairly be considered indecent and kept off the air like other offensive language:

"It is impermissible under law that the FCC would condone, or that broadcasters would use, obscene and pornographic language on live television... Similarly, it is inappropriate for broadcasters to use racial epithets as part of normal, everyday reporting. Thankfully one does not hear the "n" word on nightly newscasts."

Even if courts or the Commission decided that the word was not indecent, Hundt suggests in a Washington Post op-ed that using the word could violate broadcasters' obligation to serve the public interest. Using the broadcasting regulation angle is creative and, given our national concern over halftime nudity emergencies, perhaps a convincing argument. Broadcasting & Cable points to a previous effort to change the team name, though, that was aimed at Washington-area broadcasters and went nowhere.

This subject predictably riles people up. I think its insane that some team names and logos still exist and people wear them on hats on purpose. That said, I think it's incumbent on individuals to not be racist, and would prefer that they act on their own moral or financial interests to make a change.

And in case there is any doubt about the term "redskins" being derogatory and hurtful instead of somehow honorific (from the letter to Snyder):

"As it became increasingly difficult for trappers to transport masses of rotting corpses, colonial governors agreed to pay for Native Americans' scalps and skins. Trappers subsequently began using the term "redskin" to symbolize the bloody skin and scalps they collected."

Forty Years of Cell Phone Calls

Pew marks the 40th anniversary of the first cell phone call with some data on phones' proliferation and people's habits with them. Now 87% of adults in America own a cell phone, up from 75% about five years ago.

The good thing about all these phones is that people are learning to be a lot less annoying with them. I think there are some generally accepted norms about not talking in line, turning off your ringer in a movie theatre, and that kind of thing that didn't exist when the technology began to take off. There are still people talking in lines and now there are custom ringtones, of course, but I don't think the amount of annoying behavior has scaled with the popularity of mobile phones.

Another annoying part of the cell phone lifestyle is getting calls. That may seem counterintuitive, but getting a call in your pocket wherever you are, whatever you're doing is obtrusive. Most people think the alternative of being harder to contact is worse, but being interrupted to drop whatever to talk at any time is burdensome.

Enter text messages, which also allow immediate, anywhere connection, albeit in a much less disruptive way. Pew found in 2011 that among cell phone users who text, 31% prefer to be reached by text and 14% said that it depends on the situation. Also counterintuitive, but I think the rise of text messaging might be attributed in part to people's desire to be left alone.

So, 40 years on, the turn toward text communication, along with Internet connectivity for the web, Facebook, Twitter, and email, shows how far the cell phone has moved from something for voice calls toward a sort of all-purpose connection device.

Why Don't the Network Newscasts Cover Climate Change?

Media Matters is once again doing God's work (assuming God cares about the future of the human race) by drawing attention to the lack of climate change coverage on network television. It turns out the three network newscasts aired a combined total of 12 segments on the subject in 2012. Yikes.

Media Matters is asking its readers to sign a letter to the executive producers of the network newscasts asking for greater coverage of the issue. That can't hurt, but it raises the question of just what would lead to greater coverage.

One major obstacle to increased coverage is the politicized nature of the issue. Of course, science and the future of humanity shouldn't be politicized, but with the economic interests in ignoring the problem of climate change, politicization is inevitable. One of our major political parties is obviously willing to bend to those interests, but must our commercial news media?

The challenge here is familiar: with Republicans and Democrats largely on opposing sides of the issue, the media are restrained by twisted notions of objectivity and fear of criticism for violating that objectivity. These are real obstacles to covering climate change, but only real in the sense that they can go away if TV journalists and executives ignore them.

Viewer petitions like the one promoted by Media Matters could help a bit in that regard. But that letter to executives points to a bigger problem. That is, the content of TV newscasts is largely determined by what interests a profitable audience. So if the target audience for newscasts doesn't care about the issue (or want to hear about it) some other pressure would be required for coverage of that issue to get on the air. (This pressure could come from journalistic standards that say our impending doom is an inportant story, audience interests be damned.)

The networks likely pay attention to detailed ratings information and other reseach letting them know what viewers want to see. But that clearly didn't convince them to air more than 12 stories last year covering climate change. That suggests other means of expressing viewer interest (like a successful petition) or changes in politics or journalistic standards will be necessary before climate change gets adequate coverage.

MSNBC and a Decade of Change

Chris Hayes, who begins a new prime time show on MSNBC next week, was interviewed on Fresh Air yesterday. When asked about his new time slot, airing opposite Bill O'Reilly, Hayes explained that he doesn't see himself in competition with O'Reilly:

"...When people say, well, you're up against Bill O'Reilly, I just - it's really unclear to me - it's genuinely unclear to me whether that's true in any real sense, which is to say if we are competing for the same pool of viewers. I genuinely don't think of myself as in competition with Bill O'Reilly or in relationship to him in any real way. I think of myself as in - having a relationship with the viewers, building a viewing audience that I have a relationship with and trying to grow that. I mean believe me, I want as big an audience as possible, but the conventional wisdom about this being a competition with Bill O'Reilly is not necessarily accurate."

I think Hayes's idea about not competing for the same viewers is right on and is a clear statement about how cable news has evolved over the past ten years. There are some casual viewers and waiting rooms that might just put Fox News on because it's the news or maybe even because of an interesting guest, but anyone with well-formed opinions about politics or public issues will likely have an ideological preference between Bill O'Reilly and Chris Hayes. And in that sense, there is no real competition between the two; however entertaining or informative Hayes's show is, much of O'Reilly's audience will remain uninterested.

Those in charge of programming at MSNBC know this and are using it as a business strategy. This is an evolution from a not-too-distant time ago when it seems the idea was very much to compete for a homogeneous audience. It was ten years ago that MSNBC fired Phil Donohue because, as a critic of the Iraq war, he was too liberal for prime time:

"An internal MSNBC memo leaked to the press stated that Donahue was hurting the image of the network. He would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” the memo read."

That passage is from a recent article by Chris Hedges, who isolates the day that MSNBC fired Donohue as indicative of "when commercial television decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act."

I agree with much of Hedges's critique of corporate media and it is worth reading. It is true that the economic interests of giant media corporations constrain debate on television, limiting the topics of discussion and points of view to what can attract profitable audiences. Hedges's article misses the change that has occurred at MSNBC over the past ten years, though. While its prime time lineup remains cable news and corporate journalism, with all of its flaws, the change has been dramatic.

By counterprogramming Fox -- seeking a different audience -- MSNBC has expanded the range of debate on cable TV. Sure, the debate remains within corporate bounds, but Chris Hayes is editor-at-large for The Nation. Giving him a prime time slot -- as part of a liberal prime time lineup -- is quite a distance from removing the network's only anti-war host because of his views.

I Want to Believe

There's a lot of crazy stuff on Facebook, and much of it is wrong. The same is true of the internet generally, of course. And aside from factually inaccurate information you can find dark things in the internet's so-called dark corners. Like, say, a cannibalism forum.

Facebook, though, is much more accessible than a cannibalism forum, and thankfully more widely popular. But there is a phenomenon of passing along bogus information, whether because of political or religious motivations, or a general lack of skepticism or understanding.

My favorite that I've seen recently is the warning that Obamacare will require us all to have the Mark of the Beast implanted in our forearms. Some key points:

"The US Senate has passed the Obama Health Care' bill into law. The implementation would commence on 23/03/2013. This bill would require all Americans to be implanted with a Radio Frequency Identification(RFID) chip in order to access medical care. The device will be implanted on the forehead or on the arm. This is to fulfil the prophesy in the Book of Revelation 13:15-18 concerning the MARK OF THE BEAST!
[...]
(1) Why is the chip being implanted exactly where the Bible says it would be. Why on the hand and forehead. Why not anywhere else?(2) Why is it being connected to your bank account? Remember the Bible says you won't be able to buyor sell without the mark. And guess what! The chip is connected to your financial details."

I think I know the answers to those questions. 

Hoaxes are nothing new, and I know much of this is passed around because it's funny. It is likely that in many cases these posts are the work of spammers, who know the kind of content that will attract attention and use it to their financial advantage. Misinformation can be destructive though, especially in an environment where the only arbiters of veracity are the trusted friends and family who pass it along.

More destructive than belief that the President is Satan, I think, is the development of a culture where all information is dismissed as maybe true and maybe not. A healthy skepticism about what we get from media is, well, healthy, but a world in which Facebook hoaxes in a newsfeed are given as much consideration as journalism posts is troubling. After all, some things actually are true.

3D Printing and the Future of Stealing

So I didn't know this was happening, but just learned by way of an Ars Technica article that 3D printing files are available at The Pirate Bay. Turns out that the site's "physibles" category has been available for over a year.

I think this demonstrates the totally logical link between the possibilities of 3D printing and the anti-copyright ideal. Digital has technology allowed for the infinite and cheap duplication of music and video, and sites like The Pirate Bay have developed to help with the illegal distribution of those files. With such infrastructure and the norms of file sharing in place, 3D printing simply removes the limitation of reproduction that it remain in a digital space. Users could concievably download and print duplicates of vinyl records.

Of course, users won't be limited to duplicating copyrighted works in the already disrupted fields of music and movies, which means that viable and widely used 3D printing has the potential to disrupt just about any industry that makes and sells physical objects.

Nielsen's "Zero-TV" Homes with TV's

The Nielsen Company's new quarterly overview of American media habits highlights the increasing number of households that don't watch TV on a TV. Nielsen reports that these households -- many of which have a TV but don't use it to receive broadcast/cable/satellite signals -- represent about 5% of the country and have increased from about 2 million to about 5 million since 2007. They skew young and don't see the value in paying for TV service:

"Cost (36%) & lack of interest (31%) are the main reasons for "zero-TV" homes, with only 18% of these households considering subscribing to television services."

This trend has some sort-of obvious consequences for the future of content distribution, but what stands out to me is these households' lack of interest in free television. I can understand having a preference for Netflix or iTunes or illegal downloads over paying for cable, but Nielsen reports that 75% of these "zero-TV" households have working TV sets.

That means that unless these people are living in the mountains, in caves, or in nuclear test zones, they could plug an antenna into their TV and get a free over-the-air signal, but they do not. Based solely on people I know, I have the impression that a lot of people don't know it's possible to get an HDTV signal for free simply by plugging an antenna into a TV and turning it on. I think that says a whole lot about what is available on broadcast television.

The use (and underuse and poor use) of the television spectrum is a pet concern of mine, and the increasing number of people who want new media content but opt out of free broadcast TV is a pretty clear sign that this public resource could be better utilized.