Examining Diversity in Cable Television:
A Proposal for Linking Diversity of Content to Diversity of Ownership
March 24, 2002
Paper Submitted to the Critical and Cultural Studies Division of
AEJMC 2003 Convention, Kansas City, MO.
Siho Nam
Ph.D. Student in Mass Communications
115 Carnegie Building
College of Communications
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
(814) 865-6106
[log in to unmask]
Examining Diversity in Cable Television:
A Proposal for Linking Diversity of Content to Diversity of Ownership
by Siho Nam
Ph.D. Student in Mass Communications
115 Carnegie Building
College of Communications
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
(814) 865-6106
[log in to unmask]
Abstract
Originally developed as a means of retransmitting and boosting broadcast
signals, cable television has grown as a main component of contemporary
media culture. In view of that, this paper first seeks to examine various
conceptions of and views toward diversity, proceeds to argue for the need
to consider diversity of content in connection with diversity of ownership,
and then finally discusses implications of diversity in cable TV with
respect to both political and cultural democracy.
Examining Diversity in Cable Television:
A Proposal for Linking Diversity of Content to Diversity of Ownership
Introduction
Originally developed as a means of retransmitting and boosting broadcast
signals in mountainous or geographically remote areas, cable television
nowadays has grown as a main component of media culture in the United
States, with about seventy percent of U.S. TV households subscribing to its
service.[1] With the aid of such technological advancement as fiber-optic
cable and satellite signal transmission, which resulted in the increased
channel capacity, today there are about 300 programming networks and more
than 1,000 cable operators in the nation.[2] Given this, it would be fair
to say that cable television, transcending the passive role as a community
antenna, has become an important cultural and political institution with
regard to the well-functioning of democracy.
In view of that, the key purpose of this paper is to examine in greater
depth the issue of diversity, which has been one of the most vital
communications policy principles ever since the implementation of the
Communications Act of 1934.[3] Specifically concerned with the paucity of
scholarly work in regard to diversity in cable television and the recent
wave of mergers and acquisitions in the industry, this paper argues for the
need to consider diversity of content in connection with diversity of
ownership.
In so doing, this paper falls into three sections. In the first
section, I examine various conceptions of and views toward diversity, and I
conceptualize diversity as an essential ingredient of democracy. In the
second, as specifically related to cable television, I distinguish two
analytical dimensions of diversity, diversity of ownership and diversity of
content, and I argue for the need for linking diversity of ownership to
diversity of content. Then, I use this linkage in the third section,
largely from a political economy approach while simultaneously pointing out
some limitations of it, to evaluate how cable television serves diversity
nowadays, by utilizing some secondary statistical data and examining some
important court cases.
Conceptualizing Diversity
Before examining the notion of diversity in the specific case of cable
television with respect to ownership limits, it would be of importance
first to review various definitions of diversity and how they are applied
to communications research and regulatory considerations. As is the case
with other communications policy principles such as public interest, the
First Amendment, localism, universal service, and so forth, the diversity
principle has also been open to various interpretations and applications.
Hence, although "the promotion of diversity among media sources has been
one of the oldest and most consistent of the stated goals of American media
policy,"[4] it seems to appear that there is no exhaustive way of defining
the term.
To begin with, diversity can be examined merely in terms of the number of
media outlets. On this basis, cable television, because of its increased
channel capacity and specialized programming types, has often been believed
to be a more diverse medium in itself, especially compared to broadcast
television. In an attempt to examine the levels of diversity for cable
television, De jong and Bates defined diversity "in terms of the channels
or program services made available to subscribers."[5] To take one further
step, Levin differentiated between "absolute diversity" and "relative
diversity," defining them respectively as "the number of different channel
types carried by a cable system divided by the total number of channel
types for the cable industry" and "the number of different channel types
divided by the channel capacity of the system."[6]
Since this sort of simple definition considers neither the structure of
industry with respect to the magnitude of the concentration of ownership
nor the nature of programming in terms of a multiplicity of opinion and
representation, there is a need to consider other aspects of diversity as
well. Accordingly, as an attempt to account for the influences of economic
factors, diversity has often been linked to the degree of competition in a
given media market, grounded in the assumption that a competitive media
market would provide the consuming public with more diverse media products
and increased choices. As a result, many media scholars presented various
ways of measuring the degree of competition in the media industry.[7]
Diversity, when it comes to content, understood "as heterogeneity of media
content," obtaining the position of an end in itself.[8] Identifying three
different dimensions of diversity: source diversity, content diversity, and
exposure diversity, Napoli considers content diversity into two
sub-dimensions: "format-program type" and "idea type."[9] While the former
has to do with, for instance, "the range of different types of television
shows a viewer can choose from during an hour of prime time,"[10] the
latter is concerned with a degree to which a multiplicity of viewpoints is
made available to viewers.
As to the notion of representational diversity, Robert Kubey et al.,
particularly concerned with demographic representation on cable, examined
the 32 cable channel offerings of one typical cable system to see whether
the increase in cable channels has resulted in a fairer representation of
television characters in terms of race, gender and age. In this line of
conception, diversity is measured in such a way as to how accurate
television programs are proportionally in representing demographic groups.[11]
On the other hand, with regard to content diversity in general, it is still
difficult to determine whether programs offered are diverse or not as
perceived by audiences, irrespective of an increased number of channels and
programming types. At one extreme, one might argue that there is no real
difference among many programs provided by American commercial
television.[12] For this reason, Napoli, pointing out inadequacies of
previous definitions of diversity in understanding the perceived degree of
diversity by audiences, presents an audience-centered approach to
conceptualizing diversity. According to this alternative conception,
diversity should be measured in terms of diversity as "received" and
perceived by users, as opposed to producers or senders.[13]
Furthermore, the notion of diversity has also been associated with
localism. As to cable television's role in fostering diversity at local
levels, public access channels have been regarded as a means of encouraging
civic participation and promoting diverse cultures at the local level.[14]
To summarize, the diversity principle unfolds into three dimensions. First,
in an economic sense, it is understood as a regulatory rationale for
promoting competition in the media market so as to provide the consuming
public with as diverse products as possible. Second, in a political sense,
as related to the notion of marketplace of ideas, it is intended to ensure
the free flow of diverse viewpoints in media. Lastly, it is also aimed at
realizing cultural pluralism, by representing race, gender and age groups
fairly and maybe more importantly by offering citizens a medium for
political participation and cultural expression. Particularly, the third
dimension is of crucial importance when we consider diverse cultures that
constitute the United States and diverse programming promised by an
alternative medium, cable television, to the existing broadcast power.
Therefore, as for the centrality of diversity in communications policy,
Napoli argues, "regardless of whether one takes a purely democratic theory
approach or a purely economic theory approach to the marketplace of ideas,
the concept still emphasizes maximizing both the number of participants in
the marketplace and the range of ideas, viewpoints, and cultural
perspectives available to citizens-consumers."[15] As discussed by him in
greater detail, the diversity principle shows a very illustrative case of
how various elements of communications policy goals overlap each other,
implying that social and cultural dimensions – diversity of content and
representation – are inherently associated with the economic dimension –
diversity of ownership.[16]
Linking Diversity of Ownership to Diversity of Content
Having examined various conceptualizations and understandings of diversity,
it seems to appear that no single criterion of diversity is completely
satisfactory. Although each specific way of measuring or assessing
diversity (particularly, in a quantifiable manner) has its own analytical
strengths, one difficulty in conceptualizing diversity in such a way is
that if we consider one aspect of diversity without referring to other
important aspects, we might lose an opportunity to understand diversity
within a larger social, cultural, and political context in which several
dimensions of it interact with each other. In other words, in order to
overcome limitations of examining diversity based on functional or
behavioral approach, we need to make a link by which we can inquire into
how economics of media, to be more specific, industrial structures or
organizations of media, have influences on their performance, with regard
to communications policy goals such as diversity, localism, competition,
and the like.
Perhaps, we can find one meaningful way to fill the previously
mentioned gap in political economy approach in media studies, which
basically asserts that economic relations in a given society are the major
force in shaping the content of media.[17] As applied to diversity in
media, political economy approach, grounded in the theoretical belief and
supported by empirical evidence highlights the issues related to diversity
of ownership.[18] According to the approach, increasing diversity of
ownership is believed to lead to the increase in diversity of content.
In addition, political economy approach strives for
politicizing policy discourses. For instance, in an attempt to challenge
depoliticized views of diversity as related to the metaphor of "Marketplace
of Ideas," Edward Herman takes one further step to ask such a question:
"what type of diversity in news and news interpretation is 'meaningful'?"
According to him, "Ad hoc empiricism tends to produce static descriptions
of factors influencing the media, rather than identifying an underlying
process or its larger social function," after all failing to see how
economics, politics, and media are at interplay.[19]
On the contrary, Napoli states that "the expectation that
increased diversity of sources leads to increased diversity of content is
far from a certainty."[20] But this is near-sighted and misleading. The
thing really matters in regard to the production of media content, to a
great extent, has to do with the issue of who has a means of expression and
who controls it. For instance, if historically marginalized individuals and
groups are given a means of self-expression, it is predictable that they
would provide media content in accord with their interests and identities.
Seen in this regard, even if ownership diversity does not automatically
guarantee content diversity, it should be regarded as a minimal safeguard
for ensuring diversity. Hence, Ben Bagdikian argues, "the safest way to
ensure diversity of opinion is diverse ownership."[21]
Therefore, for example, imposing ownership limits on cable television can
lead to the increase in diversity of viewpoints, cultural values, and
programming types. With the increased diversity of ownership, programming
decisions can be made based on how a given program could help a community
or individuals with similar interests and identities, rather than on
whether it sell more advertising or not. This way, some independent program
providers or system operators can create public service and news
programming, and cultural programs that are fundamentally different from
those offered in the mainstream media.
Conceived in that way, structural regulation (e.g., ownership limits)
appear to be a desirable communications policy strategy in promoting
diversity in the media. Hence, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
had decided to limit both horizontal and vertical ownership in cable
television,[22] while proponents of free market argued that diversity can
be greatly enhanced by the "normal mechanism of marketplace."[23] From the
regulators' perspective, it is more constitutional and feasible to regulate
the structure of industry as a means of realizing diversity of content
since the U.S. Supreme Court prohibits the government's prior restraint of
media content.[24]
In the meantime, political economy approach which stresses much the
importance of ownership has its own limitations as well. If, as an extreme
political economist might argue, media content would never be democratic,
enjoyable, or communicative under the capitalist economy in which a handful
of large corporations control a means of expression, we have no way of
going beyond rather than simply victimizing media users. Concerned with
this dilemma, John Fiske, in his study of television, proposed an
audience-empowering approach by arguing that "the power to be different is
the power that maintains social differences, social diversity…. But
diversity is not simply to be measured in terms of the variety of programs
transmitted: diversity of readings is equally, if not more, important."[25]
What Fiske suggests here is essentially the centrality of critical readings
of media text, or critical media literacy. Political economy approach, if
informed by this line of thought looking at the possible way of audience
empowerment, can shed critical insights on studying various aspects of
diversity related issues in media.
To reiterate, political economy approach should be better seen as an
analytical framework by which we can make a meaningful link between
diversity of ownership and diversity of content. By doing so, we can
conceptualize structural regulation as an effective means of promoting
diversity in media, rather than as the state's bureaucratic power.
Diversity and Cable Television
As mentioned at the beginning, cable television in the U.S. evolved in a
social environment in which there were only three broadcast networks and
their distribution to the TV households was often hampered by natural and
geographical obstacles. Because of cable television's advanced technology
in delivering clear picture in its initial stage and increased channel
capacity later on, it has been seen as an alternative medium to broadcast
television. For instance, situating cablecasting within the historical
context of power struggle against broadcasting, Edward Dolan argues that
cable, due to its enhanced channel capacity, can become a true marketplace
of ideas.[26]
Similarly, Le Duc states, "in the 1960s, with the increased capacity of
cable systems and the advent of program importing services promoting the
growth of cable, many public interest groups saw in cable the potential to
bypass the technological limits of broadcasting and significantly increase
the diversity of media sources available to the American public."[27]
The growth of cable through the importation of distant signals was viewed
as competition by local broadcast stations. Responding to broadcast
industry's economic woes, the FCC placed restrictions on the ability of
cable systems to import distant television signals. As a result of these
restrictions, there was a "freeze" effect on the development of cable
systems in major markets, lasting into the early 1970s.[28] FCC rulemaking,
throughout the 1960s, in fact, was designed primarily to protect big city
broadcasters' economic interests at the expense of small market residents'
rights of accessing diverse programs.[29] This historical phase tells us
how certain legislative and regulatory decisions can promote or deter the
development of technologies. Further, it also shows that how different
stakeholders in communications policy employ policy principles as sort of
rhetorical tools to defend their position and maximize their
interests. For instance, broadcasters called for the government
intervention into cable regulation grounded on the public interest and
localism principles.
The freeze on cable's development lasted until 1972, when a policy of
gradual cable deregulation led to modified restrictions on the importation
of distant broadcast signals.[30] Unburdened by the government regulation,
coupled with the advent of the first pay-TV network, Home Box Office (HBO)
and the development of national satellite distribution system, in the
1970s, there had been a significant increase in cable subscribers. In
addition, the government began to consider cable as a form of public forum
and means of enhancing civic participation. As a result, regarding the
future of cable television, utopian views or so-called "Blue Sky" visions
began to prevail.[31]
[T]he stage is being set for a communications revolutions … audio, video,
and facsimile transmissions … will provide newspapers, mail service,
banking and shopping facilities, data from libraries and other storage
centers, school curricula and other forms of information too numerous to
specify. In short, every home and office will contain a communications
center of a breadth and flexibility to influence every aspect of private
and community life.[32]
Considering the talk about cable television in the policy arena as a
discursive practice, Streeter argues that in the 1970s, utopian talk about
cable television treated cable as an autonomous technology while not paying
attention to political and economic conditions in which such technology is
introduced and developed.[33] Although Streeter's analysis is very
insightful in demystifying the sort of uncritical and naïve utopian view
toward cable television, it is not entirely satisfactory to answering such
an issue of what kind of different political and cultural values cable
television brought to the U.S. homes.
In view of that, Pool's analysis seems to be more illuminating. Avoiding
both utopian and dystopian views toward the future of cable television
around the 1970s, he investigates to what extent and in what specific ways
cable television can encourage citizen participation, raise the level of
culture, and provide education and services to the public. For example,
cable television offers more diverse programs, both in terms of the number
of channels and the nature of programming, to viewers. Also, it can provide
opportunities to such audiences who are not able to afford access to sports
arena, movie theater, concert hall, and so forth.[34]
Pointing out cable television's potential as a counter-power to the
existing large broadcasting corporations, Raymond Williams also states, "We
are already able to see, from some publicly financed local experiments,
that cable technology could alter the whole social and cultural process of
televised communications."[35] However, according to him, the degree to
which cable as an alternative medium realizes its potential on a full-scale
ultimately depends on the public's engagement in the shaping of its form
and content.
Even though cable television has been traditionally regarded as a highly
commercialized medium, it should also be noted that diverse programs,
whether they be entertaining or informative, provided by cable television
constitute an essential ingredient of our daily life nowadays. Therefore,
one valuable way to assess the performance of cable television would be of
what kind of diverse political and cultural programs it offers to the
public. As mentioned earlier, cable television, because of its increased
channel capacity, at least in a theoretical sense, can provide viewers with
more diverse programming and viewpoints. Empirical research also confirms
this point. According to Kieschnick and McCullough, cable subscribers seek
more diverse sources of video programming than non-subscribers do.[36]
With regard to cable's role in promoting diversity and civic participation
at local levels, John Dryzek's political theory would be of help. He
states, "Democracy should be pluralistic in embracing the necessity to
communicate across difference without erasing difference, reflexive in its
questioning orientation to established traditions."[37] What he argues by
this is essentially the centrality of diversity and corresponding civic
participation in the process of public deliberation. With regard to the
role of communication, he goes on to argue that "a conception of democracy
[should emphasize] the construction of public opinion through the
contestation of discourses and its transmission to the state via
communicative means."[38] Based on this conceptualization of democracy, we
can reasonably deduce that cable television, public access channels in
particular can and should play a key role in facilitating civic
participation at local levels.
A concern for political democracy, then, is matched by another
constitutional goal every bit as important to American society, and that is
cultural democracy, the broadest possible participation in the cultural
processes that define and redefine the sort of society we shall be. This
form of life – an ideal not yet fully realized – demands not only a public
discourse that nourishes political democracy, but also a healthy local
discourse that nourishes cultural democracy.[39]
Yet the issue of to what extent and in what specific ways cable television
can or did contribute to the foregoing ideal remains very much an open
question, leading us to assess its performance empirically.
Assessing Diversity of Ownership in Cable Television
In the previous section, I briefly discussed democratic potentials of cable
television in fostering civic participation and offering diverse cultural
expression and representation. Then, based on the recognition that
ownership limits in cable television are a minimal safeguard and drawing
upon some secondary statistical data, this section seeks to assess the
current state of ownership diversity in cable television, especially in the
aftermath of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.[40] Among many legal and
regulatory issues pertinent to diversity of ownership in cable television,
horizontal/vertical cable ownership limits, aimed at ensuring greater
diversity of ownership, stand to the fore.
In the Time Warner decision issued on March 2, 2001 by the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,[41] the court determined that
the FCC's prior limits had not been adequately supported and that the FCC
had not sufficiently considered changes that have occurred in the
multichannel video programming distribution (MVPD) market. In response to
the decision, FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking[42] to review its
horizontal and vertical limits for cable companies, offering a summary of
regulatory history related to cable ownership limits.
Initially, the 1992 Cable Act directed the FCC to set up limits on the
number of subscribers a cable operator may serve (horizontal limit) and on
the number of channels a cable operator may devote to affiliated
programming (vertical limit). The FCC implemented such rules in 1993.
According to the ownership rules, horizontal ownership limit prohibits any
cable operator from serving more than 30 percent of cable subscribers
across the nation. At the same time, vertical ownership limit keep one
cable company from having any ownership affiliation with more than 40
percent of the programming that it carries on any of its cable systems with
up to 75 channels. On any system with over 75 channels, 45 channels are
mandated to be reserved for nonaffiliated programming.[43]
Traditionally, the cable industry's response to government
regulation has been grounded in the defense of their First Amendment
rights, arguing that cable operators are essentially an electronic
publisher who has the rights of deciding what to carry on their
signals.[44] In addition, as to FCC's demand of diversity principle, their
main defense has been that if cable operators are given a freedom to select
channels, it would lead to increased diversity. Although cable companies'
reliance on the First Amendment rights, in a sense, does make some sense,
especially considering the fact that they, unlike broadcast television, are
not given free spectrum which logically lead to broadcasters' obligation to
the public interest. However, in another sense, it is unreasonable to claim
that the increased ownership could still serve diversity without offering
any plausible empirical evidence. Furthermore, as discussed earlier, there
is another misconception in their argument in that a multiplicity of
outlets (e.g., cable channels) does not necessarily result in diversity of
content, whether it be an idea, opinion, cultural value, opinion, and the
like.
A recent industry survey conducted by the FCC shows an
increasing economic tendency of ownership concentration. Although the cable
industry is comprised of thousands of local cable operators and scores of
national Multiple System operators (MSOs),[45] today, in the deregulated
cable industry, the top ten MSOs control nearly 85 percent of cable systems
while by 1998, the top ten MSOs controlled the lines into 71 percent of
cable subscribers (See Table 1).[46] This economic tendency shows that a
handful of cable giants are capable of controlling distribution of cable
programming while favoring affiliated programming networks.
Table 1: Market Share of MSOs: 1998-2001
1998
2001
Top 10
71.04
84.29
Top 25
80.99
89.70
Top 50
86.08
91.38
* Source: FCC, Eighth Annual Report.
For instance, the second largest MSO (after the approval of Comcast's
acquisition of AT&T cable division), AOL Time Warner has financial
interests in more than 20 programming networks including CNN, Cartoon
Network, TNT, TBS, HBO, just to name a few. In this industrial structure,
it is easy to notice that among 234 programming networks, independent
networks that are not affiliated with cable MSOs are at competitive
disadvantages. In fact, among the top 20 programming networks as ranked by
number of subscribers, there are only 2 unaffiliated programming services.[47]
Another longitudinal research done by FCC also confirms that a
general tendency of ownership concentration in the media industry. The main
research finding is that while the number of media outlets has been
significantly increasing, the number of owners including both big and small
independent companies has been slightly increasing.[48]
In turn, as to the issue of content diversity, in terms of
representational diversity on cable, Kuby et al.'s content analysis of
programs on 32 cable channels reveals that despite the creation of scores
of new cable television channels, there has been no evidence of more
accurate proportional representations of historically underrepresented
demographic groups such as racial minorities, females, senior citizens, and
so forth.[49] In addition, Blumer et al.'s research also shows that despite
the increased the marketplace for programming due to the increase in
networks and cable systems, there is no evidence of individual producers'
increased freedom of expression, implying that no increased program
diversity for the consuming public.[50]
Therefore, although the 1996 Act was intended to promote
competition and diversity in media, the recent wave of media mergers and
acquisitions leads us to doubt about its actual effects. A very recent mega
merger between Comcast and AT&T broadband just deepens public's concern
about the conglomeration of ownership. According to the Associate Press
news, Comcast became the largest cable operator in the United States as a
result of its acquisition of AT&T's cable division.[51] The FCC Chairman,
Michael Powell, in finalizing the AT&T-Comcast merger case, states, "The
benefits of this transaction are considerable; the potential harms
negligible. We therefore conclude that the merger serves the public
interest, convenience, and necessity."[52] Regarding this, it is natural
for big media giants not to talk much about merger cases. "That's the word
from Disney-owned ABC and AOL/Time Warner-owned CNN, where both sides
weren't thrilled by how the merger and their respective sides came off
looking."[53]
Predictably, the result of deregulation in ownership is: "News departments
get reduced and culturally diverse and public interest programming comes
under pressure. Less popular programming disappears and journalists are
evaluated by the corporate-profit-center logic of these huge
organizations."[54] Thus, the mere fact of outlet multiplicity does not
signal the presence of democracy. Diversity in cable television is
undemocratic to the extent it is controlled by a few gigantic oligopolists.
On the other hand, diversity can be democratic to the extent that there is
an environment for a fair competition and there is a wide range of
competent views and programs available to viewers.
Conclusion
Having examined how concentration of ownership prohibits a multiplicity of
information sources and viewpoints, it would be fair to conclude that the
issue of ownership diversity in cable television becomes much more
important than ever. In this paper, I argued for the need to link diversity
of ownership to diversity of content informed by political economy approach
and supported by some empirical evidence. Certainly, such a linkage should
be conceived neither in terms of a simple linear cause-and-effect
relationship nor a purely economic account.
In the wake of the deregulatory turn in the cable industry, the discussion
on the nature of diversity in cable television directs us to pay close
attention to rethinking of the medium and associated regulatory
justification. Considering the recent spate of mergers and acquisitions in
the cable industry in the aftermath of the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
it becomes of utmost importance to reexamine the foundations of the current
deregulatory communications policy. An increasing concentration of
ownership would offer no help in making cable television more diverse, and
offers little chance of expanding the public sphere. Therefore, it is my
conclusion that the ownership provisions of telecommunications regulation
that are in danger of disappearance or relaxation should remain active.
As discussed earlier, diversity in communications policy inherently
involves a wide range of political, social, and cultural issues that are so
often intermingled with each other. Given this, one meaningful way to
pursue the issue of diversity in cable television would be how to realize
the normative ideals of participatory and cultural democracy by virtue of
an alternative medium to broadcast television. As cable television, with
the help of such new technologies as satellite and digital broadband,
expands its horizon, many more new regulatory issues will emerge and
consequently there is a need for media scholars to revisit the promises of
cable television, with a critical look at them.
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Williams, Raymond. Television and Cultural Form, 2nd ed. London: Routledge,
1990.
[1] According to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association's
cable industry statistics, 69.8% of TV households subscribes to cable
television service (as of July 2002). The statistical data is available
online at <http://www.ncta.com/industry_overview/indStat.cfm?indOverviewID=2>.
[2] The Federal Communications Commission, Eighth Annual Report:
Assessment of the Status of Competition in the Market for the Delivery of
Video Programming, Docket No. 01-129, January 14, 2002,
<http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-01-389A1.pdf>.
[3] Pub. L. No. 73-416, 48 Stat. 1064 (1934) (codified as amended at 47
U.S.C.A Secs. 151-610 (1990).
[4] Allard Sicco De Jong and Benjamin J. Bates, "Channel Diversity in
Cable Television," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 35 (1991), 159.
[5] De Jong et al., 161.
[6] See De Jong et al., 161-162.
[7] To see how various measures of competition lead to different ways of
assessing diversity, refer to Barry R. Litman, "The Television Networks,
Competition, and Program Diversity," Journal of Broadcasting 23 (1979):
393-409. Also, for a discussion of a wide variety of measuring program
diversity from media economics perspectives, see Mara Einstein, "Program
Diversity and the Program Selection Process on Broadcast Network
Television," FCC Media Ownership Working Group, September 2002, which is
accessible online at <http://
hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-226838A10.pdf>.
[8] Denis McQuail, Media Performance, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 1992), 142.
[9] See Philip M. Napoli, Foundations of Communications Policy: Principles
and Process in the Regulation of Electronic Media (New Jersey: Hampton
Press, 2001), 138-146.
[10] Napoli, Foundations, 138.
[11] Robert Kubey, Mark Shifflet, Niranjala Weerakkody, and Stephen
Ukeiley, "Demographic Diversity on Cable: Have the New Cable Channels Made
a Difference in the Representation of Gender, Race, and Age?" Journal of
Broadcasting & Electronic Media 39 (1995): 459-471.
[12] De Jong et al., 160.
[13] Philip M. Napoli, "Rethinking Program Diversity Assessment: An
Audience-Centered Approach," Journal of Media Economics 10 (1997), 59-74.
[14] For a full discussion of the history and role of public access
television, see Gilbert Gillespie, Public Access Cable Television in the
United States and Canada (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975).
[15] Napoli, Foundations, 127.
[16] Napoli, Foundations, 126.
[17] To a greater or lesser extent, various political economy approaches
in critical social theories in general, critical media studies in
particular are hinted by Karl Marx's claim that "in every epoch the ideas
of the ruling class are the ruling ideas, that is, the class that is the
ruling material power of society is at the same time it ruling intellectual
power. The class having the means of material production has also control
over the means of intellectual production …." Karl Marx, The German
Ideology, Selected Writings, ed. Lawrence H. Simon (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 1994), 129.
[18] Robert McChesney's works well exemplify this line of research. See
Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in
Dubious Time (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999). Also, for the
discussion of the concentration of ownership in the media on a global
scale, see Edward S. Herman and Robert W. McChesney, The Global Media: the
New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism (New York: Continuum, 1997).
[19] Edward S. Herman, "Marketplace of Ideas Revisited: Diversity of News:
Marginalizing the Opposition," Journal of Communication 35 (1985):135-146.
[20] Napoli, Foundations, 137.
[21] Ben Bagdikian, "The 50, 26, 20 … Corporations That Own Our Media,"
Extra (June 1987),
<http://www.fair.org/extra/best-of-extra/corporate-ownership.html>.
[22] See Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of
1992, Pub. L. No. 102-385, 106 Stat. 1460 (codified in scattered sections
of 47 U.S.C.).
[23] This line of argument can be found in Mark Fowler's
argument for the need to deregulate the broadcast industry. He argues, if
unburdened by the government regulation, free market can best serve the
public interests including diversity and localism. See Mark Fowler and
Daniel Brenner, "A Marketplace Approach to Broadcast Regulation," Texas Law
Review (1982), 207-257. In fact, as confirmed by Napoli's content analysis
of the FCC documents, the term "marketplace of ideas" has been often
interpreted from economic perspectives, favoring the free market approach
to media regulation.
[24] See New York Times Company v. U.S., 403 U.S. 73 (1971); U.S. v. The
Progressive, F. Supp. 990 (1979).
[25] John Fiske, Television Culture (New York: Routledge, 1989), 319.
[26] Edward Dolan, TV or CATV? A Struggle for Power ( New York: Associated
Faculty Press, 1984).
[27] Don R. Le Duc, Cable Television and the FCC: A Crisis in Media
Control (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973), 73.
[28] See Parsons and Frieden, 42-43.
[29] Parsons and Frieden, 43
[30] See Parsons and Frieden, 48-49.
[31] For a discussion about the utopian talk in regards to cable
television's future, see Thomas Streeter, "Cable Fable Revisited:
Discourse, Policy, and the Making of Cable Television," Critical Studies in
Mass Communication 4 (1987): 174-200.
[32] Ralph Lee Smith, "The Wired Nation," The Nation (18 May 1970): 582.
Cited in Thomas Streeter, "Blue Skies and Strange Bedfellows: The Discourse
of Cable Television" in The Revolution Wasn't Televised: Sixties Television
and Social Conflict (New York: Routledge, 1999): 221.
[33] In a similar vein, Parsons also argues for the need to situate the
development of technology and according policy discourses essentially
contingent upon the power dynamics of a given historical period. For a
further discussion on this, see Patrick Parsons, "Defining Cable
Television: Structuration and Public Policy," Journal of Communication 39
(1989): 10-26.
[34] Ithiel de Sola Pool, ed. Talking Back: Citizen Feedback and Cable
Technology (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1973).
[35] Raymond Williams, Television and Cultural Form, 2nd ed. (London:
Routledge, 1990), 141.
[36] Robert Kieschnick and B.D. McCullough, "Why Do People Not Subscribe
to Cable Television" A Review of the Evidence," A Paper presented to 1998
TPRC <http://www.tprc.org/abstracts98/kieschnick.pdf> November 15, 2002.
[37] John Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics,
Contestations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3.
[38] Dryzek, 4.
[39] Kenneth L. Karst, "The Privatization of Our Public Discourse: Essay
Local Discourse and the Social Issues," Cardozo Studies in Law and
Literature 12 (2000), 27.
[40] Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-104, 110 Stat. 56
(to be codified at scattered sections of 47 U.S.C.).
[41] See Time Warner Ent. Co. v. FCC, 240 F. 3d 1126 (DC Cir. 2001).
[42] See Commission's Cable Horizontal and Vertical Limits and Attribution
Rules, MM Docket No. 92-264, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, FCC 01-263, 2001.
[43] Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, FCC 01-263, 2001.
[44] Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 114 S.Ct. 2445, 1994
(Turner I); Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 117 S.Ct. 1174, 1997
(Turner II).
[45] Parsons and Frieden, 120.
[46] FCC, Eighth Annual Report
[47] FCC, Eighth Annual Report.
[48] Scott Roberts, Jane Frenette and Dione Stearns, "A,FCC.
<http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-226838A2.txt>.
[49] Kubey et al.
[50] See Jay G. Blumer and Carolyn M. Spicer, "Prospects for Creativity
in the New Television Marketplace: Evidence from Program-Makers," Journal
of Communication 40 (1990): 78-101.
[51] Bill Bergstrom, The Associated Press, "Comcast Finalizes AT&T
Broadband Deal," Centre Daily Times, 19 November, 2002, B9.
[52] Michael Powell, Separate Statement,
<http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-228446A2.pdf>.
[53] Peter Johnson, "ABC, CNN Try to Keep Merger News Quiet," USA Today,
19 November 2002, 3D.
[54] Mark Cooper, cited in Neil Hickey, "Unshackling Big Media," Columbia
Journalism Review, Sept/Oct 2002.
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