Core Post #4 - Dan Hawkins

 I was unprepared for how angry Jennifer Holt’s description of the conglomeration of the television industry made me—I think it’s that any subject, of which there are many, that details how Regan’s administration irrevocably damaged the world just causes me to seethe, and its tough being reminded how much of this country’s recent slide towards fascism can be attributed to the conservative media spheres that rose out of the FCC’s deregulatory policy changes of the 80s. There’s something fabulous, in all senses of the word but particularly as of the incredible and the incredulous, about picturing a media landscape that is not just oligopolies slicing bits of culture off and locking them into windowed vaults. How would the world be different if cable news was held via regulation to a standard of education instead of misinformation? How much better off would we be, not only as consumers, but as citizens, if the government actually wielded its power to force corporations act in our best interests?

Holt’s chapter ends almost dismissively, intimating that “well, things could be worse, it’s not all bad” but I think that between her book’s publication in 2003 and today, almost 20 years later, all those problems manifested and festered. Instead of a few broadcast corporations, there are only a few major streaming platforms, on only a few internet providing services. Each of these platforms produces their own content – the “incestuous programming free for all” that Holt says has largely been avoided is here: Disney with its strangehold on copyright, lurching along like The Blob, absorbing everything with which it comes into contact, Netflix and its arcane algorithms that decide numerically when a show should most profitably be ended; AppleTV also exists.

What’s frustrating is that the solution to a lot of these problems is to use the tools that we’ve already used in the past. The FCC could just decide that YouTube must adhere to a certain standard of quality, produce original educational content, or whatever.

Recently, I read a very persuasive argument for the nationalization of Spotify and turning it into a “music.gov” site that would be available to more people and could, because of its being a national program, afford to actually pay artists. I wonder if there could be a similar future to other industries / services. Internet access obviously should be government-provided. These kinds of things really appeal to me not just for being a public good, but for the added benefit that imagining Reagan looking up at a version of America with more citizen-oriented broadcast and entertainment industries gives me immense satisfaction.