As Word War Two
approached, a young America melted from a collection of hamlets and provinces
into one United States, thanks largely to electromagnetic radiation. The
net that drew us together was a network of powerful AM radio transmitters and mass-produced, inexpensive receivers.
These early radios had the defects of their virtues. The long range of their signals, particularly at night, allowed remote villages to get farm prices quickly.
But a transmitter in one city interfered with others planet-wide.
Consequently, relatively few clear channels (in the U.S., fifty) were available.
Radio bandwidth was deemed to be a publicly owned national resource.
Only a chosen few were allowed to transmit on this precious
resource.
The rules of
the road were laid down by the Communications Act of 1934. The character
of this set of regulations was probably derived from radio's evolution
from an emergency communications service. The Act dictated that
every station and its operators had be licensed; that every
license had to be renewed from time to time; that in order to get
or keep licenses, owners had to prove that they were operating their
stations in the public's "Interest, Convenience, and
Necessity." Information types were classified and
prioritized by the Commission. News, weather, and balanced
editorials were near the top of the list. Entertainment and other
purely profitable activities were near the bottom.
Channel scarcity mandated monopolies of necessity,
and the Commission's regulations meant that most Americans wound up listening to the same
kinds of things every night. Mass communication was born in the thirties, and along with it mass marketing and finally, a mass-consciousness.
Personal opinions varied as always, but the concept of a mainstream had
formed. Common people began to see the world from a shared point of view.
For better or worse, governments and large corporations saw the power and efficiency of shaping that viewpoint.
FDR used radio fireside chats to calm a panicked nation after the crash
of '29. Racial stereotyping was promulgated by the networked antics of “Amos N’ Andy.
There was a lot of money to be made in this business, and a lot of
businessmen wanted to get in the game.
The march of technology made that possible in
the 1950's with the advent of relatively high-frequency FM radio. The higher
its frequency, the more radio behaves like light waves. That is, it won’t penetrate hills or bounce off the ionosphere to trample on
distant stations. Suddenly lots of new short-range frequencies became
available. At the start, existing station station owners simply simulcast
what was going out on their AM side. The FCC realized that this
waste of bandwidth was temporarily necessary for the new medium to gain
acceptance, and for new receivers to be sold, and for their
mass-manufactured price to come down. As FM ceased to be a toy for
the rich, the FCC gradually forced station owners to generate separate,
if not equal, content for the new medium. Audiences and ratings
began to transition. Station owners had to aim for and capture
specific markets, or niches inside a city limits. Educational, religious, and classical “narrowcasting” evolved.
AM radio stations began to run out of money, and had to follow suit by
specializing in political, sports, or foreign-language
programming.
This migration
would be repeated again and again as new technologies increased the
number of channels. In the sixties, a typical large American City
had but three television stations, typically, one for each of the three
major networks. Then, as with FM, the UHF band opened up and
smaller-scale, independent owners could get on the air. Cable and
satellite television vastly accelerated the competition by allowing
hundreds of channels. More importantly, these newcomers did not
use publicly owned airwaves. The FCC could no longer proscribe or
promote particular kinds of content. Narrowcasts were sliced
thinner and thinner. Viewers could get all-sex, all-day channels,
if they were willing to pay. Or channels dedicated solely to
shopping, home building, history, NASA, animals, cartoons, racing, and
so on. Given hundreds of channels, it became necessary to block
some.
In his day, Walter Cronkite had to seek the middle of
his road and stick to it, because he was one of only three national TV news oracles. Today it’s possible for consumers to tune
in nothing but right-wing or left-wing reality, as they choose. People naturally dislike ideas that conflict with their comfortable prejudices. Profit-maximizing news outlets increasingly seek out those preconceived notions and confirm them by tailoring their product to resemble editorials.
So it is that next-door neighbors who drive the same cars, wear the same clothes, and speak the same language are shocked to discover that they think they live in different countries, a “red” country or a “blue” one.
Our latest communications powerhouse drives narrowcasting completely into the realm of fractional audiences.
The Internet dishes up thousands of small-time broadcasters, or bloggers, each with an audience of as few as a dozen people.
The upside is that anyone can post a photograph or an opinion and spread
it around the globe before a large corporation or government is even
aware of it. It's extremely democratic. But many would sort
through those streams and turn some off.
The Red Chinese
government is contracting with some Internet Search Engines to keep
their citizens from reading about the liberty statue at Tiananmen
square, for example. Bloggers who say the wrong there frequently
disappear into prison. Americans find that contemptible, but what
about parents who want to keep their kids from visiting porn or hate
sites, or the sites that describe how to build pipe bombs, or even
supposedly benign sites that can be tools for sexual predators? A
more prevalent problem is that if anyone can generate and distribute
information without editing, then lots of wishful or deliberately
misleading information will inevitably spread like a virus.
You can blog that 911 was caused by Elvis clones from Mars and still draw a crowd that will shake your hand and say “right on!”
On a most basic level, content generators can conceal or lie about who
and what they are.
So, the ancient
battle between the collective and the individual is now being fought on
the ground of the modern public mind. Internet technology lays down an information highway out of the mainstream.
By communicating conveniently and inexpensively, it allows unique
individuals to organize and join groups that span nations or to enter
tiny, specialized groups. Through communication across borders,
cultures, and classes, it promotes a common, global outlook.
The question of
how this will play out makes for one riveting TV show. Stay tuned.
--Raymond J. Smith
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