Indie Producers Squeezed Out of TV, GAO Confirms
| March 18, 2010 TV broadcast networks and major cable operators with ownership stakes in cable channels continue to squeeze independent TV producers and channels off the air, the Government Accountability Office reports. Creative Voices was pleased to have worked with GAO to document in this important report the chokehold that Big Media has over access to television. More»
Creative Voices gives the FCC a standing ovation for its National Broadband Plan, which will unleash billions of dollars in economic development, create over a million jobs, enhance America’s global competitiveness, deliver superior health care and education, reduce energy consumption and environmental degradation, improve public safety and homeland security, reinvigorate democracy, and connect artists directly with their audience, enabling more high quality media choices at lower cost. More»
CV Files Comments w/FCC Advocating Open Internet
| January 15, 2010 CV filed comments today in the FCC's Open Internet proceeding calling on the Commission to establish clear rules protecting the right of content creators to provide -- and consumers to access -- the Internet content of their choice without restraint or impairment by the Internet Service Provider. This principle of Network Neutrality is crucial for free expression and the future of the Internet. More»
CV Applauds FCC Decision to Sanction Comcast and Promote Open Internet for All
| August 1, 2008 Creative Voices applauds today’s FCC decision to protect and promote an open Internet where consumers have the freedom to access the lawful Internet content of their choice and use the lawful applications of their choice. The FCC decision today marked an important victory in the battle over whether consumers will have the freedom to enjoy the full Internet, or whether they will they be restricted to visiting sites approved by – or in business with – the cable, telephone, or media conglomerate “gatekeeper” that provides broadband Internet access.
Because extreme media consolidation and concentration have eliminated so many independent voices and visions from America’s mainstream media, a growing number of creative artists now share their video, music, and creative visions directly with their audience over the Internet. Today’s FCC decision protects these artists from discrimination by broadband providers, promoting more independent and diverse voices in our media. More»
Does Big Media's One-Two Punch Knock Out the Internet?
| June 28, 2008 The recent opening of Hulu.com and the MPAA's vehement denunciation of net neutrality are intimately related, a double-barreled shot aimed at the heart of the open Internet. With its back-to-back denunciation of Net Neutrality and its launch of Hulu as its anointed site for streaming TV, films, and video, Big Media's goal is nothing less than to turn today's wide open Internet into a closed system more akin to cable television. The likely result: as we've documented in cable, independent and diverse voices and their content will be inexorably marginalized or silenced.
To prevent this Big Media alliance with Big Cable/Telco from cornering and controlling the Internet, it is time for the government to implement reasonable network neutrality oversight that protects consumers and content creators, and preserves the open Internet we enjoy today. More»
Senators, FCC Seek to Promote Independent TV Programming
| June 28, 2008 UPDATED. In the FCC's proceeding on "Localism," Creative Voices and a broad coalition of public interest groups asked the FCC to promote creativity, diversity, originality, and just plain better TV by changing its rules to help independent producers not affiliated with the broadcast networks -- like the people who made All in the Family, The Cosby Show, Murphy Brown, and The Rockford Files -- to once again make TV for primetime.
Meanwhile, mega-kudos to Senators Dorgan, Leahy, and Kohl, who asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether media consolidation has reduced opportunities for independent producers and programmers. More»
FCC to Investigate Product Placement/Integration in TV/Radio
| June 27, 2008 Television programming is increasingly saturated with advertisers' "product placements" that distort and harm editorial and creative content. Even worse is "product integration" -- the production of a program paid for in large part by an advertiser that cleverly and "covertly" weaves its product into the actual storyline. After years of complaints, we applaud the FCC for finally investigating the practice and considering new rules and disclosures to regulate these practices and better inform the audience about the presence of advertising within TV programming. More»
The Case For Universal Broadband in America: Now!
| March 22, 2008 Today, more than three years after President Bush made universal broadband “in every corner of America by 2007" an explicit goal of his administration, millions of Americans are still without broadband access to the Internet. Other areas have access only to low quality "fraudband” that is so slow, unreliable or unaffordable that it fails to meet other countries’ definitions of broadband, and fails to provide the benefits that President Bush described when he established the goal.
All Americans will benefit from fast, reliable, affordable, universal and open broadband access to the Internet. Our Report, The Case for Universal Broadband in America: Now! tells why. More»
Add Diverse, Independent Voices to TV, Hollywood Tells FCC
| March 20, 2008 UPDATED, WITH VIDEO. At the FCC’s first public hearing in its media ownership proceeding, held in LA on October 3, 2006, a panel of prominent creative media artists urged the Commission to restore independent and diverse voices, visions, faces, and stories to television. Extreme media consolidation prevents the public from viewing original, challenging, family-friendly, high quality broadcast television from independent and diverse sources, the artists documented. Said WGA, west President Patric Verrone, “Homogenization is good for milk, but bad for ideas.” More»
Why the Writers Strike and So Many Actors Picket Beside Them
| November 13, 2007 The entertainment business is migrating to online digital delivery. Everybody in showbiz knows this. Yet somehow, the film and television studio executives make the claim that they don't know this and don't know if they can make money in the digital future. Writers and actors know this is bunk, and that's why they're striking -- to get a sliver of this huge new market, just as they get a sliver of revenue when their work repeats on broadcast TV, and the former "new markets" of cable, VHS, DVD, etc. More»
Cable Mega-Monopolies Not in Public Interest
| March 22, 2007 CV and other media reform groups urged the FCC to impose a 30 percent limit on the number of America's cable subscribers any single company can control. The groups write, When incumbent cable operators can simultaneously announce both record per subscriber profits and a rate increase, "effective competition" does not exist. When one considers that many of the same large incumbent cable operators consistently rank near the bottom of every customer satisfaction survey, the self-serving assertion of cable operators that 'no real problem exists' and that the Commission therefore 'lacks authority' to impose a 30% limit become laughable." More»
Net Neutrality Vital to Creative Artists AND American Public, CV Tells FCC
| March 16, 2007 Creative media artists view the broadband Internet as a tremendously exciting opportunity to directly reach their audience – the American people – with the best content they can possibly create. Yet that exciting opportunity may not come to pass if the cable and telephone companies that overwhelmingly dominate the market for broadband distribution can pick and choose who will get distribution over their “pipes.”
Such a system would essentially turn these broadband service providers into gatekeepers able to powerfully influence or manipulate information on the Internet, picking and choosing which information gets broadband distribution, the quality of that distribution, and the audience that information can reach – not unlike the oligopolistic broadcast and cable television distribution system. Read our full comments in favor of Net Neutrality to the FCC. More»
Net Neutrality Vital to Creative Artists AND American Public, CV Tells FTC
| February 24, 2007 Creative media artists view the broadband Internet as a tremendously exciting opportunity to directly reach their audience – the American people – with the best content they can possibly create. Yet that exciting opportunity may not come to pass if the cable and telephone companies that overwhelmingly dominate the market for broadband distribution can pick and choose who will get distribution over their “pipes.”
Such a system would essentially turn these broadband service providers into gatekeepers able to powerfully influence or manipulate information on the Internet, picking and choosing which information gets broadband distribution, the quality of that distribution, and the audience that information can reach – not unlike the oligopolistic broadcast and cable television distribution system. Read our full comments in favor of Net Neutrality to the FTC More»
FCC Approves ATT Takeover of BellSouth -- Public Interest Conditions Hailed as "Milestone" for Internet
| December 29, 2006 After AT&T agreed to new pro-competitive public interest conditions on the deal, the FCC voted 4-0 to approve its takeover of BellSouth. Among those conditions, a commitment to Network Neutrality, of which Professor Tim Wu of Columbia U., one of the nation's foremost academic authorities on the Internet and a proponent of Net Neutrality, wrote: To the lay reader the AT&T merger agreement may appear highly technical. It is, however, a milestone, and may even be remembered as an important moment in Internet history. Most notable is the agreement's striking inclusion of the first strong Network Neutrality language yet seen in any broadband regulatory device.
AT&T's cave in on Network Neutrality, its reluctant agreement to provide system-wide low cost stand-alone broadband access, its surrender of valuable spectrum to competitors, and other competition-preserving conditions - all in all, this is likely the best outcome the public could hope for. More»
YOU - Time's Person of This Year, But Next Year's Toast?
| December 18, 2006 With Time Magazine picking You as their Person of the Year for 2006, we need to realize how all this user created content celebrated by Time almost didn't happen; how fragile our ability to post our content on the Internet really is; and, how the telephone and cable companies that monopolize broadband Internet access want 2007 to be the year not of Us, but of Them. More»
FCC Media Ownership Policies Make Television’s “Vast Wasteland” Even Vaster, Creative Voices Tells Commission
| October 23, 2006 Misguided FCC media ownership policies harm competition, diversity of viewpoints, and localism – the Commission’s key policy goals in regulating media ownership – and prevent the American public from receiving better broadcast television, the Center for Creative Voices in Media told the Commission in comments filed today.
Former FCC Chairman Newton Minow once famously referred to television as a "vast wasteland.” By harming competition, diversity of viewpoints, and localism, recent ill-considered FCC media ownership policies have had the unintended consequence of making that "wasteland" vaster. In its current media ownership proceeding, the Commission must reverse these policies and remedy these consequences, so that the public gets what all would agree is truly in the public interest – better television. More»
Net Neutrality Vital to Creative Artists, CV Tells FCC
| October 22, 2006 From the most prominent well-established independent television or film producer to the kid with nothing but a video camera, a computer, and a dream, creative media artists increasingly utilize the broadband Internet to avoid the chokehold that broadcasters and cable operators have over distribution to the audience. But their ability to utilize the broadband Internet for distribution is threatened by media concentration, and the chokehold that the phone and cable companies have over access to the broadband network. Read our comments to the FCC calling for Net Neutrality conditions in the AT&T -- BellSouth merger. More»
CV Letter to Broadcasting & Cable, 10/23/06
| October 21, 2006 Thanks to Broadcasting & Cable for printing our response, albeit truncated, to their editorial panning the creatives who testified at the LA FCC public hearing.
B&C’s editorial “Take Risks” [Oct. 9, p. 50], concerning the complaints made against Big Media at the FCC’s public hearings in L.A., fails to mention the primary reason the FCC was holding public hearings in the first place: because broadcasters who have been granted a license to use the public’s airwaves, with no payment to the public, are required by law to operate in the public interest. Analogizing broadcasting to Wal-Mart while ignoring this critical fact is misleading and inapposite. More»
From the Folks Who Are Giving Away Your Internet, More Media Concentration
| July 21, 2006 Your Federal Communications Commission - which in the name of the "public interest" eliminated Net Neutrality and turned control of the Internet over to the big telecom and cable companies - announced today it is ready to do you yet another service. This time, FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, again in the name of the "public interest," is proposing to eliminate or weaken long-standing rules that prevent local newspapers, television and radio stations (and their websites) from all merging together to dominate and decimate local communities' media, a move likely to set off yet another feeding frenzy of media consolidation. More»
Adelphia Mixed Bag
| July 14, 2006 The FCC's approval of Comcast and Time Warner Cable's takeover of bankrupt and looted Adelphia is a mixed bag for the public. On the positive side, someone is finally taking over and upgrading Adelphia's systems, which are technologically stuck in the mud and suffering from neglect. That should bring relief to Adelphia's long-suffering customers. However, the "White Knights" are Comcast and TWC, the nation's 2 biggest cablers, that are splitting Adelphia's systems into regional cable super-monopolies and will now control over half the nation's cable homes. That brings up a whole host of concentration issues that the Commission grappled with, but did not wholly remedy. As Andy Schwartzman of Media Access Project remarked, "Nothing will fix the regional monopolies created by this deal. And without Net Neutrality, the future of the democratic and open Internet remains in doubt."
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UPDATED: Net Neutrality -- aka "Saving the Internet"
| May 25, 2006 Many in America’s creative community have assumed that the rapidly approaching broadband Internet of tomorrow -- high-speed, low-cost, and utterly pervasive -- will empower media creators to directly reach their audience, bypassing the network, studio, and cable "gatekeepers." But a new set of gatekeepers is rising up to put a chokehold over that Internet -- OUR Internet. Read our article about a critical issue called Net Neutrality -- and why it really should be called "Saving the Internet." Also read the prestigious Caucus of Television Producers, Writers & Directors' letter to House and Senate members and CV's letter to members of the House Judiciary Committee, which today passed an excellent NN bill on a bipartisan basis by a 20-13 vote. More»
Creative Voices on A La Carte's Benefits
| March 17, 2006 Read our interview in Media Life magazine about the benefits that an a la carte cable option may bring: More diverse offerings, more independent networks, more creative freedom, more free expression, more viewpoints and voices, more challenging, interesting, and innovative programming, less regulation of "indecency" -- and all at a lower price. In the long run, it is far better not only for creative artists but the entire industry to give consumers the choices they want. And they want the freedom to choose and the power to avoid that a la carte provides. What's not to like about cable a la carte? More»
Telco Mega-Merger Endangers Creative Voices
| March 6, 2006 The term "telephone" company is now a relic. These companies, particularly AT&T and Verizon, are rapidly becoming broadband internet providers that offer telephone and "cable" TV all over their same broadband pipe. And that's precisely why creative types need to worry about this merger. AT&T has a closed "cable TV" vision for the Internet, with them positioned as the Internet gatekeepers and toll takers. Their vision turns the free, independent, and open nature of today's Internet on its head. Regulators must review this mega-merger carefully and, if they approve it at all, attach stringent conditions that will preserve the open Internet we cherish. More»
CABLE'S "LEVEL PLAYING FIELD" -- NOT LEVEL. NO FIELD.
| February 19, 2006 The Center for Creative Voices in Media filed with the FCC our 65 page report, Cable’s “Level Playing Field” – Not Level. No Field. Recounting the real-life experiences and observations of top players in the cable business, including some of the pioneers who created the cable industry such as Leo Hindery, John Malone, Ted Turner, and Barry Diller, this report documents that the “level playing field" required by law and regulation does not exist today in America’s cable industry. Instead, today's giant cable operators seek to control the content they distribute, whether they deliver it via cable television or broadband Internet.
Because large cable companies like Comcast are also among the nation's leading broadband Internet service providers, the lack of the promised "level playing field" clearly illustrates why we can't rely on the promises of these same companies to provide a "level playing field" in terms of broadband access to Internet content, and why Net Neutrality must be written into law. Creative Voices' article on why creative media artists, as well as the general public, need Net Neutrality is in our article The Future Internet: Open or Closed? For both, click More»
Media Concentration
