Community Video Report (Spring 1974)

10: reviews Radical critics Politics of News Media Control by Howard J. Ehrlich (Research Group One Report No. 15: 2743 Maryland Avenue, Baltimore, Md. 21218. 50 cents) Control of Information and Directory of the Networks by The Network Project (Notebooks . Nos. Two and Three, available from 104 Earl Hall, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. 10027) $2/each ($5/institutions) or $10-$25 for annual subscription. FEEDBACK. A series of five radio programs. (Available on tape: Radio Free People, 133 Mercer St., N.Y., N.Y. 10012; in transcript, Performance Magazine, July and September, 1972: 249 W. 13th St., N.Y. 10011) “Sixteen notes on television and the movement” by Todd Gitlin, in TriQuarterly issue Literature and Revolution, p. 335-366. Reprints available from Kraus, Rte. 100, Millwood, N.Y. 10546, $2.50, or from TQ, University Hall 101, Northwestern U., Evanston, III. 60201. Starting with the premise that the U.S. mass media ‘‘operate to continually underscore the legitimacy of business and govern Banned in Boston Report of the Boston Consumers’ Council to the Hon. Kevin H. White, Mayor, on the Development of a Cable Television System . (Nov. 1973: Boston Consumers’ Council, City Hall, Boston. 02201) Cable in Boston: A Basic Viability Report, Whitewood Stamps, Inc. (1974: copies from author, 61 Chapel St., Newton, Mass. 02158. $10) 90 pp. Boston, like other major metropolitan centers, has been struggling now for several years with the questions involved in whether and how cable television will enter the city. Last November that struggle came to a screeching halt as Mayor Kevin White announced that the city was indefinitely postponing the issuance of CATV franchises. Boston was the first major city to “pull the plug on cable television,” said White. The announcement was the direct outcome of a report to White by the Boston Consumers’ Council, a publicly appointed body that had been investigating cable and holding public hearings for the Mayor. The Council listed several possible alternatives: franchising to a single operator to build a city-wide system; franchising several operators to build an interconnected network of separate systems; undertaking a publicly owned system; postponing cable development until unanswered questions regarding CATV’s true technological capabilities, regulatory climate, economic viability and ownership alternatives are clarified. — Comparing the history of cable to that of the SST, the Council opted for postponement. ment, to enhance their perpetuation in the name of order and_ stability, and to romanticize their agents with publicity and sometimes affectionate attention,” Politics of News Media Control attempts to dispel the myth that deep conflict exists between the media and the government-business complex. The pamphlet describes the corporate structure of the media and illustrates the impact of that control with two case studies—media coverage of the Children’s March for Survival in March, 1972, and the treatment of blacks in Iowa media. There are also sections on racism, sexism, and the public broadcasting system. Ehrlich’s pamphlet, stemming from radio scripts by Great Atlantic Radio Conspiracy for which he works, is one of an increasing number of socialist-oriented analyses of the mass media, in the style of the power structure research exemplified by NACLA and other research organizations. Unfortunately, this pamphlet is too sketchy and makes too many sweeping generalizations to sway any but the already committed, a common problem with much left-oriented research in the U.S. A much better job is done by the Network Project, whose Notebook series covers various aspects of media control. (See p. 5, CVR #3 for review). Two of these pamphlets were issued in connection with an excellent and award-winning series of radio programs about The Council was apparently heavily swayed by a lack of public support for cable, by the failures of cable in New York City, by the difficulty of regulating cable within the legally prescribed franchise fees, the serious questions of whether cable would be economically viable, and questions of privacy. The Council was also interested in further exploring common-carrier type ownership and municipal ownership. In contrast to the negative Consumers’ Council report, which has since sent shock waves throughout the nation’s cities, Cable in Boston uses a unique method of economic analysis to show that cable could be viable in certain neighborhoods. This incredibly detailed and instructive manual uses Boston as a model by which the components of economic viability are explored, compared, evaluated. Whitewood Stamps, Inc., a group of dedicated cable analysts and activists, have developed a computer simulation model for the economic performance of CATV systems in dense urban markets which compares to none. Furthermore, it is adaptable to local characteristics and situations. Perhaps the primary contribution of Cable in Boston will be, not in the debate within the city itself, but to the analysis of CATV costs nationwide. So many communities (including Boston) are basing decisions on various opinions, all too often those of national bureaucrats and so-called ‘‘experts’’ who never really evaluate the specific local characteristics, cost assumptions, and growth estimates. Certainly not with this kind of detail and comprehensiveness. Key to Stamps’ model is the concept of a threshold ‘‘subscriber monthly cost’’ or SMC. This is defined as ‘teach subscriber’s prorated monthly share of the proportional costs incurred in building and operating the cable the media which were produced in cooperation with WBAI-FM in New York and have been widely distributed. The radio programs, which are lively, imaginative, funny, and extraordinarily informative, are available at reasonable rates for broadcast, and transcripts were published by Performance. Control of Information and Directory of the Networks are factual, dense presentations of material using the same premise Ehrlich starts with—concentrated corporate control of the media, the basic’ consensus of values between the power elites in the society, and the impact of that control on non-elites (read: Americans). The Notebooks, however, focus on the television media alone, and do an excellent, non-rhetorical job of analyzing many of the pat assumptions about “free TV” in a commercialized society. They expose exactly how the ownership and the reliance on advertising lead inevitably to censorship and the manufacture of ideology that serves these needs. It is a subtle and substantial argument. SDS founder and movement theorist Todd Gitlin has contributed a personal and wellwritten essay on the impact of television from the perspective of a participant in the 1960s radical politics. His “16 notes” are divided into three sections, first describing the “power and mission of commercial television’”— which, he points out, is as far as most critics go; second, he looks at the media’s “capacity to produce and nurture effects opposite to the yoog uonoy A, ul ‘Biaquials jneg :o14yde15 If you're in love with TV or not, there's a great book to get to learn about it: TV Action Book, by Jeffrey Schrank, a workbook for high school students about broadcast television. Excellent. Review next CVR. (1974, McDougal, Littell & Co., Box 1667, Evanston, Ill. 60204). Comes with teacher's manual. distribution plant over a given period of time.” The SMC is always associated with the percentage of subscribers participating in the CATV Service, since the more subscribers, the lower the per-subscriber share. For Boston, Whitewood Stamps indicates an SMC of $5.30 with 30% subscriber participation. This figure directly contradicts the Consumers’ Council report. —DeMartino Endless reports Last issue (CVR #3) we listed endless news letters. Add to them: The Mobile Newsroom: Video News in the Midwest (WIDL Video, PO Box 11508, Chicago, III. 60611) Monthly at $4/mo. This is a typed-and-Xeroxed packet with random tidbits about things going on in the Midwest in video field. WIDL Video is apparently a video production group with a mobile van; hence, the name of the newsletter. We saw Vol 2, #4, which was a bit on the amateur side, with a Television Trivia Quiz, a note on what video drop-out is, and a bulletin board of events....The National Technical Information Service, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Springfield, Va. 22151, is the source for the research coming out of the government in the technical fields, among them, of course, telecommunications. Weekly abstracts of this research are available by subscription to newslett-~in some 12 areas. Urban Technology Abstracts covers communications, as well as administration, planning, housing, sanitation, pollution control, traffic, services, health, economics, etc. Cost: $35/ year. Related titles include Computers, Con trol and Information Theory ($22.50/yr.); Library and Information Sciences ($20/yr.). The Privacy Report is a new monthly newsletter by the Project on Privacy and Data Collection of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, 410 First St., S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003. You can receive it free, although they are requesting tax deductible contributions to aid the work of the project. The May, 1974 issue (No. 10), features an article about the civil liberties challenge presented by cable Unions & access “Community Cable TV: Public Access and Union Fears” by Ralph Lee Smith in The Nation, April 6, 1974. If the prospects of funding and maintaining community video and public access cable projects are difficult now, add to that the problems involved when the organized labor movement decides that anyone operating a PortaPak must be a union-scale, cardcarrying member of the AFL-CIO. That is the spectre raised by this thoughtful article by Ralph Smith, who published a similarly prophetic article about cable four years ago (“The Wired Nation’’). Smith summarizes a TV. The article is longer on alarming rhetoric than substantive detail, although it does a good job of pointing to potential danger to privacy in two-way cable. Issue also contains report of the National Computer Conference, a migrant student records transfer system, new laws in the state legislatures dealing with privacy issues, recent court action, Congressional report and an article called “Privacy is Not Solitude,” dealing with the issue of whether Americans really want privacy. number of issues of concern to unions and video communicators, much of it coming from a seminar held in February by the AFLCIO’s Labor Studies Center. Two opposite positions emerge: Videomakers (represented by Smith & Red Burns from Alternate Media Center) point out that forced union membership for public access personnel at present would kill it, primarily because nobody is willing to pay for access at this time. In addition, ‘‘professionalization’”’ is completely at odds with the video movement’s goal of involving lay people in producing their own TV programs. “My interest is to organize the fellow who runs the camera and get him a week’s pay, and not to have volunteer help,” says union. representative John Carr. ones it intends,” or the dialectical nature of communications, in other words; finally, he hints at some suggestions for a more liberated media, concluding that “‘politically, open communications could constitute an obstacle to the pyramiding of power that characterizes all previous civilizations, since power requires, among other things, a monopoly of information at the top.” The Gitlin piece is clearly the most readable and lucid synthesis of ‘“power-structure research” and theory I have read on the subject of media. While this kind of analysis is not everyday reading for most people, theory is essential. So, step one for us is to try and reach each other with our ideas. Perhaps the only American that publishes this kind of material in book form that is commercially distributed is Herbert Schiller (Mass Communications and the American Empire and The Mind Managers, see CVR #3). Any other discussion of this sort occurs in self-published booklets like those reviewed above, in limited circulation publications. And of course, there are the master’s and PhD. theses, which almost nobody ever sees. _ We need more and better research into the functioning of the media and case studies that get at the root causes of its control of our minds. Pity that the only way to reach people with this information is through the media under analysis in the first place! Adhocit! Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation by Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver (New York: Doubleday Anchor #AO-86. 1973, 216 pp. $4.95) If a single word could describe the guiding spirit with which we are building our new, people-oriented media projects, Adhocism has got to be it. Coined by architectural critic Charles Jencks in 1968 to describe “a principle of action having speed or economy and purpose or utility,” Jencks and co-author Silver have now issued this delightful and provocative book that propounds, illustrates and evangelizes the theory & practice of improvisation, or Adhocism. The book is profusely illustrated, with pictures and word-gems, vaguely reminiscent of the McLuhan/Fiore concept pieces of a few years ago. Only Adhocism is ardently partisan in advocating human scale vs. techno-overkill. It is critical of the status quo, and hopeful of the human spirit. The book, while learned and extremely informational, is neither academic nor pop-cutesy. The idea of adhocism itself was to me both peculiarly original, and imminently familiar, being as it is the core of a lifestyle and an organizing principle we have used in creating the Video Center. But never had I seen it pointed out as a ‘‘theory’”’ before. The shock of recognition for you won’t come from my synopsis. Better I should give you an excerpt or two and let you explore adhocism for yourself. I certainly don’t agree with all of the book, particularly the section on political subjects. But it’s worth your time, I think. “Basically it (adhocism) involves using an available system or dealing with an existing situation in a new way to solve a problem quickly and efficiently. It is a method of creation relying particularly on resources which are already at hand.” (p. 9) “Today we are immersed in forces and ideas that hinder the fulfillment of human purposes; large corporations standardize and limit our choice; philosophies of behaviorism condition people to deny their potential freedom; ‘‘modern architecture’ becomes the convention for ‘‘good taste’’ “The electronic techniques of communication now allow decentralized design and consumption based on individual desire... With an electrified consumer democracy, the time spent and the cost of consumption would plummet, and the impersonal subsystems of large corporation would be repersonalized by combining them ad hoc towards specific ends.” (p. 55) “But a new mode of direct action is emerging, the rebirth of a democratic mode and style, where everyone can create his personal environment out of impersonal subsystems, whether they are new or old, modern or antique. By realizing hjs immediate needs, by combining ad hoc parts, the individual creates, sustains and transcends himself. —DeMartino