On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Nick May wrote:
> It is the old "Which is best - two
> channels of BBC broadcasting or 9876 American cable TV shopping
> channels.?" Real choice is the former, not the latter.
I'm not so sure that this is so obviously true about television,
but radio is the perfect example of where less regulation has
introduced "more competition," but has resulted in a loss of choice
overall.
The U.K. has far fewer radio stations than the United States, and
five of the few available stations are all government-funded BBC
stations. Since the FCC removed a lot of the restrictions on radio
station ownership a few years ago, the amount of different types
of music or programming available to the consumer has plummeted.
More than half the radio stations in the US are now owned by Clear
Channel, which expressly goes for lowest-common-denominator,
inoffensive programming. Local content has vanished on all of these
stations; for country music, for example, stations in most of the
major markets all get the same programme from one studio in Houston
(or Dallas, I forget which), Texas. The competitive incentive in the
radio market has become very much, "get the programming out as cheaply as
possible, and minimize the chances of ever offending a listener."
In almost any area of programming now (classical, pop, talk), there
is more choice avaialble to the consumer in the U.K. In the U.S.,
"the market" won and the consumers lost.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
Received on Mon Jun 17 04:37:56 2002