Again this month there is way too much news for a single column. Reports gathered by Alden Scott Crow & Musea.
CORPORATE ART: The big story is Viacom's planned merger with CBS - TV for $80 billion (and not a dime of taxes is paid in the stock swap). This will be the biggest media deal ever and make the 2nd largest media corp. in the world. (WB is first). The combined holdings will include: CBS network, Paramount Pictures, UPN Channel, Simon & Schuster Publishing, Blockbuster Video, cable channels MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, The Nashville Network, Showtime etc., major interest in Infinity Broadcasting Corp. (largest radio and outdoor advertising co.), Internet sites, and 6 theme parks, etc. The spineless FCC will do nothing to stop it and the Corp. Art 10 are now only 9 companies.
DIGITAL DATA, GOING GOING... There is growing concern that digital data is disintegrating. "Tests by the National Media Lab (gov. and industry consortium) found that magnetic tapes might last only a decade, depending on storage conditions. The fate of floppy disks, videotape and hard drives is just as bleak. Even the CD-ROM is proving vulnerable to stray magnetic fields, oxidation, humidity and material decay." And to further the problem, a lot of the machinery to read this info is long gone. "Information doesn't have much of a chance unless you keep a museum of tape players and PCs around." Abby Smith, Council on Library and Info Resources. (Newsweek). Y dismay!
FASHION: Conde Nast, owners of Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Mademoiselle is talking deal with Disney to buy Fairchild Publications (W, and Women's Wear Daily (the Bible of the fashion industry), Jane, etc.) for a reported $650 million. This will give Conde Nast a virtual monopoly on all fashion mags. And with a policy of advertising that NEVER discounts except when advertising many times over a year - i.e. all small companies are out - the future of fashion looks ALL BLACK! "My biggest concern is that it puts us closer to an environment of zero competition," Laura Wenke, Anne Klein. (Wall St. Journal).
USA TODAY SELLS ADS ON FRONT PAGE AND IS NOT ASHAMED! In October the national newspaper USA Today will begin selling space on the front page (considered by most newspaper journalists as sacred territory - always free from ads). The inch high banner at the bottom will cost advertisers $1 million a day with a minimum of 52 days (1 per week). Already signed up are AT&T, Marriott, and NW Airlines. No Musea size companies allowed! Will it ruin their objectivity concerning these companies? We think so. They on the other hand say, "We're just delighted to offer the space, and that advertisers responded so quickly." Steve Anderson, spokesman. (Washington Post)
VIDEO GAMES: For the first time video games are now making more money than domestic (minus foreign) film box office grosses! Big bucks in those games. (Newsweek) And speaking of change overs, households with Internet access watch 13% less TV than houses not online. That's bad news for bad TV. (Nielson Media Research)
SILENT FILM: The feds are giving a $1 million dollar grant (isn't that about the cost of one bomb?) to the National Film Preservation Foundation. The goal is to produce new masters of 67 shorts, serials, and feature films from the 1st 4 decades of American Cinema including 20 short fiction films by Thomas Edison, War on the Plains the first western made by Thomas Ince, one reel comedies by Harold Lloyd, etc. We salute the action and encourage more $$$ from the government to save these treasures. (Variety)
PUBLIC TV MORE CORPORATE, LESS PUBLIC THAN EVER was the findings of the independent academic study, "The Cost of Survival; Political Discourse and the 'New PBS,'" by Prof. William Hoynes, Vassar College. Some key findings: more than 1/3 of all on - camera sources were representatives of corporations or Wall St./ 80% of the news sources were men / politics coverage was gov. officials 50%, professionals - mostly journalists - 31%, and Wall St. 11%. Consumer, environmental or labor advocates were almost invisible. / expansion of business news / a decrease in international news from 11% to 5% / and opinions from the general public dropping from 12% to 6%. (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, www.fair.org - A website we highly recommend.)
AID: 2 charity projects worth mentioning: NetAid aims to use the net as a clearing house allowing visitors to link to thousands of charities and gov. relief programs. Also while you're there tap into live concerts or documentaries on important issues. www.netaid.org. /// Native Son Willie Nelson recently had his 12th FarmAid concert, this time in Washington. "It's government policy set by corporations that has put the prices of what we produce so low that many farmers are on the verge of bankruptcy" Roger Allison, farmer. (Scripts Howard News Service). Musea salutes both!
FREEDOM OF SPEECH = $47.50 for a license. The Oklahoma City Council is now requiring anyone with a "Will work for food" sign to buy a city license at $47.50 (A sign on your truck advertising your company is exempt). Look, no one LIKES these street panhandlers but Freedom of Speech is not about liking. It's about allowing anyone to say what you abhor. And woe to us if the Oklahoma City Council were the founding fathers of our country. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in a ruling granting the Million Youth March in Harlem over city objections, summed up the idea of freedom of speech when he said many statements made by the organizers were 'bigoted, hateful, violent, and frightening"... but "At least as frightening as the rhetoric of Mr. Muhammad is the possibility of a society where freedom of speech is not respected and where the right to speak publicly can be denied on the basis of administrative whim personal dislike or disapproval of anticipated content."
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