Media Watch
On July 26, 2000, without ever submitting a letter of resignation and with the corporate security chief waiting to escort me from the building, I “resigned” from my job from my job as a Meteorologist at WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio. To put it more accurately, I was fired (TV bosses nearly always say that anchors and reporters “resigned” no matter how their employment ended. To “fire” them might cause viewers to ask too many questions: the station would have to explain why they fired the employee.) And why did I get fired?
In a shameful vote on April 13, just before the Easter recess, and after furious lobbying by the National Association of Broadcasters, the House of Representatives voted 274-110 to scuttle one of the few creditable rulings issued in recent years by the Federal Communications Commission. If the U.S. Senate concurs, Congress will have issued a brutal "No" to free speech and democratic communications, just as ruthlessly as any dictator sending troops into a broadcasting station.
The broadcasting lobby has been on a lobbying rampage ever since the FCC voted on Jan. 20 to authorize low-power, non-commercial FM with power anywhere from 1 to 100 watts. The new stations -- for which license applications have been pouring into the FCC -- have been available to non-profits and local educational associations, which would then be able to start broadcasting to their communities for as little as $1,000 in start-up costs.
1984 – Public access becomes a separate entity; a non-profit organization, Columbus Community Cable Access, Inc. (CCCA), is formed to administer the city contract funds. CCCA moves into 394 Oak Street and Carl Kucharski is hired as Executive Director.
A year or so later, some friends suggested that a group of us do our own show, and for over 10 years, Vast Wasteland was central Ohio’s (insert tongue in cheek here) video guide to pop culture. But in the fall of last year (1999), we made the decision to stop production despite the warm positive response we were still receiving from the majority of the viewing community. Anyone who has every participated in a public access production knows that the reward comes from learning that you have reached your audience and they have responded as you had hoped. Over the years we were well rewarded.
Helping to fuel the online trading mania is a new blitz from Ameritrade, a company that has launched a $200 million national marketing drive. "The campaign's target audience is more psychographic than demographic," says an Ameritrade news release, "cutting across all ages, races, professions and income levels."
One of them has more than 100 colorful pages of ads packed into each issue. Brand names evoke the very good life just out of reach: Saks and Victoria's Secret, Gucci and Mercedes-Benz, Armani and Cartier.
The articles are equally cool in this new magazine named Talk, which had its splashy premiere a couple of months ago -- making headlines with a Hillary Clinton interview that discussed the First Husband's childhood hurts and adult philandering. Now, Talk is settling into its lofty routine as trendsetter extraordinaire.
Tina Brown, the editor in chief, describes Talk as "a new, upscale monthly magazine that provides depth, passion and context to the issues that obsess us." She adds: "Talk tells the story of who we are. Talk reveals us, obscures us, positions us."
That's what worries the 60 psychologists and psychiatrists who have just sent a letter to the American Psychological Association. While the prestigious APA says that it seeks to "mitigate the causes of human suffering," the letter's signers contend that "a large gap has arisen between APA's mission and the drift of the profession into helping corporations influence children for the purpose of selling products to them."
In the midst of "the sale of psychological expertise to advertisers to manipulate children for monetary gain," the signers add, "the profession does very little to protect innocent children -- the people it is supposed to help -- from the psychological cajoling and assaults that it itself helps to create."