For your consideration this Monday

For your consideration, from the Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2008: Broadcast networks under seige by Scott Collins. Did the writer's strike signal the death of broadcast television as we know (or knew) it? How do you consume broadcast media (radio & television), and has that changed in the last year or two? Do you watch TV online? Listen to your favorite radio station online? Do you wait until your favorite shows come out on DVD and watch them that way? Download them from iTunes or some other site? Do you watch TV on your iPod or cell phone?

For your consideration: Hulu. What do you think of it?

For your consideration: Tim Robbins's keynote speech at the National Broadcasters Association, April 14, 2008. Watch the first few minutes here. Read the full text here.

For your consideration: Does Tim Robbins's speech remind you of anything?

For your consideration: Little Mosque on the Prairie.

For your consideration: The Telecommunications Act of 1996. You can read the full text on the FCC's website, but you're not likely to want to. Instead, consider the FCC's report on the steps taken to implement the act. The most contentious of which are these: The order eliminating the national broadcast radio ownership limits; and the order eliminating numerical limits on national broadcast television ownership. Consider as an example: the Walt Disney Company owns ABC, which includes the television network and all these radio stations. What do you think will air on all those news programs if something bad happens at a Disney theme park?

For your consideration: Satellite radio is a $2 billion business that charges people for something they were used to getting for free. Are you willing to pay for it? Do you think it will succeed? What do you think the radioscape will look like ten years from now?

For your consideration: In the early days of radio its advocates promoted it as the great democratizing medium. (The same was said about the Internet 80 years later.) Do you think radio can be democratic in light of the deregulation that allows a few large media conglomerates to own most radio stations? Can a medium that charges subscribers be democratic?

For your consideration: The FCC regulates "terrestrial" radio but not satellite radio. Do you think that's right?

For your consideration: The FCC says this about its regulation of broadcast and cable television: "FCC rules generally do not govern the selection of programming that is broadcast. The main exceptions are: restrictions on indecent programming, limits on the number of commercials aired during children's programming, and rules involving candidates for public office." I can't seem to find, on the FCC website, a definition of obscene or indecent programming. Can you? How do they decide whether something is obscene or indecent? (Interesting article in the New York Times asks the same question.)