roundtable: nonprofit culture

roundtable: nonprofit culture

nonprofit culture

Gary O. Larson (glarson@tmn.com)
Wed, 16 Mar 94 02:06:36 EST 

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 94 02:06:36 EST
From: glarson@tmn.com (Gary O. Larson)
Message-Id: <9403160706.AA24722@tmn.com>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: nonprofit culture


Rick Crawford raises an important issue in his 10 March posting (SUBJECT:
Tyranny of the Indexing Authorities) concerning the dominance of
conglomerate culture ("Media Monopoly TV" and mainstream publications) and
the inability of bandwidth set-asides to solve the problem of marginalized
alternative expression.  "The problem is not scarce bandwidth," Crawford
reminds us, "but scarce audience autonomy."

Crawford's advocacy of a "a *permanent* 25% set-aside for non-commercial
uses" is attractive, although I'm not sure how realistic it is.  (I'm not
even sure I understand what it is--25% of *what*?--but that's because I'm
naive in such matters.)  Regardless, whether it turns out to be "only 1 of
them [alternative channel] per every 1000 mainstream/commercial channels,"
as Crawford predicts, or the 25% ideal, I'm curious about what
noncommercial programming will look like.

[*Personal agenda alert*]  I'm associated with a two-year-old nonprofit
arts computer network, Arts Wire, and I find it discouraging that the arts
community tends not to be very well represented in the NII discussions.
That's ironic, too, since such discussions (even public-interest NII
debates) are usually well stocked with glowing references to the promise of
interactive multimedia, without acknowledging that such programming will
feature Tom Cruise and Whitney Houston a lot more than Ornette Coleman and
Merce Cunningham.  (PBS, I realize, will take care of such established
stars as these; I'm more concerned with the next generation of national
arts figures--e.g., Butch Morris and Jawole Jo Zolar--as well as their
less-heralded community-based counterparts across the nation.)

Anyway, I'm pleased that Rick Crawford has opened this can of worms, and
I'm hopeful that others will address the issue of the nonprofit culture as
well.  And any suggestions as to how the "arts community" can gain a
foothold in the NII debate would be most welcome, too.  (By the "arts
community" I'm referring both to the 501(c)(3) organizations that depend
heavily on contributed income for their continued existence, as well as to
individual artists who operate outside of the popular culture/entertainment
industry.)  Some of us in the arts are growing impatient waiting for
"museum" or "arts center" to be added to the hospital/clinic
classroom/library litany, and somehow I don't think this will ever happen
without a concerted effort.

Gary O. Larson
Arts Wire
glarson@tmn.com

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