roundtable: Re: universal service and non profit amendments....

roundtable: Re: universal service and non profit amendments....

Re: universal service and non profit amendments....

James Love (love@Essential.ORG)
Fri, 25 Mar 1994 09:07:45 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 09:07:45 -0500 (EST)
From: James Love <love@Essential.ORG>
Subject: Re: universal service and non profit amendments....
To: "Gary O. Larson" <glarson@tmn.com>
In-Reply-To: <9403240510.AA07134@tmn.com>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.85.9403250945.D23649-0100000@essential>

On Thu, 24 Mar 1994, Gary O. Larson wrote:
> In any case, the one-size-fits-all approach that Jamie Love advocates,
> based solely on something as chimerical as membership size, strikes me 
> as a recipe for an abundance of lowest-common-denominator programming.  
> Is an organization that charges dues, or has certification requirements, 
> the same as one that collects names at the shopping mall?

    It would be simple to require that a nominal dues be paid, and that 
membership size be subject to audit.  Moreover, the organizations 
themselves should be democratically controlled by their "membership."

   In the absense of a membership fee, the government could forward 
"ballots" and people could mailback their choices, limiting them to only 
one group among competing proposals.

   Although commerical programming is now allocated by the size of the 
viewers (as weighted by advertizing demographics, or ability to pay in 
terms of pay-per-view), it would be possible to place restrictions on the 
ability of these groups to offer advertizing or pay-per-view services, 
which do not apply in the commerical area.  I really don't think that 
people would do such a bad job of choosing "gatekeepers," and since these 
groups would largely repackage offerings by others, there would be a 
great deal of opportunities for access by a number of non-profit groups.  

jamie

----------------------------------------------------------------------
James Love, Taxpayer Assets Project; internet:  love@essential.org
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036; v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176
12 Church Road, Ardmore, PA 19003; v. 215/658-0880; f. 215/649-4066
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> Curiously, *commercial* programming, which we're all agreed leaves a lot
> to be desired, is based on "membership size"--as determined by Arbitron 
> and Nielsen, et al.  Surely we can come up with a better system than that.
> Peer review comes to mind, but only after we've collectively arrived at
> some definitions of what we're really talking about when we refer to
> "noncommercial programming."  Sometimes I think we get so wrapped up in
> discussing the pipeline (how wide it'll be, who'll control it, how fast
> it'll be, etc.) that we lose sight of what we'd like to see actually
> flowing through those pipes.  Neither public-interest generalities, nor
> health-education-welfare platitudes, gets us very far.  Perhaps next 
> week's summit conference will begin to fill in some of these blanks.
> 
> Gary O. Larson
> <glarson@tmn.com>

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