> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23050
>
> America will never have a BBC. The government funding isn't there. What
> we do have, though, is a tremendous increase in enthusiasm and
> initiative that, in the age of the Internet, counts for more
> than transmitters and printing presses.
I'm all for alternatives, but we media critics should not be expected to clean up the appalling mess left by the corporate pigopolists out of our own pockets. The Federal government gave the pigopolists eighty years of lucrative subsidies (broadcasting spectrum, postal subsidies, tax breaks for ad campaigns, etc.). Kind of like how taxpayers pay for highways, and then auto workers take it on the chin for GM's stupidity, or the way the US taxpayer is footing the bill for Wall Street's bubble insanity.
We should take our money back from the media barons, and take our government back from the kleptocrats.
> The opening won't last forever. Lurking in the wings is a potential
> new class of media giants. Google, Yahoo, MSNBC, and AOL, all have
> vast resources that could finance a new oligopolistic push on the Web.
The oligopolistic push isn't going to happen. AOL, MSNBC and Microsoft have already tried, in various ways and business sectors, to hijack the Web the way US monopoly capital hijacked US broadcasting. They have failed, miserably. The digital commons, a.k.a. the nervous system of the multipolar world, is here to stay.
-- DRR