Good News, and More Good News

Apparently, a box the size of a refrigerator can generate all the electricity needs of 100 homes... A Hummer is about the size of 4 refrigerators...I see an opportunity here!!

The "heavy hand of government" is often that of the public interest, yelling "Stop Thief!"

"A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation"--Howard Scott

The USA is already the biggest health insurance company--and the private insurance companies still thrive!

To all those friends of the Health insurance industry in the U.S. Senate: government competition is no obstacle to massive insurance company profits.

One half of the US's health care industry is funded by a non-profit health insurance system: it's called the US government. We already have a massive "public" option and we still have a massively profitable private health insurance industry.

All the Democrats are seeking is a public "option" to insure the remaining 10% of Americans who don't have health insurance. This would mean the now-uninsured would have "preventive" care, and preventing illness is a lot less costly than the taxpayers having to pay to treat a full-blown illness. Either way, the uninsured are going to a government/taxpayer funded clinic or hospital once they get sick. Our tax dollars will pay for treatment no matter what. The public option is the only way that the total cost for care will be brought down. The private health insurers have never reduced their rates and have no incentive. Republicans always talk about saving the taxpayer's money. Whether the tax is paid to the government or to a private health insurance corporation, we all pay the cost of the massive profiteering by the health industry. Based on the way the Republican's bankrupted both our government and banks and Wall Street over the last 8 years, why does anyone see them as protectors of our money? I trust my government, which I can vote for or against, a lot more than unelected corporate monopolies.

---Rex Frankel
--------------------

2/4/2010--WASHINGTON (AP) -- Government is poised to become king of the hill in America's vast health care system, with or without President Barack Obama's planned redo, according to an economic report released Thursday. Federal and state programs will pay slightly more than half the tab for health care purchased in the United States by 2012, says the analysis by Medicare number crunchers published in the journal Health Affairs. That's even if Obama's health care overhaul wastes away in congressional limbo...

...The report estimated that in 2009, the United States spent $2.5 trillion for health care, with government programs - mainly Medicare and Medicaid - paying $1.2 trillion. Employer health insurance and various private sources covered the other $1.3 trillion. Even as the economy shrank because of the downturn, health care spending grew by 5.7 percent from 2008. Spending by government grew nearly three times faster than private spending, closing in to overtake it...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_CARE_GOVERNMENT_ROLE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-02-04-00-49-37

English as a second language for the looney-right

Fox News--the choice of 1% of America...

Fox stands alone against the massive liberal establishment...bla bla blaDuhhhh...Fox News MUST Represent the majority of Americans...Right? Cause they get the highest ratings
(the fine print: among people who watch the 24 hour cable news channels only. However, as a percentage of the total number of people who watch their televisions at that hour, Fox News' ratings are miniscule, as Tiny as Rush Limbaugh's heart.)

But...They Beat MSNBC and CNN, so they must be #1 right?

Yes, Fox news cable channel got an average of 2.2 million viewers during their primetime shows, compared to 946,000 for CNN and 788,000 for MSNBC. This means TOTAL DOMINANCE!!!!....right?

Of course if we were to average this with their ratings for all day, the average would be a lot lower.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/fox-news-dominates-3q-200_n_304260.html
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12345307/3Q-09-_LIVESD_-P2-ranker


--------------------------------------------

But when you directly compare Fox News' ratings to all the competition that is available to American viewers:

Based on August 2009 ratings of the Cable channels only:

1 USA 2.7
2 FOXNews 1.9
3 TNT 1.8
4 NAN 1.6
5 ESPN 1.4
6 TBSC 1.3
7 HGTV 1.1
8 ABC-FAM 0.9
9 A & E 1.1
10 LIFETIME 1.1

SOURCE: http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/original/Cable%20Time%20Period%20Rank%20-%20Week%20of%208-10-09%20(Live+SD).pdf

Then compare this to the ratings of the broadcast TV channels, just released this week:

CBS: 11.88 million viewers
NBC: 7.4
Fox entertainment: 8.4

according to the Nielsen Ratings people, when you compare Fox News ratings to the total ratings of all the channels that are available to the 300 million Americans, they are getting 2.2 million out of over 300 million, so less than 1% of Americans watch Fox News at the time when Fox gets it's most viewers. CBS, those annoying liberals, gets over 5 times as many viewers.
----------------------------

And Fox gets their asses handed to them on the Sunday political talk shows which are available to everyone with an antenna, not just cable viewers:

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/sunday_shows/sunday_show_ratings_october_18_141005.asp

Network	Program	Total Viewers
NBC	"Meet the Press"	3.02M
ABC	"This Week"	2.65M
CBS	"Face the Nation"	2.23M
FOX	"Fox News Sunday"	1.30M

So is Fox News dominant, and therefore they represent the views of the majority of Americans, or do they just represent a teeny minority of brown-shirted super-rich racist yahoos? I'm just askin'...

My Cure for Health Reform Fears...

and more funny stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0

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Let's Do Health Care Reform in Several Steps:

8/27/2009

My opinion:

I think most Americans have no idea what health systems are like in any other country because they've never been outside the US. People in Europe can travel to their neighbors so much more easily and see different cultures. I'm guilty of this--I've never left the U.S. either.

Fear of the unknown is understandable, but the health care reform debate should be based on truth, not lies. Unfortunately, I think the democrats are trying to reform the entire system at once. People are scared when the see a 1000 page law. I think congress should fix the worst problems first. Like congress should ban insurers from dropping people for pre-existing conditions and limit rate hikes for everyone to the rate of inflation. Even if we don't do the reforms that will cost tax money, we can change regulations and those changes can themselves fix a lot of the inequity.

It reminds me of how California's legislature cut back on strip mining abuses 6 years ago. Even though the federal government has this antiquated law that gives away federal land to mining companies, and congress can never get the votes to change it, our state legislature changed the local laws to require every mine to restore the landscape to what it looked like before the mining project. That raised the costs so high that several federal mine giveaways in the desert were dropped by the companies because they knew they couldn't make money doing it.
(I also write an enviro blog at http://rare-earth-news.blogspot.com . )

This is the way we could accomplish the same goals of a government plan by making the health insurers follow rules that curb their profits so much that they will be the ones seeking a federal bailout. And with a bailout comes government control, like at GM and Chrysler. If reform was done in stages, we could do this.

Most Americans hate the insurance companies--let's target their abuses right now.

We don't have to fix the entire system at once. We can knock down the power of the insurers now and later force them to be part of the fix of the entire system.

---Rex Frankel, for StopCorporateGreed.org

-----------------------------------

http://humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/thompson-town-hall-packed/

“This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US department of energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the national aeronautics and space administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US department of agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the food and drug administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the national institute of standards and technology and the US naval observatory, I get into my national highway traffic safety administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the environmental protection agency, using legal tender issed by the federal reserve bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US postal service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the department of labor and the occupational safety and health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the defense advanced research projects administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.”

Exposing the Right-Wing's Lies about Health insurance reform

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FACT CHECK: Health overhaul myths taking root

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_fact_check_health_poll

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writer – Wed Aug 19, 5:39 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The judgment is harsh in a new poll that finds Americans worried about the government taking over health insurance, cutting off treatment to the elderly and giving coverage to illegal immigrants. Harsh, but not based on facts.

President Barack Obama's lack of a detailed plan for overhauling health care is letting critics fill in the blanks in the public's mind. In reality, Washington is not working on "death panels" or nationalization of health care.

To be sure, presenting Congress and the country with the nuts and bolts of a revamped system of health insurance is no guarantee of success for a president — just ask Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Their famous flop was demonized, too. After all, the devil does lurk in details.
It can also lurk in generalities, it seems.
Obama is promoting his changes in something of a vacuum, laying out principles, goals and broad avenues, some of which he's open to amending. As lawmakers sweat the nitty gritty, he's doing a lot of listening, and he's getting an earful.
A new NBC News poll suggests some of the myths and partial truths about the plans under consideration are taking hold.
Most respondents said the effort is likely to lead to a "government takeover of the health care system" and to public insurance for illegal immigrants. Half said it will probably result in taxpayers paying for abortions and nearly that many expected the government will end up with the power to decide when treatment should stop for old people.

A look at each of those points:

THE POLL: 45 percent said it's likely the government will decide when to stop care for the elderly; 50 percent said it's not likely.
THE FACTS: Nothing being debated in Washington would give the government such authority. Critics have twisted a provision in a House bill that would direct Medicare to pay for counseling sessions about end-of-life care, living wills, hospices and the like if a patient wants such consultations with a doctor. They have said, incorrectly, that the elderly would be required to have these sessions.
House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said such counseling "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia."
The bill would prohibit coverage of counseling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option.
Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who has been a proponent of coverage for end-of-life counseling under Medicare, said such sessions are a voluntary benefit, strictly between doctor and patient, and it was "nuts" to think death panels are looming or euthanasia is part of the equation.
But as fellow conservatives stepped up criticism of the provision, he backed away from his defense of it.
___
THE POLL: 55 percent expect the overhaul will give coverage to illegal immigrants; 34 percent don't.
THE FACTS: The proposals being negotiated do not provide coverage for illegal immigrants.
___

THE POLL: 54 percent said the overhaul will lead to a government takeover of health care; 39 percent disagree.
THE FACTS: Obama is not proposing a single-payer system in which the government covers everyone, like in Canada or some European countries. He says that direction is not right for the U.S. The proposals being negotiated do not go there.
At issue is a proposed "exchange" or "marketplace" in which a new government plan would be one option for people who aren't covered at work or whose job coverage is too expensive. The exchange would offer some private plans as well as the public one, all of them required to offer certain basic benefits.
That's a long way from a government takeover. But when Obama tells people they can just continue with the plans they have now if they are happy with them, that can't be taken at face value, either. Tax provisions could end up making it cheaper for some employers to pay a fee to end their health coverage, nudging some patients into a public plan with different doctors and benefits. Over time, critics fear, the public plan could squeeze private insurers out of business because they would not be able to compete with the federal government.
It's unclear now whether Obama is committed to the public option. He described it recently as "just one sliver" of health reform, suggesting it was expendable if lawmakers could agree on another way to expand affordable coverage. Now the White House is emphasizing his strong support for it.

___
THE POLL: 50 percent expect taxpayer dollars will be used to pay for abortions; 37 percent don't.
THE FACTS: The House version of legislation would allow coverage for abortion, but the bill says a beneficiary's own money — not taxpayer funds — must be used to pay for the procedure. How that would be enforced has not been determined.
Obama has stated that the U.S. should continue its tradition of "not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care." Current laws prohibiting public financing of abortion would stay on the books.
Yet abortion guidelines are not yet clear for the government-supervised insurance exchange. There is strong sentiment in Congress on both sides of the issue.
___
The poll of 805 people was taken Aug. 15-17 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Time to start paying...

Have you gotten used to reading your local newspaper on-line for free? Yeah, you look at the ads at the same time, so it's a fair trade, you're not really getting it for free, totally. Well, now, the big media corporations got you hooked, and now it's time to make you pay. Just like your local movie theater, you pay $11.50 a ticket and still are forced to watch TV commercials on top of the movie previews. You pay out the wazoo for cable TV and every channel is packed with commercials, unless you pay extra for a channel like HBO that doesn't have commercials. Commercials are everywhere we go -- and no one is paying us to watch them. They are assumed to be what we give up to get free or "cheaper" entertainment.

Well, the problem with newpapers, at least the big ones, is that they long ago forgot about local investigative reporting. They have created the opportunity which is being exploited by small-time bloggers. Charging for the crappy content that now is given away won't pull the big newspaper companies out of bankruptcy. Providing a better product is the only way to survive.

Here's a thought: pay the local bloggers to write a section of the newspaper.

Adapt to the future, or get replaced.

--from the big cheeze, Rex Frankel
-----------------------------------------------

Can Internet charges stem newspapers' losses?

Publishers hope readers will pay if content is no longer offered free.
By Michael Liedtke, The Associated Press
Posted: 05/25/2009
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_12448668

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is a rarity among large U.S. newspapers - it's selling more weekday copies than a decade ago. In Idaho, the Post Register's circulation has remained stable, while many print publications have lost readers to the Internet, where much of their content may be viewed for free. The executives behind the Arkansas and Idaho newspapers think they've been stable because they have been giving free Web site access only to print edition subscribers. Everyone else has to pay. "To just give it all away on a Web site is completely and blindly idiotic," says Roger Plothow, Post Register editor and publisher. That logic is starting to resonate with many publishers, who are preparing to erect toll booths on parts, if not all, of their Web sites. They hope the switch adds to online revenue and helps them keep print subscribers and ads. If it works, it would provide a sorely needed boost for an industry that has seen $11.6billion, or nearly one-fourth, of its annual advertising revenue dry up during the past three years. But ending free access could drive away many online readers and discourage online advertising at a time just as marketing budgets shift to the Internet.

As a result, 28 percent of newspaper executives responding to a recent survey by the Associated Press Managing Editors, a group of newspaper executives, said their publications are considering online fees.

Newsday's owner, Cablevision Systems Corp., plans to start charging for online access to the Long Island, N.Y., paper this summer. MediaNews Group, which owns the Daily Breeze and 53 other daily newspapers, has decided to charge for the online versions but hasn't said when. Hearst Corp. is assessing whether online fees could help save its 15 remaining daily newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Online fees will give people one less reason to stop subscribing to the newspaper" in the print format, said Steven Brill, Journalism Online's co-CEO. "Fewer people will be saying, `Why am I buying this thing when I can get it free online?"' Some commentators say the numbers don't add up. Former newspaper editor Alan Mutter, now an industry consultant and author of the blog, "Reflections of a Newsosaur," doubts most publishers understand how to produce the "content niches" that will cause people to ante up. Yet it's not an impossible task, said Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time magazine and now chief executive of the Aspen Institute, a think tank. Charging online fees "could create a discipline on journalism that produces more things of value," Isaacson said. "We could end up getting better journalism and a better business model out of it."

Like good dope dealers...

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Big 5 Media Corps. are pissing off cable firms and DirecTV big time by letting the public watch shows for free on the internet;

Fox and NBC are Scheming together to give it to us free, get us hooked, then jack up the price.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-hulu11-2009may11,0,5771665.story

5/11/2009 L.A. Times

...But in making a bid for the next generation of Internet- attuned viewers, Hulu's owners have strained their lucrative relationships with cable and satellite operators. Companies like Time Warner Cable Inc. and DirecTV Group Inc. pay cable networks billions of dollars each year to carry programming. Believing that they should have exclusivity because their payments support the enormous cost of producing TV shows, such companies have been pushing back against the Hulu freebies...

..."And now people are starting to wonder, do we even need the cable connections?"

The country's largest cable operators aren't waiting around to find out the answer. In recent months, the operators have taken a hard line against cable networks for funneling their shows to Hulu. Some have gone so far as to stipulate that cable networks limit the number of episodes they make available online. Others have imposed an outright ban. The strictures buy time for cable operators until they can develop their own response to Hulu....

...NBC Universal and News Corp. are considering whether to adopt a cable industry initiative called authentication, which would require users to prove they are pay TV subscribers before they can watch current shows on Hulu.

The partners also are discussing setting up a tiered system for online video, with some shows available for free -- such as prime-time network offerings -- while others would be reserved for existing cable TV subscribers.

"Everyone is coalescing around a central area -- authentication," said Tony Vinciquerra, chief of Fox's television networks. "If we can move this in the right direction, it will be something relatively seamless to the consumer, and good for business overall."

After Setting Record for Text-Messaging, Two Men May Finally Get a Life...

Slaves to their cell phone company rack up a $26,000 bill in 1 month.

--Their next record to beat: buying millions of dollars of useless crap on their credit cards from infomercials all in one day! Can they do it? Inquiring swines want to know! Reporting on this exciting story are Billy Bush and Britney Spears for Excess Hollywood...


By BILL BERGSTROM, Associated Press Writer – Wed Apr 22, 7:13 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090422/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd217

PHILADELPHIA – Their thumbs sure must be sore. Two central Pennsylvania friends spent most of March in a text-messaging record attempt, exchanging a thumbs-flying total of 217,000. For one of the two, that meant an inches-thick itemized bill for $26,000.

Nick Andes, 29, and Doug Klinger, 30, were relying on their unlimited text messaging plans to get them through the escapade, so Andes didn't expect such a big bill.

"It came in a box that cost $27.55 to send to me," he said Tuesday. He said he "panicked" and called T-Mobile, which told The Associated Press it had credited his account and was investigating the charges.

The two Lancaster-area residents have been practically nonstop texters for about a decade since they attended Berks Technical Institute together.

That led Andes to search for the largest monthly text message total he could find posted online: 182,000 sent in 2005 by Deepak Sharma in India.

Andes and Klinger were able to set up their phones to send multiple messages. During a February test run they found they could send 6,000 or 7,000 messages on some days, prompting the March messaging marathon.

"Most were either short phrases or one word, 'LOL' or 'Hello,' things like that, with tons and tons of repeats," said Andes, reached by phone.

Andes sent more than 140,000 messages, and Klinger sent more than 70,000 to end the month with a total of just over 217,000, he said.

A spokesman for Guinness World Records didn't immediately return messages asking whether it would be certified as a record.

April came as a relief to Andes' wife, Julie, who had found his phone tied up with texting when she tried to call him on lunch breaks.

"She was tired of it the first few days into it," Andes said.

The Middle Class Fights Back?

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Which "Losers" Should the Government Bail Out?

"Do We want to subsidize the loser's mortgages?"--Rick Santelli, CNBC financial analyst

3/5/2009

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=220252&title=cnbc-financial-advice

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Concern over "class warfare" depends on which class you're in...

for full story, see http://www.latimes.com/business/personalfinance/la-fi-hiltzik4-2009mar04,0,1356927.column

by Michael Hiltzik
March 4, 2009

"Class warfare" comes in many flavors. There's the variety practiced by feudal overlords upon their serfs, and the variety waged by the Jacobins of the French Revolution against the monarchists.

Then there's the variety that Republicans claim to find in President Obama's proposed budget -- a taking from the rich to reward the undeserving poor. The rhetoric has spread quickly, moving from the libertarian Heritage Foundation to the ranks of GOP presidential hopefuls like flames leaping from tree to tree in the Angeles National Forest.

"Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff," says former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics may be dead, but a Union of American Socialist Republics is being born."

Yet the true class war of recent American history is the one that has pitted the upper 1% of income earners against almost everybody else. Over the last three decades, a period that spans Republican and Democratic administrations alike, average family income has scarcely budged an inch, while the wealthy have grown measurably wealthier.

In 1979, the top 1% of U.S. households earned eight times as much as the middle 20% and 23 times as much as the bottom fifth; by 2005, the Congressional Budget Office found, the upper crust touched 21 times as much as the middle class and 70 times as much as the bottom. Adjusting for inflation, the average American worker made 16% less in 2004 than in the 1970s, according to economist Benjamin M. Friedman....

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In a bad economy, Oil companies still profit

from a 3/4/2009 letter to the editor, http://www.dailybreeze.com/letters/ci_11830754

A few weeks ago there was an article in the business pages that should have been on the front page of every newspaper in the country and the top story on every television news show. While the whole country was suffering a recession, including giant corporations like Microsoft, the ExxonMobil Corp. posted not only the highest profits in its history but the highest of any corporation in U.S. history: $45.2 billion. ExxonMobil made this money through outrageous price gouging, which caused the entire economy to suffer. That cost was added to the price of everything you buy, and it caused every business except the oil companies to suffer. The Republicans did everything possible to help them get away with this. When Congress tried to get records of the secret meetings between the Dick Cheney, administration officials and the oil companies, they were refused even when the records were subpoenaed. For that alone, Cheney should go to prison. The Bush administration gave them huge tax breaks, and when gas prices shot up to record levels and the economy went into recession, their answer was more tax breaks for the oil companies. The Republican Party works for these crooks and against ordinary people. They should all be removed from office. - MARK BEGOVICH

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Cable Industry Fires Back Against Viewer Choice

As We reported last week, (http://greedwatch.blogspot.com/2009/02/while-cable-system-operators-have.html), the Big-5 Media monopolies are finding new ways to distribute their programming and that is breaking the backs of the big cable TV monopolies. Now the cable firms are fighting back, as usual, to restrict the ability of the viewing public to choose where they get their favorite shows...

excerpted from:

Cable operators seek platform to put TV shows online
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/la-fi-tvonline25-2009feb25,0,7627468.story

2/25/2009--Wary of the growing number of consumers watching TV shows online for free -- and yet reluctant to upset viewers by yanking shows from the Internet -- the nation's largest cable operators are in talks with media conglomerates to take back control. They would create a platform to release cable TV shows online, but exclusively for paying subscribers....

Gaspin and others familiar with the project said the new service probably would be free to cable TV subscribers. But it's also possible a small fee might be assessed....

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Here's a very interesting 20 minute video on the cycle of over-consumption and how it's killing our planet.

Enjoy!

http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html

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BUY IT NOW!!! THE NEW IMPROVED 2009 MODEL PIECE OF CRAP!

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of

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While Cable System Operators Have Fought Consumer Choice (aka A la carte) Cable, Consumers are taking their dollars elsewhere. In Response, the Big 5 Media Corporations are Dumping Less Lucrative Businesses...

2/18/2009--More and more the entertainment mega corporations, the big 5, ie., Disney, Fox, Viacom-CBS, GE-BBC-Universal and Time-Warner, are dumping their less-profitable cable and satellite distribution arms, while retaining their ultra-profitable broadcasting and content-production divisions (studios and cable channels).

Thanks to the internet reaching as much or more of the country than cable and satellite, a lot of the TV fare we have to pay big bucks for on cable can now be found on free websites sponsored by the Big 5. These sites typically have very few commercials, maybe 2 minutes in a half hour show instead of 8. Some of the best shows are archived forever, such as all 35 years of Saturday Night Live, and all ten years of the Daily Show. What the Big 5 are doing is cutting out the middlemen. And since cable system monopolies have jacked up their rates much higher than the rate of inflation for over 20 years, it's hard to feel too sympathetic for them.

Fox last year traded away the #1 DirectTV satellite service to Liberty Media (an owner of cable channels), and this month reported a $6.4 billion loss.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Time-Warner is spinning off the nation's 2nd largest cable system as an independent company. Given that Time-Warner owns numerous cable channels, which are essentially TV "brands" that they can distribute any way they want, they now can fully embrace giving viewers the maximum number of ways to see their programming, whether it's on the internet, cable, phone company TV or satellite. Their bottom line was really hurting, with their last quarterly loss being $16 billion, so I can understand why they chose to get out of a very competitive business. Contrary to what corporate propagandists say, they don't like competition.

Another big cable system owner, Charter, just declared bankruptcy. Charter is controlled by Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft who couldn't transfer his success in software to the cable business.

Controlling all facets of a business, or what is termed "vertical integration", has made a lot of money for stock traders who helped the big guys gobble up additional variations of their core business. The big guys haven't always done as well. AT & T really blew it 10 years ago when they bought TCI, which then owned Liberty Media and the nation's top cable system operator. Very soon they wrote off around $50 billion in losses, and spun off Liberty Media to the public, and sold the cable systems to Comcast. They recovered well (well, maybe not for us) by the Bush administration letting them merge with SBC and BellSouth and buy Cingular Wireless, essentially rendering the U.S. a 2 -phone company country (except for some tiny competitors).

(see http://greedwatch.blogspot.com/search/label/AT%2BT)

This trend of binging and purging really hit Clear Channel, which hugely overpaid for over 1000 radio stations and hundreds of thousand of billboards 10 years ago and then they lost billions and dumped a lot of stations. CBS likewise gorged on radio stations and billboards and then wrote off a lot of paper-value recently. Time-Warner blew over $100 billion by buying America OnLine and found that Americans weren't that keen about buying everything over the internet.

In the end, we still have 5 mega corporations that produce and distribute most of our news and entertainment. But at least we have more ways to get it, at lower cost, and that's good.


--Rex Frankel, 2/18/2009
------------------------------------

A Historical Trend of Sell-offs:

RADIO: ABC sold off much of their news and music radio stations to Citadel Broadcasters in 2006, while keeping their ESPN radio and Radio Disney stations. NBC had sold off their radio division in the 1980's. Only CBS remains heavily in the radio business but is selling a lot of stations in middle American markets in order to keep their big holdings in big cities.

MUSIC: All of the Big 5 have been out of recorded music since Universal Music (which had previously bought ABC's labels) was bought by Vivendi of France in the 1990's and CBS's Columbia and Epic records division were sold to Sony in the 1980's. NBC's RCA labels were sold off in the 1980's and are now owned by Sony.

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Where were the Fiscally Conservative Republican/Conservatives that are Foaming at the Mouth Over Obama's Economy Fix for the Past 8 Years?

http://www.thechrismatthewsshow.com/html/transcript/index.php?selected=1&id=150
from February 15, 2009

Mr. ANDREW SULLIVAN (The Atlantic Senior Editor): They're also saying that
we are the party of fiscal conservatism. Now they...

MATTHEWS: Since when, though?

Mr. SULLIVAN: Well, since like I think like 10 minutes ago. I mean, they
spent, for future debt of this country, they added $30 trillion in a period of
boom. We're now in the swiftest downturn in employment in decades and they're
quibbling over something like $400 billion worth of spending. It doesn't make
any sense. The hypocrisy of these people, their ability to turn on a dime and
not even acknowledge their own responsibility. If they hadn't spent the
amount they'd spent in the last eight years, we wouldn't have this crisis in
the sense that we'd have much more leeway to spend our way out of the
recession. The one moment you don't want to be a fiscal conservative is when
the global economy is heading down into a down draft. And yet that's the one
moment that these Republicans pick to allegedly stand up for their principles.
It's insane, I think, and frankly, all these news cycle spins, I--that's the
old politics. The new politics is we're in a terrible economic crisis, have
we done enough to get ourselves out of it?

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Is the Digital TV Changeover Really Just a Big Gift to the Broadcasters at the Expense of Consumers?

2/18/2009--Why should the public have to pay anything more in order to see ad-filled crappy TV channels that are packed with celebrity news and reality TV junk, along with a few programs featuring actors and writing?

The airwaves belong to the people, but they are occupied by mega-corporations, which, thanks to digital TV, will have many more channels to fill with junk.

To compensate, the 5 mega-media corporations are giving up their "analog" channels (the one our TV's currently can pick up). Originally, when the U.S. Congress approved the digital TV switchover in the 1990's, the promise was that we would now have all these local-owned stations. Instead, a few years ago the Bush administration auctioned those channels off to AT & T and Verizon, the U.S.'s 2 phone monopolies, so they can SELL us more cell phone services.

Call or write your congresspeople now!
This is a ripoff!
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http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_11726018?IADID=Search-www.dailybreeze.com-www.dailybreeze.com

About a quarter of the nation's TV stations cut off their analog signals Tuesday, causing sets to go dark in households that were not prepared for digital television despite two years of warnings about the transition.

Though most viewers were ready - and people with cable or satellite service were unaffected - some stations and call centers reported a steady stream of questions from frustrated callers.

"It's kind of an irritation, but I understand that everyone will have a much better picture. As far as I was concerned, they could have left things the way they were," said Dorothy Delegard, 67, of Minneapolis, who bought a converter box because a friend gave her a coupon that expired Tuesday.

Phones were ringing off the hook at a walk-in information center set up by stations in Providence, R.I.

A volunteer at the center, Jeremy Taylor, said he tried to calm agitated callers.

"I try to explain that the digital switch is not something we're doing to extort them of money," Taylor said...

OH, REALLY?

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http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-dtv17-2009feb17,0,6567234.story

Early converts to digital are fuzzy about benefits

Some report getting worse reception and fewer stations, at least for now

…The switch to digital broadcasts will free up valuable airwaves for public safety officials to improve their communications networks and for wireless companies to offer new services. And for most people, it will produce sharper pictures with better sound. Digital TV also enables broadcasters to transmit four or more programs simultaneously on new sub-channels….