One-to-Many meets Many-to-Many

Berkman Center lunchtime talk series

July 11, 2006Susie Lindsay, Berkman Fellow

with Steve Schultze, PRX

We are talking here about a special industry—a very special industry. When we talk about media, we are not talking about just another commodity…

No, when we talk media, we’re talking about how we as a people converse with one another, how our democracy communicates with itself, how together we make decisions about where we want our country to go, how we share and benefit from the genius and creativity and diversity of nearly 300 million Americans, not to mention our brethren around the globe.

FCC Commissioner, Michael J. Copps, Jan. 2005

Public Interest in the Broadcast Age

Public Interest Media in the Internet Age

How New Media Affects Old Media: one-to-many meets many-to-many

Public Interest in the Broadcast Age

Three eras of television: (i) Over-the-air

• Localism, Diversity, Universalism

(ii) Cable• Relationship between cable and

over-the-air

(iii) Internet• Innovation, competition, democracy

Public Interest in the Broadcast Age

Localism Diversity Minority Representation National Identity Access Community Excellence in Programming (education,

children) Non-commercial

Public Interest in the Broadcast Age

(a) Trusteeship model with commercial broadcasters

(b) Public Broadcasting Service and Corporation for Public Broadcasting

(c) Public, Educational, Government (PEG) Access Channels

Public Interest Media in the Internet Age

Today our problem is not making miracles--but managing miracles. We might well ponder a different

question: What hath man wrought--and how will man use his

inventions?

Public Interest Media in the Internet Age

3 Observations about the Emerging Information Production System:

Rise of non-proprietary systems Rise of non-market production Rise of effective, large-scale

cooperative efforts Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of

Networks

Public Interest Media in the Internet Age

Innovation, competition Diversity Community Localism Non-commercial Access, participation Identity, autonomy

Public Interest Media in the Internet Age

Question: In order to achieve these values: what do we need?

A PBS of the Internet? A platform with:

(i) An open pipe(ii) Balanced copyright(iii) Funding mechanism

 “The centralized, dinosaurian one-to-many media that roared and trampled through the twentieth century are poorly adapted to the postmodern technological environment.” – Bruce Sterling, the Dead Media Project

“Old media never die – they don’t even necessarily fade away. What dies are simply the tools we sue to access media content – the 8-track, the Beta tape.”

– Henry Jenkins, Rethinking Media Change

One-to-many meets many-to-many

One-to-many meets many-to-many

Public Insight Journalism – APM Radio Open Source YouTube & NBC, Guba & Warner

Bros. The War Tapes Current TV

Questions: Are the new technologies fulfilling

the public interest element we have fought so hard to achieve – making the regulatory structure obsolete?

Is our existing regulatory structure fundamentally ill-suited for a media landscape effected by the Internet?

Is it that everything new is old again?