From a FreePress email:
- Please join FCC Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein, Michael Copps and Robert McDowell for a public hearing on the future of media.
Date: Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Time: 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Location: Broad Street Presbyterian Church
Address: 760 E. Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43205
The event is cosponsored by Free Press, Consumer's Union, Common Cause, UCC, Metropolitan Church Council, Ohio PIRG and Ohio Citizen Action. FreePress, by the way, is one of the groups spearheading the Net Neutrality effort.
The commissioners will give opening remarks, followed by "a lengthy period for public testimony." The sponsors are recording citizen testimony to present it to the FCC.
The event webpage includes factsheets to help people prepare their testimony. You might also want to check out the Frontline documentary on the pressures on the news business. Part III is airing tonight, but you can also catch it online.
UPDATE: Looks like ProgressOhio is part of the effort as well. They have a page up where you can sign up to attend.
1 comments:
Its great that commissioners are traveling around the country listening to citizens. Sometimes Washington operates in a bubble so its nice they're getting out.
I work with the National Association of Broadcasters. I wanted to emphasize how the media landscape has changed in just the last year.
As Frank Ahrens puts it, "Citizens exercise their greatest power when they act as a market, which they did by choosing new media over old. Old-style media empires -- radio, TV, newspapers -- no longer have the eyeballs to support the kind of audience scale that justified '90s consolidation and so alarmed media activists. Why? Because of MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, satellite radio, XBox, iPods, et al."
Bottom line - Local broadcasters would like to see the FCC modernize its outdated rules to allow them to be more creative and competitive in this new marketplace we live in.
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