In the last three months of 2008, broadcast networks lost nearly three million viewers, or about 7 percent of their total audience. Overall television viewing is up, however, and some big cable networks, like USA and TNT, are attracting new viewers.
Broadcast networks still bring in the largest audiences, but now they are facing a deep advertising recession that is hitting both the networks and their local stations.
Like my discussion about the effect of Google’s advertising business on Newspaper revenues, the addition in the last three decades of some 300 cable networks was an attempt to repeal the laws of supply and demand. You cannot add all of that commercial inventory on the market and not expect prices of ads to fall eventually. Some day soon the CEO’s of the big media conglomerates that own both broadcast and cable networks are going to realize that they are spending billions a year in programming costs only to break even. It may be that Jeff Zucker of NBC already knows this.
Jeff Zucker, the chief of NBC Universal, has been more pessimistic, saying, “broadcast television is in a time of tremendous transition, and if we don’t attempt to change the model now, we could be in danger of becoming the automobile industry or the newspaper industry.”
The tide began to turn this week as the polls show, but as I watched Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove go for broke this week–fulminating about Obama’s “Radical” budget, I thought,
The more I look into the details of the new Obama Budget proposal for the next ten years, the more I am struck by the stark break with the economic policy of the last 30 years it represents. As the chart above shows, the U.S. has diverged from the rest of the developed world in lowering taxes on the top 5% of earners and thus increasing income inequality. Peter Orzag made clear that things are going to change.
“Over the past two or three decades, the top 1 percent of Americans have experienced a dramatic increase from 10 percent to more than 20 percent in the share of national income that’s accruing to them,” Mr. Obama’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter R. Orszag, said in a briefing for reporters. “So we are asking them to pitch in a bit more.”
But what’s more important is where the new revenue will be directed. The budget “would overhaul health care, begin to arrest global warming, expand the federal role in education.” As I mentioned yesterday, the cuts in corporate welfare subsidies to Agribusiness, the Military Industrial complex, health insurance companies and student loan providers will provoke a fierce lobbying effort. But the budget process plays out over many months and my hope is that Al Franken will be seated by the time the votes are cast. That would mean the President would need only one Republican senator to block the filibuster. The Republicans will declare that raising taxes on the top 5% is class warfare, some how ignoring the fact that a majority of people making over $200,000 voted for Obama, fully aware that he had pledged to raise their taxes.
Industries from health care to agribusiness to mining that stand to lose under President Barack Obama’s policy agenda are ramping up lobbying campaigns to derail or modify his plans.The day after Mr. Obama formally laid out his policy goals in his first address to Congress, the former chief executive of HCA Inc. unveiled a $20 million campaign to pressure Democrats to enact health-care legislation based on free-market principles.
Mr. Obama’s ambitious agenda — ranging from expanding health-care coverage to cutting farm subsidies to cutting wasteful defense projects — touches almost every part of the U.S. economy. It threatens to disrupt the business models of a broad swath of America’s biggest companies.
Taking on Agribusiness, the Military Industrial Complex and the Insurance Industry all at once is pretty ballsy. I hope we all remember how the insurance industry spent millions in the 90′s to kill Universal Health Care. The Gucci Gulch set figure they’ve got the Republicans in their pocket, so they just have to pick off a couple of Democratic Senators to block all of this. But hopefully Pete Townsend was right.
Yesterday the FBI arrested 750 members of various Mexican Drug Cartels along with a lot of weapons and cocaine. But the problem of the vicious war going on just over the border is really an American problem. We buy the drugs and supply the guns.
In 2007, the firearms agency traced 2,400 weapons seized in Mexico back to dealers in the United States, and 1,800 of those came from dealers operating in the four states along the border, with Texas first, followed by California, Arizona and New Mexico.
Mr. Iknadosian (owner of X-Caliber Guns) is accused of being one of those dealers. So brazen was his operation that the smugglers paid him in advance for the guns and the straw buyers merely filled out the required paperwork and carried the weapons off, according to A.T.F. investigative reports. The agency said Mr. Iknadosian also sold several guns to undercover agents who had explicitly informed him that they intended to resell them in Mexico.
Whereas in Mexico you need a permit from the Army just to buy a high powered pistol, the Beltran Levya Cartel was able to buy 515 AK-47′s from Mr. Iknadosian’s gun store over the course of 18 months. This of course is all thanks to the National Rifle Association which has battled states and cities to make sure it is the right of every gun dealer to sell assault weapons. The NRA’s lawyer Scott Shields was very clear on the matter, ”Most of my clients have machine guns,” Shields said. “They are absolutely lawful.”
My father was a duck hunter, so if someone wants to own a shotgun, that’s fine with me. But I can see no sporting purpose for an assault weapon. But it’s time for some brave politicians like Mike Bloomberg to call out the NRA and their sock puppets like Glenn Beck and Bobby Jindal. On this little video Glenn says the Second Amendment “was a right endowed on us by our Creator”!
OMG. I must have missed the 11th commandment “Thou shalt always carry a gun”.
Barack Obama has proved to be an orator who consistently rises to the occasion with the great speech. Last night’s address to a joint session of Congress was no exception. One of the interesting things to me from a visual point of view was that the Republicans have so few House members that there was no sense of an “aisle” (Republicans on one side sitting on their hands, Democrats on their feet cheering on the other side). Looking out at the wide shot after the great applause lines it seemed like everyone was on their feet.
But more important than the visuals was the text. To me it was the most progressive/populist speech to Congress since Teddy Roosevelt’s famous 1904 State of the Union when he called out “the malefactors of great wealth”.
The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank.
We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy, yet we import more oil today than ever before. Continue reading ‘The Obama Speech’
Barack Obama has proved to be an orator who consistently rises to the occasion with the great speech. Last night’s address to a joint session of Congress was no exception. One of the interesting things to me from a visual point of view was that the Republicans have so few House members that there was no sense of an “aisle” (Republicans on one side sitting on their hands, Democrats on their feet cheering on the other side). Looking out at the wide shot after the great applause lines it seemed like everyone was on their feet.
But more important than the visuals was the text. To me it was the most progressive/populist speech to Congress since Teddy Roosevelt’s famous 1904 State of the Union when he called out “the malefactors of great wealth”.
The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank.
We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy, yet we import more oil today than ever before. Continue reading ‘The Obama Speech’
Last week I wrote about the death throes of the local newspaper , and this morning the New York Times dissects the problems of Network Television.
The tide began to turn this week as the polls show, but as I watched Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove go for broke this week–fulminating about 
Barack Obama has proved to be an orator who consistently rises to the occasion with the great speech. Last night’s address to a joint session of Congress was no exception. One of the interesting things to me from a visual point of view was that the Republicans have so few House members that there was no sense of an “aisle” (Republicans on one side sitting on their hands, Democrats on their feet cheering on the other side). Looking out at the wide shot after the great applause lines it seemed like everyone was on their feet.