Reply #4: The Living Legacy Of Telcom '96

[KharmaTrain]

An old broadcast chestnut is that in hard times, the first thing advertisers do is cut their budgets. Either they cut their advertising or are more selective on where they spend. This is the real trouble facing broadcasting/cable in general.

A lot of these companies got real fat...especially in the late 90's when advertising revenue increases were clipping at 20-30% a year. For the past couple years those numbers are 20-30% in the other direction...less this year than last year.

Next it a problem similar to the airlines...a time bomb that is beginning to explode on some of these large corporations. Telcom '96 was carte blanche for the Comcasts and Clear Channels to gobble up stations and cable systems all over the place. They took on a lot of debt...at the time cashing in on higher stock prices, but now the bill collector is at the door...and with less revenues coming in, it's harder for these companies to meet their nut.

I wish this were a reflection of the corporate media's "accoutability", and maybe there's a wee bit of that in play here, but it's more the results of corporate media's largess than anything else. A good example is the amount of money Time/Warner still is trying to make up from its disasterous "merger" with AOL.

I'm sure there are some in the corporate media who would love a big White House scandal, but that sure isn't their Washington bureaus. Look at all the appologists that are parading across the screen the past couple days...many of these people know there's laws broken (probably knows who broke those laws) and now are playing judge and jury? Spare me.