'I Am Legend ...'

I've been watching the World Series and one of the sponsors is the new Will Smith film, "I Am Legend." I said to my wife, Damn, that looks like "Omega Man." Well, sure enough, a quick Google reveals that "Omega Man" is based on the book, "I Am Legend." I never knew that but "Omega Man" is one of my favorite films. I can hardly wait to see this one:

Two words
Lacey Underall: ["'Caddyshack' address comes home to Rockford"]. 'Nuff said.

What the heck is this?
"1-18-08":

R.I.P. Aaron Russo
About 30 minutes ago, I received an email stating that Aaron Russo, the film producer ["Trading Places," "The Rose"] and Libertarian presidential candidate, has passed away. I don't know if this is legit or not although I know he was sick. I still haven't watched "From Freedom to Fascism," although I bought it on DVD quite awhile ago. I guess it might be time to watch it now.

Update: Russo died of cancer: ["Aaron Russo dies of cancer"]. Those wishing to offer a card or donation to help offset medical expenses can do so here:

All Your Freedoms, Inc.
P.O. Box #1213
264 South La Cienega Blvd.
Beverly Hills, California 90211

Media Report #3
Guest Perspective/Bob Bittner
There's a nationwide organization called the "Future of Music Coalition", whose energy is directed against conglomeration in the radio biz, and for diversity in radio formats, and encouraging the airing and exposure of new and varied artists. They recently issued a study saying that 75 percent of all commercial radio stations in America air only 15 different formats. Another one of their findings is that local-ownership of stations has dropped by about a third, in the past 30 years.
Responding to that was the National Association of Broadcasters who said in a press release: "The Future of Music Coalition's long history of producing questionable research and dubious data to fulfill its agenda-driven mission is apparent for all to see." Is the pot calling the kettle black here? The National Association of Broadcasters has issued annual reports in recent years touting that broadcasting stations have dramatically increased public service time year after year. Most listeners might be scratching their heads on that statement.

Other conclusions from the Future of Music Coalition are:
* The top four radio station corporate owners have almost half of all the listeners in the United States, and the top 10 corporate owners have almost 2/3rds of all listeners.
* Niche music formats are usually provided by smaller radio groups or individual owners. Such niche formats mentioned are: classical, jazz, bluegrass, Americana. Folk, New Rock and even Adult-Standards fits into the orphan-format category.
* In 155 markets, radio listenership has declined by 22 percent in the past 18 years. They suggest that corporate consolidation is possibly to blame. That's a very valid point, but we all know that there is a another contributor to this, and that is new technology such as ipods and computer music downloads/and/sharing which makes radio sometimes irrelevant to many young people.

Another study says that white males own 87 percent of all radio stations. And women represent only 1 percent of people at the head of corporate radio groups. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps says of minorities and women: "It's not that they're riding in the back of the bus, they're not even ON the bus."
The Federal Communications Commission has reached a settlement of the recent-years' "pay-for-play" investigations. Four companies are ponying up significant cash as a penalty. Clear Channel had to pay $3.5 million, CBS $3 million, Entercom $4 million, and Citadel $2 million. All companies have promised "reforms." On May 14, the Chairman of the FCC said the investigation is not over. They're currently looking at other large radio broadcasting companies.
How's radio been doing billing-wise? Here in America, its been flat in the past 18 months, with some sub-categories dropping. All of this after a continual rise in revenues over the past 10 years. However, in Canada, radio station revenues are up almost 6 percent in 2006 at the same time ours went flat.
Radio hobbyists have put together a list of unlicensed radio stations in the Boston area. A list of 26 AM stations and 25 FM stations; not all of which are presently on the air, and some who broadcast only at night, or weekends.
For an unlicensed station to be legal, its signal should not go more than several city blocks, a small distance which is an unfamiliar trait of many of their signals.
Those so-called infomercials heard on radio in half-hour blocks, disguised as radio talk-shows, peddling diet pills to get-rich-quick schemes... Ten years ago, they were only on the smallest stations in America. Well, they're big in New York City.... even on most of the 50,000-watt AM radio stations, late at night. Those things started out and are still aired on the smaller stations in New York at any time of the day, and of course, in Boston too (but not HERE on this station). I wonder why the Federal Trade Commission is asleep on this.... Seems like they're in the latter-middle part of an ordered 8-year-long nap.
A group called the "AM Daytimers Association" has submitted their approval for a proposal for rule-making to the FCC - to allow some low-power-at-night and no-power-at-night AM stations, to have a moderately-low-powered FM repeater station. This means, stations like WJIB and WJTO might be able to have their signals repeated on the FM dial. This is one of the very few efforts to assist smaller AM stations. But there ARE restrictions to this idea, and it is quite possible that the whole intent of the idea may be corrupted by Wall-Street broadcasters to somehow use it to their advantage thereby squeezing out the stations which really need it the most. See info on this on-line:
AMDaytimers.org

Radio formats in 2006.... the count is in.... how MANY stations are airing which formats... Number 1 is country music with over 2,000 stations doing it. A distant second is News/Talk with about 1,350 stations. Third is rock & pop oldies (late-60s to mid-80s) with 730 stations. Fourth are all the different kinds of Spanish language stations, with 715 stations, and fifth is adult-contemporary music stations usually heard on FM, with over 650 stations. Adult-STANDARDS stations, like this station, well we didn't make the list, but I'm sure we're near the bottom of the pile. But we probably beat the number of all-Farm-news stations.

Last November and December, 412 stations went to an all holiday/Christmas music format; a record number. Remember, 10-or-more years ago, a seacoast New Hampshire FM station did that, and we all laughed?

You've all heard about the Dom Imus debacle. Well another New York City on-air duo made some similar remarks about an Asian ethnic group LONG BEFORE Don's comments, and those previous anti-Asian comments were virtually ignored by ethnic advocacy groups. But when that same program aired again AFTER the Imus episode (as a radio taped re-run), then they protested, demanding that the on-air duo be fired. Just an interesting tidbit of how "it worked once for someone else (with Imus), now its our turn." This is not to say that I condone ANY of the on-air comments made in New York City.

A talk-master on another New York City big station said that in HIS contract, there's a provision that says he can be terminated for offending any significant part of the community, but if he's not offending someone every day, then he's not doing the job that his wink-wink-nod-nod employer wants him to do.
This is a situation that plagues most talk-show hosts these days, which keeps them tensely on the edge of their seats every time they sit in the studio.

In early-June, an appellate court ruled that the FCC's laws against indecency in broadcasting, were invalid; which essentially negates restrictions on indecency. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, is preparing legislation for Congress to step in, to give them control over the court decision, and even over the FCC, in an effort to keep obscenity OFF the air. Right now, technically, broadcast stations may broadcast most obscenities, but there's no rush by stations to test this out, at least not right away.
Congress is also looking to ban most pharmaceutical products on radio, TV, and print advertising, at least for a three year period, so the situation can be studied. The drug companies spent a whopping $5.5 BILLION dollars in the media last year. Imagine what it would be like the see the 6:30 p.m. network news without those ads. Anyway, this started out as a proposed three year moratorium on just NEW drugs, in an effort to see how they work before mass-marketing of them.

Satellite radio
Satellite radio's subscriptions have slowed down significantly in 2006 and even more-so in this year so far. Some of it has to do with Internet listening, which is free, and another aspect of this is hesitation ... hesitation by consumers who know about the desire of both satellite providers to merge into one.
And that's another story in itself. Citing believed-future financial difficulties, Sirius and XM want to merge. Over 10 years ago, the FCC purposely granted the two separate licenses, in the public interest to allow competition.
Now that they want to merge, they must get government approval which might be quite difficult. Hindering such are two happenings. First, the fact that some of the satellite DJ's have been making racist remarks and skits; and it has been confirmed that land-repeater transmitters have been running way authorized power AND there are land-repeater transmitters that aren't even authorized! Such of the legal transmitters ARE needed to repeat the satellite signal into the abysses of large city streets, between tall buildings, since the satellite is not "straight up" in the sky.

Music & the Internet
Ever wonder who the money goes to when you download a song for 99-cents? Here's how it breaks down: 5-cents goes to the credit card company, 7-cents goes to the singers/or/band who recorded the song; 13-cents goes to Apple for hosting, billing and bandwidth; and a whopping 73-cents goes to the record company.
The major record companies, through their common organization, the RIAA, has been brutal to Webcasters - people or companies who stream music programming on the Internet. Recently, they WON their suit against Webcasters, resulting in new sky-high royalties (almost three times what they are now, and in some cases, as much as 12 times) which are said will put most Webcasters out of business. Actually, its not "business" that most of them are doing - its more of a hobby with artistic attributes. These new fees that have been approved by the Copyright Royalty Board (which are retro-active to 18 months ago, and all due July 15), are being challenged in court right now. But it still doesn't look good for Webcasters. The appeal has been filed by RealNetworks, Yahoo, Live365, and Pandora, who say in letters to every member of Congress, that "the new royalty rate will cause immediate bankruptcy of the majority of the Internet radio industry and will actually reduce royalties to record companies and artists as services go dark and royalties are never paid by them." If this court-approved rate hike stays in place, then starting July 15, the only entities that will be Webcasting would be the largest corporations and some scattered people who would not worry about being sued because they have little or no assets.
This may very well be "the plan" by the major record companies - to be able to control all Webcasting, and additionally all recorded music performed publicly in the USA. While presently, Webcasting of radio station signals is exempt from this court action of extremely higher rates, the record companies are now gearing up to attack the Webcasting radio stations too, to get them to pay more than they are now. AND, there's talk about the RIAA going after all music-formatted radio stations for just broadcasting on their over-the-air signals, too! ... Stations like THIS ONE. This is not to be confused with the current royalties paid by traditional stations to the WRITERS of the songs.
This however is an effort by record companies (the RIAA) to get Webcasters AND stations to pay the record companies, where then those record companies would dole out a minority percentage to the actual performers that play the music, and I really mean, a MINORITY of it going to the artists, the players and singers of the music.
Right now, non-Webcasting stations (like this one), enjoy paying NO royalties to the record companies, but we do pay to the song-WRITERS. Those are the fees I told you about in March, where WJIB's royalties went from $5k-plus to $33k-plus. Over the past 80 years, there has been an uneasy agreement between all radio stations and record companies that stations, while not having to pay the royalties to the record companies, is in trade for radio stations creating sales for the record companies. After all, without stations' airplay over the past 80 years, record companies would not have sold many records/CD's at all, excepting for recent developments on the Internet.
If all of this seems confusing, IT IS. All due to American 21st Century greed, with different industry groups always trying to extract as much money as they can from other industry groups. And all of this greed regarding music got a jump-start from one thing: The invention of the digital transmission of music, where it was stated by record companies 15 years ago that it was so easy to copy music instead of buying it. But now, the record companies are going after EVERYONE involved in music, even if music is not easily copyable such as off traditional radio stations (By the way, if you want to use your cassette recorder to record music off this station, it's OK, as long as its for your own use and not re-distributed as a sale).
And now, it gets even worse. On the international stage, many Webcasters are finding ways to curtail their music streaming to be only within U.S. borders, due to the fact that the same thing happening here, is happening "there." Scores of different countries are wrestling with this same legal problem, and results, when and if they occur, will likely be all different from each other. This is important, as many acts aired in America are from other countries. This is a good time to be a copyright lawyer and/or lobbyist.
In addition to the record companies trying to change the laws in order for them to collect as much money as possible, the Performing Rights Organizations are trying to do the same. ASCAP and BMI, who represent their own interests and the WRITERS of the songs, filed suit in order to classify every individual song download as a "public performance," therefore they too, would get royalties for each download. On April 25, a federal judge saw through that and denied such, much to the glee of AOL and Yahoo who fought the suit.

Television
While digital radio is suffering a very slow start, digital TV is rolling right along. Also known as HDTV, many stations are broadcasting now on two channels; the first one being the ones we're familiar with, and the second one, not so familiar. The real news in TV-land here is that every non-digital TV in America will no longer be able to receive local TV stations come February 2009. That is the month that the FCC is requiring TV stations to turn off their traditional signals, which has been in use since the 1940's. So no more NewsCenter5 on Channel 5, no more WBZ-TV on Channel 4. And "7, the News Station" will be "something-else, the news station."
For those of you who have traditional TV's, which is most of us; all is not lost, since there will be converter boxes available for you to install to make your TV's still functional.
Retail stores are still selling traditional TV's and the FCC is quite irritated with them ... Not so much for selling them, but for the stores not informing would-be purchasers that these TV's have a limited time-span use in the future.
The V-Chip, so far, is useless, says the Parents Television Council, who lobbied hard for it. Or at least they say that the $550-million that the TV industry spent on educating parents about it, didn't work at all. They blame parents' indifference and even more-so, the networks for presenting shows that the organization says is not suitable for children.
Cable TV is now at a 16-year-low. In just one month, November 2006, cable television saw a loss of over 2.5 million subscribers, mostly due to increased penetration of satellite-delivered services.

Cellphones
For about $4 a month, you can now get a service that enables a mono-lingual person to speak in French by hearing bits of it so you can parrot it, as if to let others near you to hear you. It gives you snappy one-liners to impress people at parties, and even shows little pictures of women that a guy could claim are "his." The company is appropriately called "Mobile Faker," and its on the west coast.

Movies
It just well may be that in the near future, if a newly-released movie show someone smoking IN that movie, it might get an "R" rating by the Motion Picture Association of America. Such is being considered right now.
But even more interesting is that one large cable company has had discussions with some Hollywood studios on the topic of allowing that cable company to air their newly-released movies on "opening day" at theaters. The two largest theater companies responded by saying they'd refuse to show movies that debut on cable on the same day.

In closing ...
Despite all the messes going on in today's broadcasting industry, some of which I've talked about here, it's worse in Venezuela, where broadcasters had free speech rights, at least on South American standards. But now, its different. The most-watched TV network in Venezuela has just been shut down by Presidente Hugo Chavez. The network and its stations had been airing opposition to Chavez's speeches and policies.But Chavez said they were becoming a threat to the country, so he personally stepped in to prevent its licenses from being renewed. Now, they are no longer broadcasting. The stations are now, according to Chavez, going to be "public service channels." Critics there say they'll really be "servicing Chavez channels."

That's it for this Media Report....

Written by myself, Bob Bittner, and aired exclusively on 740-WJIB Cambridge, Massachusetts...and...730-WJTO, Bath, Maine.

The people who control the world?
It isn't often that I post entire articles here which aren't written by me. But this piece just says it all, doesn't it? And people think there isn't a conspiracy to run the world ... they aren't hiding, are they?

["Partying at Davos"]
By Jeff Faux
The world’s rich and powerful are heading this week to their annual meeting in the plush mountain resort of Davos, Switzerland. Hosted by the great global corporations (Citigroup, Siemans, Microsoft, Nestles, etc.), some 2000 CEO’s, prominent politicians, pundits and international bureaucrats will network over great food, fine wine, good skiing and cozy evenings by the fire contemplating the world’s future.
This is not a secret cabal; journalists will issue daily reports to the rest of us on the wit and informal charm of our financial betters. Rather it is like the political convention of those who manage the global economy. Call it the Party of Davos.
All markets are systems of rules that determine what sort of people are winners and what sort are losers. Politics is largely conflict among the different sorts – or classes – over who gets what. In stable societies, a social contract provides for enough wealth to trickle down to keep the lower orders from rebelling. Thus, in the 1950s, when Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of defense said that what was good for General Motors was good for America, most Americans – including the United Auto Workers – agreed. Within the boundaries of the US economy, capital and labor needed each other.
But as corporations went global, the mutual dependence weakened. And in the absence of global democracy, their owners and top managers seized the opportunity to set the new rules without social constraints. The first head of the World Trade Organization called these new rules a “constitution for the global economy.” It’s a constitution that protects just one world citizen – the corporate investor. It prohibits effective protections for the workers, consumers and the environment.
In America, as in most places, the party of Davos is bipartisan. It includes Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney, Robert Rubin and Don Rumsfeld, Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice. (George Bush is also a member, but he doesn’t like to travel). John Kerry is quoted as having called himself a “Davos” man.
Indeed, without reference to economic class it is impossible to explain why Democratic elites championed NAFTA, the WTO and the other instruments of corporate protectionism, which traded away the interests of its blue-collar industrial base in favor of the GOP constituencies in Wall Street and red-state agri-business. Nor is it possible to explain why Washington is indifferent to a relentlessly rising trade deficit, and the resulting foreign debt that has put the country’s future in the hands of the central bank of China, while the Pentagon simulates war games with China as the enemy.
The media language we use to talk to each other about globalization hides its class structure. The press consistently talks about national “interest” without defining who exactly is getting what. Thus, American workers are told that the “Chinese” are taking their jobs. But the China threat is in fact another global business partnership – this one between commissars who supply the cheap labor and the United States and other foreign capitalists who supply the technology and two-thirds of the capital used to finance China’s exports. The rest of the world calls this “neo-liberalism,” a term unknown among America’s media “internationalists.”
The politics of the global marketplace are a one- party system. The opposition to Davos is unorganized globally. What might be called the Party of Porto Alegre – the NGOs who meet at the same time in Brazil – is politically marginal. The trade union movement’s effort to organize the workers of the world is at best at a very early stage.
Still, there may be some bad new ahead for Davos. After a quarter of a century, the world is beginning to resist policies that have shifted wealth and power away from people who work for a living to those who invest. Scarcely a day goes by without a major riot somewhere in China, Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia. In South America, anti-neoliberal parties have come to power in Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Argentina – and already have slowed down the effort to extend NAFTA to the rest of the hemisphere. Very close to home, a leftist candidate is leading in the campaign for Mexico’s next president.
But perhaps more important, Davos’ chief champion – the U.S. governing class – is in trouble. The opposition to the War in Iraq has demonstrated the limits of America’s willingness to send its children to die in order to force the world’s cultures into one vast shopping mall. And the looming crisis of America’s foreign debt will cramp the ability of our elites to use the countries’ economic power to support their global corporate backers. The erosion of the American social contract – already being reflected in stagnant wages, financial insecurity and collapsing health care system – could soon force the governing class to pay more attention to Bloomington, Illinois than to Baghdad, Iraq.
Globalization will not go away. Improvements in communications and transportation will continue to make the world smaller for as far into the future as we can see. Nor will economic classes soon disappear. The question is, as always, who sets the rules and in whose interests? So although the parties at Davos may not be over, the rest of the world seems less willing to pay for them.

Jeff Faux, the founder and former president of the Economic Policy Institute, is the author of the new book The Global Class War, a study of the impact of globalization abroad and on U.S. living standards and politics. He is a contributing editor to The American Prospect, and a member of the editorial board of Dissent. His articles and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, Foreign Affairs en Español, The Nation, The Columbia Journalism Review, and many other popular and professional publications.

Haunting
Christopher Lee blasted some of the so-called actors involved in films these days recently: ["Lee laments Hollywood 'stars'"]. However great Lee is, let's be honest: He has been in some clunkers over the years. Gremlins 2, Howling 2, 1941, Meatcleaver Massacre, and a ton of cheesy Dracula movies.