End broadcast TV! Airwaves should be used for Nationalized neutral wireless broadband internet only.
There is no real reason to continue broadcast TV as we know it, anolog or digital, and the broadband system should be built and maintained by and for the people, just like our highways. As it stands only a small percentage of the wealthy few have access to and control the media. The internet is the great equalizer, if Fox or NBC (General Electric) want to broadcast their media they can use their websites like everyone else. Any media you need (or want) can be offered online, and if you want your programing mixed and played for you (which is all that a broadcast TV station really does anymore) you can pay for a cable or satelitte service to provide it. This would immediately desolve a large portion of the influence and advantage corporate biased media now have and could garner in the future with the recent Supreme Court ruling.
Carl Mott
shared this idea
6 comments
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Chris Couch commented
I strongly disagree too! I drop my cable because it cost too much, and I bought a digital converter HD, it is way better than cable tv!
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Peaches
commented
Free speech... access to information... I cannot agree... However I am sick and tired of paying for hundreds of channels that hold no interest or are bias such as Spanish speaking stations or other foregein language stations - CNN covers international news. Packaged media is a huge problem which drives up the cost and therefore access... personally I don't want to pay anyone for shopping stations, religious stations, foregien speaking... if you don't speak english and live in the USA you should pay extra for those stations, I don't want to pay for it. I'm sick of reruns of sitcoms, the same movies or general propoganda. I don't want shopping networks and I can go to church if I want christian doctrine which I don't practice - why do I have to pay for it? Why do I have to receive it at all... I'm part of the public, why are Christian stations "public interest" when it's outragiously bias... So sick of garbage programing that I'm forced to pay a premium price for.
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Hal Hancock
commented
The problem with removing broadcast TV is for instance several million older viewers that have old televisions and digital converter boxes, and rely on such services as local weather forecasts or news (including for instance the PBS Newshour). Many lower income people simply could not afford to get a $300 computer and pay a minimum of $20 or $25 a month for the internet access. Eliminating broadcast would simply cut these people off.
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chuy
commented
I strongly disagree. Many low-income persons only have free broadcast TV service as they cant afford cable, satellite or in many cases internet svc. The public's airwaves should continue to remain in the service of the public.
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rwb
commented
Quick addendum. These firms are by default dumb pipes, they provide a service to facilitates our communication but it is our communication not theirs. For instance they have no right to collect our speech and words for resale or claim ownership of them and no right that could ever be accepted to sell our private speech or pass it along for gain when it would damage us- current rules may be out of date but there is a limit to what any public can accept in the way of harm and injustice.
On the other hand when people as individual citizens buy something they are going to use it as they see fit, edit out commercials etc..- short of making a profit by spreading it and regardless of missguided laws- they may even give it away. When it comes to speech real speech not debt as speech engaged in by a fraud of personhood, money and profit do not matter at all.
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rwb
commented
I couldn't agree more that broadcast TV needs to go away. Its a pile of brainwashing and propaganda that is destroying out society.
While we are at it we should be very clear that neutrality is speech. Can we imagine AT&T claiming that it should be party to our private conversations or be able to interject in our conversations? Can we imagine a local toll road operator closed to our home trying insist on having a say in who can visit our homes? Relative to our rights as a public and our need to be able to communicate especially on political issues the profit concerns and motives (regardless of precedent) have no weight. We as a public own these markets outright.
