Do something great today...

[maleghasty]

...go and pledge some money to KEXP 90.3 Seattle they play great music, and no commercials. They support loads of non-profit organisations in the Puget Sound area and they promote aton of LIVE music in the same region and around the US (SXSW, Lollapalooza, Saasquatch etc.). Help them keep the corporate influences in radio at bay, PLEASE!

Comments

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

Well, I do see your point, but...

1. There are a few people who read my LJ who are living in the States and they were my primary focus.

2. The same companies that are already well on their way to homogonising media through corporate consolidation in the States are keen to do as much of that as possible in the UK and the rest of the world - standing up to them doesn't need to be on your own doorstep to be meaningful. Not only that, but helping to keep an independent media outlet alive in the land of the media giant extends the possibility (at least) that some people in the US might take the opportunity to avail themselves of that broader horizon. As a station KEXP is not just a music station, they do factual and news programming as well, and none of it is at the mercy of a profit-focused share-holder / market bias. Sure they have their own bias, but I'll take it over 'greed is good' when it comes to getting information over to the masses...

3. The BBC is already subject to the slave of market forces and the lowest common denominator; I love popular and modern music, but there is only one show left on Radio 1 that I can listen to, and even then it's sometimes hard...

So, yeah, you live in Britain - doesn't mean that you're safe forever from the kind of oppressive media consolidation and dumbing down that is going on in the States at the moment, and now that the world is that much smaller why not help an organisation that is doing some good and not lining the pockets of a board of directors in the process (KEXP is a "not-for-profit" status company)? Moreover, not being able to tune-in to their programming 'on-the-dial' is not really a good reason, as they broadcast 24 hours a day, completely legally, around the world over the internet and they provide hours of music each week through free podcasts.

It's not as important as people starving or dying of AIDS, or the plight of prisoners of conscience around the world, or abused children everywhere, or any other group that is suffering and needs our support - not even close - but no one ever makes the "well I don't live there" argument about those problems any more...

(And yes I do give to those kinds of charities as well).

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

The model for radio in Britain is very different to that in the US. I think we are massively fortunate to have radio stations that are not genre based, for example, because it allows music in this country to develop more organically and means people like the Scissor Sisters can find a home. Radio 1 and 2 certainly are not perfect but they can be pretty good at times. I suppose I would rather work on improving things over here rather than trying to sort out the US music industry which is in my opinion massively broken. I think things are already improving over here because of the internet (eg the rather hackneyed example of the Arctic Monkeys).

I know about massive media corporations (I did half my degree on them). My comment was probably a bit rude, I just think in Britain we are in a very different situation than in the US and whilst globalisation means we all get to eat from the same offal filled trough we have more ways to fight more effectively against the hyperglobalmegacorps here than in the US. For example, the BBC has a lot of faults but Murdoch wouldn't hate it so vehemently if it didn't give him serious cause for concern.

And god knows I want to cause the collapse of capitalism but whatcha gonna do?

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I completely agree with you that the model for radio is different - oh hold on it isn't... Apart from the BBC (which although not the same could be seen as analogous to NPR in the States) radio in the UK has become more and more genre-based, just like the US model of commercial radio. In the UK we now have Kerrang!, KISS, XfM, Classic FM, Talk Radio, Magic FM and in fact any other niche / genre based radio you might want or need. The only 'melting pot' left is the BBC and it is becoming less and less of that, at least in my opinion. Sure there is "Introducing" on Radio 1 - it goes out between midnight and two am on a Wednesday... There is no prime-time radio left in this country that is programmed by music lovers for music lovers that I can think of, not even Jo Whiley, Zane Lo or Colin Murray get to 'play what they want' from start to finish of their shows. Listen in to KEXP sometime on the internet - their primetime shows which are "John in the Morning", "The Midday Show" and Kevin Cole in the afternoon - and you'll hear classics from the 60's and 70's next to hip-hop, rock, experimental music, dance, classic country, rockabilly, punk, protest, local music, British Music, World Music, unsigned bands all of it planned and programmed by the people playing it and talking about it. That's organic development of a music scene, not providing 2 hours of after midnight programming per week.

I'm not talking about helping to fix the American Music Industry - you're right it is broken - I'm talking about safeguarding a genuinely independent, public-service, not-for-profit media outlet that produces radio and live events based on a mixture of audience guidance and merit, that is answerable only to the people that it serves - if I had to pick one person out of the readership of my LJ that I would have expected to be __for__ that it would have been you, so I am a bit mystified...

I really don't think that your comment was rude - glib and / or thoughtless, but I don't think that you made it to cause offence, so rude would not be the word I'd use.

As for the BBC; overall I love the BBC and I would stop giving the money that I do give to KEXP to give it to the BBC on top of my licence fee if I was told that that would save it, or that it was going to be fully commercialised and the license fee scrapped if I didn't pay more - the sad truth is even with paying the license fee, most people take the incredible gift that the BBC is for granted and would not support it if it were a voluntary thing. People just assume that it will always be there.

Finally, why does Murdoch hate the BBC? He's a business man who sees a corporation with what he sees as an unfair advantage and does not acknowledge that public funding of the arts is not only beneficial but desirable as one of the measures of the success of a society is the freedom and diversity of art that it produces. He also probably hates the BBC because of the demographic that say "I already pay for my TV license, why should I pay for SKY?". Neither of these is a big leap, but Internationally the BBC is no threat to Newscorp whatsoever, we would only have to compare the salaries of a friend of mine who is currently living in LA working for them and the people I know who have either worked for the BBC in the past or still do to work that out. If the current trend for media conglomeration continues, the BBC will be something that we fondly remember as we reminisce about the good old days, and while it's not as important as a good deal of other things it is important to me, so helping to fight it (or at least stave it off) wherever that can be achieved is important to me, and I'm not to shy to say that I think it should be important to other people as well...

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

I think I was responding with a different bee in my bonnet, which for some reason is currently buzzing more loudly than the 'everything's-going-to-shit-because-of-global-capitalism-including-the-media-which-is-of-course-important-as-a-source-of-ideas-and-ideology' bee. This bee is the 'British-people-never-appreciate-what-they-have-and-are-never-proud-of-anything-even-stuff-they-have-a-right-to-be-they-are-consumed-by-post-imperial-self-loathing-and-think-the-grass-is-greener-elsewhere' bee. If you catch my drift. We are otherwise very much in agreement. I'm also in an argumentative mood because I'm doing an online philosophy tutorial today.

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

I totally get your position / mindset, and I completely acknowledge your own acknowledgement of your mood as well - I'm glad we can have the back and forth about this - it's a lot better than not talking about things, after all if we hadn't talked about it we wouldn't really know how much of this issue we actually agree on :-)

Hope that your online seminar goes well, and hope to see you soon; it's been waay too long.