DEAD
AIR

Has
radio become irrelevant? That’s a question I’ve pondered recently while
big-media conglomerates run radio into oblivion. Like others who criticize
corporate-dominated commercial radio, however, I don’t hope for radio’s demise.
On the contrary, I believe the century-old medium has great potential, even in
the age of satellite radio and iPods.

Broadcast
radio is free, portable, and far-reaching, and, as originally structured in
this country, it can uniquely serve local communities. In the early 20th
century, US electronic-media regulators chose a market-based mechanism of
control explicitly to promote viewpoint diversity and localism (service
benefiting communities).

Much
of the program fare served up recently by media giants, however, advances
neither —particularly following ownership consolidation unleashed by the
Telecommunications Act of 1996. Instead, duplicate formats and voicetracking (computer automation that imitates live,
local programming) induce audiences, especially younger ones, to tune out —fostering
radio’sgrowing irrelevance.

Those
concerned over the effects of high media ownership concentration were heartened
by a groundswell of citizen opposition following a Federal Communications
Commission proposal, in 2003, to further loosen media ownership restrictions.
In contrast, relative calm over recently announced merger plans involving two Rochester radio
ownership groups is disheartening.

Entercom Communications Corp., which already controls four Rochester radio
stations, wants to buy four local stations owned by CBS. If the deal is
consummated, two conglomerates, Entercom and Clear
Channel Communications Inc., will dominate the market by controlling nine of
the top 10 stations, a handful of others, and a local television station.

In
its coverage of the proposed merger, the Democrat and Chronicle quoted three sources, including a representative of
one of the principals in the agreement. Each lauded the deal with similar
pro-big business views. Meanwhile, the silence of listeners, community leaders,
and politicians, and other local media has seemed like radio dead air. Had no
one noticed the deal? Or, more ominous for radio, does no one care? Has radio
become irrelevant?

Call
to citizenship: To learn more about the effects of media ownership
consolidation, visit Free Press at http://www.freepress.net.

Michael Saffran, Brighton (Saffran covers radio for Business Strategies Magazine.)

HEZBOLLAH’S
MOTIVES

DaanZwick’s serious if ignorant
charges against Israel (The Mail,
August 23) require refutation.

Under
international law, the blame for the substantial civilian casualties in the
Hezbollah-Israel war falls squarely on Hezbollah. With their policy of
launching rocket attacks from civilian and noncombatant areas, most egregiously
from right next to a UN headquarters and similarly at KfarKama, Hezbollah has shown their contempt for the
lives of civilians and international observers.

This
policy of perfidy is a war crime under the Hague Regulations, which “clearly
disallow placement of military assets or military personnel in heavily
populated civilian areas,” writes Louis Rene Beres in
The Jewish Press (August 11, 2006). The 1977 Protocol I addition to the Geneva
Conventions contain further prohibitions of perfidy, and perfidy “is identified
as a ‘grave breach’ in Article 147 of Geneva Convention IV,” writes Beres.

Zwick holds that “this great difference
in the target deaths make one question the motives of Israel in the
conflict.” Why doesn’t he find fault with Hezbollah’s explicitly genocidal
motives?

Daniel Gordon, Meigs Street, Rochester

SEIZING
OPPORTUNITY

The
governance of the Monroe County Water Authority has been negatively evaluated
by critics who apparently fail to recognize the distinction between Honest
Graft and Dishonest Graf.

That
distinction was defined in 1905 by Senator George Washington Plunkitt, a Democrat, of Tammany Hall. You can find his
speech on the web under “Honest Graft.” Honest Graft is obtained when
a politician uses “foresight” gained from the job to buy advantageous
parcels of land in advance of public knowledge, or by cooperating in a system
of inflating government salaries in anticipation of an eventual return of
favor.

Dishonest
Graft is limited to acts of extortion of money from illegitimate enterprises in
return for non-enforcement of laws, or acts of actually accepting cash bribes
to influence legislation. The latter, of course, can be achieved
“honestly” by accepting promises of future favors, or positions of
lobbying, or consulting work for six-figure remuneration.

I
encourage all to GooglePlunkitt’s
speech and read it for its eternal relevance. We are in his debt for these
subtle distinctions. In the speech, he said that his epitaph could read:
“He Seen His Opportunities and He Took ‘Em.”

Ron
Johnson, Sutherland
Street,
Pittsford

WRITING
TO CITY

We
welcome and encourage readers’ letters for publication. Send them to:
themail@rochester-citynews.com or The Mail, City Newspaper, 250 North
Goodman Street, Rochester14607.

Our
guidelines: We don’t publish anonymous letters — and we ask that you include
your street name and city/town/village. We don’t publish letters that have been
sent to other media — and we don’t
publish form letters generated by activist groups. While we don’t restrict
length, letters of under 350 words have a greater chance of being published. We
do edit letters for clarity and brevity. And in general we don’t publish
letters (or longer “op-ed” pieces) from the same writer more often than about
once every two months.

This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2006.