Watch this one. There are reports that the FCC today will
strike down rules that keep apartment dwellers from choosing their own
cable TV provider. Such a ruling could allow you to choose who you
want to provide service, sort of like we do with cell phone companies. You can find the agenda for this meeting
here. This issue is item number three after a public hearing on local media ownership.
The New York Times reports:
The change [...] is expected to have a particular effect on prices for low-income and
minority families. They have seen cable prices rise about three times
the rate of inflation over the last decade. A quarter of American
households live in apartment buildings housing 50 or more residents,
but 40 percent of households headed by Hispanics and African-Americans
live in such buildings.
"Exclusive contracts have been one of
the most significant barriers to competition," Kevin J. Martin,
chairman of the commission, said in an interview. Cable prices have
risen "about 93 percent in the last 10 years," he said. "This is a way
to introduce additional competition, which will result in lower prices
and greater innovation."
Last
month, the commission approved a rule that requires the largest cable
companies to provide programs produced by their affiliates to all of
their rivals, including the phone companies and satellite television
companies. The commission is also considering a proposal to make it
less expensive for independent programmers to lease channels from cable
companies.
Mr. Martin has also pressed the cable companies to
offer so-called a la carte plans that would permit subscribers to buy
individual channels, or groups of channels, at lower rates than they
now pay.
By the way,
this is what the cable operators say [PDF] about the price of service these days.
The Coming Movie Firestorm
This December, look for church groups to protest the soon-to-be-hyped film, "The Golden Compass," starring Nicole Kidman. Take a look at the movie trailer
here.
The film is already being hailed for its amazing animation. The howls of protest are less about the movie than the book it's based on and the author who wrote it.
The movie is based on Philip Pullman's children's book series
(which includes "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass"). Books in this collection have sold 15 million copies worldwide.
You can read a chapter of the book
here.
Catholics are already protesting the film, which critics have reported is a watered-down version of the book.
In the film, witches rule the northern sky. Every human soul lives on the outside of the body as a demon that takes the form of an animal.
The compass, which is a key in this film, seeks not True North. (As real compass users know, compasses really seek out "magnetic north," but I digress.) This compass seeks out "Truth." If you know how to set the dial on this device, you can get the answer to any question, but nobody really knows how to use it except for the film's teenage heroine, Lyra.
But, as
Rotten Tomatoes, a film critic Web site, points out:
Unfortunately for the filmmakers, Pullman's books also include a fair
amount of what has been perceived to be anti-Catholic rhetoric; in the
first book, for instance, the church is in the business of kidnapping
children and conducting some rather unpleasant experiments on them.
A group called
The Catholic League is critical of the movie and book series, and launched a two-month campaign against it. The Catholic League, often described as a "conservative watchdog group," says this film is "selling atheism to kids."
The Baltimore Sun reports:
"Right now, it's hard to see where it's going to have a real impact on
the movie," speculates Gregg Kilday, film editor of The Hollywood
Reporter. "Historically, these warnings sent as many people to see the
movie, once they were labeled 'forbidden fruit,' as they kept away."
His Dark Materials centers on a world run by the sinister and
dictatorial Magisterium, a force that suppresses free will, demands
conformity and punishes anyone who deviates from the norm. "The first
volume, the one that's being adapted, doesn't have much in it, in terms
of the author's philosophizing," says Kilday, who has read the trilogy.
"The latter volumes do have more, and they are a kind of metaphorical
attack on the church."
Golden Compass director Chris Weitz recently told the London Daily
Telegraph: "In the books, the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic
Church gone wildly astray from its roots. If that's what you want in
the film, you'll be disappointed."
The filmmakers didn't go so far as to change the name Magisterium,
which in Catholicism refers to the teaching authority of the church.
Still, Thomas Doherty, author of Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration, decried the changes, telling The Daily Telegraph, "This is part of a long-term problem over freedom of speech."
Doherty has written extensively on film censorship. He says protests
like those spearheaded by Donohue and the league are far less effective
today than they were in the past, when the Roman Catholic Church could
slap a film with the dreaded "condemned" tag and seriously affect its
box-office potential.
"Basically, today, Catholics themselves are far less willing to obey
either the priesthood or their alleged spokesman and forgo seeing a
film," says Doherty.
Snopes.com, a credible urban myth-busting Web site, goes on to point out that the author of the book series the film is based on is a self-professed atheist who said the books "are about killing God."
Over the years, interviews with the book's author, Pullman, have explored how he portrays God as an invalid and suggests the toppling of heaven that is replaced by an atheistic republic on earth. No wonder his work draws so much heat. See this 2004 piece in
The Sunday (London) Times.
There is quite a bit more to this author, including his passion for children's literature. Read more about it
here.
Whether you do something on the film or not, I thought you would at least want some background.
NBC and Fox Launch Hulu.com
NBC Universal and Fox this week launched
Hulu.com, a Web site that will significantly increase the amount of video the two networks offer online for free. You will find recently aired primetime shows on the site.
Some media have focused on whether this presents a new challenge to YouTube or even iTunes. But the unreported story, I think, is how the networks continue to undermine the affiliate TV stations that carry the shows. The online videos present one more reason for people not to have to watch the programs on TV. And when the videos move online, the local station is left completely out of of the transaction.
The Secret Lives of Public Officials
I can only hope this does not spread, but something tells me it will. Maybe you knew this -- I didn't, but for the last year or so, it has been illegal to post the addresses of California public officials online.
All an official has to do to stay private is ask for that privacy in writing. Why these people deserve that kind of privacy when nobody else does, I do not know. You would not be able, for example, to see if they paid their property taxes, see what property they own and so on. Property records, home ownership and other data have always been public until now.
See the law here.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning
Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other
materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and
analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it
will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The
column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of
the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be
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