The current public television and radio system in the United States, while it's better than nothing, that's about the best you can say about it. It's nowhere near the standard it needs to be for our society, and we've got to make a commitment to rethink the system altogether. You know, just giving more money to what exists on PBS now would be not great; we've got to have a new vision of PBS.
Robert Waterman McChesneyDeregulation is a popular term that's used across the political spectrum. And it's one of these terms like "choice," that corporate interests have used because they know their focus-group buzzword testing makes it sound like a popular word. Because, who can be against deregulation? Being free, having liberty, not having someone tell you what to do, being deregulated, hey, that sounds great. But deregulation is a non sequitur in the realm of media policy or media regulation. The issue is never regulation versus deregulation; our entire system is built on media policies and subsidies.
Robert Waterman McChesneyThe whole process of getting licenses to broadcast, which took place decades ago, was done behind closed doors by powerful lobbies, and wealthy commercial interests got all the licenses with no public input, no congressional input for that matter.
Robert Waterman McChesneyThe problem of how to make the Internet advertising friendly bewildered and obsessed Madison Avenue for much of the 1990s. Advertising won.
Robert Waterman McChesneyWhat I've found is that there is a tremendous interest in these issues, across the political spectrum, sort of left-right terms we used to describe people don't really hold here exactly.
Robert Waterman McChesney