From: To: A4.A4(ssegal) Date: 11/21/95 1:17pm Subject: Chairman's Column Comments Bret Bassett (bbassett@Novell.com) writes: Hi Chairman Hundt, I was able to hear your message at Telecon XV, and was impressed to get involved. I appreciate your desire to get citizen input before you set policy which will manage the upcoming media blitz made possible by new telecommunications technologies. My wife and I have some pretty strong feelings about the social damage being done by unresponsible media and advertising entities who proliferate violence and immorality across our airwaves. I understand the impossibility of Government stepping in and cutting off this type of programming. Our first ammendment rights are too precious to leave up to the Government to control. But I believe that the public can pressure advertisers and television moguls to clean up their programming. The problem is that there are no tools, forums, or resources to help me unite my puny little voice, with that of the other millions of outraged citizens. I believe that the Government can and should help create means and resources to help unite the public against those who seek to proliferate this damaging content. Here are 3 things that would help me in my personal fight against irresponsible programming... 1. Make advertisers responsible for the programming they sponser. At the beginning and ending of each questionable program (maybe all programs) a list of the sponsers of the show, and how you can reach them should be listed. This will allow the viewing public to contact the people who really are the 'owners' of that hour of program time. I can't do that now without doing so much research that it becomes impossible to do. Maybe a site on the WWW which shows not only television programming, but who the sponsers are for each program, and a hot link to each sponsers response page would do the job. That seems to be an appropriate task for Government...to set up and promote such a service. 2. Make local television stations more responsible for the programming they air. Right now if my local CBS affiliate airs an objectionable program, and I call to complain, their only response is - 'We have no control over the programming. That comes from the CBS corporate programming. We can't change it.' So I go to write a complaint to the corporate Giant, and I find that I don't have a name or number to write to. I quickly lose faith that my little letter will do any good anyway, so I stop. If local affiliates were free to pick and choose from a menu of programming they could air then our community could demand more decent programming from our local affiliates. As it is, we have no control of national programming, and are doomed to have our kids (and our neighbors kids) watching whatever garbage media moguls (and advertisers) believe will get the biggest audience. 3. Require movie trailers and TV show promos which are aired on television to be shown in appropriate time slots...Right now my children (and myself) can be watching a perfectly wonderful program, when suddenly during advertising time, lewd, sensual, violent, macabre, and powerful movie trailers blast onto the screen. It takes another fifteen minutess of getting back into the program to get the graphic nature of the ads out of my mind, and I don't know if the images ever fully leave my children's minds. I can control what our kids watch on television. But I can't control the advertisements which are shown. There needs to be some control placed there. Why should we bother? Because I believe that much of the television and other media programming that air are tearing apart the trust structure of our nation. By constantly depicting people solving problems with guns, normal people who go mad, normal mothers and families that are broken apart with greed, lust, and ambition, I learn in the media that I can barely trust myself, let alone trust you. I learn that you shouldn't trust your spouse, your children, your elected leaders, your police force, your legal system, your health system, etc. I learn that the people I don't know intimately are instantly suspect. I learn that I have to keep my own interests uppermost in my mind and to heck with everyone else's interest. This is a terrible way to learn to live, for it tears apart our nation. It is worth fixing the media, so that we can begin to learn to trust each other again. If there are any resources that I am not aware of to help me get involved I would appreciate knowing about it. Thanks for giving me a forum to express my feelings. It gives me hope that there are people in powerful places, who are working on these problems. It helps put trust back into Washington. Bret ------------------------------------------------------------ Server protocol: HTTP/1.0 Remote host: bbassett_pc2.orem.novell.com Remote IP address: 151.155.230.159