{"id":906,"date":"2009-07-21T09:26:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-21T13:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/07\/21\/big-cable-v-localism\/"},"modified":"2009-07-21T09:26:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-21T13:26:00","slug":"big-cable-v-localism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/07\/21\/big-cable-v-localism\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Cable v. Localism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.northcountrypublicradio.org\/news\/story\/14006\/canadian-cable-drops-watertown-s-wpbs-tv\">The Rogers Cable decision to displace the Watertown public TV station WPBS from its Ottawa line-up<\/a> and to replace it with a Detroit PBS station is a cautionary tale on the threat to localism posed by an increasingly wired world, and a media environment dominated by &#8220;pipeline&#8221; owners who have little committment to relevant local service. <\/p>\n<p>WPBS has a decades-long relationship with its Ottawa audience, more than 1600 of whom are contributing station members. Ottawa businesses are well-represented in the station&#8217;s underwriting lineup, and programming at the station is formulated with a Canadian audience in mind. Ironically, WPBS has shown a level of respect for Canadian audience that could serve as model for all US border broadcasters. Canadians have long complained of arrogant&nbsp;self-centeredness in&nbsp;US media, which treats the nation&nbsp;(to quote&nbsp;Jon Stewart),&nbsp;as&nbsp;&#8220;that country we keep in the attic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The same players that dominate North American cable TV also dominate broadband internet, and have been lobbying vigorously for a two-tier Internet to ration bandwidth&#8211;giving priority to their own media properties and those of their contractors, over media produced elsewhere. HD reruns of Gilligan&#8217;s Island&#8221;&#8211;fast lane; NCPR broadcast stream&#8211;slow lane.<\/p>\n<p>One would think that the new environment offering thousands of audio and video channels would usher in a Golden Age for localized niche content providers. One would think wrong. So far anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Rogers Cable decision to displace the Watertown public TV station WPBS from its Ottawa [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[880,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}