ADBUSTERS - RIGHT to THE AIRWAVES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jammers and creatives,


Today is our big moment in court.  Ever since the first issue of
Adbusters was published seventeen years ago we've been fighting to break
the corporate monopoly on access to the airwaves.  After countless
delays, and over $100,000 spent on legal fees, we've arrived at a
critical juncture in the case.  At issue is our freedom of speech on the
most powerful social communications medium of our time, television.

Below is a copy of our press release as well as a sneak preview of an
article that will appear in the upcoming issue of Adbusters (on
newsstands February 18th).  Please give us your support by getting the
word out there.

If our lawsuit is successful in Canada, we'll try to raise the funds
necessary to launch a suit in the United States as well.  What's at
stake here is a critical new human right for our information age, the
right to communicate.

The Adbusters Team




PRESS RELEASE:  THE RIGHT TO COMMUNICATE

On Monday, January 7th, the British Columbia Supreme Court is scheduled
to hear arguments on whether or not Adbusters' lawsuit against Global
Television, the CBC, and the CRTC, should go forward. If the Adbusters
lawsuit clears this hurdle, media rights advocates will celebrate an
important victory in the battle against censorship.

For more than a decade, Adbusters, a magazine and media foundation, has
been trying to pay major commercial broadcasters to air its
public-service TV spots, but these attempts have been routinely blocked
by network executives, often with little or no explanation. In 2004,
Adbusters finally turned to the courts. It filed a lawsuit against the
government of Canada and some of the country's biggest media barons,
arguing that the public has a constitutionally protected freedom of
expression over the public airwaves.

At issue is the right of all Canadian citizens to have (as stipulated by
the Canadian Broadcasting Act) "a reasonable opportunity...to be exposed
to the expression of differing views on matters of public concern."

"This case will decide if Canadians have the right to walk into their
local TV stations and buy thirty seconds of airtime for a message they
want to air," says Kalle Lasn, editor-in-chief of Adbusters.

Ryan Dalziel of Bull, Housser & Tupper LLP, who is representing
Adbusters, explains the special nature of this suit.

"This is not," he says, "a bare-knuckle family law dispute, nor is it a
Bay Street-style war of attrition between commercial entities. It is
public interest litigation, brought by a not-for-profit organization
with no chance of any monetary return."

Adbusters is hoping Canadians will pay close attention to a landmark
case that pits ordinary citizens and consumers against powerful special
interests. The outcome will determine the future role of television in
Canada.


EDITOR'S NOTES

For more information about Adbusters and the global media democracy
movement visit <http://www.mediacarta.org> and <http://www.adbusters.org>.

[1] Canadian Media facts:
* Four corporations (CanWest, Quebecor, Torstar and Gesca) control 72
per cent of the country's daily newspaper circulation.
* Five major media acquisitions in Canada have occurred or are
currently in the making in the past two years: CHUM was purchased by
CTVglobemedia for $1.4 billion, which then sold five CityTV stations to
Rogers for $375 million; CanWest purchased Alliance Atlantis for $2.3
billion; Astral Media bought Standard Broadcasting for $1.2 billion; and
Black Press and Quebecor are vying for the Osprey Media newspaper chain
in a deal that will be worth more than $400 million.

[2] Facts about Media Democracy:

* More than 30,000 people have signed the Media Carta
<www.mediacarta.org> to voice their concerns about the way information
is distributed in our society.
* In the past year a growing number of grassroots media activist
groups have been formed in Canada to express their dissatisfaction with
the continued consolidation of the country's media:
<http://www.democraticmedia.ca> <http://www.mediareform.ca>
<http://www.mediademocracy.ca>




The Media's New Aesthetic: Why TV is about to have a major mood swing by
Clayton  Dach

The last few years have been hard on poor old television.

Viewership has fallen across the board as core audiences -- guys aged 18
to 34 in particular - are abandoning the device that raised them, opting
instead for game controllers and the internet. Meanwhile, those who have
remained loyal to TV are failing to remain similarly loyal to the
advertising that makes it profitable, increasingly choosing to get their
tube fix via commercial-annihilating digital video recorders,
advertising-light DVDs, and (horror of horrors) pirate downloads.

With viewers putting up blinders to the ad-program-ad rhythm of
for-profit television, the desirability of conventional 30-second
commercial spot is tanking. For the first time in decades, a number of
key markets have witnessed decreases in the amount spent on traditional
ads, as marketers demand the ever-elusive bigger bang with in-program
product placements and full-on brand integration within storylines. The
result: as much as 15 full minutes of every hour of programming in North
America is now dedicated to thinly veiled product placements, with shows
like American Idol topping out at over 4,000 placements per season --
all of this in addition to the average of 14 to 22 minutes out of 60
still set aside for traditional spots.

Given televisions' incredible shrinking credibility, especially in the
case of broadcast journalism, it is little wonder that we have suffered
through the ceaseless debate over whether we live under the thumb of a
"liberal media" or a "conservative media." Luckily, we can safely
disregard the question of television's political affiliation, since we
are rapidly approaching a sort of McLuhan-esque implosion which will
render the answer irrelevant. It's that moment when the specifics of the
rock 'em sock 'em, talking-head debates may be school massacres or
missing pageant queens, but the message itself always remains the same.
That message is television, an ingenious device for the capturing of
eyeballs. Increasingly, this device is being pressed into the service of
a singular purpose. While this purpose could hardly be called a
philosophy in the proper sense, as a system of narrow values it does
require the exclusion of dissonant ideas to efficiently function.

Adbusters began, in large part, as a product of outrage over just how
destructive, self-serving, and at times downright insane the deliberate
exclusions of this system have become. We've learned, for example, that
the keepers of the airwaves will permit you to expose the perils of
cardiovascular disease; you may not, however, tell the truth about a
major advertiser's fat-laden products. Similarly, you are allowed to
tell kids to get more exercise, but you can't tell them to turn off
their TVs in order to do so. You may encourage women to ignore the
images produced by the beauty industry and to feel good about their own
bodies, no matter the shape or size -- but only if you're selling soap
in the process. And, most gallingly, you can pay lip service to the
urgency of tackling climate change, and yet you can't challenge people
to buy less stuff as a way to actually go for it.

But it's possible that you don't care. Maybe you gave up on television a
long time ago. Maybe you don't even own a TV set anymore. For your
personal peace of mind, that was probably a good move; with an estimated
112 million television households in the United States alone, however,
we ignore the stirrings of TV at our own peril. The last couple of
decades have seen unprecedented levels of consolidation in the realm of
mass media. Today, the movers and shakers of TV are the very same people
and corporate entities who control the majority of newspapers, of radio
stations, of book publishing, of outdoor advertising, of music
distribution, of film production, and of your favorite social networking
sites. The dirty tricks and the sleights of hand that are used to keep
urgent, dissonant messages off the air aren't in any way specific to
that TV. They are the natural consequences of corporate rule, and they
will be brought to bear whenever we are too distracted to stand in the
way.

Not by accident, more and more people are doing just that -- stepping up
to join the ongoing battle against a media system that has left civil
society out in the cold and in the dark, a media system that has been
busily propagating itself at the expense of our social, cultural,
political and environmental health. It's a battle that Adbusters has
proudly taken up with its ongoing lawsuit against CanWest, Canada's
biggest media conglomerate.

What's at stake in this struggle is not just access, but the creation of
a whole new media aesthetic: a messier one, more spontaneous and
unpredictable, one that fosters participation and social relevance, a
genuine engine for the positive change. If Adbusters' lawsuit is a
success, one of the first manifestations of this aesthetic will be a
strange new mood - exciting, challenging, even slightly dangerous --
every time you switch on the box in your living room, where previously
there was only a moribund device completely sewn-up by private,
for-profit interests. This strange new mood will prove once and for all
that television (just like newspapers, magazines and radio before it,
and just like the internet after it) has the capacity to perform
services other than selling us on the idea of buying, services of vital
importance to the health of our species and its democracies. And like
with all exciting, challenging, and slightly dangerous new moods, we're
betting it will prove to be pretty damned infectious.



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