During the 1920s, David Sarnoff, the founder of NBC, was the single most powerful man in American broadcasting. NBC’s parent company, Radio Company of America (RCA), was the nation’s most important radio manufacturer. David Sarnoff and RCA feared competition, specifically the invention of the television and its potential to destroy the broadcast network NBC and RCA. As a self-centered monopolist, Sarnoff was determined to convince the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to freeze the marketing of television in order for RCA to make it their invention. Sarnoff’s close relationship with the FCC enabled him to coerce this government agency into agreeing that the television was inadequate to market to the public. To Sarnoff’s satisfaction, the FCC froze the advancement of commercial television for twenty years.
This example supports Tim Wu’s claim that “there are some substantial dangers implicit in aligning the immense power of the state with the greatest information monopolists” (p. 59). In this particular case, the FCC had the power to fuel or destroy the broadcasting monopoly. Unfortunately for John Baird, Charles Jenkins and Philo Farnsworth, the inventors of the television, the FCC’s decision allowed Sarnoff and RCA to continue their domination of the broadcasting industry. After the FCC’s decision, Sarnoff engaged in espionage, stealing Farnsworth and Baird’s ideas and creating the world’s most advanced electronic television sets.
Who is to blame for the early death of America’s first television industry? I believe it is without question David Sarnoff, who was an egotistical, conniving monopolist. However, I think the government, specifically the FCC, is also to blame. In the 1920s and still today, we live in a free-market economy where there should be minimal economic intervention and regulation by the state. Yet, it was a government commission, not the market that decided to forbid the sale of the television. In a free-market economy, inventors like Charles Jenkins, who are not aligned with a monopoly, rely on investors to survive. However, the FCC’s actions deterred potential investors, ending Jenkins’ opportunity for survival in the industry.
If the FCC still disrupted the free-market economy today, we might not have the Iphone, Android, Facebook, or Skype. As Wu questions, “what fate might have befallen…the IPod or a site like eBay, if going to market required firms to first gain federal permission?” (p. 145). Fortunately, the government is acting in the public interest, and we in turn benefit from Wu’s idea of the Cycle, in which creative disruption results in new technology and innovation.
If the FCC still disrupted the free-market economy today, we might not have the Iphone, Android, Facebook, or Skype. As Wu questions, “what fate might have befallen…the IPod or a site like eBay, if going to market required firms to first gain federal permission?” (p. 145). Fortunately, the government is acting in the public interest, and we in turn benefit from Wu’s idea of the Cycle, in which creative disruption results in new technology and innovation.
Works Cited: Wu, Tim. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. New York: Knopf, 2010.
Maddie, don't turn up the sound to much when you play "F the CC" by one of my favorite musicians, Steve Earle:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDFi2ebKntg
Earle and his peers claim that way the FCC continues to censor radio. I doubt that he'd want little kids to hear the F-word blaring from their parents' car radios.
You have to wonder, as I quipped on another blog, why a show like The Walking Dead on cable can show pick-axes buried in skulls of zombies but full-frontal nudity would get the show yanked off the air.
Maybe the problem is a culture that thinks violence is less disturbing than sex or dirty words. As we bloggers put it, just sayin'.
All that said, I thank Ted Turner every time I watch an episode of The Sopranos. Sarnoff would have never aired that!