Are the corporate suits ruining TV?

ARE THE CORPORATE SUITS RUINING TV?
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Marshall Herskovitz]
A look at how a confluence of government policy and corporate strategy is literally poisoning the TV business. It started in 1995 when the Federal Communications Commission abolished its long-standing "finsyn" rules (that's financial interest and syndication, for those unfamiliar with the term), allowing networks for the first time to own the programs they broadcast. Before that, under classic antitrust definitions, the networks had been confined to the role of broadcaster, paying a license fee to production companies for the right to broadcast programs just two times. The production companies owned all subsequent rights. In the mid-1990s there were 40 independent production companies making television shows. If a particular network didn't like a show -- as famously happened with "The Cosby Show" many years ago -- the production company could take it to another network. Today there are zero independent production companies making scripted television. They were all forced out of business by the networks' insistence -- following the FCC's fin-syn ruling -- on owning part or all of every program they broadcast. Over the last few years -- during a time when network profits have been increasing -- salaries and profit participation for the writer-producers who create the shows have been slashed. Fees were cut by one-third to one-half, and profit participation in many cases was effectively eliminated. Within five years there won't be a significant distinction between TV and broadband. As of now, the Internet is just too big for any company to get its hands around, and that's good for all of us. If the large companies -- and the FCC -- cannot come to comprehend the paradox that too much control is destructive to their own ends, they may bring about their own downfall, losing their audience and their workers at the same time.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-herskovitz7nov07...
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