Cable companies looking to shake off their public access obligations

Alliance for Community Media is watchdog organization that keeps an eye on all those recent Republican congressional activities on behalf of their cable company clients. It seems these cable companies minions have really mobilized now to push through their agenda, emboldened by passage of all those other outrageous corporate bills, and probably seeing it as a window of opportunity that may close with the next Congress. The Alliance's spokesperson, Anthony Riddle, was on Counterspin last week (it's on WBAI, Fridays at 10 am) talking to Janine Jackson about what's going on. Really worth a listen.

Here's a blip from CounterSpin and links to the audio files.


Anthony Riddle on Public Access

Counterspin (8/12/05-8/18/05)

This week on CounterSpin: if you're only looking at the country's major media, you likely know nothing at all about bills currently before Congress that would allow cable companies to offload those pesky public access requirements that are supposed to [be] part of their lucrative franchise agreements. We'll hear more about this latest attempt by corporate media to profit from the public while shutting them out from Anthony Riddle, executive director of the Alliance for Community Media.

Listen: MP3 or RealAudio (it's towards the end of the program)