McLuhan & the (Un)Holy Tube

Class responses to McLuhan got me reminescing about the infatuation with broadcast media, particularly with TV, in the middle 20th century.

The hype for radio in the early '20's and even TV in the late 40's shows that some people entertained similar hopes that these media would democratize information. I wonder to what extent centralized ownership; profit-driven, MOR, least-common-denominator programming; softcore news and so forth are inherent results of broadcast per se, and to what extent these are results of the largely successful attempt by a few corporations to control production and distribution.

What seems relevant about all this to me at the moment is the attempts by AT&T and aligned powers to arrange to charge content-producers for allowing access or high-speed access to their content.