Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Interestingly enough, the subtext of this exhchange--and the countless others like it--demonstrate that inside almost all people there is a nucleus of cultural (or general) conservatism regarldess of political affiliation or ideology.

My problem is that I'm deeply suspicious of this natural sentimentality (which I share) about cultural diversity and the like. Most of us assume that it's a Good Thing because, well, because it obviously is. If Leon Kass's gut test is laughable in regards to stem cell research, then it's probably laughable elsewhere. Disgust, or warm-and-fuzzy feelings, do not an argument make. Do they?

"For example, Bangladesh, apparently, pays around $25k per episode of the Simpsons. That's a program that costs c.$1m dollars per episode to make (and has attendant high production values), being sold for around 1/40th of that sum."

Isn't the same logic applicable to books (technical) and pharmaceutical drugs? For serial and movies it is called dumping but in case of books and drugs people in developing countries want as low prices as possible. And not a word of gratitude is heard when low priced edition books are sold in developing countries! Forget developing countries, even in Canada, American drugs are sold cheaper than in US itself.

And if "dumping" of serials is such a big deal, then why doesn't developing countries support Copyrights and Patents wholeheartedly?

http://ashish.hanwadikar.name/

Brad quotes: For example, Bangladesh, apparently, pays around $25k per episode of the Simpsons. That's a program that costs c.$1m dollars per episode to make (and has attendant high production values), being sold for around 1/40th of that sum.

Wow! Assuming 100% ROI an impoverished country makes up for 2% of proift from making a stupid cartoon. No wonder US goverment is willing to take any measure (short of going to war - yet) to protect the "intellectual property" of its owners.

First one is free...

The Simpsons: Am I missing something here? Is the episode custom-made for each country, or for that matter just Bangladesh, at $1m per country? Why should Bangladesh pay more than a certain fraction? The movie is produced once, and presumably the additional per-country cost is the additional dubbing/subtitles.

Otherwise my default assumption would be that most sellers of stuff are trying to charge whatever the market bears. That US TV stations can and have to pay more based on higher ads revenue, which in turn is based on higher ad purchasers' revenue, etc., is no surprise.

Or is this discussion based on the "pay-per-view" or "pay-per-eyeball" concept?

I think the problem is that we have been able to deal intelelctually and culturally with the increasing alienation that consumption of culture brings, the fundamental shift in the nature of participation in culture. In these cases, both foreign cultural material and its means of delivery are making it difficult for another culture to fashion organic responses to social change. It is somewhat like denying someone their reason when you do not respect their need to incorporate and accomodate, at their own pace, some major change in their lives. If you think that their being uncomfortable is not sufficient reason for them to resist change, or that it cannot be distinguished from more insidious reactionary stances, then you are faced with the question of the justicication for forcing the change, as a culture.

Both Canada and France subsidize Canadian- or French-made film, TV, and music and require some local content on TV and radio. Not only is this good for the Canadians and French, but people elsewhere in the world often end up benefitting, and I see/listen to a fair amount of it myself. Just having more kinds of stuff is a good thing in itself, even though monoculture is cheaper per hour of entertainment experience.

It strikes me that here, along with journalism, is a place where an economic analysis in terms of consumer choices, production costs per unit, etc., obscures the most important thing about the topic discussed, and when the economic analysis is written into law and then becomes inflated into a fervent ideological belief ("free trade" and "intellectual property") the results are really disastrous. I don't know how NAFTA treated Canadian-content laws in media, but on the face of it (from the economic-legal point of view) they seem pretty much the same as any other kind of protectionism.

I frequently run into people who believe in free trade the way people used to believe in democracy or equality.

cm-

There's no argument that Bangladesh _should_ pay more. It's a statement of facts, underlying conditions, that leads to an effect: US culture (on TV at least) tends to push out Bangladeshi culture. Why? Because the Bangladeshi Groening can't compete with the American Groening - only an absolute cultural chauvanist would consider a Bangladeshi Simpsons, made for 2.5% of the cost, as watchable as American Simpsons.

The counterargument, about turning off the TV, is a weak one. The debate isn't about the presence, on one channel, of offensive or otherwise problematic material; it's about the ominpresence of programming that undermines local culture and identity. Battista's answer is in the same class with the argument that, if the poor would only forgo cigarettes, TVs, video games, and decent cars, they wouldn't be poor anymore. Rather than address a structural problem of cultural dumping, all Bangladeshis should simply show a restraint that few Americans do. Why are the Bangladeshis so weak-willed?

I think the argument is bad for two reasons. First it is pretty clear that Bangladesh could produce a local version of the Simpsons for much less than the US version. At this point the Simpsons must cost a lot more than $1 million an episode due to the fees for the actors providing the voiceovers.

Second, cultural imperialism is good.

The best way to break down cultural prejudices such as considering women to be second class citizens is to expose people to a more successful economic culture behaving in a civilized manner. Bin Laden and co know this which is why they realy realy hate the idea of western influence.

Culural relativism only goes so far. It is perfectly acceptable for people to decide to wear a turban, yarmaluke or a neck tie. People can even wear a burqua if it is their own choice rather than an edict.

When it comes to sicko ideas like killing girls because someone raped them, or sutee or the like I am all in favor of some cultural imperialism.

Ideas of this type were originally propagated at the point of a sword. I don't think we should be particularly shy about spreading the ideas of the English Enlightenment anywhere. It would not be a bad idea to spread them to the US southeast come to that.

James S. Coleman Battista is not countering your asterisked friend's point. The problem is that Bangladeshis don't get the choice between US made brightly coloured snarky cartoons and Bangladesh made BCSC. To reply they have the choice between watching a US made BCSC or not watching anything is, in effect, to agree there's a problem.

The difficulty is there doesn't seem to be a way to construct a level playing field.

In the mid-19th century, American authors couldn't compete with British authors. American publishers were free to publish works from the British Victorian fiction industry (John Sutherland's useful label) royalty-free, so they preferred to do that rather than pay American authors royalties. It was this situation that did in Edgar Poe. No American fiction industry developed and that had the same sort of cultural consequences that your asterisked critic (I suspect I'm supposed to recognise his/her initials, but I don't) bewails.

But it was easily fixable. Reciprocal copyright levelled the playing field. American authors became competitive with British. Since their products were more culturally relevant, American publishers preferred them.

The modern version is not easily fixable. Small underdeveloped countries simply don't have an infrastructure to advance the production costs that modern media demand. So no native modern media creation industry arises. Countries that are sufficiently large or sufficiently developed can try to protect their media creation industries by quotas. As zizka notes, France and Canada still do. But the record of the British film industry making "films for the quota" between the wars was bad enough that Britain stopped.

I don't have an answer. But it's clear there's a problem.

If the Chinese want to smoke opium, what right does the Chinese government have to stop cheap British imports? Get with the program!

Off Topic: Something seems to have happened to the formatting. The lines way exceed 80 characters and even scrolling to the far left or right doesn't bring the entire line into view. It's like word wrap has been disabled. Much as I love the Semi-Daily Journal, it's nearly unreadable when it presents this way. Can anything be done? Is anyone else having the same problem?
The other blogs I read don't have this problem

Wol

I don’t see this as much of a long-term problem. Arab Muslims, for example, have already seen all the American crap they care to see.

More importantly, I think we are still misled by the historical newness of photographic, cinematographic, videographic, and digital image-making. We are all starting to learn that: (1) it isn’t very special, (2) it doesn’t necessarily tell the truth, and (3) good artists in it, are few and far between.

The production costs of modern media keep tumbling, and the deciding issue now is distribution, but that too will change. In the U.S., young people are starting to make films, videos, news, sports, current affairs, entertainment, just as they record their own music bands, and this is about to explode here, then worldwide. Most of it will be junk, but a few things will be quite good. It will become as ubiquitous as writing, and likewise, most people won’t make any money at it.

Hollywood already appears to have begun its slow, long-term implosion. History will record that it had a Golden Age that lasted approximately one-hundred years, due to a technology-cost bottleneck. As a residential plumber in L.A., I talk to lots of people in the entertainment industry, and they’ve been going through an enormous shakeout in film and TV work, unrelated to the recent recession. In fact, the “writing was on the wall” fifteen years ago, although then a lot more of them were still whistling past the graveyard.

Of course, there will always be a market for a few major productions every year, similar to the subculture of opera. But beyond this, America will no more dominate the screen than it does literature.

Meanwhile, if you want the greatest screen art, see the films of Ozu (Yasujiro Ozu, 1903-1963). THIS is global culture! In the U.S., the Criterion Collection on DVD now has “Early Summer” (1951), “Floating Weeds” (1959), “Good Morning” (1959), and of course “Tokyo Story” (1953), consistently voted one of the best films of all times.

[Under the White House rubric, "When Pigs Fly"]

S.B. 911

108th CONGRESS

2nd Session

S. 911
To establish the Utilities and Commodities Futures Trading Anti-Gaming Act

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

November 22, 2004
Mr. SANTORUM (for himself and Mr. SPECTER) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

A BILL
To establish the Utilities and Commodities Futures Trading Anti-Gaming Act regulating speculative investment in utilities and commodities futures by non-institutional players.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Utilities and Commodities Futures Trading Anti-Gaming Act'.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSE.

(a) FINDINGS- Congress finds that--

(1) the United States remains under continuous security alert by the Department of Homeland Defense, and will remain so indefinitely, and--

(A) this represents numerous and unknown threats to the nation's utilities and commodities supply systems; and

(B) the potential thereby exists to completely disrupt American industry and the viability of the American economy;

(2) the United States and other world equity markets contain a significant function of equity trading in utility and commodity futures--

(A) speculation in these futures by non-institutional players threatens to disrupt the orderly flow of commodities and utility supplies; and

(B) speculative investors with no capacity for
taking physical delivery of these utilities or commodities are artificially gaming prices; and

(C) this price gaming of utilities and commodity futures by speculative investors has a severe and debilitating national security significance;

(3) SEC and ICC regulation and oversight of utilities and commodities futures trading is insufficient and inadequate to mitigate or
offset the substantial gaming activities of national and international non-institutional speculative investors seeking to adversely manipulate prices of utilities and commodities futures purely for their own financial benefit;

(b) PURPOSE - The purpose of this Act is to institute new policies, rules, regulations and oversights in utilities and commodities futures
trading, interstate commodity and utility transfers and other transactions relating to utilities and commodites by non-institutional
players, to severely curtail, limit and otherwise reduce and remove gaming incentives for speculative investment, without, at the
same time, adversely affecting the market for and lawful trade in these same utilities and commodities by and between institutional suppliers, processors, refiners, traders, brokers, distributors and end-use by consumers in the general public and within industry.

SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.

. . .

SEC. 4. UTILITIES AND COMMODITIES FUTURES ANTI-GAMING ACT.

(a) ESTABLISHMENT- There is established the Utilities and Commodities Futures Trading Anti-Gaming Act.

SEC. 5. COMPACT.

(a) IN GENERAL- The Secretary shall enter into a compact with the management entity to carry out this Act.

(b) COMPONENTS- The compact shall include--

(1) information relating to the objectives and management of the Anti-Gaming Act; and

(2) a description of the goals and objectives of the Anti-Gaming Act that includes--

(A) an explanation of the proposed approach to identification and regulation of futures gaming activities; and

(B) a general outline of the anti-gaming protection measures on which the Secretary and management entity agree.

SEC. 6. DUTIES OF MANAGEMENT ENTITY.

. . .

SEC. 7. MANAGEMENT PLAN.

. . .

SEC. 8. DUTIES OF SECRETARY.

. . .

SEC. 9. DUTIES OF OTHER FEDERAL AGENCIES.

Any Federal agency that conducts or supports an activity that directly affects the Heritage Area shall--

(1) consult with the Secretary and the management entity with respect to the activity;

(2)(A) cooperate with the Secretary and the management entity in carrying out this Act; and

(B) to the maximum extent practicable, coordinate the activity of the Federal agency with the efforts of the Secretary and the management entity; and

(3) to the maximum extent practicable, conduct or support the activity of the Federal agency in such manner as the Secretary and the management entity determine shall not have an adverse effect on the Heritage Area.

SEC. 10. USE OF FEDERAL FUNDS FROM OTHER SOURCES.

Nothing in this Act affects the authority of the management entity to use Federal funds made available under any other Act for the purposes for which those funds are authorized.

SEC. 11. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

(a) IN GENERAL- There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out this Act--

(1) $10,000,000 for any fiscal year; and

(2) a total of $100,000,000.

(b) COST SHARING- The Federal share of the cost of any activity carried out under this Act shall not exceed 50 percent.

SEC. 12. TERMINATION OF EFFECTIVENESS.

The authority provided by this Act terminates effective on the date that is 15 years after the date of enactment of this Act.

==================================

Just one more "truth in advertising" you're not likely to see from your elected representatives.

Socialism is merely fascist rule by the global corporate-state. Welcome to American Peristroyka.
Now go drink your Kool-Aid and lie down with the others. Our leaders know what is best for you.

Tante Aime posted to an irrelevant post. It is an interesting post, but not a relevant post. Does anyone here want to read me whining about how our grain reserves were down to only a month this spring, so if Rabaul, or Long Valley, or anwhere else had gone off, most of America would have starved to death when a volcano winter killed our harvest? It's important to me, but I don't think we came here for that.

Back to the topic under discussion.

The Europeans subsidized their homegrown work by taxing the American sitcoms. They used their monopsony position to restrict their purchases and since the large number of sitcoms were competing for limitied slots the Europeans got low prices.
Bangladesh only had 25K$ to spend and it was take that or they would buy anime instead. If you cut a lower price for a customer, is it fair to your full price customers? It doesn't bother me that Bangladesh got a lower price because it's such a poor country that it couldn't pay more.
The Europeans could have afforded to pay more and used their legislated monopsony to avoid that. That offends me.

Is James S. Coleman Battista even right to say that we're the borg here? The story told by the fearful antagonists of cultural globalization and American triumphalists is that American culture is spreading to every part of the globe, taking over other cultures, but aren't other cultures spreading into the U.S. too? Leaving aside the obvious "we all eat Thai food" type stuff, the fact is that the U.S. imports about 11.5% of its GDP, and exports 6.5% -- out of a total manufacturing sector of 18%. In spite of the U.S. being a more isolated economy than, say, Germany, as much leaves and enters U.S. borders as is manufactured within the U.S. Foreign cultures have had a big influence on us -- in fact, pre-Columbian native American culture is hardly perceivable in U.S. culture. Some foreign culture in the U.S. is readily spotted (Anime and Almodavar films), but other have had a profound influence that we hardly even notice because it has become part of the American cultural mainstream (German culture of the mid-1800s). I think it's somewhat silly to speak of the U.S. as an cultural "aggressors" or "donors" and Bengalis as "victims" or "recipients" of American culture. The U.S. isn't a very diverse country like, say, Nigeria or India, but it isn't totally culturally homogeneous either. (Of course, according to Star Trek: TNG, the Borg are also not one way dominators with nothing to learn from others: they assimilate other cultures, changing others to look like them, but also changing themselves to look a bit more like the others, at least if they have neat new technology and such. In the end, though, they all end up looking like white guys wearing goofy vests riding around in big cubes)

By the way, who is R****** M********-B****? Is this just because he's a private guy who asked not to be named, or you're afraid of Google associating you with him (like D***d B****s), and you don't want that? If it's the later, could someone "in the know" spell it out here backwards or something? I'm curious.

I don't think you can really stop this
sort of thing, good or bad. The demand for it
is just too strong. People in other countries
really really like the stuff. Not "are
brainwashed" into liking it, they just like it.
Why?
I remember in Poland of the 80's before the
fall etc., one of the most popular movies on the
black market was Rambo. Yeah, everyone knew it was
essentially a dumb movie but 1. the Russians were
the bad guys 2. they got their butts kicked and
3. it had explosions and exciting (albeit dumb)
action instead of cheap sentimentality about
the peasants or what not. Essentially - it
was different.
I think this is the appeal of
American culture - it's a different fare then what
people in other countries are used to. They've
heard the traditional songs, now they want rock
n roll.
Even Americans after a few years (i.e. past
teenage/early twenties) of consumning exclusively
American movies, food, music, tend to go out and
seek out foreign stuff for exactly the same reasons.

Now, Rambo at the time was about as illegal as
you can make it. If caught with it (original or pirated) you'd at very least pay a
hefty fine, invite the police in for further
unpleasant snooping (what else does he have?) and
possibly land in jail. Still the stuff was
everywhere. Even posters (though I don't recall
seeing any action figures).

Another thought on this subject. Whenever the
issue of aesthetics in a capitalist system
arises it seems relevant to remind people exactly
how the market functions and what it does. Snooty
college educated types often complain that the
market appeals to "the lowest common denominator"
and point to culprits like Jerry Springer show or
the vomit inducing slew of reality shows. Well,
it doesn't. It appeals not to the LCD, but rather
to the AVERAGE.
Now, snooty college educated types, myself among
them, are not average as much as sometimes we
try to pretend. We're in the tail of the
distribution on a lot of things, the type of
aesthetic tastes among them. The fact that we
find a lot of cultural fare that's outthere
thrown up by the market distasful is a simple
consequence of this fact. Some then go on to
conclude, failing to understand how anyone could
enjoy say, "Bevis and Butthead", that it must be
"brainwashing".
In other words they regularly conflate their
own subjective preferences with an objective
notion of rationality and reason. That is they
believe that anyone who does not share their
tastes must be behaving irrationally.
But some of us rember that des gustibus non
disputatum est.

I've been informed that Rambo was also very popular throughout the Arab world and in the Caribbean. However, I find Radek's populist schtick annoying; populism is apparently wonderful when it means watching imported American shit movies, but bad when it involves advocating protectionism, nationalism, etc. Maybe the debate should be populism-neutral for the moment.

I'll just restate my original point as a question: are the Canadian and French local-content laws and subsidies in film and music to be regarded as good or bad things? And specifically, should they be regarded as illicit forms of industrial protectionism (entertainment biz intellectual-property protectionism), or are there other factors in play here?

To be a bit populist myself, Zizka, the difference is: your protectionist populism means the big guvment tells me I can't buy my shirt from the Pakistanis. Your cultural elitism means the big guvment tells me my radio station has to fill a quota of proper music. My free trade elitism and cultural populism mean that the big guvment lets people do as they please.

As for your question about local content laws... I don't think it's a good idea to mandate a certain level of local programming. However, I *do* think that subsidies toward development of culture are a good thing for roughly the same reason that R&D is a good thing, though: new orchestral piece may take thousands of dollars to produce, but it can be duplicated and distributed almost for free. I.e., it is a nonrival, rapidly-becoming-nonexcludable public good (some might point out that the public good of broadcast media is handled satisfactorily by advertising. I have my own concerns about this, but that's a diversion from this thread). The question is, how much influence do you want John Ashcroft to wield over our culture? I think that, if the government is to be trusted, I would think that culture would be a legitimate aim for government subsidy and assistance, but I'm not sure the government IS to be trusted. (I kinda like those WPA murals from the 30s, and think they're nice decoration for public places, but is anyone ready to tell me that the future of our artistic development lays down that road?)

I've gotten into some rather longwinded disputes on this matter with my mother (a St. Louis symphony harpist), among others. My case would probably be more convincing if I could say "Well, I *personally* enjoy Bach, but I don't think other people's money should be spent on it," but the reality is, I'm a basically a non-musical person, classical, pop, or otherwise.

Government spending on the arts is risky, same as any other. I specifically mentioned Canadian and French spending because I liked some of the stuff that came out of that.

Between Big Government and Clear Channel, I strongly prefer Big Government. Even within the U.S., C.C. has a strangling effect, all nationalism aside.

My opinion is that both of them is better than either one alone, and more independent venues would be better than fewer, nationally and internationally, and that if government intervention actually increases the diversity, even by one unit, then all the libertarians in the world can go fuck themselves blue.

1) NOBODY objects to the Simpsoms - in fact most Europeans would agree that it is one of the best TV programmes ever made.

2) Having many relations involved in the Culture industries I can say that the general European (artists) attitude is more of a desire to keep the infrastructure necessary to produce TV, Film etc. rather than protectionism per se. The attitude has some validity from an artistic/cultural point of view and I have more of less given up trying to explain economics to artists (but when you get someone who wants to understant it is great - can lead to some good ideas about better ways to achieve the desired end)

-----it's about the ominpresence of programming that undermines local culture and identity-----

My larger point, from the thread that was part of, is that worrying about your culture being undermined is the realm of moral busybodies. Even if it's on all the channels for a month, you can't force people to adopt cultural attitudes they actually find loathsome. It's at best silly and patronizing to suggest that that bunch of people over there are acting too western or too white -- they're acting as western as they feel like, absent some other coercion -- and at worst downright racist to claim that there's a "too western" or "too white" that one might be. But then I'm far out on the "nationalism is between stupid and downright dangerous" end of the world.

-----Is James S. Coleman Battista even right to say that we're the borg here?-----

I was just admitting to the tendency of the US to take Italian food, shift it into NY- and Chicago-style pizza, and send Pizza Hut back to Italy (assuming there are any there).

I have to admit that when I read Battista's first response, I wasn't aware that it was supposed to be powerful and effective. I though it was some sort of parody.

It's neither. It's an offhand remark on a chatty listserv, which is all it's supposed to be.

"""Thanks to the economies of scale [bla bla bla] Bangladesh, apparently, pays around $25k per episode of the Simpsons. That's a program that costs c.$1m dollars per episode to make [...]There's no way local program producers can compete with that. """

Didn't anyone notice the obvious? Outsource this baby to Bangladesh immediately! I tremble at the thought of little brown children drawing cartoons in Bangladesh sweatshops! Try to compete with that.

"if government intervention actually increases the diversity, even by one unit, then all the libertarians in the world can go fuck themselves blue"

to which an obvious rejoinder is that if free
flow of cultural ideas and products increases
diversity in Bangladesh, even if by only one
American produced goofy reality show, then all
the protectionists in the world....

As to the charges of populism, the answer is
obvious if you think about it.

But the real puzzle is, why is NPR so good
(despite some flaws) and PBS sucks so hard
(despite a few exceptions)?

I am still waiting for someone to say what they think about the Canadian and French laws, which seem like good things to me.

W. Stafford: "I think the problem is that we have been able to deal intellectually and culturally with the increasing alienation that consumption of culture brings, the fundamental shift in the nature of participation in culture."

He might appreciate this from todays Times:
Since then he has had 20 surgical procedures and expects another 4. And Amir, who as a woman was married twice to men - his second husband helped with the transition and remains a good friend - is now engaged to marry a woman.

"I love my life and I'm happy, as long as no one knows about my past identity," said Amir, who asked that his full name not be published. "No one has been more helpful than the judge, who was a cleric and issued the permit for my operation."

After decades of repression, the Islamic government is recognizing that some people want to change their sex, and allowing them to have operations and obtain new birth certificates.--- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/international/middleeast/02iran.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1091454341-pDiUzgf5nKFmu2mdf04OQg

This questions are about cultural autonomy itself, not movies and TV. Islam for example is a language system, a system of problems and a history of attempts at their solution. To treat the reactionary anti-modern impulses in Islam or christianity as a gordian knot to be cut in the name of 'freedom' is both impractical and immoral. There are any exceptions to any rule, but the opinions of the glibly ignorant do none of us any good. In this case it's only a matter of time before an Islamic jurist following the logic of these decisions makes the case for the acceptance in religious terms for homosexuality.

As regard libertarianism etc. because there is a connection:
The German cheese industry is destroying the artisanal cheese-makers in Switzerland by buying up all the milk from local dairies. Is this freedom? Is it freedom to make it difficult for the average American to afford a decent tomato? Is it freedom to say that only the wealthy or their lieutenants should be able to afford a decent glass of wine? So Brad DeLong can drink Margaux and the peasantry- now urban proletariat- are stuck with Carlo Rossi?

I remember having a drink with a friend of mine, a woodworker, who was born into the lower middle class in a small town in southern France. his father was an accounting clerk. We were talking as we often do about alcohol. He said his father didn't drink much: maybe a glass of wine after dinner, "with the cheese." His use of the definite article made me smile.

A final note. The Simpsons have a lot in common with Jerry Springer. That's why the show is so popular. It's lowbrow and highbrow. The democracy of conflict produces such things, in this country or in Iran. Go see a Kiarostami movie.

Libertarians and technocrats have so much in common. It amuses me how much they refuse to admit it.

radek: "Whenever the issue of aesthetics in a capitalist system arises it seems relevant to remind people exactly how the market functions and what it does. Snooty college educated types often complain that the market appeals to "the lowest common denominator" and point to culprits like Jerry Springer show or the vomit inducing slew of reality shows. Well, it doesn't. It appeals not to the LCD, but rather to the AVERAGE."

As a measure of the public's taste, US television is a horrible instrument because of the distorting effects of the system we have ended up with. If we had a real a la carte delivery system where consumers paid directly for the content they watched, you could make such judgements. But we don't have that kind of system. We have several conflicting sets of firms all attempting to maximize their own profits, many of them with at best an indirect linkage to the viewing public. The "real" goal of the market system for television in the US is not to deliver the content which is most desired by the LCD viewer, or even the average viewer, but to deliver viewer eyeballs in particular consumer demographics for advertising purposes.

Snooty college educated types (like me) are prohibitively expensive to reach for that purpose. The costs of content to attract me to the TV more often and a book less often are too high -- good writing, good acting and good production values are expensive when compared to a reality show. Given infinite free bandwidth (so that delivery costs tend to zero) and an a la carte payment system (so that I pay directly for what I choose to watch and no more), we might find that US taste is considerably "better" than we currently think.

Zizka: OK, I'll bite. I think of local-content laws as a necessary-evil type of thing. By appearances, US content firms produce primarily for the US market, and take from foreign markets whatever they can get. For relatively low-cost items (like a few or more year old shows that have already paid off, have been written off, or are not of the big-star-big-salary variety), this can take the form of dumping at marginal cost. Music ditto.

Local artists/producers then have to compete with the large paid-off archives of US firms. Where this is considered undesirable, e.g. because of fears of cultural imperialism, or loss of local culture otherwise, local content can either be subsidized or legislated. I think they are doing both, mandating content quotas, and funding of local art. There are of course abuses, as nobody can force local stations to fill the quota with quality, but if everybody has a quota, they can compete on quality within the quota. And there is a lot of local Jerry Springer type stuff in Europe as well.

In pre-Y2K Germany, I have largely seen a lot of reruns of US shows and out-of-cinema movies, although surprisingly a more diverse and recent selection on the movie front than here in the US. But then Germany didn't really have a lot of cable and thus pay-per-view penetration then.

Perhaps in the near future, as computers and bandwidth get cheaper, we'll replace TV broadcasting (partially, at least. Well, more than now, at least.) with streaming-video websites, and people will be able to watch a lot more stuff, and Zizka can watch his French and Canadian programming, and the Bengalis can watch their Simpsons, and I can watch my porno^H^H^H^H^H enlightening, educational programming on string theory and evolutionary biology and that... kind.. of stuff, without the homogenization fears.

As for French and Canadian local content laws, I don't know enough about them to have an informed opinion.

Julian, I wasn't asking you to fine-tune the laws. Should there be any such laws at all? France and Canada were menat as (non-hypothetical) examples, not specific case studies.

I like the laws, but I'm a free trade skeptic and only a limited free-marketer. One point I'm trying to make is that media are, and are not commodities like sugar or rice. If we feel that media protectionism is OK whereas sugar protectionism isn't, why?

To me this links with the question of, "Why are the news media so bad?" Perhaps news should not be organized on the commodity model, especially when it is controlled by big financial groups with interests affected by news reporting.

Michael Cain says "As a measure of the public's taste, US television is a horrible instrument because of the distorting effects of the system we have ended up with. If we had a real a la carte delivery system where consumers paid directly for the content they watched, you could make such judgements."

Some TV has special value because of its real-time nature (mainly news and sports). Set those aside. Then you can get a good sense of what people would want, a la carte, by looking at DVD rentals and sales.

Regarding the French & Canadian content laws, I think they are a mistake. It seems clear that they subsidized a lot of poor movie making for several decades, where the movie-makers were spoiled and uncompetitive. OTOH, you can't spend all that money without getting some value. In addition, when Hollywood began internationalizing productions, places with some indigenous movie production capabilities had a leg up.

Tom: "It seems clear that [the French & Canadians] subsidized a lot of poor movie making for several decades, ..."

Huh? I don't know what your concept of "poor" is, but this strikes me as a bit preposterous.

Of course as in any activity, only the "top" X% are good, with "top" in the sense of artistic value, not box-office revenue. The same applies to US movies. Whenever people are set loose on projects where there are no clearly defined success criteria, a lot of crap will result, together with some amount of good stuff.

Also that you are not getting something out of French movies doesn't mean that the French won't.

Zizka: Culture is not the same kind of commodity as other things. The French government/society probably doesn't care much whether they eat French shrimp or Asian shrimp, French sugar or American sugar, etc. Any protectionism there is not to ensure the population consumes local products, but to give local producers income support.

But they probably do care whether they watch/listen to art that relates to _their_ lifestyle and social environment, as opposed to others. Protectionism in that area _is_ meant to protect the local product.

You can argue that is misguided, and whether they watch French or US shows on TV matters just as much as which sugar they eat, but then that's for them to decide.

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Didn't anyone notice the obvious? Outsource this baby to Bangladesh immediately! I tremble at the thought of little brown children drawing cartoons in Bangladesh sweatshops! Try to compete with that.
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This is already being done in the Philippines and China. Animation, being labor-intensive, finds the lowest bidder. Comics, cartoons in TV and movies, there's already lots of outsourcing going on.

Why isn't culture, as "intellectual property" simply a commodity?

Of course, French agricultural protectionism (or Japanese) is a way of preserving the cultural values of the countryside, and often a mystique grows up around the local products themselves.

This assumes that American series, this includes The Simpsons, are prime time material in the rest of the world, which i don't think they are. They are mostly used as filler

Zizka: It would be even better if you elaborated your thoughts on what is implied by the questions, instead of leaving the labor to us.

Culture, in a broad definition, is what defines the "identity" of a society. Thus it comprises not just art, but also everything that relates to patterns of social interaction at all levels of society.

It is perhaps needless to say that any culture anyplace is not monolithic, formally defined, or static. It is constantly evolving, in some aspects for the better, some for the worse, and some sideways. Various interest groups inside (and perhaps outside!) the society would like to define and influence the culture(s) to their own liking and values, and that includes "protection" from certain external influences that may be considered undesirable or destabilizing.

How this relates to the concept of culture possibly being a commodity you have to explain to me.

One could even make the somewhat inappropriate analogy of an individual who wants to retain control of its own thought process and ways of doing things, by choosing what information input it would like to enjoy, and resisting to suggestions by others how to go about its business in a "better" way. Society being essentially comprised out of individuals, with hierarchical feedback loops, individual preferences somehow find their way into social preferences and vice versa; not necessarily in the same form though.

c: Except for those TV or radio programs that have a clear mission (promoting scientific/cultural/politic enlightenment, etc.), most of the programming is "filler" for the advertisements. Before I gave up on watching TV, I couldn't even make out a concept of "prime time" in the cable channels that I got. I suppose prime time must be around 20:00 or so, when most of the adult population is at home, and perhaps finished with dinner.

There seems to be a presumption that shows like the Simpsons are avidly watched in developing countries....in India shows like the Simpsons/Cartoon Network (mainly animation) are offered only in the top 20 or so urban centres on cable....their ratings in the overall population are insignificant....a TRP of 1.8 is the highest I've seen for the Simpsons in the top 6 Indian cities.

I don't have a way of checking this out ...but I suspect Indian serials have higher avg. ratings in the UK (im reasonably sure of this), and comprable ratings in the US, to shows like the Simpsons in India . Hong Kong potboilers are much more popular than US serials in India (if ad rates are anything to go by)

What is interesting - at least with my experience of Indian channels - is how they are spreading to geographies with significant ethnic Indian populations, like SE Asia, the Carribean etc. and how the majority populations in those regions are becoming viewers.

cm, you are right that any programming outside the advertising is just filler but i was more alluding that on a mainstream channel 70% of programming only generates 10% of turnover and that that 70% is just filler

cm, you are right that any programming outside the advertising is just filler but i was more alluding that on a mainstream channel 70% of programming only generates 10% of turnover and that that 70% is just filler

As said, why not dump the Simpsons on whatever market will take it, production costs must be more or less a sunk cost at that point. And surely there are other choices-would the Simpsons be even be popular- it's not Europe. What else is available- soaps? Baywatch is standard fare. War movies featuring red-haired American evil-doers? Nature programs? News?

c: In case you are still reading this from the archives -- what do you mean by "70% of programming only generates 10% of turnover and that that 70% is just filler"? That 30% of the programming brings in 90% of the ads revenue? Your point is well taken, anyway. My perspective was just a bit more extreme.