Last month, I wrote in the Libertarian Standard about Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling and the end of the Golden Age of Television — and about Serling’s preference for government interference over that of the advertisers.
Last week the Freeman published my article "TV’s Third Golden Age," about our present era in which quality dramas are moving from cable TV to the Internet, where they finally enjoy less interference from both advertisers and government regulation. The Internet is freer than television ever was.
In that article, I also give a little more background on JFK’s assault against the TV industry and how the deregulation trend of the 1970s and ’80s produced TV’s second "golden age." (Can you guess what brought it to an end?)
Because I mention the University of Virginia’s Paul Cantor in the Freeman article (as I did in "The Golden Age at Twilight" and "Price Theory a la Rupert Murdoch" here at TLS, as well as in "Did Capitalism Give Us the Laugh Track?" in the Freeman), I emailed Professor Cantor a link to the article.
Having just returned from the annual meeting of the Property and Freedom Society in Bodrum, Turkey, Cantor wrote this wonderful reply (which I quote with his permission):
This is a terrific article and thanks for sending it to me (and mentioning me in it). I’m glad to see that Thompson seems to be on board with us on these issues. I own his book but haven’t read it yet. It’s nearing the top of my "to read" pile, and you’ve pushed it up a few places. It’s good that we’re not alone on these issues.
As I recall what you wrote about radio, all this could have happened back in the 1920s if a subscriber model had been adopted for radio instead of the broadcasting model. Essentially, we’re finally getting where we should have been in the first place — real consumers for TV. I notice that young people now have no interest in seeing TV as broadcasted. They want direct access and know how to get it. When I was at Hans-Hermann Hoppe‘s recent conference in Turkey, I was amazed at how current the young people from central and eastern Europe were with American TV — maybe one episode behind on BREAKING BAD. When I asked: "Is BREAKING BAD broadcast in your country?" they stared at me as if I were saying: "Do dinosaurs still roam the plains of Poland?" They were getting the show — well, frankly, I don’t know how they were getting the show, but it was definitely online and quite possibly illegal.
Paul