After a couple of decades watching telecom regulators and interest groups crush consumers and competition, Tom is a bit of a pessimist. But this time, there's reason to hope. Two million unhappy satellite subscribers were enough to get the law changed last time. By 2002, there will be millions more. They will demand, with Smith, the right to buy what they want.
That's not just a change in interest. It's a change in ideas. Telecom regulation was built on the assumption that experts knew best how to allocate service. Cable monopolies added "democracy" to the equation, giving local politicians--those closest to the people, after all--the right to determine how, when, and from whom citizens could get TV service. Americans still support expert regulation in some areas, and they certainly support democratic politics. But they also want individual choice and individual control. They don't want officials making inherently private decisions for them, including decisions about which products and services to buy. The more potential choices technology creates, the more people expect the right to exercise those choices.
The political and media establishments haven't quite realized that consumers want the right to control their own lives, not simply to ask favors from officials. After seven decades of complex and esoteric regulations, it's hard to grasp the idea that communications technologies might be too quickly evolving and too important to individuals' lives to be governed by central control. Reporters like Newsweek's Johnnie Roberts still see the answer as more government control. "When you find that you can't get the local news because of a business dispute between these giants, then Washington is clearly apt to scrutinize these businesses and whether they want them to get even bigger," he said on The Charlie Rose Show. This analysis, which encapsulates the conventional wisdom, gets the story all wrong.
Viewers don't care how big media companies are. They care whether they can dump those they don't like, whether because of lousy service or because of crummy shows. They want the right to exit--the fundamental right that has been lost in 70 years of "public interest" regulation.
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