On Television

...Meanwhile, as some of the brethren relax in the sun they might want to start pondering my own suit-for the return of the public airwaves Richard Wald of ABC News once explained to me that each member of the public was allotted one wave By combining them, we can do something I speak for five waves (my immediate family) when I suggest that fraud was involved in the giving away of the airwaves m 1924 My grandparents' waves were among those deceitfully taken, too...

...On one side you have the Hollywood producers, who want extra bucks from anyone using a video cassette recorder (VCR) to look at one of their productions They favor a royalty tax on VCRs and/or tapes On the other side you nave the manufacturers of the sets and tapes, who ridicule this demand as noncommercial and unfair...

...The crux of this controversy has always been money Greed Two gangs of millionaires slugging it out over who would rake in even more zillions of dollars...

...It was General David Sarnoff himself-the founding father of RCA and NBC-who said in testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee in 1924 "The air belongs to the people Its main highways should be maintained for the main travel To collect a tax from the radio audience would be a reversion to the days of toll roads and bridges, to the days when schools were not public or free, and when public libraries were unknown " Sarnoff also believed it unthinkable that there would ever be commercials on radio (and by inference television, for the Radio Act of 1924 established the ground rules for the newer medium...

...As the litigation dragged on, though, many other legal conundrums were raised, such as who is more guilty, the taper or the person who buys the unauthorized tape...

...The cable business plugging into signals from distant stations without paying is another instance of larceny Then the viewers started pulling a similar trick on cable companies The tats have been taking all the pay TV services (HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc ) from the satellites with illegal converter equipment purchased from cable TV installed The cable pirates may be worse than the Taiwan book pirates and the Pittsburgh Pirates Of course, there are also those who take advantage of public TV without coughing up their membership dues, which is only a crime in the eyes of the public station's management...

...The Court's decision to take a powder left two powerful opponents in the entertainment industry hanging by the thumbs The champagne bottles on both sides were waiting to be uncorked that morning Press conferences had been called by the combatants, each with victory statements ready to go Now that the justices have gone fishing, the case will have to be argued anew in the tall Everyone will have to pay legal tees again I hope the very thought ruins the summers of the TV and movie biggies involved...

...We had no idea the broadcasters were going to profit so excessively from exploiting our property, or do so much harm My suit, in addition to a return of the airwaves, seeks treble punitive damages-as compensation for bringing down SAT scores, destroying conversation, causing my summer slacks not to fit because of the endless snack food commercials late at night, and all the other ills of society Retroactive to 1924, naturally The Sony-Betamax case is simply the top of the rotten barrel...

...It is hard to know who to root for in this tussle Since the Court's nonruling, those producer yutzes have been brooding in their sand castles at Malibu Beach, draped in black, their flags at half-mast The delay is taking brie out of the mouths of their starving kids, the cocaine out of their noses Let them eat crepe suzettes, I say...

...TV is today's steal industry, and the VCR court battle is a parable for capitalism Except that the weak won't fall by the wayside after the Supreme Court finally rules They will tumble into their deck chairs at the Malibu Colony...

...At the time the suit was first filed, the legality of videotaping seemed to be the sole murky area We were faced with the specter of the Gestapo breaking into homes and arresting everyone caught using tapes without paying royalties Or with enforcement of the payments by a videotape fraud unit of the National Endowment for the Arts, perhaps assisted by the FCC and the FBI's video narks I had visions of people disguising VCRs as washing machines, word processors, planters It would be done with taste, the way the law-abiding element in New York City walks around drinking beer wrapped in brown paper bags...

...Our greatest visionary in TV thought and sciences, the late Marshall McLuhan, could not foresee that video games and word processors would be so popular Nowhere was it hinted that some of our finest minds would be addicted to matching wits with the tube The Court should know, for example, that one of our most famous literary critics-for the New York Times, no less-is a closet Pacman player The electronic revolution is coming faster than ideas at a brainstorming session in Beverly Hills now The Supreme Court quaked at the legal implications of these supercharged innovations Smoke was coming out of the justices' ears, an inside source reports...

...Whatever, the TV industry does not present an edifying spectacle It reminds me of a pack of highwaymen all plundering each other This morally sickening climate is caused by watching television itself, I think, but that is a different story...

...The manufacturers aren't exactly sweet hearts cither You can bet their share of the money at stake will never finance the careers of promising young film makers or sitcom creators at some Yaddo-like colony out West Nor will Sony and others mount a campaign to correct defects in the copyright laws that penalize writers or their families after 28 years...

...Identifying the wronged party is also slippery because TV and movies have always been riddled with people stealing from each other This nonstop theft begins from the moment someone has an idea Producers, for example, regularly copy and profit from what is already successful on the air Try making a list of the unauthorized ripoffs of I Love Lucy or All in the Family and you'll see what I mean A show can hardly reach the tube unless it is lifted from another one Nobody wants to stick his neck out financially with an original project Scoring a breakthrough is tougher still these days in the movies, where almost every title has to have a Roman numeral after it, as in Jaws IV or Psycho III...

...The issue is serious, but not catastrophic Basically it is a matter of deciding how the swag will be divided Sony and other VCR folks could pay the producers The question becomes, will they take these charges out of their profits from selling the machines at excessive prices9 Rots of ruck' The royalty will probably be added to the costs of the tape Some option-we pay, or we pay The public will lose, as it always has in its dealings with the broadcasters The public's share has been steadily declining since 1924, when the airwaves were "stolen," so to speak, or given away, as they laughingly said back then...

...Is somebody who is merely watching an illegal act of taping or playing back an accessory to the crime, a sort of a spare speaker attached to the hi fi ? Every VCR could be a source of law-lessness, I thought Tape pirating would be the next fashionable crime, after smoking pot, not waiting for a red light, jaywalking, cashing in coupons at the market, taking free record offers Now in every home young people would be able to learn unlawfulness right at their mother and father's varicose knees...

...In my opinion, the case is so complex and so fraught with problems about the nature of culture, communications and society that the Court should have imposed a ban on any further technological advances, and then gone fishing We have been unable to digest what has happened to date with the rapid invention of taping equipment, word processors, video games, not to mention developments in cable TV...

...Although the legal status of home videotaping is moot, sales of VCRs have boomed In 1976 when the suit was filed they were selling at a rate of 30,000 per year, and today that figure is up to half a million People have been purchasing them as status symbols They are not actually taping anything or buying what others have taped They all have their machines on "pause," waiting for the Supreme Court rules some year...

...Until the Court figures things out, everybody should turn in their home video machines at the local police station to protect themselves from crime Be sure to get a receipt from the stolen property clerk...

...Idea pilferage is only petty larceny The industry steals money outright from its creative people, too Actor James Garner is currently suing Universal Studios, the plaintiff in the Betamax case, for some $22 5 million Garner claims he was rooked out of profits from the Rockford Files TV series when Universal inflated expenses, thereby seriously diluting the 37 5 per cent of the net he was supposed to receive under the terms of his 1973 contract Remember, this is James Garner feeling aggrieved, not some poor schnook trying to collect his first million from a successful series The standard warning in the industry is never agree to a piece of the net Profits do not exist out there Studios add all kinds of overhead, such as damage potential from tidal waves or a future slippage of the San Andreas fault Even the bill for cocaine is often slipped into a show's budget...

...On Television THE VIDEOTAPE TANOLE BY MARVIN KITMAN loved the latest development in the so-called Sony-Betamax case, the most controversial item on the Supreme Court docket this past term The justices were to rule on whether the use of home video recorders violates Federal copyright law The original suit, brought against the Sony Corporation by Universal Studios and Walt Disney Productions ,dates back to 1976 A surprise twist on July 6 stunned Supreme Court watchers The eight old guys and a gal opted for a vacation They escaped to the country, perhaps to relax with their tapes of Return of the Jedi and a few rounds of Donkey Kong and Zaxxon-a dignified way of handling a case that has billions of dollars riding on it...