Cable's silver lining.

• Author: Rapping, Elayne
• Position: Cable television - Culture - Column

Bruce Springsteen was the first to put it in a song: "57 Channels and Nothin' On." But we've all been talking about it ever since the great promise of a "cable-television revolution" turned out to be, for the most part, an endless stream of third-rate imitations and reruns of traditional network and Hollywood fare.

And now that the hype from the media hardware and entertainment producers has escalated exponentially--with the promise of interactive media, information "highways," and no less than 500 TV channels to choose from--the anger and despair have escalated along with it.

"Who wants 500 channels of Brady Bunch reruns?" we are all moaning to each other. "Who wants a networkful of smarmy Beltway insiders arguing about who said what to whom at the latest White House reception?"

Well, call me addicted. Call me braindead. Call me slap-happy from too many years of media watching. But I see a silver lining beneath the clouds of moronic media overkill. Not only, I would argue, is there quite a bit more that's worth watching, now that cable and its gimmicky spinoffs have arrived (although you need to learn how to find it, of course); there is even something positive in the endless spate of reruns and recyclings of classic and not-so-classic programming from the past.

Before continuing with what may seem like a hard-sell argument, let me first place my discussion of the politics of media consumption--for that is what I am talking about--in the broader context of the entire information-highway debate, as it is mostly, and correctly, understood by leftists. In the brave new world of interactive media, cyberspace networking, and boundless masses of electronically stored information, our greatest concern should, of course, be access to and control of the channels of communication. The ability to produce and send messages and cultural products is obviously the most important issue for those of us concerned with preserving and broadening our rights to free speech and personal and collective expression.

The flip side of this concern is the need to ensure that the power unleashed by the new technology is not used to infringe further upon our democratic rights to freedom and privacy. Less ominous, perhaps, but nonetheless chilling, is the prospect--very much in the works as we speak--of Government-regulated corporate control of cyberspace, whether through the cable industry, the telephone companies, or some giant merger of both.

While The Wall Street Journal, the business section of The New York Times, and Vice President Al Gore--with his oxymoronic promise of a largely deregulated, market-driven, "universal-service" system--would have us believe otherwise, the fact is that any of the options currently in play will make it difficult for most alternative, community, and grass-roots producers and users to get onto the highway at all. For media activists, then, the fight for access and democratic control is paramount.

But there is another issue we ought to be giving more attention to as well: media literacy and education. For whatever happens in the realm of access and production, there will still be 500 channels offering databases and libraries filled...