Beyond Terrestrial Radio: A Prelude to a Philosophy of Future Media

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BEYOND TERRESTRIAL RADIO:

A PRELUDE TO A PHILOSOPHY OF FUTURE MEDIA

By

ANDREW WHITACRE

A Project Submitted to the Faculty of

Wake Forest University

In Fulfillment of the Requirements

For Honors Distinction

in the Department of Communication

April 24, 2002

Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Approved By:

Ananda Mitra ________________________________

Examining Committee:

Geoffrey Baym ________________________________

Jill McMillan ________________________________

Ananda Mitra ________________________________



Introduction

On September 25, 2001, XM Satellite Radio (XM) launched a service to provide

paying subscribers with radio that they would traditionally receive free of charge. With in

hand an $80 million Federal Communications Commission license to broadcast its

signals via satellite rather than through a network of ground-based transmitters, XM had

raised $1.1 billion to launch two Boeing-made satellites and to build a 60,000 square-foot

broadcasting headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Colker T1). XM also secured deals with

electronics manufacturers and auto-makers to make certain the public can buy XM-ready

receivers, and by pouring $100 million into a preliminary advertising campaign, it made

sure the public would know about this new, “revolutionary” technology (Taub G1).

What was supposed to be revolutionary was that this new conception of radio would

financially support its 100, genre-specific channels with almost no advertising within

their programming (see appendix for full channel listing). Instead, the commercial-free

programming is funded directly by the listener through subscription fees.1

From its nationwide rollout in November to the beginning of 2002, XM had

signed up more than 30,000 subscribers, making satellite radio the fastest-selling piece of

audio equipment in twenty years—topping even compact disc and DVD players when

they were first made available (XM Satellite Radio “XM Ranks”). Thus far, market

response to the new service has been extremely positive. XM signed up those thirty

thousand customers despite an economy still in recession during the 2001 holiday season,

and the company immediately received their customers’ wide endorsement. 94 percent

1 About thirty percent of XM’s channels are entirely commercial-free at present, and most have minimaladvertising in any case.

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of respondents to a Greystone Communications survey described the technology as

“excellent” and 99 percent regarded the $10-per-month charge a “good” or “excellent”

value (“XM Ranks”). XM expects to sell hundreds of thousands of more units in the next

year, as car companies like General Motors make the radios available in their 2003

model-year automobiles.

Rationale

One could ask why this development is so important. He or she could answer that

it is at least interesting for the obvious reason that satellite radio stands so much in

contrast to traditional, terrestrial AM/FM radio. Terrestrial broadcasting, first of all, is

limited substantially by the curvature and topography of the earth, for if a station wishes

to reach listeners farther than a few dozen miles away, it must replicate and rebroadcast

its signals through ground-based transmitters (“FM Transmitter Kits”). Secondly, also in

contrast to current satellite radio, the majority of terrestrial broadcasting is greatly

dependent upon mid-program advertising as a source of revenue (Boehlert). Finally,

unlike XM, which has 82 of its 100 channels centralized in a single block of studios in

one building in Washington, D.C., terrestrial broadcasters have to depend very much

upon conglomeration of many individual stations across the United States (Boehlert).

That is, ground-based radio, in order to maximize efficiencies, conducts a practice called

conglomeration by buying and consolidating many disparate stations; it then centralizes

the management and programs the stations’ content only to the two or three most popular

genres. Ultimately, as a combination of the three differences above, the content of

terrestrial radio can be greatly affected: in order for a conglomerate to overcome the

limits of geography while delivering its advertisers the biggest audience possible, the

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conglomerate literally replicates its programming in the most popular format (e.g.,

country or classic rock) across the entire nation. It therefore takes little investigation to

understand what this type of media system could potentially mean for diversity in music:

the combination of terrestrial limits and consumer and advertiser demands compels

terrestrial broadcasters to make their programming incredibly uniform. More intriguing,

however, are the questions of what this traditional media system means in light of a new

one—a challenger—especially if this new media system has a describable effect on

culture, and vice versa.

Theoretical Consequences

It is at this point that the development of satellite radio becomes quite important,

instead of remaining merely an interesting story. The success of any new medium means

much more than its financial outflanking of an entrenched competitor; rather, it means the

introduction of a radically different system, of a new way to get audio content to a

listener, of an evolved content-medium relationship. It would be nothing short of a

cultural and media transformation. Necessarily it must be, if indeed media, like any

technology or other extension of human action, are shaped by and represent culture

(McLuhan, Understanding Media 55).

Many different theories within the study of mass communication can help one

understand this systemic change, not the least of which include theories like Marshall

McLuhan’s thoughts on the powers of individual media and John Fiske’s interpretation of

cultural studies and the popular creation of meaning (Understanding Media 63;

Television Culture 1). McLuhan, for example, helps show how radio conglomerates

attempt to turn music radio into as “warm” a medium as possible (Understanding Media

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24-5). Conglomerates create warm media, which do not need much audience

involvement to complete the meaning, by trying to fill up radio programming with so

much information—fast music, fast talking, music in the background of advertisements

and disc jockey interludes—that the listener becomes detached just enough not to “touch

that dial,” but attached enough to pay at least cursory attention to the advertising (333).

McLuhan explains how warm media ask much less of their audience than their cooler

counterparts: cool media, like a cartoon or the telephone, invite their audiences to engage

the content, to be critical and questioning, to attempt to fill in cognitive gaps (25). In

dealing more with content, John Fiske nevertheless comes to some similar conclusions as

McLuhan. Conglomeration of media and homogenization of substance leads potentially

to the creation of a disinterested audience by allowing one segment of society to limit the

mediated cultural options of another (Fiske, Television Culture 316). This latter segment

will respond, Fiske argues, by interpreting content in its own way—in a way not intended

by the former, medium-controlling segment (316-9).

While McLuhan and Fiske present extremely nuanced understandings of systemic

changes in media, and while the present study will draw greatly from these two,

something still lacks in being able to present a full and accurate account of how satellite

radio presents a challenge to terrestrial radio and the culture it supposedly reflects.

Similarly, other models of how media systems work, namely Marxism and capitalism,

from which McLuhan, Fiske and many others like Dean Alger, Robert McChesney and

David Trend draw their motivation, also fall a bit short in being able to explain the long-

term cultural change that media system-change can create (McLuhan, Understanding

Media 41; Fiske, Television Culture 309; Alger 24; McChesney 289; Trend 35).

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Traditional interpretations of Marxism, generally, fail to explain how a business venture,

like satellite radio, can produce both quality and diversity; traditional understandings of

capitalism, equally, fail to explain the possibility for value-creation—that is, the

possibility that producers and consumers could together create a common morality, a

world based on common moral needs that somehow limit the scope and aims of

capitalism itself.

While Marxism and capitalism can be extremely helpful for understanding the

relationships between portions of society and for understanding the reasons media

companies are founded and succeed, something more is needed to understand the

relationship of society to itself, as something unified and self-referential, and why media

companies are able to be integral to evolutionary change in culture. This “something

more” is the philosophy of a grandfather of cultural studies, the philosopher who first

successfully placed “culture” and “life” higher even than truth and rights: Friedrich

Nietzsche.

Nietzsche’s interpretation of history and culture has subtly been used in various

forms in nearly every major work of mass communication theory, from Walter

Lippmann’s Public Opinion and McLuhan’s Understanding Media to Michel Foucault’s

Archaeology of Knowledge and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent (Lippmann

42; McLuhan 93; Foucault 13-4; Chomsky and Herman, 70). Nietzsche speaks of life as

being the necessary goal of those strong enough to pursue it: life —not money and

efficiency, not equality and brotherhood, but rather an ever-vague internal motivation to

create a world around oneself that represents one’s innermost desires for that world.

Plainly put, for media such as satellite radio this means that a society will eventually

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demand a media system—the very system that creates representations of that society—

that fulfills not only their basic content needs but also their moral needs for how that

content is delivered to them.2

This very general outlining of Nietzsche and satellite radio sets the context for the

argument in the present work. A closer examination of Nietzsche and his concepts in the

following sections will help make clearer the connection between him and more

traditional communication scholars, namely Marshall McLuhan and John Fiske. The

three of them viewed together will help provide an adequate account of how media and

culture are related and how those relations cause media and culture to evolve. Once one

understands that dynamic in terms of Nietzsche, McLuhan, and Fiske, one can begin to

appreciate the changes taking place in radio today, namely the introduction of a different

system for the medium called radio. In short, nothing better explains this potential

change in culture and cultural representation through satellite radio than reintroducing

and applying the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Background on Nietzsche

Since mass communication scholars rarely invoke Nietzsche directly and

therefore perhaps have forgotten or never learned of his context, one would do well to

briefly discuss Nietzsche’s back-story. Born outside Leipzig, Germany, in 1844,

Friedrich Nietzsche had already proved his staggering talents at age twenty-four by

becoming chair of classical philology at the University of Basel, Switzerland (Kaufmann

2 A wonderful illustration of this phenomenon is the continued, though increasingly rare, resistance bycertain Native American tribes to the printed word. In these cases, the printed word simply does not meettheir cultural needs for communication; indeed, many fear that passing on tribal history through print willcompromise not only the content of that history but also the values of community and storytelling that thathistory advocates (Zolbrod 1-5).

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20). Before his mental breakdown in 1889, he produced wide-ranging works on

philosophy, rhetoric, history, culture, and art for nearly twenty strong years, the best-

known publications being The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (first

part published in 1883) and The Will to Power (collection of notes, published

posthumously in 1901).

Fellow Germans tended to be the most immediate influences on Nietzsche.

Arthur Schopenhauer became one of Nietzsche’s earliest inspirations when the latter

stumbled upon the former’s writings in a used bookstore. Schopenhauer, though

ultimately spurned by Nietzsche, attested to the primacy of the will, a primacy that

Nietzsche adopted with a finer distinction (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 25).

Nietzsche’s desire to form a philosophy that highlighted the virtues of life itself found

nourishment not only in the philosopher Schopenhauer but also in artists like Goethe and

Wagner. As with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche had his differences with Goethe and with

Wagner, whom Nietzsche believed betrayed his potential for greatness (177-180).

Greece’s Socrates, though a huge influence like the Germans above, proved to be

Nietzsche’s biggest philosophical nemesis. In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy,

Nietzsche took up arms against Socrates—and therefore against most of European

thought—and fought a war against Socrates’ rationalism for the rest of his working life.

It has been argued that because Nietzsche traced so many of his theories back to the

Greeks, he was never fully able to escape the shadow of Socrates (Dannhauser 87).

Nietzsche of course was more than the sum of his influences. Like all

philosophers of his renown, Nietzsche has come to be associated with certain concepts

unique to him, all of which derivatively play role in the arguments to come. These

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concepts include his radical atheism—picked up in part from Schopenhauer—his

preference for history over reason as the best teacher, his dense writings on the “last

man” versus the “overman,” and his so-called perspectivalism, which has proven to be

his most lasting contribution (Kaufmann 14-19). This perspectivalism, which to put it

all-too-simply means to consider a concept from different angles, has been picked up by

Heidegger and Foucault, certainly by most every postmodernist, like Lyotard, and by

entire fields of study, such as cultural anthropology. These complex concepts make up a

large part of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and though for that reason they have been important

to enumerate here, further, slightly simpler Nietzschean ideas inform the present study.

For example, Nietzsche has been appropriated by communication scholars, beginning

with Kenneth Burke and Mikhail Bakhtin, who drew their respective theories on

perspective by incongruity and heteroglossia largely from Nietzsche (Whitacre 3). Their

theories on language and dialogue carried over to later scholars more associated with

mass communication, such as Marshall McLuhan, but Nietzsche’s direct influence has

largely ended there (McLuhan, The Medium Is the Massage 146).

Definition of Terms

The first step in bringing Nietzsche to bear directly on modern mass

communication studies is to refamiliarize the reader with some Nietzschean terms as they

relate to intuitively familiar communication and cultural concepts. In so doing, one can

lay the foundation for understanding how Nietzsche can in fact be valuable in interpreting

changes in culture and in media, as is the task of the present study.

Terminological group one: Life, Need, and Value.

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Nietzsche made himself very clear at a very early point that he felt one should

pour one’s efforts into nothing higher or lower than life. Being true to life immediately

denies the possibility of living with an afterlife in mind, and while this perhaps tickles the

interest primarily of theologians and metaphysicians, living for the sake of life itself has a

close relationship to media and culture as well. Nietzsche wrote that “culture can grow

and flourish only out of life [. . .] only give me life, then I will create a culture for you out

of it” (“Use and Disadvantage” 117, 120). This mode of thinking encourages people to

be actively creative by responding to their interior impulses and perceptions, thereby also

encouraging people to employ extensions of themselves—media—to affect change

according to these impulses and perceptions.3 Radio, like other media, serves life by

extending any one person’s ability to communicate his or her impulses, perceptions—or

on the larger scale, culture—beyond him- or herself.

These so-called impulses and perceptions can be more clearly translated as needs.

“This is a parable for each one of us,” Nietzsche writes. “[H]e must organize the chaos

within him by thinking back to his real needs” (“Use and Disadvantage” 123). From

within, individuals and cultures experience needs, or existential desires and cravings for

meaning. While the deepest logical readings of Nietzsche’s work show how thorny and

contradictory this issue of needs can be, it nevertheless provides a powerful explanatory

tool of cultural revolutions throughout history (Neumann 293). A commonly-known

interpretation, for example, is Hitler’s rise to power, which could be viewed as an

impossible occurrence without his exploitation of the German people’s existential needs

for physical survival and, more importantly, for self-worth, pride, and hope for the future.

3 The relationships between and within cultures can perhaps determine the extent to which individuals andcultures realize accurate expression of their needs. Fiske discusses this, but this important topic is a bit toolarge for the scope of this work (Television Culture 311-3).

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Likewise, collective needs have found historical expression in media developments such

as photography, which capped centuries of artistic striving for an accurate pictorial

representation of reality (Kirschner). If people need a way to share news, to be informed,

to express themselves musically, and to feel a connection to others, would it be a surprise

that a medium like radio would flourish?4

Pursuing the actualization of a need, however, means that one must quest for that

need at the expense of other needs. This necessity introduces the Nietzschean concept of

value. Nietzsche saw man as the only animal capable of attaching value to things,

people, events, etc., and thus he viewed cultural advancement as tied to these

indispensable inequalities in people and institutions:

Every enhancement of the type ‘man’ has so far been the work of an aristocratic

society . . . a society that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and

differences in value between man and man [. . .] the craving for an ever new

widening of distances within the soul itself, the development of higher, rarer,

more remote, further-stretching, more comprehensive states—in brief, simply the

enhancement of the type ‘man,’ the continual ‘self-overcoming of man’. . .

( Beyond Good and Evil 201)

Put another way, people will prefer one thing to another and will assign a higher value to

what they feel is better. For the present study, individuals and the cultures they make up

will assign values to different media, to different media institutions, and to different

content. According to Nietzsche, these values will coincide with their needs, which

themselves arise from a love of life. Satellite radio, then, if it meets certain needs better

4 At this point it should be acknowledged that the use of “needs” in this study is as clearly presumptive, thatis, in the way “inalienable rights” or “God is dead” is presumptive and self-evident. This means that anyhuman’s action—eating, riding a bike, playing guitar, creating democracy, committing suicide—is in thisthinking necessarily an extension of his or her needs.

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than terrestrial radio, will be destined to surmount it by virtue of people’s having placed

higher value on the satellite version. Even so-called “low culture” products arise from

certain existential needs, be they for entertainment, regularity, affirmation, superiority,

sexuality, etc. The balance in which a culture values these needs will tell one a lot about

that culture and where it wants to head.

Terminological group two: Cultural improvement and Revolution.

To Nietzsche, cultural improvement is the natural outcropping of individuals’

taking an active, creative interest in their own lives. The need for improvement of a

culture seizes all people, lest they be content with their lack of something higher, of

something to be overcome. Once a culture ceases striving, even if that merely means

becoming cynical, that culture cedes its vitality: “I love the great despisers,” Nietzsche’s

character Zarathustra concedes. “Man, however, is something that must be overcome”

(Thus Spoke Zarathustra 379). Media, in this sense, are the great tools for cultural

improvement. They become weapons for overcoming that which has come before,

including older, less valuable media.

This overcoming on the cultural level of course evokes the language of

revolution. While Nietzsche rarely speaks expressly of revolution, it is implicit in all of

the concepts above. “[Man’s] honesty, the strength and truthfulness of his character,

must at some point or other rebel against the state of things,” he writes, alluding not only

to the existence of belief in one’s own values but also the possibility of forging those

values into something new for the world, such as new media (“Use and Disadvantage”

123).

Terminological group three: Medium and Content.

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As with revolution, Nietzsche never addresses the concept of medium or media

head-on, though ruminations on media permeate his entire philosophy. Nietzsche denies

humanity’s ability to arrive at absolute truth not only because of the existence of that

truth is questionable but also because humanity must mediate their experience of the

world: through eyeballs and nerves, through the written word and history, through

airwaves ( Beyond Good and Evil 23-4). Nietzsche, like McLuhan later, was convinced

that the medium through which information passed was in fact just as, if not more,

important than that information itself. The nature of media could tell much about the

people who use them:

The laws of written style were then the same as those for spoken style; and these

laws depended partly on the amazing development and the refined requirements

of ear and larynx, partly on the strength, perseverance, and power of ancient

lungs. A period in the classical sense is above all a physiological unit, insofar as

it is held together by a single breath. Such periods as found in Demothenes and

Cicero, swelling twice and coming down twice, all within a single breath, are

delights for the men of antiquity who, from their own training, knew how to

esteem their virtue and how rare and difficult was the delivery of such a period.

We really have no right to the great period, we who are modern and in every

sense short of breath. ( Beyond Good and Evil 183)

So where people are shaped by their medium of choice, as Nietzsche says of the Greeks

and Germans, so are their values. Values shape media; media shape values. So because

media and their content are, in this way, deeply tautological, media become a people’s

primary way of representing themselves to one another.

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Therefore, as far as content goes, there is really no significant difference between

it and its medium. Changing content will necessarily change one’s experience of the

medium and vice versa—such as when one mediates a single idea through the written

word, first as a poem and then again as a short story. The medium (the written word)

remains the same, but within that medium so much content and so many other media

intermingle that it is useless to differentiate (McLuhan, Understanding Media 23): there

is the written word, there is the idea expressed in content; but the poetic version perhaps

evokes rhythmic and auditory media and content, and the short story version perhaps

evokes logical and imagistic media and content. Radio, as another example, forces one to

visualize its message; it therefore invites one to process its message as something to be

heard, to be imagined visually, and, if particularly adept, to be felt physically. Even

though at first glance they seem so similar as media, the medium of satellite radio

expresses different messages from the medium of terrestrial radio: having a wider variety

of programming, the ability to play songs longer than four minutes, commercials that are

few and far in between, disc jockeys who are not pressured by advertisers—all of these

things make the experience of satellite radio radically different from that of terrestrial

radio.5 As vital people express their needs and values through media for the sake of

improving their culture, both media and culture evolve. Just as with Nietzsche’s thoughts

on media and culture, the whole process is—perhaps frustratingly—self-referential and

circular. But it serves as an excellent explanation of satellite radio’s rise and has even

found a home within the work of other scholars, namely McLuhan and Fiske.

5 This even includes the unconglomerated portion of the AM radio system, which suffers from its own setof problems, such as, first, tiny broadcasting ranges and the subsequent inability to share a coherentmessage and, second, miniscule budgets and the subsequent poor programming quality (“FM Transmitter Kits”). Perhaps its only advantage over both XM and conglomerated FM is its ability to program tospecific localities.

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Relationship of McLuhan and Fiske to Nietzsche

In putting these terms together as something coherent and applicable, one can

make the nearly obvious argument that societal improvement requires at least three

things: valued content, a medium, and an audience. In other words, cultural improvement

requires something to be said, something to say it with, and someone to hear it. Certainly

this formula sounds simplistic, but when unpackaged as something Nietzschean, one sees

how it encompasses other major theories of mass communication and cultural change,

especially those similar to Nietzsche’s, such as McLuhan’s and Fiske’s.

Marshall McLuhan, in writing during the 1960s and 1970s, is perhaps the best-

known advocate of studying media qua media. “All media are active metaphors in their

power to translate into new forms,” McLuhan wrote in 1964’s Understanding Media and,

in doing so, supported the argument that a culture understands and describes itself

through specifically selected media, which in turn affect other media and content (63).

As a way of introducing this concept of “the medium is the message,” McLuhan writes,

“the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of

ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension

of ourselves, or by any new technology” (Understanding Media 7). To repeat a line of

reasoning that should be fairly clear by now, McLuhan supports Nietzsche’s thoughts

almost perfectly by stressing, throughout Understanding Media, that the nature and future

of humanity depends extensively on the valued use of media. He adds to this notion in

The Medium Is the Massage: “Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of

the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication” (8).

This argument—that media shape cultures—adds more support to the notion that changes

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in radio will play large roles in changes in society, just as Nietzsche would theorize, as

sketched out above. Yet while McLuhan emphasizes the importance of this use of media,

one cannot begin to see how it fully applies without also discussing his unique models of

“hot” and “cold” media.

“A hot medium,” McLuhan says, “is one that extends one single sense in ‘high

definition’” (Understanding Media 24). In writing during the 1960s, McLuhan cited film

as a hot medium; he argued that television, on the other hand, constituted a cold medium,

or one in which “very little visual information is provided” (Understanding Media 24).

Of course in 2002, television is much, much warmer than it used to be—technology

literally called “high definition television,” along with various forms of cable and satellite

television, has largely replaced the “antennaed” television and its snowy images of

McLuhan’s day. What is significant about the difference between hot and cold media is

that hot media, by inundating its receiver with information, acts to limit that receiver’s

participation in the communication process:

[S]peech is a cool medium of low definition, because so little is given and so

much has to be filled in by the listener. On the other hand, hot media do not leave

so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore,

low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the

audience. Naturally, therefore, a hot medium like radio has very different effect

on the user from a cool medium like the telephone. (Understanding Media 24-5)

This insight has great cultural consequence, for if a society is awash in hot media, what

will be its relation to itself or another society? Because hot media encourage a lack of

participation, will that make the society more detached, disinterested, and apathetic?

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McLuhan thinks so (Understanding Media 25). But more importantly, what will be the

cultural effect when media combine, as they almost always do: “Except for light, all other

media come in pairs,” notes McLuhan, “with one acting as the ‘content’ of the other,

obscuring the operation of both” (Understanding Media 57). If this concurrence of media

—such as sound within film or music and speech and visual imagery within radio—also

has value and need-components for life, what could be the effects on cultural

development? Nietzsche’s and McLuhan’s answers to these questions go hand in hand.

Their theories lead one to the conclusion, as satellite radio takes on different

characteristics from terrestrial radio, that the newer media will affect the public in new

ways that will reflect the public’s existential needs.6 Nietzsche noted this with the Greeks

and their use of the “great period” for purpose of exuding rarity and virtue, just as

McLuhan noted it with the ideogrammic written word of the Chinese, who find in it the

power to strengthen familial relationships (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 183;

McLuhan, Understanding Media 91).7

The relationship between Nietzsche and author of Television Culture John Fiske

is perhaps more difficult to draw. However, even though Fiske derives much of his

thinking from Marx, where he shifts away from Marx is where he moves toward

Nietzsche. Fiske does not acknowledge any debt to Nietzsche in Television Culture, but

much of his thought parallels the same Nietzschean concepts delineated earlier, even if

for Fiske they are derived through other scholars such as Foucault, Barthes, and Derrida

6 . . . indeed, even if those needs are as apparently unimportant as needing music in a car. A follow-upstudy, using Nietzsche’s terms, could very easily explain why people need music in their cars—as perhapsways of feeling connected to others while in the alienating environment of the commute, of findingdistractions from the stress and literal danger of driving, etc.7 One would be hard pressed to successfully argue that “virtue” and “family” are not in some way sourcedin existential desire.

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(Fiske Television Culture 116, 303-5, 314). One need only consider the following

opinions from Fiske’s Television Culture chapter entitled “The Popular Economy”:

Despite the homogenizing force of the dominant ideology, the subordinate groups

in capitalism have retained a remarkable diversity of social identities, and this has

required capitalism to produce an equivalent variety of voices. [. . .] In the

cultural domain, then, popular art is an ephemeral, multifarious concept based

upon the multiple and developing relationships with the practices of the dominant

ideology. [. . .] What is exchanged and circulated here is not wealth but

meanings, pleasures, and social identities. (310-1)

In these three different quotations, one can observe the clear Marxism in phrases like

“dominant ideology” and “subordinate groups,” but the Nietzscheanism peaks through

when he speaks of “developing relationships” and “not wealth but meanings.” Fiske

often speaks in economic terms, but he is forced by these understandings of culture to

argue that so-called subordinate groups hold a lot of power when it comes to expressing

themselves and seeing themselves represented, especially when their needs for expression

and representation are not being met. Fiske discusses this specifically as resistance and

semiotic power, that is, the ability of a culture to reject a definition of itself in favor of a

different one, especially when another group is trying to impose that definition

(Television Culture 316-19). As of now, terrestrial broadcasters still appear to be

defining what they think the public wants; or really, they still appear to be defining the

public:8 “Why would someone pay for something they already get for free?” asks Dennis

8 This is to say, as long as terrestrial radio remains a viable medium, its spokespersons will have the power to describe terrestrial radio’s listeners as the spokespersons see fit, that is, to describe its audience in a waythat fits its own interests. As stated before, if this description is too inaccurate, the audience may very welldefect; if terrestrial broadcasters continue to increase the number of commercials per hour because theythink and say their audience can take it, they may—as they have—experience a drop in listenership.

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Wharton, a National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) spokesman (qtd. in Colker T1).

Wharton adds, “The ideal audience for satellite service is someone who loves classical

music and lives in a holler in West Virginia” (qtd. in Colker T1). If Wharton’s

statements are representative, then clearly the NAB, which acts as the organizing and

lobbying hub of the terrestrial broadcasting industry, believes that the primary cultural

value in radio programming is its inexpensiveness. Unfortunately for terrestrial

broadcasters, Nietzsche and Fiske together would be compelled to point out terrestrial

radio’s eleven percent decline in listenership during the 1990’s, the exact period of time

when traditional broadcasters consolidated their ownership, homogenized their

programming, and streamlined their offerings to the public (Adelson C9). Fiske, as

influenced by Nietzsche, would acknowledge what appears to be the active cultural

resistance and use of semiotic power that thousands of consumers are exercising by

signing up for $10-a-month satellite radio. McLuhan, too, would view this development

as a necessary reaction to a medium—terrestrial radio—that no longer meets the needs of

the people it is said to represent. In light of the interconnections of the three scholars’

work, the possible success of satellite radio, even if it does not completely supplant the

terrestrial version, would be nothing short of a cultural revolution by having a culture

create a medium that reflects the values of and needs for commercial-less programming,

diverse content, etc. But the possible success is a big “if” indeed. Now that one has dealt

with the theory involved, one can take a closer look at satellite radio itself, specifically

XM Satellite Radio.9

9 XM Satellite Radio, as stated earlier, began providing its service in September of 2001. The service of acompetitor, Sirius, is scheduled to become available to the public in mid-to-late 2002. The only significantdifference between the two regards the source of revenue: Sirius will be about three dollars per month moreexpensive than XM, but will have commercials on even fewer channels.

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XM Satellite Radio

The following brief study of XM Satellite Radio and its context first consists of

careful, critical readings of public information on XM and the radio industry. This will

include legal documents, specifically Congressional documents; relevant news articles;

and XM press releases—all of which incorporate some amount of opinion and persuasion

that must be approached with a measure of intellectual caution. Such caution has been

exemplified by scholars like Noam Chomsky, who himself gathers a large amount of

public data—like the legal documents, news articles, and press releases in the present

case—and interprets them in light of one another (Chomsky “The U.S. and the Middle

East” 28-31). With this method of rhetorical analysis, Chomsky overcomes any personal

biases, particularly biases in his selection of sources, by selecting so many sources that

verifiable trends appear. While this study of XM necessarily lacks the political edge of

Chomsky’s work, his method of gathering different types of opinion-data in order to

establish fact is nevertheless appropriate and helpful here. Additionally, while the

documents listed are relatively few, they are very representative of the data available; for

example, this study makes use of just a handful of the literally thousands of news articles

on XM published in major newspapers in the past year, but after approximately 120 of

these articles were evaluated for this research, the trends, which are what are reported

below, became quite evident. This follows for the press releases, of which there are

hundreds—even some dating back to 1998—and for the Telecommunications Act of

1996 , which more or less acted as an amalgamation of all major media law enacted since

1934.

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Second, this account will use data I collected personally, by spending more than

forty hours analyzing actual XM broadcasts. The study of XM programming follows an

ethnographic model employed previously by others, such as Beverly James, Lyall

Crawford, and even John Fiske (James 291-3; Crawford 164-7; Fiske “Writing

Ethnographies” 330-5). These writers have come to defend a process that goes by

various names such as “autoethnography” or “personal ethnography,” names in any case

that essentially mean the same thing: gathering data personally, acknowledging how the

data affects and is affected by the researcher, and presenting a qualitative interpretation of

that data for others’ discursive consideration. For this research, I collected data by

listening to and taking notes on forty-one hours of XM broadcasts, on many of its

different channels, during a period of time between March 7 and 16, 2002. The data’s

effects and interpretation are reported after the promised analysis of legislation, press

releases, and news articles pertaining to XM and its industry.

Analysis of Past Documents

The documents to be used in the first part of this study include (1) a

comprehensive media bill named the Telecommunications Act of 1996 ; (2) news articles

found in business and/or technology sections of major papers; and (3) several XM press

releases, including outside firms’ commissioned marketing research (surveys), all of

which are made readily available for public scrutiny on any stock market webpage or, for

good reason, on XM’s website. Because the foil for satellite radio in this study has of

course been terrestrial radio, it and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 must still be the

starting point for any description of a radio industry that now includes the newer type of

broadcasting.

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In the 1990s, traditional radio underwent its first upheaval since the introduction

of FM nearly forty years ago. This upheaval is best represented in the Telecom Act of

‘96, which, though it concentrated on other communications issues, had a huge effect on

radio by accelerating the government policy of loosening the restrictions on how many

stations any one company can own in a given market (United States 309-10). According

to the 1996 law, a company could not own more than approximately twenty percent of

the stations in a given market:

. . . in a radio market with 45 or more commercial radio stations, a party may own,

operate, or control up to 8 commercial radio stations, not more than 5 of which

are in the same service (AM or FM); [. . .] in a radio market with 14 or fewer

commercial radio stations, a party may own, operate, or control up to 5

commercial radio stations, not more than 3 of which are in the same service (AM

or FM), except that a party may not own, operate, or control more than 50 percent

of the stations in such a market. (United States 309-10).10

Perhaps more significantly, the Act abolished any limitation to ownership nationally; this

therefore made it possible for one company to own literally hundred of stations across the

country in dozens of different markets: “. . . The [Federal Communications] Commission

shall modify section 73.3555 of its regulations . . . by eliminating any provisions limiting

the number of AM or FM broadcast stations which may be owned or controlled by one

entity nationally” (United States 309).

The Telecom Act made a provision, however, that the FCC, within the bounds of

the local ownership rules, may grant a broadcasting license to any entity whose

10 For markets between thirty and forty-four stations, the ownership cap was set at seven stations. For between fifteen and twenty-nine stations, the limit was six (United States 309-10).

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possession of that license “will result in an increase in the number of radio broadcast

stations in operation” (Unites States 310). On the surface, one could view this provision

as one aiming at increasing diversity; on the other hand, one could interpret it as

representative of the aforementioned motivation to ensure the economic vitality of the

radio industry. That is, the FCC would grant licenses to those it deemed capable of

expanding radio’s operations. Ideally, this would have indeed happened and would have

increased diversity with the founding of each new station. However, by encouraging

terrestrial broadcasters to more fully pursue profitability, the opposite of the Act’s stated

intentions occurred. As researcher Robert McChesney notes of the Act’s obvious effect,

“some one-half of the nation’s eleven-thousand radio stations changed hands, and there

were over a thousand radio firm mergers” (McChesney 75). $100 billion have changed

hands in these purchases and mergers, and as of the summer of 2001, there were 1,100

fewer stations than in 1996, a drop in the number of stations of thirty percent, including

the elimination of ten thousand radio-related jobs (Boehlert). Six years after the Act’s

passage, only two companies control most of commercial radio—Clear Channel

Communications and Infinity Broadcasting.11 In fact, these two conglomerates control

more than one-third of advertising revenue, nationally, and in some markets are

responsible for ninety percent of the market’s radio advertising revenue (Boehlert). By

itself, Clear Channel controls nearly 1,200 stations (Boehlert).

The positive effect of this consolidation has of course been profitability, with

stations today worth ten times more than they were in the early 1990s, when 59 percent

of all stations were losing money (Boehlert). Because radio is indeed an industry, it

11 For the record, it is worth noting that Clear Channel has hedged it bets by investing heavily in XMSatellite Radio. XM’s competitor, Sirius, has publicly refused investments from terrestrial radioconglomerations. Infinity is a subsidiary of a much more diversified company, Viacom, which runs suchmedia outlets as MTV, Showtime, Nickelodeon, Paramount Studios, UPN, and Blockbuster.

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makes perfect sense that radio station owners would merge their operations or buy others

—just as it makes perfect sense that they would homogenize their programming:

efficiency of operation leads to higher profits. When an industry can centralize its

management, as radio did in the 1990s, it will be able to cast off a huge chunk of its

financial burden. And when a media industry can promise its advertisers that it will play

only the most popular, largest-audience-garnering content, then it would be unsound not

to do just that—again, just as radio did in the 1990s and now into this decade.

But where have these changes left terrestrial radio? Twenty-one percent of

consumers are dissatisfied with its offerings (Taub G1). Listenership has dropped eleven

percent since the early 1990s, with listeners in 2002 comprising the most restless

generation of radio consumers ever (Simon M1; Wilkerson “Changing the Game, Part

I”). And is it any wonder? One hundred million Americans live outside the major

markets, where most of the diversity, if any, of terrestrial radio exists—so they are left

with the dregs of terrestrial broadcasting (Simon M1). Many of the best-selling

musicians cannot get airplay because their music does not fall into one of the two or three

most popular genres (Toroian C1). And to top it off, commercials on terrestrial radio

now comprise up to a third of every hour of programming (Adelson C9).12 While the

Telecom Act of ’96 certainly aided traditional radio’s short-term profitability, the

industry’s response of conglomeration and homogenization has disappointed consumers

and opened the door to the arrival of the more existentially satisfying satellite radio.

Surveys conducted by outside marketing firms indicate that customers are

extremely pleased with their experience of satellite radio, and XM expects that 350,000

12 One satellite radio executive went as far as to describe terrestrial radio’s use of commercials as “abusive”to the listener (Capobianco qtd. in James 1C).

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people will have subscribed by the end of 2002 (Wilkerson “Is Pay Radio for Everyone”).

XM, then, is apparently providing those who are willing to pay a remedy to the

shortcomings now plaguing terrestrial radio. Americans living outside of the major

markets will be able to hear the same hundred channels as those living in New York City

or driving through downtown Chicago. The best-selling musicians will always have a

home on one of XM’s channels, where more than 1.4 million songs are currently in

circulation (XM Satellite Radio, “XM Signs”).13 And with subscription fees funding the

bulk of the programming, XM has thus far limited itself to six minutes of advertising per

hour—on the stations that have any advertising at all. These differences from terrestrial

radio change the entire experience of radio as a medium, so XM claims: for example, XM

will not care if a subscriber hates the music on one of the channels, because, unlike

terrestrial broadcasters who are dependent on listeners’ sitting still to tune in to

advertising, XM can afford to have people flipping around the dial. All XM cannot

afford is if listeners decide that the quality of commercial-less, diverse programming is

not worth $10 per month. The statistics regarding listener satisfaction have suggested

that, yes, it is worth it. In addition, age distribution is proving to be a most telling gauge,

as XM’s customer base is distributed evenly across all age groups. This phenomenon

implies, at least to XM executives, that satellite radio not only attracts the typical, gadget-

loving, 21-year-old male but also older media consumers that made up much of the

13 This phenomenon is likely counter-intuitive. Complaints made about terrestrial programming typicallyimply that only the most popular musicians get almost non-stop airplay at the expense of other verytalented performers. While this is indeed the case, many top-selling artists, who become popular by virtueof committed fans, well-conducted tours, etc., cannot get airplay because they do not fit the bill for aspecific terrestrial genre (Colker T1). As XM Chief Executive Officer Hugh Panero told the Los AngelesTimes: “Some of the best-selling music is rap and metal, but you can’t find it on the radio in a lot of placesin this country. . . . I grew up in New York listening to Jonathan Schwartz play Sinatra . . . now, there is nostation in [New York] where you can hear Sinatra sing ‘New York, New York’” (qtd. in Colker T1).

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eleven percent of listeners who had tuned out from radio altogether (XM Satellite Radio,

“XM Ranks as Fastest-Selling Audio Product”).

At this point, it should go without saying that the variety of XM’s programming

far surpasses that of any terrestrial station with respect to uninterrupted, eclectic

programming, at least based on XM’s claims. Commercials make up less than six

minutes of every hour, and listeners are evidently satisfied with the variety of the

programming. In short, the content and medium of satellite radio has reportedly provided

a new, better experience of radio.

Ethnographic Study

To confirm these assertions, I spent forty-one hours in mid-March, 2002,

evaluating the actual content of XM, subjected XM and my own preconceptions to

criticism, and discovered that XM’s public relations department has not oversold the

product. While I could not make recordings, I did keep notes on the structure and

musical content of the programming and later downloaded some of the music I heard in

order to further evaluate it. I brought to my data-collecting sessions my own prejudices,

in particular my empathy for those who turned their backs on terrestrial radio. Taste, of

course, proved to be another prejudice, but less than one might imagine: the meeting of

people’s taste, the meeting of their needs and values, is the basis for media in the first

place, as already argued. My final significant bias is my status as an XM subscriber; that

is, I should have a psychological interest in defending the way in which I spend my

money, perhaps even despite the fact that I could cancel my subscription at any time the

service fails to meet my expectations.14

14 Nothing objectively verifiable cancels out these prejudices in a personal ethnography. Future researchersmust simply take them into account. This procedure follows in general the work of those like BeverlyJames, who analyzed cultural change in post-communist Hungary by chronicling her own interactions withindividual Hungarians (James 291-3).

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In forty-plus hours of listening, I attempted to gather two specific types of data:

evidence confirming or denying diversity in programming and evidence confirming or

denying a lack of commercials. These two categories reflect the most significant

complaints about the current experience of terrestrial radio (lack of diversity, too many

commercials), so with regard to satellite radio, they too are the most relevant. Since it

was clear that XM’s 100, genre-specific stations would make it nominally more diverse

than terrestrial radio stations, I evaluated the diversity of the actual programming of

stations in formats supposedly covered by the ground-based broadcasters. I therefore

spent most of my time listening to (1) XMU, an alternative rock channel; (2) Top 20 on

20, a popular music channel; (3) Bluegrass Junction, a country channel; and (4) Deep

Tracks, a classic rock channel.

As the first set of findings, each of these channels did one thing that seems to

exemplify the differences between satellite and terrestrial radio programming: the XM

channels actually made a commitment to play new music. Whereas terrestrial radio, even

ones that claim to play the “best new music,” typically only air songs that have already

proven to be popular—that is, they are already months or years old—these four XM

stations played music never aired before. XMU aired an entire album by the artist KRS-

One the day it was released; Top 20 on 20, as the name implies, played the most popular

songs of the moment, like Kylie Minogue’s “Outta My Head,” Toya’s “I Do,” and

Starsailor’s “Good Souls,” before they were battle-tested for the terrestrial stations, which

still may not play them if they do not fit the genre perfectly. Bluegrass Junction and

Deep Tracks, while both geared toward playing a lot of older music, managed to

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consistently put out a new product by airing rare live performances and songs that had

been too long to air on stations needing commercial breaks.

As a further example, Bluegrass Junction, along with other XM country and

popular music channels, has been able to play songs from the O Brother, Where Art Thou

soundtrack, which at present has been on the Billboard Top 200 for more than 65 weeks,

while terrestrial broadcasters have struggled to find airtime for all but one of the

soundtrack’s songs. Not only have these songs found airtime, but they have found

repeated airtime in XM channels’ rotations.15 Although terrestrial stations employ song

rotations as well, XM rotates a number of different songs from a single album. So

whereas terrestrial radio often plays “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” from the O

Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, Bluegrass Junction on XM consistently airs

additional songs off the album such as “Keep on the Sunny Side,” “I Am Weary (Let Me

Rest),” and “Down to the River to Pray.” Furthermore, while it was momentous to this

listener that two songs off the album Parachutes by the band Coldplay concurrently

found their way into the terrestrial signal, these two songs, namely “Yellow” and

“Trouble,” were played on XMU alongside the same album’s other songs, such as

“Spies,” “Sparks,” and “We Never Change.” Other, more experimental bands, such as

Gorillaz, have also had numerous songs mixed into XM’s programming rotations at the

same time that terrestrial, commercial-based broadcasters have all but ignored them. In

my experience, it has even been extremely rare for a wildly popular artist like Britney

Spears to have two songs from a new album playing within the same rotation on

terrestrial radio—let alone two songs from a less-known artist as would be the case on

15 To place a song in rotation means to conduct the practice of repeating a song periodically, with someamount of frequency.

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XM. These programming advantages for XM exist without even considering the

superiority it possesses when it comes to breadth of programming: multiple channels in

country, hits, rock, urban, jazz, blues, dance, Latin, world, classical, and kids music—not

to mention the non-music genres: news, sports, comedy, and talk.

Secondly, as XM promised, advertising proved almost impossible to find and,

when located, typically ran on channels where one would almost expect to hear them: on

the fifteen various “hits” stations (see appendix). Consider for instance a personal

favorite moment of listening, when a disc jockey on one channel suggested that his

audience change the channel to listen to an interview being conducted on another

channel. Naturally, a disk jockey’s advice to change the channel is something that would

be an incredibly rare occurrence on a terrestrial broadcast.

Disk jockeys also have the latitude to play uncensored versions of songs that

would not otherwise air on terrestrial stations. For instance, a Ben Folds song that

currently plays often on terrestrial radio includes the censored line “and some producer

with computers mixes all my s—ty tracks,” a line that airs uncensored on the channel

XMU (Folds “Rockin’ the Suburbs”). Within broad limits, terrestrial broadcasters legally

retain their right to broadcast any content they wish, but without the censoring threat of

commercial funding, XM is able to broadcast this content uncompromised. This, like a

disk jockey’s encouragement to switch channels, has suggested that XM is much happier

and much better suited to create a more direct connection between the listener and the

musical content.

While XM Satellite Radio certainly considers itself a for-profit venture, with these

examples in mind I came away with the impression that the disc jockeys and

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programmers at XM place a much higher value on music, that is, a higher value on the

existential need for music that successfully represents and fulfills its listeners’ needs.

This impression stands in great contrast to that for terrestrial broadcasters, who despite

considering themselves high esteemers of meaningful music, for good reasons already

stated consistently come across as merely “in it for the money.”

Significance

This has been the evidence that informed my opinion of XM Satellite Radio. I

expected and largely received what XM had promised: diverse programming, devoid of

commercials. While I am confident in its defensibility, I nevertheless hope other

researchers will evaluate XM in a similar way, bring their own experience to their

listenings, and provide their own conclusions so that a larger body of ethnographic

research on satellite radio can accumulate. In any case, with this consideration of satellite

radio and its larger industry in mind, one can finally spell out in detail the Nietzschean

interpretation of satellite radio.

One can for example preview new accounts of culture’s needs in media by first

discussing an older one: the account of the needs terrestrial radio met that made it

successful in the first place. While these are numerous, there are three that help one

understand satellite radio a little better. First, as with all new industries, there is the need

for material and economic success and productivity: this need manifested itself in the

steps entrepreneurs and their corporations took to secure the economic viability of radio

in the first half of the twentieth century (McChesney 189-91).16 The need to make money

through the medium of radio endures today, with both terrestrial and satellite

16 This is a very simplistic explanation of what really was a complicated intersection of needs amongentrepreneurs/corporations, educators, and politicians (McChesney 191-198). In the early days of radio, theneeds of entrepreneurs/corporations were clearly given more value. While that may still be the case in2002, other needs—like those of educators then and music-lovers now—are gaining ground.

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broadcasters trying to maximize profits and make sound business decisions, even at the

sake of programming quality. Then there is the need for music. Terrestrial broadcasters

took root not merely because of their ability to send official addresses, editorial opinion,

and news stories across long distances nor merely because of the broadcasting of (now

all-but-defunct) dramas and comedies—but also especially because of the attraction of

recorded music. Technically and existentially, it should be no surprise that commercial

radio developed so soon after the invention of the audio recording, just as it makes sense

that radio and recorded music found a home in the stressful, often monotonous world of

driving an automobile. These needs together feed the third of this list: the need to share

common values. If Americans indeed largely share the values of individualism,

creativity, and self-expression,17 then terrestrial radio certainly answers to those needs,

most obviously through its capitalist ideals.

However, terrestrial radio is evidently failing in contemporary times to continue

to meet these needs, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of listeners that have

given up on the medium altogether. Radio no longer resonates with their needs. And

why? For an answer, one should consider the true story told by Lee Abrams, who helped

FM supplant AM by the 1970s and who is now XM’s Chief Programming Officer:

A station might be playing, oh, 100 Rolling Stones songs. And people were very

happy. The ratings were big. Then they started researching it. And they found

out that, well, out of that 100, there were 50 that were stronger than the rest. So

they played those 50. Then the next year they did more research, and it would

17 Self-expression, particularly in a capitalist culture, is a very tricky concept, for one must wonder what ittakes to be in a position to express oneself, say, via radio. But as both Fiske and this study have argued, if amedium ignores the needs of its culture, the culture will change it or provide a new one for itself (Television Culture 319). Further studies, it is hoped, could use Nietzsche to discuss just how powerfulindividual media are in this relation.

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come back that, well, if we really want to the cream of the crop, there are 25 of

them. So we'll just play 25 songs, and get rid of the others. Then they'd do more

research, more research, until it got down to four or five songs, and they said this

is the ultimate, the cream of the crop. Granted, there might be songs that are more

popular than others. But the whole essence of the classic rock format is to play

careers, and not just the hit songs. It's called the "Oh wow" factor. You say, I

don't know that song, but oh wow—it's the Rolling Stones.... It's an element of

controlled surprise and spontaneity, where you never know what song you're

going to hear by these great bands. And when it started losing that, it started

losing the essence of what the format was designed to do.... And secondly, a lot of

the people who are programming these kinds of stations may not have the same

kind of levels of passion about it that the programmers in the '70s had. And that

reflects what you hear on the air. It's become very mechanical, very scientific; it's

really a passionate, emotional format about a phenomenal era in music that's been

taken to its lowest common denominator. (qtd. in Wilkerson “Changing the Game

Part II”)

As Abrams makes clear, terrestrial radio, in valuing market research and profits, has

sacrificed the value of airing quality music. Those people who valued the quality music

they had been hearing before industry changes like the Telecommunications Act of 1996

are the same ones who have tuned out (Wilkerson “Changing the Game Part I”).

This begs a question, however: how has terrestrial radio persisted? While one can

certainly point to the listeners who listen to radio more casually than others and therefore

care less about its quality, the simplest reason for terrestrial radio’s persistence has been

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the lack of a viable alternative. People have a need to listen to music and to have it

presented to them (as opposed to choosing it themselves via CDs, mp3 players, etc.), but

because the terrestrial broadcasters held a monopoly on the medium of radio, listeners

had nowhere else to go.18 This situation has evolved, of course, with the introduction of

satellite radio.

If Nietzsche, McLuhan, and Fiske are to be believed, then satellite radio has the

potential to be much more valuable than terrestrial radio. With its motivation toward

profit and contentment to compete with others in the industry, satellite radio, like its

ground-based counterpart, appeals to the culture’s need to observe or participate in

material and economic success. On this point, both types of radio are in parity. But

when one considers a culture’s need for music—quality music, diverse music, new

music, etc.—satellite radio satisfies that need better than terrestrial radio. Additionally,

while the sheer breadth of XM’s offerings may result in a culture’s inability to share

value and meaning through individual pieces of content, a culture would be sharing in the

whole new, existentially satisfying mediation of that content. In other words, while the

value placed upon hearing common programming may drop, the value placed upon a

commercial-free, eclectic atmosphere may rise.19

Additionally, if Nietzsche, McLuhan, and Fiske can explain so much about media

and culture, they must also prove helpful in considering competing theories on these

topics—and indeed something addressing this relationship could constitute an entire

separate survey. The broadest categories for these theories are the Marxist and the

18 Listeners could always tune in to commercial-free, un-conglomerated low-power FM where it exists, butthese stations are severely limited in their broadcast range, broadcast quality, and budgets for musical programming. They therefore typically fail to meet listeners’ needs as they have been described here.19 In any case, with XM’s current programming line-up, this point may be moot. Content could easily beshared by listeners tuning in to any of the numerous hits stations, assuming of course that people indeed seevalue in having one another hear the same songs.

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capitalist, and both types of theories possess incredible explanatory power. Marxists, for

example, have helped develop public interest theory, which suggests that governments

should be shaping the arena for media companies so that they work in the best interest of

the governments’ citizens. This theory places a value on democracy, access to media,

general affordability, and equality, but, as most public interest theory scholars concur, the

government’s interpretation of working in the public interest has varied greatly

(Aufderheide 7, Sawyer 77). Additionally, Marxists, even such as John Fiske,

concentrate much of their efforts on how the interests of media consumers rarely

converge or are understood by media owners (Alger vii).

On the other side, so to speak, are the capitalists. These theories focus on

individualism and react against any trend or legislation that in any way allows one person

or group to misappropriate the freedom and individualism of another person. Anything in

the media industry that limits a company’s economic fluidity will be viewed very

negatively (Cato 455). However, these capitalist interpretations, as well as their Marxist

counterparts, leave open some gaps that Nietzsche in fact can fill.

For example, strict Marxists have a difficulty remaining consistent when a

company started by those primarily interested in profit can in fact provide diverse, high-

quality programming (McChesney 260-1). XM, as a matter of fact, has a talk channel

devoted to African-American issues, and this channel frequently questions the very

economic and social foundations upon which XM was founded. Nietzsche though, with

his conceptions of existential needs and cultural improvements described above, has little

difficulty in explaining how diverse, high-quality programming can find a home on a

presumably profit-driven medium. On the other hand, strict capitalists run into a wall

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when trying to account for why individuals would cede any power when it has nothing to

do with economic success or physical survival. Such concessions appear irrational in the

light of capitalist theories. Again, however, Nietzsche’s arguments on needs shows how

and why individuals would do so-called irrational things, such as being happy to let their

government set the limits for media or being willing to pay for radio programming that

they could simply receive for free. These brief Nietzschean responses to the challenges

faced by Marxism and capitalism are yet another way in which the present study acts as

merely a preface to future research.

Conclusions: Satellite Radio through Nietzsche

This study has endeavored to show that by returning to the German philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche, one could more fully appreciate the cultural changes wrought by the

introduction of a new medium such as satellite radio. In effect, it acts—in the most

Nietzschean sense—as a revaluation. As a side effect, of course, revisiting Nietzsche in

this context has also shown how certain revered communication scholars and

philosophers of media have in fact drawn upon ideas first espoused more than 125 years

ago by the fragile and, at the time, unheralded Nietzsche. Moving Nietzsche’s concepts

to the foreground will therefore revalue, at least in this work, the theoretical “morality” of

mass communication studies. The data provided above and the conclusions drawn below

are but a prelude to future research on all new media, just as Nietzsche’s Beyond Good

and Evil was a prelude to all future philosophies: both describe a sort of dissatisfaction

with the status quo (whether on the part of the writer or of society at large), and they both

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try to provide a context and, at the very least, a terminology with which to create newer,

grander accounts of the world.

Herein lies where Nietzsche, McLuhan, Fiske, culture, and media unmistakably

intersect. If Nietzsche is correct in saying that human actions and creations always

reflect their needs; if McLuhan is correct in saying that new media transform cultures; if

Fiske is correct in saying that people whose desires are not being represented will use

what power-via-mediated-meaning they have to change things—then the new medium of

satellite radio is a cultural creation born of a culture’s needs that will necessarily alter that

culture. At this moment in history, satellite radio has not perhaps had enough time to

affect cultural change, but the collective logical extension of Nietzsche’s, McLuhan’s,

and Fiske’s individual theories point to what should be a fascinating development, if only

in speculation: if millions of people sign up for satellite radio, they could then make the

same demands of other media. All of television could eventually be forced to follow

satellite radio’s model of commercial-free, subscription programming (currently

exemplified, in fact, by Home Box Office). Internet service providers could charge

subscribers a little more each month with the deal that the service providers will not only

better coordinate access to world wide web content but also eliminate or filter out all the

advertisements that currently inundate internet surfers, researchers, and shoppers. The

public could get used to expecting a lack of advertising, which could eventually incite a

backlash against any movie that receives money in exchange for placing a commercial

product in a scene; or against a math textbook publisher who cuts a deal with Coca Cola

to ask “If Billy has twenty two-liter bottles of Coke and drinks seven of the bottles of

Coke, how many liters of Coke will he have left?”; or against a magazine that places an

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advertisement for brownie mix on the facing page across from an article on how to find

and bake affordable desserts; or against a billboard company who erects a series of

billboards across from a city park. The possible achievements of satellite radio would be

a clear indication of a culture’s desire for diversity without the distraction of

commercialization: the consumer pays for their musical programming in any case—either

through subscription fees or by purchasing an advertiser’s product—and satellite radio is

beginning to show which method of funding may become more valued. So while the

values of, for example, capitalism remain intact, a culture could shape itself by denying a

capitalist’s ability to profitably place advertising within that culture’s environment. Just

as with the potential of satellite radio, a culture could create commercial-free zones in

places where it merely wants—and is still willing to pay for—quality content. These

needs, values, cultural changes, etc. have their source and explanation, of course, in the

work of Nietzsche and his descendents.

Possibilities for future research include examining news and talk radio, both of

which are subject to different demands and cultural needs than musical programming;

accounting for the musicians’ role in radio, e.g., not only what needs—such as the

possible need for heroes, poets, or peers—that they fulfill, but also for the role they play

in helping to decide which music gets aired; reexamining XM Satellite Radio in 2004,

when the company says it needs to be profitable in order to pay off its debts; and studying

other countries’ media systems, to which the listening/viewing culture will bring vastly

different needs.

In the end, though this study does not aim to provide a model for future

explorations but rather a direction, yet-to-come Nietzschean evaluations of media and

Whitacre 37



cultural phenomena can be fundamentally reduced to a single question: Is this the world

in which the culture being studied wants to live? The answer must inevitably be in the

negative—lest one be observing a utopia—but negative by varying degrees. Following

through on the question by discovering the source of any existential dissatisfaction will

lead a researcher to that culture’s possible paths of transformation. This concluding study

of satellite radio has attempted just that: by starting with the assumption that a culture

will follow its existential needs, as defined by Nietzsche, the fall in listenership of

terrestrial radio and the concurrent rise in listenership of more costly satellite radio has

been interpreted as a cultural validation of XM Satellite Radio’s diverse, commercial-less

programming. By logical extension, those like McLuhan and Fiske share this

interpretation, but more considerable and appealing will be those who apply Nietzsche’s

refreshed philosophy to the myriad new media taking hold in the present day. In other

words, with the prelude complete, now may commence the first act.

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