Jack Valenti and Big Media Technophobia: 100 Years in the Making
The following comes verbatim from Jack Valenti's 1982 testimony before congress on "Home Recording of Copyrighted Works". Most interesting in hindsight is the fervor with which Mr. Valenti - chief spokesman for the MPAA until recently - decries the rise of the video market which would be Hollywood's windfall for nearly two decades following.
And 6 out of 10 films do not retrieve their total investment period. Now, what are you going to do right on top of that? There is going to be a VCR avalanche. Exports of VCR's from Japan totaled 2.57 million units in 1981. No. 2, the United States is the biggest market. No. 3, February 1982, which is the latest data, shows the imports to the United States are up 57 percent over 1981. This is more than a tidal wave. It is more than an avalanche. It is here. [...]
Now, is this all? Is it going to get any bigger? Well, I assure you it is. Here is the weekly Variety, Wednesday, March 10. Head1ine, "Sony Sees $400 Billion Global Electronics Business by the Decade's End," $400 billion by the decade's end. In 1981, Mr. Chairman, this United States had a $5.3 billion trade deficit with Japan on electronic equipment alone. We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry that is able to retrieve a surplus balance of trade and whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine.
Now, the question comes, well, all right, what is wrong with the VCR. One of the Japanese lobbyists, Mr. Ferris, has said that the VCR -- well, if I am saying something wrong, forgive me. I don't know. He certainly is not MGM's lobbyist. That is for sure. He has said that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
What is clear in the above, and the long history of technophobia from the media industry as so admirably outlined in Nate Anderson's 100 Years of Big Content Fearing Technology, is that big media is in fact a staunchly conservative (small c) culture... prematurely attacking change out of deference to an idyllic status-quo and all too often relying on acts of congress rather than spirited movements of innovation to cope. This is not a new phenomenon.
Exhibit B: 
