Cable’s hold on America

IN HIS first speech to America's television bosses on January 19th, Martin Luther King day, the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Bill Kennard, celebrated the industry. Without television, he said, King's great speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial might have been a footnote in history; without television, black people like himself would not have seen the growing power of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s. It was a friendly introduction, but also a reminder of Mr Kennard's attitude to the media: they are to serve society, not the other way round.