Letters


July 26, 2002


BOB GARFIELD: And now for a few of your letters. After hearing our story last week on digital radio in the UK, Mike Thompson wrote us all the way from East Yorkshire, England to let us know that our reporter forgot to mention one critical fact. Digital radio there sounds terrible! And he suspects he knows why, telling us that on a recent domestic BBC radio program it was admitted by the BBC that it is deliberately limiting the band width of its broadcasts to a maximum of 128 kilobytes per second - nothing like the already-available hi-fi analog FM broadcasts.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Nice investigative work, Mike. In response to last week's discussion of record companies suing individuals for copying music off the internet, Alex Fowler wrote that record companies are not only using the courts but a little muscle as well, strong-arming cable companies into cutting off the cable service of suspected file-sharers. He says he knows someone who got a call from a cable company about his son's computer. It was required, the cable company said, that the son remove music-sharing software from his machine before they would restore service.

BOB GARFIELD:We enjoy all of your observations, and-- you know, facts -- so send them to us at onthemedia@wnyc.org and don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, why newspapers make mistakes and what happens when journalists get political.

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR.