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SACRAMENTO — A far-reaching proposal to outlaw hydraulic fracturing and ban oil and gas wells from operating near homes, schools and healthcare facilities failed in the California Legislature on Tuesday, a major setback for progressive leaders who hail the state as the nation’s bellwether on environmental protection.

Gov. Gavin Newsom in September called on state lawmakers to ban fracking and voiced his support for safety buffer zones around wells, saying they posed a significant health threat to vulnerable Californians, primarily in predominantly Black and Latino communities near well fields and refineries.

The legislation that failed Tuesday was much more ambitious than what Newsom proposed, however, and faced fierce opposition from California’s oil industry, which holds tremendous political sway among Central Valley legislators, along with trade unions, a powerful force within the Democratic Party.

The bill would have banned fracking and a series of other well injection methods used to extract oil — all opposed by environmental activists. It would also have prohibited wells from operating within 2,500 feet of homes, schools, healthcare facilities and other populated areas. Newsom’s proposals were limited to a ban only on fracking and the consideration of a buffer zone.

“Obviously I’m very disappointed,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), one of the legislators who introduced the legislation. “California really has not done what it needs to do in terms of addressing the oil problem. We have communities that are suffering right now, and the Legislature has repeatedly failed to act.”

Wiener’s bill failed to receive the five votes necessary to pass the Senate’s Natural Resources and Water Committee, the proposal’s first stop in the legislative process. State Sen. Susan Eggman (D-Stockton) was the only Democrat to vote against the legislation, but it failed largely because two other Democrats, state Sens. Bob Hertzberg of Van Nuys and Ben Hueso of San Diego, did not cast votes.

After the vote, Hertzberg said he supported California’s efforts to wean itself from fossil fuels but argued the bill did “nothing to foster that transition by reducing demand for oil in our state or in the global marketplace.”

Rudy Gonzalez of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council made a similar argument when testifying by video during the committee hearing, saying the legislation would lead to the loss of thousands of well-paying union jobs at California’s refineries and in other petroleum-related industries.

“It doesn’t do for workers or for the environment what it claims,” Gonzalez said. “Our domestic supply factors in 32 million cars and trucks that are on our roads today. Ending extraction in California won’t end the supply or the demand for that. In fact, they’ll shift production outside of California or supply avenues to other nations.”

Oil industry officials have argued that a mandate for 2,500-foot buffer zones around wells would effectively shut down the vast majority of oil production in California. California was the seventh-largest oil-producing state in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

At the beginning of Tuesday’s hearing, Wiener acknowledged that the bill would have a major impact on oil production in California and faced major obstacles in the Capitol. But he said he was open to amending the bill and having a conversation with opponents of the legislation.

Before the hearing, Wiener amended the bill to extend the period of time allowed to phase out fracking and other forms of ejection wells. But that did little to temper opposition. On Tuesday, four senators on the committee, all Democrats, voted in favor of the bill while three senators opposed it — the proposal needed five votes to pass the nine-member committee.

Wiener said he is weighing whether to ask the committee to reconsider the legislation. He vowed to continue pushing the bill, in total or in part, during the current session and said his top priority is establishing health and safety buffer zones around oil and gas wells.

“If there is a path to narrowing the bill and getting the votes, we are very open to doing that,” he said. “We’ll have to see what’s possible.”

Even if the bill cannot be revived, buffer zones may still be mandated by administrative action. At the direction of an executive order by Newsom, officials with the state Department of Conservation have been holding public hearings in person and online throughout the year on proposed public health and safety protections for communities near oil and gas operations, including imposing possible buffer zones around wells. Those proposed regulations are expected to be made public this spring.

From the outset, the fracking ban and mandatory buffer zones created a fissure within the Legislature’s Democratic majority, with liberal legislators from coastal areas and major cities seeing the proposals as essential to combat climate change and protect vulnerable families, and business-friendly lawmakers and those from inland areas worried about the potential loss of tens of thousands of jobs and the effect on local economies in California’s oil-rich San Joaquin Valley.

A proposed fracking moratorium stalled in the Legislature in 2014, and just last year a bill calling for less stringent buffer zone requirements around oil and gas wells failed in the same Senate committee as this year’s bill.

Eggman voted in favor of the setbacks proposed in last year’s bill but against this legislation, saying it would “shut down oil production in California.” Most of her Central Valley constituents cannot afford expensive electric cars, she said.

“I’m just thinking about the rest of California and in my district: the people who commute, the people who have to drive trucks, the people who drive tractors. None of those are electric,” she said.

Dec. 31 (Asia Today) — South Korea’s broadcasting industry remained in a slump last year, with total revenue declining for a second consecutive year as terrestrial broadcasters posted steep drops in advertising income, regulators said Wednesday.

The Korea Communications Commission said total broadcasting industry revenue in 2024 fell 0.7% from 2023 to 18.832 trillion won (about $14.5 billion) in its “2024 Survey on the Status of the Domestic Broadcasting Industry.” The market first turned negative in 2023 after expanding every year since 2003, the commission said.

Terrestrial broadcasters, including digital multimedia broadcasting, recorded the largest decline by category, with revenue falling 5.4% to 3.5337 trillion won (about $2.7 billion), the commission said. The drop was driven by weaker advertising, historically the biggest income source for terrestrial channels.

Terrestrial advertising revenue declined 9.9% to 835.7 billion won (about $640 million) in 2024 after plunging 23.3% in 2023, according to the survey. Advertising accounted for 23.7% of terrestrial broadcast revenue in 2024, down from 47.4% in 2014, it said.

Cable television operators and satellite broadcasters also posted declines, with revenue down 2.9% and 3.6%, respectively, as subscription fees and home shopping carriage fees weakened, the commission said.

Total revenue for pay-TV operators, including cable and internet protocol television, edged up to 7.2361 trillion won (about $5.6 billion), but growth remained near flat, the survey said. IPTV was the main driver, with revenue rising 1.4% to 5.0783 trillion won (about $3.9 billion), the commission said, citing steady increases in subscription fees and home shopping transmission fees.

Home shopping program providers posted revenue of 3.4168 trillion won (about $2.6 billion), down 2.1% from the previous year, the commission said. TV home shopping sales continued to slide, while data-based home shopping sales rose 1.6% to 774.3 billion won (about $595 million), reversing a decline the year before.

Employment in the broadcasting industry also fell, the survey said, with the number of workers declining to 37,427 in 2024 from 38,299 in 2023. Terrestrial broadcasters recorded the sharpest employment drop, down 4.5%.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

“Stereophonic,” David Adjmi’s heralded drama that won five Tony Awards including best play, is ready for its Los Angeles close-up.

The first national tour production, which opened Wednesday at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, seems right at home in the music capital of the world. The play about a 1970s rock band on the brink of superstardom takes place in recording studios in Sausalito and L.A., where the Laurel Canyon vibe is never out of sight.

The visual crispness of this L.A. premiere goes a long way toward dispelling doubts that the Pantages is the wrong venue for this ensemble drama. If there’s a problem, it isn’t the cavernousness of the theater. The production, gleaming with period details on a set by David Zinn that gives us clear views into both the sound and control rooms, comfortably inhabits the performance space, at least from the perspective of a decent orchestra seat.

The play, which includes original music from Will Butler, the Grammy-winning artist formerly of Arcade Fire, has a sound every bit as robust as one of the blockbuster musicals that regularly passes through the Pantages. The songs, crushed by the actors at top volume, are Butler’s indie rock re-creation of cuts for a part-British, part-American band that bears such a striking resemblance to Fleetwood Mac that a lawsuit brought by a former sound engineer and producer of the group was eventually settled.

Adjmi, like Shakespeare, takes his inspiration where he finds it. And like the Bard, he makes his sources his own, alchemizing the material for novel ends.

The touring production of “Stereophonic” makes clear just how integral the original cast was to the success of the play.

(Julieta Cervantes)

Unfolding in 1976 and 1977, “Stereophonic” offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective of a band at a crossroads. While recording a new album top-heavy with expectations, the group falls prey to romantic conflicts and self-destructive spirals, to toxic jealousies and seething insecurities. The prospect of fame magnifies pathologies that have been intensifying over time.

Diana (Claire DeJean) is the Stevie Nicks of the band. Beautiful, achingly vulnerable and awash in lyrical talent, she is entangled in a relationship with Peter (Denver Milord), the Lindsey Buckingham of the group, who strives for musical perfection no matter the cost.

Their connection is as professionally enriching as it is personally destructive. Diana’s ambition is matched by her self-doubt. She’s susceptible to a Svengali yet doesn’t want anyone to tell her how to write her songs.

Peter, angrily competitive, can’t help resenting the natural ease of Diana’s talent, even as it’s her song from their first album that has put the band back in the spotlight. His genius is ferociously exacting while hers seems to spring naturally from her soul.

Artistically they depend on each other, but the tension between them is unsustainable. And as the play makes clear, there’s no way to keep their personal lives out of the studio.

DeJean and Milord are the most captivating performers in the ensemble. The other actors are solid but this touring production makes clear just how integral the original cast was to the success of the play.

Daniel Aukin’s production, which had its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2023 before moving to Broadway the following year, hasn’t lost its confident flow. The storytelling is lucidly laid out. But the tantalizing peculiarities of the characters have been whittled down.

The British band members suffer the worst of it. Emilie Kouatchou’s Holly moves the character away from the obvious Christine McVie reference, but her role has become vaguer and less central. Cornelius McMoyler’s Simon, the drummer and weary manager, fills the bill in every respect but gravitas, which must be in place if the character’s ultimate confrontation with Peter is to have the necessary payoff.

No one could compete with Will Brill, who won a Tony for his strung-out portrayal of Reg, a deranged innocent whose addictions and dysfunctions create farcical havoc for the band. Christopher Mowod can’t quite endow this “sad man in a blanket,” as Simon dubs his bundled-up bandmate, with the same level of fey madness that Brill was able to entertainingly supply.

These casting differences wouldn’t be worth noting if it weren’t for their impact on a play that distinguishes itself by its observational detail. Everything is just a little more obvious, including the two American sound guys bearing the brunt of the artistic temperaments running riot in the studio.

Jack Barrett’s Grover, the sound engineer who lied about his background to get the job, sands off some of the character’s rough edges in a more straightforwardly appealing version of the character than Eli Gelb’s bracing portrayal in New York. Steven Lee Johnson’s Charlie, the dorky assistant sound engineer, is an amiable weirdo, though I missed the way Andrew R. Butler played him almost like a space alien in New York.

The play has been edited, but it’s still a bit of an endurance test. Art isn’t easy for the characters or for us. But the effort isn’t in vain.

Adjmi’s overlapping dialogue and gaping silences, orchestrated in a neo-Chekhovian style, renders the invisible artistic process visible. By the end of the play, the tumultuous human drama behind creative brilliance emerges in poignant, transcendent glory.