Sad but true: last Friday, the FCC finally responded to my appeal of its denial of my Freedom of Information Act request involving a case in which the agency declared Workers Independent News to not be news.
The dismissal was fairly perfunctory. What I was primarily asking for was the other 5,600+ pages of documentation the agency collected regarding correspondence (both internal and external) and deliberations on the WLS/WIN case (it only released 88 heavily-redacted pages). My primary objective was to discover the identity of the complainant who kicked off this sordid saga, as well as the identities of FCC staff who took the complaint and turned it into libel by official writ. Never before in the history of U.S. broadcast regulation has the FCC made a content determination on the legitimacy of a news organization. Continue reading “FCC to WIN: You're Not News, Get Over It”
Month: October 2016
Anti-Pirate Activity Rebounds from 2015 Nadir
Though not by much, and certainly not along the lines of what we saw at the beginning of this decade. August was a busy month for FCC field agents, who conducted nearly three dozen enforcement actions against fewer than half as many stations. The state-leader this year so far is Florida – while New York still leads the all-time pack enforcement action-wise – and the FCC’s flexed its muscle in only seven states, compared to 10 in 2015.
Some of the cases are fairly curious, such as a $15,000 Notice of Apparent Liability issued against a Florida man who first started broadcasting without a license way back in 2013. One visit that year, followed by four visits last year (and a change in frequency), finally compelled the FCC to bring the threat of a fiscal penalty to bear.
Then there’s the case of an Alabama man who first hit the FCC’s radar in 2015; after being warned he voluntarily surrendered his transmitter via mail, only to get a new one and move to a new channel. When contacted again by the federales, he expressed the wish that he could be legal but no application windows for LPFMs are in the works, so his “hands were tied.” Not a good enough excuse to avoid a $15,000 NAL…but then again, it remains to be seen whether the FCC will formalize these as actual forfeitures, much less be able to collect on them. Continue reading “Anti-Pirate Activity Rebounds from 2015 Nadir”
LPFM Expands…But Translators Still Dominate FM Crumbs
Last month the Pew Research Center published a short report on the growth of the LPFM radio service, following the conclusion of a 10-year legislative battle to expand it back to near the scope originally hoped by the FCC when it was first proposed in 1999-2000.
According to the report, since the passage of the Local Community Radio Act in 2011 and subequent filing windows for new LPFM construction permits, the number of licensed stations has nearly doubled, to more than 1,500 nationwide (including U.S territories and protectorates). Most states have more than 20 LPFM licensees, while California, Florida, and Texas clock in with the most (100+). Continue reading “LPFM Expands…But Translators Still Dominate FM Crumbs”