As June slips away I want to highlight a few other interesting FCC happenings that got crowded off the radar by the hoopla and its reverberations this month. The rest of the loose ends will follow later in the week.
First up is FCC administrative law judge Richard L. Sippel’s June 19 
decision to revoke two licenses for FM stations owned by Peninsula Communications in Alaska. This case has been wending its way through the agency for several years and involves the company’s creation of a seven-station translator network, which it had been operating in violation of the FCC’s translator rules since 1994. A $140,000 fine (collection pending) and one federal court injunction later, Peninsula finally silenced the stations last August. The seven translators were fed by two full-power stations; in addition to those Peninsula also owns one AM station, one FM station, and an additional four FM translators. Continue reading “More Corporate Piracy: FCC Takes 9, Leaves 6”
Category: Media Policy
Amendment One Gauges Senate Media Reform Stances
Don Schellhardt’s June installment of Amendment One summarizes the latest action on various legislative efforts to reform or repeal the FCC’s decision earlier this month to relax media ownership rules. It includes an excellent supplement that details each individual Senator’s position on the issue.
June has been a busy month for media reform forces in Washington, D.C. Don’s handling the beat for us, but another excellent news source for congressional news is the Free Press Media Reform Network’s Washington Watch, as they have people working Capitol Hill. Continue reading “Amendment One Gauges Senate Media Reform Stances”
Bush Announces Spectrum Management Overhaul
Yesterday president Bush issued a “Memo on Spectrum Policy,” which sets the stage for a fundamental reform of the way radio spectrum is used and managed in the United States. With the establishment of this “Spectrum Policy Initiative” the White House hopes to “unlock the economic value and entrepreneurial potential of U.S. spectrum assets while ensuring that sufficient spectrum is available to support critical Government functions.”
Claiming that “the existing spectrum [management] process is insufficiently responsive to the need to protect current critical uses,” the Memo outlines several tasks to begin immediately, involving the cooperation of more than a dozen government departments and agencies.
The effort will be headed up by the Department of Commerce and has two major goals: the first is to basically examine and overhaul the way the government uses spectrum for its own purposes. This sounds like a process of inventory-taking and, possibly, a whittling-away of some spectrum currently claimed for government use that sits mostly unused. This “freed” spectrum will likely be auctioned off to the highest bidder, ostensibly to allow for things like more wireless network traffic capacity. Continue reading “Bush Announces Spectrum Management Overhaul”
The Deed is Done: FCC Lifts Most Media Ownership Restrictions
It took only 90 minutes for the debate; calling the question took less than 15 seconds. And, as expected, the FCC voted along party lines (3-2) to significantly relax the rules restricting media ownership and consolidation, eliminating several of them completely. The agency’s news releases are full of sickening spin, but it does provide a decent overview of the new rules.
The biggest bonanzas appear to affect television ownership, where caps have been greatly relaxed, and cross-ownership of media outlets in all but a few large markets is now permitted. Mediageek’s Paul Riismandel has posted a more specific analysis of the changes to radio ownership rules.
Clear Channel might be stung by these changes but its freshly-endowed freedom to gobble up television stations and newspapers should more than compensate. The Big Ten must be having a collective orgasm over how much their empires will grow as a result of what happened today. Time to begin paying close attention to business news. Continue reading “The Deed is Done: FCC Lifts Most Media Ownership Restrictions”
Perceptions of Reality on the Eve of Disaster
Three days from now the FCC is expected in a series of 3-2 votes to approve changes to media ownership rules allowing further consolidation. Where radio saw its near-destruction as a useful information source following the Telecom Act’s passage and the consolidation that followed, we have not learned from this mistake, and now much of the same damage will be done to other media outlets.
If you’re inclined to watch the mess as it unfolds, the FCC streams video of its meetings online. I hope to have choice cuts of each Commissioner’s comments available for download in MP3 format later in the day on Monday.
As we stand on the eve of what is likely to be a big step backward in the fight for media democracy, it’s important not to give up hope, especially when the evidence continues to mount that this fight was long rigged in favor of corporate interests. It was heartening to see some evidence this week – from the corporate media itself – that paints a brighter view of the future. Continue reading “Perceptions of Reality on the Eve of Disaster”
NRA Fusillade Felt at FCC; May Amendment One Online
The National Rifle Association’s “urgent bulletin” to its membership on the FCC’s upcoming media ownership rules revision unleashed a flood of petitions and complaints to the agency, at last count topping 100,000 – five or six times the number of public comments filed during the course of the rulemaking itself. The NRA’s bulletin is now online if you’d like to read the full pitch.
Don Schellhardt’s latest installment of Amendment One is also up, adding his voice to the still-growing chorus calling for Congressional involvement to stop Mikey Powell’s grand designs. Continue reading “NRA Fusillade Felt at FCC; May Amendment One Online”
Preach On, Brother Bob
We are at the two-week point from the FCC’s further decimation of American media. Last week a communiqué of sorts came in from media scholar and author Bob McChesney: “Please spread this article around on the Internet. Thanks.”
While that one is good, if you had to pick only one article on media ownership to forward around in a last-minute flurry of activist email, I’d pick McChesney’s “The FCC’s Big Grab,” which is the most succinct yet complete synopsis available on the FCC’s pending action and its disastrous implications for media democracy.
National Rifle Association Mobilizes for Media Democracy?
Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows. The NRA has sent out a “Urgent Bulletin” to its members on a “Media Monopoly” in the making:
“…the nation’s most powerful media companies are trying to force the FCC to do away with these rules and pave the way for a tiny handful of corporations to gain total control over the news and information that Americans are allowed to read, see, and hear. If that happens, your NRA would face a disastrous situation where – in a political crisis – a small group of media executives could literally silence your NRA and prevent us from communicating with your fellow Americans by refusing to sell us television, radio, or newspaper advertising at any price.”
In this case, I’ll leave the myth of the liberal media well enough alone, as the NRA’s clout could be handy in the eventual Congressional fight to reform the Telecom Act.
Partytown Mediajammers At It Again
Back in January, the one-man media-busting army that is Brad Johnson confronted a pack of journalists who’d camped themselves out in front of the home of a man whose pregnant wife has been missing since the winter holiday season. Brad and his wife Sandy live in Modesto, California, which for some ungodly reason seems to attract packs of journalists to tabloid-style stories unlike any other community in America.
The Johnsons also run the Partytown Streaming Network, which provides several free channels of music and news online, including one feed completely dedicated to independent journalism and special IMC protest coverage. Brad was once the broadcast engineer for Clear Channel’s Modesto cluster.
After watching throngs of cameras hover around the scandal of a former congressman a couple of years ago the Johnsons decided they’d seen enough. When this new salacious story broke involving the mystery disappearance of a pregnant woman, the Johnsons were ready for the hordes of cameras. Continue reading “Partytown Mediajammers At It Again”
Reportback from Seattle FCC Festivities
“Strategically optimistic” is the way Jonathan Lawson, an organizer with Reclaim the Media, feels coming out of Friday’s FCC media ownership field hearing with Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. The two certainly got an earful.
Reclaim the Media, along with many other groups, spent a lot of time and energy making the field hearing happen. Because it was not officially sanctioned by Chairman Michael Powell, the FCC wouldn’t release funds for the two Commissioners to travel. Copps paid his own way, presumably out of his own (limited) office expense funds; Reclaim the Media paid the freight for Adelstein.
Having originally scheduled only 30 minutes of time for public comment at the hearing, the Commissioners pledged not to cut off anyone who wanted to speak. They listened to more than three hours of public comment as a result. Not only that, but corporate media executives in the onstage discussion panels were openly jeered. Lawson says the overall sentiment was “overwhelmingly, if not totally opposed” to further relaxation of media ownership rules. Continue reading “Reportback from Seattle FCC Festivities”