Federal Communications Commissioner Ajit Pai and his Chief of Staff Matthew Berry conferenced with two executives from Clear Channel on Wednesday. They talked up a variety of issues. The meeting’s last item caught my eye. I presume from the language of the filed summary that Pai asked Clear Channel Vice Presidents Jeff Littlejohn and Jessica […]
President Obama has nominated telecom biggie Tom Wheeler to chair the Federal Communications Commission, and nervous commentaries are proliferating across the blogosphere. “Uh-oh: AT&T and Comcast are ecstatic about the FCC’s new chairman,” runs the headline over at Ars Technica. The post points the reader to a statement from AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim […]
The National Association of Broadcasters has asked the Federal Communications Commission for a 30 day extension on a proceeding requesting feedback about the agency’s indecency rules. The FCC launched the proceeding following the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Commission’s policies against “fleeting expletives,” basically dirty words said on the fly. The high court said that […]
An uncompromising voice for human rights, unafraid to make unrestrained and harsh criticisms of local and federal officials, is still heard on the airwaves of Illinois capital city. Despite multiple letters and visits from the FCC over the years, the Springfield, Illinois unlicensed station Human Rights Radio celebrated its 25th anniversary last fall. This week […]
I’ve been keeping an eye on the Federal Communications Commission’s proceeding on its indecency rules. It’s not looking good, from a First Amendment standpoint. Most of the comments seem to support more censorship. Some background: The FCC has been asking for public feedback on how stringently to enforce its broadcast indecency regulations since the Supreme […]
We received a couple of comments on my post about the revitalization of AM radio pointing to pieces that make convincing arguments that it was not a mere suggestion made at NAB last week to go all-digital with HD Radio on AM. Rather, there are forces at work to put this into policy, contrary to […]
This week is the annual National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas, which brings thousands of broadcasters, manufacturers, producers and journalists together to talk about and see what’s next for broadcasting. Radio tends to play a very quiet second fiddle to television and video at this show. But this year radio’s own second fiddle, […]
The Federal Communications Commission is asking the public for input on its indecency rules. Last summer the Supreme Court declared the FCC’s sanctions against “fleeting expletives” to be unacceptably vague, largely because the government didn’t give Fox and ABC TV “fair notice” about the relatively new regulations before fining them for various shows. “Regulated parties […]
According to the Fifth Report and Order released in March, the FCC has started dismissing backlogged translator station applications based non ational and local caps. In that Order the FCC established caps for the number of applications a single applicant could pursue in a given market, and nationwide, in order to ensure open frequencies are […]
Today the FCC released its quarterly list of the total number of licensed broadcast stations in the United States. Based on FCC statistics through December 30, 2012, the number of licensed broadcast radio stations is still on the rise, continuing the trend that we’ve seen every quarter this year. Based on this list, there are […]
