Prof. Christopher Terry also guests on this week’s podcast to review the FCC’s recent court loss in detail. -Ed. “Here we are again.” That is the opening of the recent decision written by Judge Thomas L. Ambro in the latest judicial review of media ownership rules, in what is now Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC […]
Radio waves don’t obey borders, and stations have been taking advantage of this fact since the dawn of the medium – often despite the rules of government regulators where the signals go. Dr. Kevin Curran of Arizona State University has been studying border radio stations extensively, making it the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Everyone […]
Radio World reports that Switzerland’s FM radio broadcasts are due to end by the end of 2024, according to a release from the country’s Federal Office of Communications. OFCOM says at the end of July only 17% of people in that country listen to FM exclusively. I am a bit chagrined that this story flew […]
The FCC is one step closer to a rule change that threatens to de-fund community media and technology, by undermining a long-established principle that cable and internet companies owe rent to municipalities for use of the public right-of-way. Sabrina Roach, board member of the Alliance for Community Media Foundation, joins to help us understand what’s […]
The FCC just proposed a series of changes to help make it easier for low-power FM stations to move their transmitters and to fill in weak signal areas. We review this proposal along with a suggestion from the Commission to whittle away at protections for the few dozen remaining analog low-power TV channel 6 stations, […]
A different media world is possible. What if the FCC truly regulated in the public interest, creating policies and services that promoted community voices and civic values? It does happen occasionally, but not often enough. It’s easy to assume our media system turned out this way because it was inevitable, but in truth it was […]
The FCC was back in front of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals again, defending its failure to address declines in minority- and women-owned broadcast stations, amongst other failures. In fact, as our guest, University of Minnesota Prof. Christopher Terry, explains, the Commission claims it’s too hard to assess the change in ownership between 1996 […]
In June 2009 a coup d’etat overthrew Honduras’ democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. Since the coup, human rights conditions in that country have deteriorated. Radio has become a vital organizing tool for defending the rights of indigenous people and fighting environmental destruction, while providing needed information and education to people in rural areas. In April […]
Can US radio survive even more consolidation? The National Association of Broadcasters is asking the FCC to raise local radio ownership caps in the 75 biggest radio markets, and to get rid of limits entirely in the remaining 194. The prospect of even less diversity on the airwaves has motivated a broad coalition of music […]
Most press coverage of low-power FM focuses on particular stations, or the flourishing of the medium in the last half-decade. Not unexpectedly, rarely do articles delve into the deep history, which goes all the way back to 1948, with mileposts in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, leading up the FCC’s eventual creation of the […]
