News Headlines from the Jan. 13 Radioshow: NJ Outlaws Pirates, Indiana Senate Considers Massive Telecom Dereg, more…

These are the news headlines as read on the Jan. 13, 2006 edition of the mediageek radioshow: NJ Passes Anti-Pirate Radio Law; Indiana Senate Considering Radical Telecom Deregulation; FCC Accepting Comments on Local Cable TV; FCC Chair Says ‘Yes’ to Network Neutrality, and ‘Yes’ to Two-Tiered Internet; Groups Urge FCC Not To Expedite TV Station License Renewals

Communications legislation at the state level tops the news this week.

NJ Passes Anti-Pirate Radio Law
New Jersey has become the second state to make unlicensed radio broadcasting a state felony, following Florida which passed such a law last year. The New Jersey state Senate voted in favor of the anti-pirate bill unanimously, 38-0, and governor Richard Cody signed it into law on Jan. 13.

The law had been pushed for hard by the New Jersey Broadcasters Association, whose members are feeling pinched by large broadcasters from New York City on the North and Philadelphia on the South which dominate much of the State’s airwaves. Apparently the NJBA can’t get a law passed outlawing out-of-state broadcasters, so instead they took aim at unlicensed broadcasters, although there are no indication that pirates are as rampant as they are in Florida, largely acknowledged as the nation’s hot spot for pirate radio.

Now that unlicensed broadcasting is a crime in New Jersey, local and state law enforcement are permitted to track down and shut down unlicensed stations. No doubt, the NJBA intends to aid police with the tracking down part of the equation.

According to the NJBA web site, the association is planning to distribute commercials for member stations to air, “alerting listeners to this new law, and what to do if a pirate station interferes with their favorite local station.”

Indiana Senate Considering Radical Telecom Deregulation
Over in Indiana, the state Senate is looking at a bill that would radically deregulate telecomm law there. The Homeland Security, Utilities and Public Policy Committee approved by a 8-2 vote a bill that would let telephone companies set their own rates without state intervention as soon as 2009.

If passed, the bill would also move cable TV franchising to the state level, similar to what happened in Texas last year. Such a change would limit the ability of local municipalities to push for public service and public access channels in exchange for companies’ use of the public right-of-way.

The bill would also further hamstring municipalities by placing restrictions on their ability to deploy broadband networks.

Supporters of the bill, including former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey who testified in front of the Indiana Senate committee, argue that radically relaxing the rules would bolster competition.

But opponents of the bill argue otherwise. Linton, Indiana, is one of only two cities in the state with its own broadband network. Linton mayor Tom Jones said the bill’s stiff rules for municipal broadband networks would deny citizens access to new and developing technologies.
The Indiana bill represents just one battle in a nationwide war the telecommunications industry is waging to get states to individually deregulate their industry and pull power away from local municipalities to the state level where lobbiests have more access and centralized resources.

FCC Accepting Comments on Local Cable TV
Currently the FCC is exploring the issue of cable TV franchising, mostly with regard to whether or not local municipalities are “unreasonably refusing to grant
competitive franchises,” and if the FCC should intervene at the local or state level.

The Center for Digital Democracy warns on its website that the true intent of the proposal in front of the FCC is to “overturn perhaps the most important remaining public interest media safeguard.” The Center notes that, “local franchising is the only method that can ensure that the public is even modestly served by the communications giants.”

The FCC opened this proposal for rulemaking last November and is accepting comments from the public until Feb. 13. To learn how to send your comments to the FCC go to the mediageek website – www.mediageek.net – and click on “comment to the FCC” on the right hand column.

FCC Chair Says ‘Yes’ to Network Neutrality, and ‘Yes’ to Two-Tiered Internet
In the last few weeks here on mediageek I’ve been talking quite a bit about the concept of “network neutrality,” which is where broadband providers don’t block content to subscribers, even if it’s not something they directly profit from. The issue has been coming to the fore in recent months because the big telephone companies, like AT&T and Verizon, are getting into the business of providing cable TV services over internet lines, and they’re making noises like they don’t want their subscription services to have to compete with free and competitor’s video on the Internet.

On January 6 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin came out strongly against broadband internet providers filtering content to subscribers. In a public question and answer session, Martin said, “It is critical that consumers continue to have the access, and unfettered access, to all of the Internet.” He continued, saying, “I think that Washington and policymakers will be concerned if we are talking about network providers blocking access to content.” Martin stresses that the FCC is going to be committed to network neutrality.

However, Martin was hesitant to commit the FCC to making rules to enforce network neutrality, saying that he doesn’t have evidence that any internet content is being blocked.

Martin also drew a distinction between network neutrality and tiers of service. He told the CES audience, “Some want a lower speed, and for other consumers, it may be worth more to them to pay for a better quality of service or better speed.” That attitude worries public interest advocates, who foresee a two tiered internet that reserves rich audio and video content for the wealthiest customers.

Indeed, dividing the internet by access speed and bandwidth, may be the way the big telcos can effectively filter content without explicitly filtering content. As I mentioned last week, companies like Verizon and AT&T are trying to charge big internet companies like Yahoo and Google for the bandwidth used by the videos and other media content they provide to consumers.

Such a policy may give the telcos a way to block content from websites that don’t pay their fee, — most likely to be nonprofit and amateur sites that don’t have the profits or revenues of the big dot-coms.

On Jan. 10, BellSouth Chief Executive Officer Duane Ackerman told the Citigroup Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference that as more bandwidth-intensive content is available online, broadband providers will have to negotiate more with content providers, concluding, “There will ultimately need to be some commercial agreements established.”

Groups Urge FCC Not To Expedite TV Station License Renewals
Two weeks ago guest John Anderson and I discussed an Iowa group’s challenge to the license of a Sinclair-owned TV station in Cedar Rapids. On January 11, three groups sent a letter to the FCC Chair, urging the commission to be careful with rubber stamping the license renewals of TV stations.

The Campaign Legal Center, Benton Foundation and the United Church of Christ are concerned by comments made by FCC Media Bureau Chief Donna Gregg that expediting the license renewal process will be a priority at the bureau. According to the groups’ letter, “for broadcasters to be effective public trustees, the FCC must appropriately exercise its statutory responsibility of holding them accountable for fulfilling their public interest and programming obligations.”

Already license renewals for broadcast television stations are largely a pro forma process, although in the last couple of years viewers groups have taken to challenging the licenses of stations they believe are not providing adequate public service in the form of news and public affairs programming.

Although all broadcast stations are by law supposed to serve the public interest, convenience and necessity in exchange for their free license, since the Reagan administration this has become a mostly toothless admonition rather than an enforceable requirement.