mediageek

Category: The FCC

  • Round Two on Comcast, Net Neutrality & the FCC

    As we talked about extensively on the radioshow, the FCC’s last attempt at holding a hearing on network management and ISPs was somewhat thwarted by Comcast hiring disinterested seat warmers to take up valuable space that otherwise would have gone to interested members of the public. So the Commission is taking another stab at holding…

  • Reasonable Truth Management and Waiting for Godot Neutrality

    “Reasonable.” That’s a tough word when you think about it. We all like to think we know what is reasonable and what is unreasonable. But where’s the line? When they put that word in policies and laws, it’s usually stand in for: We can’t or don’t want to specify specific limits here, even though we…

  • yes! Magazine and the SF Chronicle on Micropower Radio

    Why is it all of a sudden micropower radio articles are cropping up in both the mainstream and alternative press? Is it just a slow news time at the end of the year outside of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the Iowa Caucuses? At least the last two I’ve seen have been far more…

  • free103point9 Says There’s No News in the Times about Brooklyn Microradio

    Just noticed free103point9’s Tom Roe’s comments about the Times Brooklyn pirate radio article I blogged about yesterday. He calls it “under-reported,” by which I think he means “not sufficiently reported” by the freelancer who wrote the piece, not “under-reported” to mean “a story which deserves more coverage like this.” Roe goes on to comment that…

  • Unforuntate Problem with NYC Pirates

    On the second year-end wrap-up radioshow, John Anderson mentioned a steep rise in the number of FCC enforcement actions in the New York City metro area, especially against unlicensed stations serving ethnic minorities who have little or no representation on licensed stations. Last week the NY Times ran a short story about college and public…

  • Year-End Review Pt. 2

    The 2nd part of my year-end review radioshow with John Anderson from DIYmedia.net is online now. We cover the FCC’s all-but-elimination of the cross-ownership ban, and John catches us up with the year in FCC enforcement action against unlicensed stations. You can download the show at the radioshow page, or just listen here: [mp3]https://mediageek.net/sound/2007/mg20071221.mp3[/mp3]

  • Matthew Lasar Says the FCC wasn’t just Naughty

    Matthew Lasar argues that the FCC did a few nice things this year making it deserving of something other than coal in the stocking. Included in that list are asking Congress to restore LPFM, putting a cap on cable companies limiting them to serving no more than 30% of the nation’s subscribers, and the localism…

  • Mark Cooper on the FCC’s Cross-Ownership Decision

    The Consumer Federation of America‘s Mark Cooper is arguably one of the smartest guys looking out for the public interest in media law and regulation. He has a very broad and deep understanding of the law and economics and how it applies to the spheres of policy and regulation. The Columbia Journalism Review interviewed him…

  • The Gospel of Kevin Martin

    Media Access Project’s Harold Feld has written an interesting analysis of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s history of positions and decisions. Feld claims that Martin’s approach is very consistent, marked by a brand of free-market pragmatism he calls “First Church of the Market — Reformed”: Like most Republicans, Kevin Martin is all about the deregulated free…

  • Newspaper-TV Combos & Lawsuit On the Way

    As expected, the FCC today voted down party lines to all but eliminate the cross-ownership rule [see PDF of the press release]. It was a last-ditch rush job by Chairman Martin since his lame duckness is about to set in with the end of the Bush administration. In his statement [PDF] Martin strenuously tries to…