Category: The FCC
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Net Neutrality To Be the FCC’s Responsibility? Or Nobody’s Responsibility?
On Monday Sen. Commerce Comittee Chair Ted Stevens told reporters at a press conference that he’s considering charging the FCC with protecting network neutrality. He was speaking at an event sponsored by CompTel, which represents the smaller telecom companies that compete with the big Bells like Verizon and AT&T. For it’s part, CompTel supports legislating…
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FCC Chair Says He’s Ready to Eliminate Cross-Ownership Ban
I missed this one last Friday, but FCC Chair Kevin Martin gave his first press conference as chair and promised to repeal the cross-ownership ban which prevents a company from owning both a newspaper and a television station in the same market. He will have a fighting chance at this when the Senate confirms new…
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Shocking and Gratuitous: Bono’s F-Word Is Now a Precedent for Two Words Too Bad To Use
Last week the FCC cleared out part of its indecency queue and I’ve finally had a chance to read the order [link to PDF]. Let me tell you, it is interesting reading, if only to find out that the words “shit” and “fuck” are such fundamentally offensive words that their mere utterance alone makes something…
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It’s Confirmed — AT&T Planning To Gobble Up BellSouth, Public Interest Be Damned
AT&T confirmed today that it plans to buy BellSouth and the remaining portion of Cingular wireless that it doesn’t already own, for $67 billion. If the deal goes through, AT&T will be both the biggest conventional telephone and the #1 wireless/cellular company in the US. Marketwatch is reporting that analysts it has talked to don’t…
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Recreating a Monopoly
Remember the old Ma Bell, AT&T? Before the 1980s we pretty much all had the same phone company and one long distance company with pretty high rates. You could only get your phone from the phone company, and this monopoly was protected by the federal government. That looks like the current dream of the new…
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Godcasters Making a Mint by Trafficking in Free Low-Power Radio Licenses
Last year I was tracking the apparent trafficking in low-power FM translator stations by several Christian broadcasting groups. Translators are stations whose only legal purpose is to rebroadcast the programming of a full-power parent station. John at DIYmedia has an update on the traffickers and their spoils from laundering licenses that come free-of-charge from the…
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Micro-Transmitter Manufacturer Fined by FCC
Ramsey Electronics has been well known in micro-radio circles for selling small Part 15 transmitter kits that often function as many folks’ first introduction to unlicensed broadcasting. A few years ago Ramsey started selling transmitters that put out much more power, at least 1 watt, which greatly exceed the Part 15 limits for unlicensed operation…
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FCC To Start Issuing Backed Up Indecency Fines
It’s been rumored for a while, but apparently now it’s official — the FCC’s Media Bureau is going to start issuing broadcast indecency fines from 2005. They’ll be done in packages which will each be signed off on by the FCC’s Commissioners, and are supposed to provide a little more guidance on what the FCC…
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News Headlines from the Jan. 6 Radioshow: New FCC Commissioners Sworn In; No Indecency Fines for 2005; CBS Splits from Viacom; Texas Is IPTV Frontier, but Problems Ahead for Public Interest
These are the media news headlines as read on the Jan. 6, 2006 edition of the mediageek radioshow: FCC Commissioners Sworn In On Jan. 3 Michael Copps and Deborah Taylor Tate were sworn in as FCC Comissioners. This will be a second term for Copps, a Democrat who has been on the FCC since 2001,…
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No Surprise, NPR Smears Florida Pirates
In the 1970s NPR lobbied the FCC to get rid of low-power FM radio, and in 1978, the Commission did. Then in 2000 NPR lobbied Congress to hem in the new low-power FM service, and Congress did that. Now it’s 2005 and it should be no surprise that the public radio network would air a…