After many years of advocacy, the U.S. Low Power Radio community may be getting what it wants. The Federal Communications Commission has announced that they are considering a proposal to broadly authorize a power increase for many low power radio stations from 100 watts to 250 watts.
So-called “simple LP250”, which would make the increased wattage available with a minimum of exclusionary conditions, would provide the mini-radio stations with increased reach and increased legitimacy.
Two-thirds of existing low power radio stations are outside the top 100 media markets and offer local news, information and culture in areas with relatively little media diversity.
by Chris Witteman and Tracy Rosenberg. Originally published at 48 Hills.
Fourteen months of COVID quarantine made one thing clear: we need our broadband.
It used to be only media activists who insisted that Internet access was an essential service; now it’s accepted wisdom.
Unfortunately, the last year has also made clear that the current system is broken. Pictures of kids doing homework in parking lots because they have no broadband at home highlight the problem: The market has failed to deliver adequate broadband because there is no market.
High-speed broadband in most areas is available only from the monopoly cable company, occasionally from the duopoly phone company. It’s overpriced, unreliable, and – even based on the carriers’ overstated reporting — simply not available to millions of Californians – certainly not at the bandwidth needed for today’s applications.
People know this is so, despite industry propaganda to the contrary.
Californians need fast, modern Internet. Gov Newsom has responded with a budget that allots $7 billion — from a mix of state surplus dollars and federal rescue money – to actually build public broadband infrastructure rather than just talk about it or continue to throw money at the incumbents.
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Looking ahead to the upcoming annual conference of the Alliance for Community Media West, Mickey speaks with two long-time activists in the community-media movement- Sue Buske and Tracy Rosenberg; they discuss the future of public-access cable channels, associated public/local media, and the role community media centers can play centering marginalized voices in local news deserts, especially in hyper-artisan times. The ACM West’s 2022 conference is taking place in San Jose, CA from March 30 through April 1. In the second half of the show, we learn about the iconic, pathbreaking civil-rights activist, lawyer, clergy, and feminist, Pauli Murray (1910-1985), from Simki Kuznick, author of a newly-published Murray biography. That which Murray fought for foreshadowed and impacted many of the civil rights campaigns that continue to this day. Notes: Tracy Rosenberg is Executive Director of Media Alliance, a San-Francisco-based advocacy organization involved in a wide array of campaigns, including net neutrality, personal privacy, and many other issues. Sue Buske is Vice-Chair of ACM West, and heads a consulting firm (the Buske Group) assisting local governments and nonprofit organizations on cable-TV matters. The California Assembly bills discussed on the show are AB2635 and AB2748. Simki Kuznick is the author of “Pauli Murray’s Revolutionary Life” (from Rootstock Publishing). While living in California, she helped found the group Interracial Pride. Now based in the Washington, DC area, she is a writer and editor, holds an MFA in Creative Writing.
Cable industry lobbyists have swamped the state capital with lies and distortions to stop much-needed changes in the discriminatory treatment of public content on cable.
They want to keep on degrading the signals of public community benefit TV channels to outdated technology that makes Zoom captions illegible and compresses images so they are indecipherable. By down-converting a high definition signal to a standard definition signal, up to 80% of the picture information is discarded. This is ridiculous in 2022 and will get a lot more ridiculous as time goes by.
Industry has somehow convinced the state Assembly that providing functional and robust community benefits on cable systems will break the bank, although 20 other states already have high definition public channels, including the cities of Denver, Chicago, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, Portland and Seattle. Californians already pay some of the highest average cable bills in the country.
We only have two weeks to set the record straight and combat the lies or this modest reform dies.
ACTION: After the first new cable regulation bill in 15 years, the public utilities commission can now consider cable’s execrable customer service record when renewing licenses. In a proceeding at the CPUC, they are asking how best to do that. We have answers.
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As the FCC ramps up to open the first Low-Power FM radio station licensing window in several years, LPFM advocates are asking the Commission to consider making a window for translator licenses exclusively for non-commercial licensees.
Translators enable radio stations to broadcast at greater distances and help to circumvent geographic obstacles to radio waves, like mountains and tall buildings They are especially critical to low-power stations which work on small power allocations and often serve rural areas with rugged terrain.
Even now, in an age when most of us use the Internet, one in five Californians lack reliable and affordable service. Most are lower-income people of color and rural residents.
“We are living in an unjust and inequitable moment of technology, where some have and some don’t” Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, who authored AB 2239
The author of AB 2239 said it would make California the first state in the nation to codify the Federal Communication Commission’s newly adopted definition of digital discrimination into state law.
“We know that equitable access to fast, reliable and affordable Internet is a non-negotiable part of everyday life,” she said.
The FCC’s new rules adopt a “disparate impact” standard for identifying digital discrimination, meaning broadband providers could be in violation, even if they are not intentionally withholding adequate Internet from a protected group.
“The disparate impact standard has long been applied in education, in housing and health care, and more. And what this bill is doing is essentially saying it also needs to be applied to broadband access,” Bonta said. “Regardless of the inputs that you have around broadband intent and the different programs that we set up if there is a disparate impact — and we know that there is — then that’s considered discrimination.”
Catch up fast:
“It’s not acceptable to have a California where such an essential infrastructure is not equally accessible to all Californians,” said Miguel Santana, president and CEO of the California Community Foundation.
“The most common criticism I’ve heard is that [AB 2239] is not necessary because there is no intention to discriminate. And that the industry has implemented a number of programs to help create access to low-income, marginalized communities,” Santana said.
“The outcomes speak for themselves,” he added, referencing the fact that researchers and activists say low-income Californians pay more for worse service than those in wealthy neighborhoods because there’s often no competition in poor neighborhoods to compel Internet providers to compete on service and price.
Remote technology performance management company Hubble IQ partnered with Oakland Undivided to run nearly half a million speed tests across Oakland. ‘Over 75% of the Internet connections we tested never reach the speed threshold to be considered served,’ Oakland Undivided director Patrick Messac said. (Courtesy of Hubble IQ)
The context:
The advocacy group Oakland Undivided recently partnered with remote technology performance management company, Hubble IQ, to run nearly half a million speed tests across Oakland.‘The facts of the digital divide in California are stark. Race and income are the best predictors of whether you have access to the Internet in your neighborhood, how reliable it is and what you pay for it.’Patrick Messac, director, Oakland Undivided
“Over 75% of the Internet connections we tested never reach the speed threshold to be considered served,” said Oakland Undivided director Patrick Messac. “The facts of the digital divide in California are stark. Race and income are the best predictors of whether you have access to the Internet in your neighborhood, how reliable it is and what you pay for it.”
The big picture:
“In many cases, I would say that discrimination is often not per se the intent. Maximizing profit and delivering value to shareholders is the intent,” Tracy Rosenberg of Media Alliance wrote. The advocacy group is a party to the 8th Circuit proceeding where the FCC’s rules, which AB 2239 aims to align with at the state level, are being challenged.
“Because of history, market conditions and existing societal divides, the intent of maximizing shareholder value leads inexorably to actions that exacerbate digital inequity,” Rosenberg added.
The opposing view:
Contacted for comment, a spokeswoman for Charter Communications’ company, Spectrum, responded that it is still reviewing the legislation but that “Spectrum Internet plans, download speeds and regular prices are not only exactly the same in every ZIP code we serve in California but also across our entire 41-state service area.”
AT&T, another major player in the state, referred KQED to Cal Chamber, which lobbies on behalf of the broadband industry. In a letter to the Assembly Communications & Conveyance Committee, which is hearing AB 2239 on Tuesday, Cal Chamber argued, “We do not want to repeat the FCC’s mistakes in California, which would risk provoking costly litigation and delaying the deployment,” of ongoing universal connectivity programs.
The bottom line:
This early in the legislative session, it’s hard to anticipate whether the bill will survive or how its language might be changed in the coming months to mollify industry-backed critics or forestall lawsuits.
But Bonta said that if her bill becomes law, California will send a clear signal to the rest of the country to consider Internet connectivity as a social justice issue.
