Mergers, diversity of ownership, and multiple perspectives.
After the Trump Congress invoked rarely-used Congressional Review Authority (CRA) to revoke enormously popular broadband privacy rules that required opt-in consent for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to sell user search and browser data, revolt broke out.
A dozen prominent media advocacy groups wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking him to protect Americans from the destructive impacts of the massive AT&T/Time-Warner merger.
Continue reading Dozen Media Change Groups Protest AT&T/Time-Warner Merger
Charter ended up being the successful suitor for Time Warner Cable after Comcast’s offer for the Southern California cable/ISP giant went down in flames.
Charter, which made much of being “not nearly as bad as Comcast” got their merger, but they got it with some conditions attached, noticeably in the State of California, where the Public Utilities Commission went through a robust approval process.
However, Charter was not content with yes for an answer and spent much of the last few months agitating about the merger conditions and trying to get them abated, using typos and other lame arguments to do so. Continue reading CPUC Slaps Charter
California’s fifth largest public television station, KCSM-TV, has been the property of the College of San Mateo and its governing board, the San Mateo Community College District, for more than half century.
Recently the station, which once trained much of the Bay Area’s broadcasting corps with probably the best educational program ever offered at a public community college, has been very much unwanted property.
The station was put up for sale, twice, and some very reasonable offers from new operators were turned down in favor of a deal with a hedge fund, the Blackstone Group, to have subsidiary Locus Point Networks, eradicate the station entirely by selling its spectrum to wireless companies in the FCC’s spectrum auction.
The get rich quick scheme foundered. The District’s authorized bidder, who appears to have been VP Jan Roecks, failed to make a bid at some point in the complex procedure and KCSM-TV was dropped from the auction.
This article by Media Alliance ED Tracy Rosenberg describes the troubled history in the AFT May 2017 Bulletin. Continue reading KCSM TV Spectrum Sale Dissolves Into Lawsuits
Update: The DC Court of Appeals unfortunately rejected the stay on the reinstatement of the UHF Discount on June 15. This will allow the Sinclair-Tribune merger to move ahead. See press release below.
Continue reading Obscure UHF Discount Feeds Media Consolidation
Posted by Tracy Rosenberg on
The Huffington Post January 28 2011
Like the B-52’s? Metallica? The White Stripes?
You might have never heard of them if not for KUSF, the venerable San Francisco college radio station that first played their music.
College radio is part of the diverse package of community media voices around the country that with spit-and-glue budgets, volunteer energy and a handful of overworked staff, keep bits of the television and radio waves open to the public, while training millions of young people in technology and how to use it.
These do-it-yourself outlets, which have survived for decades with an open door policy, often feature unique and eclectic formats inspired by the passions and talents of the surrounding community. At the University of San Francisco for the past thirty years, that has often meant the city’s flourishing and influential music scene, one of the most vital in the country.
