The United States Federal Communications Commission will vote to roll back media ownership regulations that prohibit organizations from owning a television station and newspaper in the same market and will make it easier to acquire media outlets.
Common Frequency, which performs engineering and regulatory assistance for educational radio stations across the Western US, says the pending decision to eliminate the main studio rule is an “egregious” oversight that disregards that only 16% of Puerto Rico’s 3.34 million residents have regained electricity, more than three weeks after Hurricane Maria ripped through the island.
For years, we’ve told you why network neutrality is the key principle underlying an Open Internet and protecting the web’s capacity to connect. Finally it seemed as if the future of the Internet was no longer in question when the FCC moved to Title 2 classification.
But as with so many things, the Trump administration is leaving no stone unturned in trying to dismantle social progress and the open Internet is now on the chopping block.
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.
About 20% of the hugely valuable TV spectrum — slated for auction in 2014 — is reserved for noncommercial stations. Only noncommercial stations (mostly owned by universities and community non-profits) can operate on this spectrum and when they sell, they must sell to other eligible noncommercial operators. Two years ago, Congress made the fateful decision to allow noncommercial stations to cash out of their spectrum when it goes up for auction to wireless providers. That means that a university licensee can sell its spectrum and put the proceeds into a gym or a dorm. Or, the licensee can enter into a deal with a commercial entity to split the proceeds in return for subsidizing its operations until that fateful auction day. It’s like this: a nonprofit is granted (at no cost) public land to operate as a park, and then allowed to sell the land on the commercial market, splitting the proceeds with a private equity firm. The park is gone, and the public gets nothing other than more commercial real estate.
Question: What is the single most valuable piece of property worth owning at the dawn of the information age? Answer: The radio frequencies–the electromagnetic spectrum–over which an increasing amount of communication and commercial activity will be broadcast in the era of wireless communications. Our PCs, palm pilots, wireless Internet, cellular phones, pagers, radios, and television all rely on the radio frequencies of the spectrum to send and receive messages, pictures, audio, data, etc. Continue reading GLOBAL MEDIA GIANTS LOBBY TO PRIVATIZE ENTIRE BROADCAST SPECTRUM. by Jeremy Rifkin.→
