Slashdot Mirror
Congress May Overturn FCC's Media Consolidation Plan
Spril writes "A congressional committee voted yesterday to prevent the FCC from allowing even more consolidation of the media industry. The original ruling was covered on Slashdot. The committee attached the pro-consumer proposal to a bill funding the Justice and State departments for 2004. But the Bush administration has threatened to veto the funding because they support ever-larger corporations owning ever-bigger chunks of the spectrum that theoretically belongs to the public. Clear Channel may need to cough up some more money for their lobbyists."
...when we need clearchannel licenses to operate radios. Similar to the UK's radio/tv tax, only done by the one company that rightfully controls the entire radio band and has the right to tax it. In socialism, the government takes away freedoms. In democracy, companies take away freedoms. In a mix (the US), companies take away freedoms with government mandate.
Unfortunately, this challenge only applies to the increase in percentage of TV broadcast ownership. The change allowing cross-media ownership (so that ClearChannel, for example, can now own several radio stations plus TV stations plus newspapers) will not be challenged. Congressmen (mostly Republics, surprise, surprise) threatened to kill the entire bill if any changes in the cross-media section were pushed.
Still, better than nothing I suppose. If this passes, Fox will have to go ahead and divest itself of the excess Television coverage they picked up that put them in violation of the cap.
i'm pretty evenly split on dem/rep issues.
a few issues on both sides that i agree with, with a lot of issues "undecided/don't know"
what i do know is the republicans push the idea of "smaller government"
this is appealing in a way. i don't want a large overbearing government fucking with my life.
but i think many pure unquestioning republicans don't understand is, I DON'T WANT LARGE OVERBEARING CORPORATIONS fucking with me either.
the end result is the same. I, an individual, am made irrelevant.
THAT is why i have so little faith....in either party.
Yesterday afternoon as I was driving home from the office, I heard Trent Lott talking about the proposed FCC rule on Public Radio Mississippi. Basically, he said he opposed the new rules because it would reduce the diversity of opinion in the media. It sounded almost exactly like a PIRC form letter.
Needless to say, I was a bit amazed (omg wtf lol!). But regardless of what you (or I) think of him, Trent Lott is a seasoned politician. And the only way to become one of those is to listen to constituents.
Maybe he's still atoning for that Strom Thurmond thing...
The FCC doesn't like it, but you can probably expect to be on the air at a couple of watts (1-2 mile range) for a year or more before they come knocking. Just choose your frequency carefully, and listen to neighboring stations for interference (which, BTW, almost never occurs).