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FCC Silenced Puerto Rico Radio Station's Boosters In March 2017
An dochasac writes: WAPA (680 AM) is a radio station in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After Hurricane Maria took out power, phone lines, cell towers and internet, WAPA was the only Puerto Rican radio station on the air for crucial public emergency communication. But WAPA's signal coverage was significantly cut in March 2017 when the FCC refused to renew the license for synchronous AM booster stations at Arecibo, Mayaguez and Aguadilla in March due to procedural issues with the petition for renewal. This decision limited the coverage, signal strength and signal quality of this station for remote and mountainous parts of Puerto Rico where the need for emergency communications is greatest. The FCC audio division chief who pulled WAPA's synchronous booster license decided to retire a few days ago. The position is open but is focused on legal training rather than technical expertise and experience with emergency communications.
FCC audio division's regulations have done little to stop AM and satellite radio from broadcasting right-wing streams-of-consciousness throughout the lower 48 states. With IoT, cellular, mesh, satellite, social media and cognitive radio, communications technology is changing much faster than the FCC's legal efforts to regulate it. But its arcane regulations leave Puerto Rico as one of the few islands in the Caribbean without a long distance shortwave broadcast station. With line of sight FM stations offline and WAPA's AM station neutered, post-Maria Puerto Ricans have a better chance of getting news and emergency information from Havana, Cuba than from anything under the FCC's increasingly pointless jurisdiction.
FCC audio division's regulations have done little to stop AM and satellite radio from broadcasting right-wing streams-of-consciousness throughout the lower 48 states. With IoT, cellular, mesh, satellite, social media and cognitive radio, communications technology is changing much faster than the FCC's legal efforts to regulate it. But its arcane regulations leave Puerto Rico as one of the few islands in the Caribbean without a long distance shortwave broadcast station. With line of sight FM stations offline and WAPA's AM station neutered, post-Maria Puerto Ricans have a better chance of getting news and emergency information from Havana, Cuba than from anything under the FCC's increasingly pointless jurisdiction.
No bias in that summary at all LOL....
It also demonstrates how a "free market" is capable of failing to be in the best interests of the population.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
FCC audio division's regulations have done little to stop AM and satellite radio from broadcasting right-wing streams-of-consciousness throughout the lower 48 states.
Can't tell if he's far right, and complaining about being silenced by the left, or far left, and complaining that "those pesky nazis" get to spew their hate speech.
Either way its -10 points for off topic content.
Nothing but a corrupt banana republic run by a handful of thieving families.......it's no different than Guam, the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands or American Samoa. Illiteracy even in government officials is rampant. I personally know one representative in Washington who is a high school dropout (he's also a Democrat). Getting a permit filled out is beyond most of them. The US allows them self-government and this is what happens. And of course, getting lawyers involved in any government department is asking for trouble.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I can tell. He's a lefty who's tweaked that the FCC won't censor his political opposition.
Since the number of stations (and alternative media outlets) climbed to the point where there was no shortage to be used to justify forcing radio stations to present all positions on controversial subjects, the "fairness doctrine" regulations were removed. This let free speech came at last to radio, which enabled the talk radio industry.
Talk radio ended up presenting primarily conservative viewpoints, mainly because progressive viewpoints tend to be presented as as 1984-style duckspeak rants attempting to enforce consensus, and this verbal abuse didn't attract enough listeners for such shows to achieve financial success.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But WAPA's signal coverage was significantly cut in March 2017 when the FCC refused to renew the license for synchronous AM booster stations at Arecibo, Mayaguez and Aguadilla in March due to procedural issues with the petition for renewal.
Bullshit. It wasn't "procedural issues" it was a lack of compliance with the terms they were allowed to add boosters.
Blanco-Pi sought and received annual renewals for the Stations' licenses, albeit often without the
required reports of his experimental progress.5 In 2009, he sought to add a third synchronous booster to
the two he was already operating in conjunction with station WISO.6 After initially denying the
application based on an erroneous interpretation of the rules,7 the staff denied reconsideration based on
Blanco-Pi ' s failure to demonstrate any further experimental benefit of adding a third AM synchronous
booster, at Guayama, Puerto Rico, to WISO and the two existing AM synchronous boosters.8 In seeking
review, Blanco-Pi attempted, for the first time, to justify the addition of a new AM booster station on
technical and experimental grounds; the Commission disregarded these new arguments pursuant to
Section 1.115(c) of the rules.9
Who would have thought that flaunting the rules would eventually get you shut down, right?
Also, if you think all this regulation on radio frequencies is silly then you should realize that the shielding on power supplies (that would otherwise jam most of the RF spectrum) only exist because of regulation that protects the RF spectrum from mass contamination.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
FCC audio division's regulations have done little to stop AM and satellite radio from broadcasting right-wing streams-of-consciousness throughout the lower 48 states.
Perhaps you should have mentioned that you want to censor people you disagree with instead of assuming that everyone on Slashdot happens to have your same brave wave pattern.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
"FCC audio division's regulations have done little to stop AM and satellite radio from broadcasting right-wing streams-of-consciousness throughout the lower 48 states." Is the FCC supposed to be censoring conservatives or something? I didn't realize the FCC worked for the DNC.
It also demonstrates how a "free market" is capable of failing to be in the best interests of the population.
Slow down there, cowboy! Are we to understand now that a radio station being *forced*...by government regulation...to *stop* serving their market in the manner that they'd been doing and spent good coin on doing is the *free market* at work?
These words, I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
And as far as this gem from TFS:
FCC audio division's regulations have done little to stop AM and satellite radio from broadcasting right-wing streams-of-consciousness throughout the lower 48 states.
Fuck you very much, and you could switch the terms to left-wing, atheist, Christian, Muslim, Nazi, Communist, Socialist, Fascist, etc etc, and unless they're actually inciting violence and/or armed rebellion/overthrow, I'd still tell you to fuck right off.
Government has no business policing the content of speech outside the aforementioned incitement to violence and/or armed rebellion/overthrow caveats, particularly and especially concerning politics or religion. This idea of "hate speech" is simply Orwell's "Newspeak" re-labeled. A prison for the minds of the masses who cannot rebel when the words and the concepts they conveyed that were used to describe it, and even for the very concept of individual freedom itself, have been erased.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
[operation of these] impermissibly circumvents our commercial AM filing window and competitive bidding processes. (from your quote) -- The story is pretty close to the level of fake news. It conflates boosters for commercial stations (which these were never supposed to be) with boosters for radio science (what these were permitted as) in order to give a false impression of the situation. There is a legal way to have boosters, but this station was intentionally avoiding that process, almost certainly in order to avoid the bidding. The headline should be "FFC blocked station's attempt to cheat on regulations." If there is any blame here it is on the station not the FCC.