Category: Media Policy

Massachusetts Mulls Anti-Pirate Law

Lawmakers in Massachusetts are hard at work trying to outlaw unlicensed broadcasting. H.1679 was introduced in the state House of Representatives in January and got a hearing in the legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary just last week. Floor votes are expected before the end of the year.
If approved, Massachusetts would become the fourth state in the country to pass an anti-pirate radio law. Continue reading “Massachusetts Mulls Anti-Pirate Law”

The Wait for a Full FCC

Future FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler had his first sit-down with the United States Senate last week. The Benton Foundation has assembled an excellent compendium of coverage from the hearing, focused especially on Wheeler’s qualifications and his potential agenda for the agency.
For decades, Wheeler was the chief lobbyist for the wireless phone and cable industries. He also raised more than a million dollars for President Barack Obama’s elections in 2008 and 2012. Currently, Wheeler’s a venture capitalist. Continue reading “The Wait for a Full FCC”

Wisconsin's Attack on Truthtelling

The present practices of drafting a state budget in Wisconsin is like an inverse Christmas: a drunken anti-Santa stumbles through the people’s house at the dead of night and leaves flaming bags of poo for the citizenry to unhappily discover the next morning. These come in the form of non-fiscal matters attached to the budget itself; the riders typically advance some inane personal/political cause of individual lawmakers.
A recent sad example of this practice is a budget provision which would expel the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism from the UW-Madison campus and prohibit UW faculty and staff from working with it in a professional capacity. Continue reading “Wisconsin's Attack on Truthtelling”

Clear Channel: Give Us More Translators Before Expanding LPFM

Kudos to Matthew Lasar for unearthing an ex parte gem from the FCC files. Clear Channel’s top engineering executive and chief lobbyist had a sit-down with FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai earlier this month in which they covered a wide range of issues related to the state of AM broadcasting. Pai is pushing for an "AM Revitalization Initiative" at the FCC, which would consider several ideas related to finding sustainability for the nation’s oldest broadcast band. Continue reading “Clear Channel: Give Us More Translators Before Expanding LPFM”

Translator Market Comes Out of the Shadows

Playing end-of semester catchup: the Clear Channel-owned trade publication Inside Radio recently published an article quoting a station-appraiser who likens the booming market for FM translators to the birth of the Internet. Documents for more than three dozen translator sales have been filed with the FCC this year, compared to just three at this time in 2012. Continue reading “Translator Market Comes Out of the Shadows”

Greasing the Skids for AM's Digital Transition

The National Association of Broadcasters’ annual convention just wrapped up in Las Vegas, and HD Radio proponents used the event to begin the push to make the AM dial all-digital.
At a panel on "AM Band Revitalization" moderated by Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai – the first Commissioner to moderate a panel at the NAB Show – CBS Radio Senior Vice President of Engineering Glynn Walden told attendees that there was no sustainable future for analog AM broadcasting and that the FCC should set a date for an "for a digital AM sunrise and for an analog AM sunset."
Walden has been one of the broadcast industry’s point-people on HD Radio from the very beginning. He helped develop the system’s core technical design and specifications, co-founded the company from which iBiquity Digital Corporation was born, and was instrumental in lobbying the FCC to approve HD as the U.S. digital radio standard. With three HD patents to his name, Walden would like nothing more than to see his baby actually fly after languishing all these years. Continue reading “Greasing the Skids for AM's Digital Transition”

Broadcasters Get Wake-Up Call on Cybersecurity

On Monday, viewers of two television stations in Montana were treated to an Emergency Alert System prank. During a daytime schlock talk show, the EAS system went off at the stations and a message was heard that "the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living." The zombie apocalypse warning prompted a handful of quizzical calls to public safety officials, but no mass panic.
Today, we learned that this EAS hack was not a localized event. Public and commercial television stations in Michigan apparently broadcast the same warning; Radio World reported that other television and radio stations around the country also discovered the message in their EAS systems and some were able to prevent it from airing. Continue reading “Broadcasters Get Wake-Up Call on Cybersecurity”

HD Radio's Multifaceted Search for Traction

We’re going into HD Radio‘s 11th year on the air. So far, the technology’s proliferation has been underwhelming, to put it mildly. However, proponents of HD are working on several projects which they hope will break it into the mainstream. They are: Continue reading “HD Radio's Multifaceted Search for Traction”

LPFM vs. Translators: A "Resolution"

Last week, the FCC approved significant rule changes to the low-power FM radio service; this week the agency formally released the text of those changes.
There’s a lot of good things in the latest Report and Order. LPFM stations have finally achieved something close to technical and legal parity with FM translator stations. LPFM rules have been refined to provide a substantive preference for those who actually plan to focus on live and local programming. And the next filing window for new LPFM stations will open in the fall of next year. Continue reading “LPFM vs. Translators: A "Resolution"”