GAO Report Slams FCC 117
eldavojohn writes "The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has made a report available today that was requested a year ago by a Democratic senator that finds the Federal Communications Commissions has been favoring lobbyists a little too much. 'The report says that some people at the commission warn lobbyists when a particular issue is about to come up for a vote. Typically, the commission chairman circulates an item for vote three weeks before a meeting. Under the rules of the FCC, meeting agendas are published one week before a vote is scheduled. Once the agenda is published lobbying is banned. The report says that the two-week window allows lobbyist plenty of time to "maximize their impact."'"
Re:Accountability! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So what's the problem? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Government & Business (Score:4, Interesting)
Even the teenagers are sick of the clearchannel 1 song between 15 minute commercials power blocks. also several of the FM stations locally that clearchannel turned into robo radio stations have such low bandwidth mp3's in their playback pool that the stations sound WORSE than the weather channels on XM and sirius.
NAB needs to be disbanded, Clearchannel needs to reap what they sow by being decimated by the satellite offerings. You know that free radio has problems when you can drive people quickly to the pay channels.
Re:I don't see the problem... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:business and government are run by aliens? (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, are you self-employed, unemployed, or what? Don't you work for a "corporation"? If so, then like me, you know that a "corporation" is a collection of workers and managers plus a base of satisfied investors and customers. (Please note you can't be a successful corporation without the latter.)
In other words, a corporation represents quite a large group of citizens, and they're all tied together by some significant common interest that has them exchanging money with each other all the time. If I work for LEGO, then I have skills that LEGO needs (designing toys). I have common interests with my managers (like them, I want the world to buy more LEGOs at higher prices, so my salary goes up). I have common interests also with my customers (like them, I want the component of the cost of LEGOs other than my salary to be as low as possible, so the price of LEGOs is as little more than my salary as possible, so folks buy plenty of them). I have common interests with our shareholders, too, of course, for obvious reasons.
Of course, I also have interests that conflict with the interests of my bosses, the shareholders, and the customers. That's human nature. That's why I belong to more than one interest group. I'm a LEGO employee but also (say) a member of the LEGO workers union, and a member of the Save Our Planet From Plastic Garbage pressure group that agitates for less plastic packaging around LEGO toys, et cetera and so forth. I'm in the middle of several groups, some of which sometimes come into conflict, which presents me with painful choices sometimes. (That's life, too.)
Nevertheless, clearly one of the most important of the organizations to which I, a citizen, belong, is the corporation that employs me. So actually, of all the social organizations to which citizens belong, corporations are one of the most important, if not the most important.
Perhaps you're confused by thinking that your most important interests are as a shopper, a consumer, someone at leisure. So you focus on those organizations that are oriented around your shopping, consuming, and leisure-time activities. But that's dumb. Most of your waking life you spend working, not on vacation, being a producer, not a consumer. And most of life's nastiest surprises come as threats to your role as producer, not consumer. It's far more traumatic to lose your job, or become disabled and unable to work, than to have to pay higher prices at the gas pump or be unable to buy a non-DRM copy of Bladerunner. If you're rational, you'll pay somewhat more attention to the organizations that allow you to be a producer in the way you want, that allow you to have a satisfying, well-paying job.
Without "corporations," we're all just Neanderthals scratching in the dirt, individually. It's banding together voluntarily to tackle jobs too big for any one of us that gives us this nice modern lifestyle. Decrying the fact that when we do band together the bands have a lot of influence is sort of goofy. Like complaining that when you get rich you have to suddenly start making all these difficult decisions of where to invest your money.
Re:Government & Business (Score:3, Interesting)
After a pirate station was shut down by the FCC, free speech and public access to the airwaves issues were raised, along with the idea that additional lower power stations might be added without causing significant interference. But when rules were finally implemented, it was done in such a way that the vast majority of the allocations went to religious broadcasters.
For democracy to function properly, diversity in media is essential to allow adequate probing and exposure to many issues. Instead of improving the situation the FCC has made things far worse by relaxing the ownership rules.
At a time when were facing what should be a wonderful improvement in technology with the transistion from NTSC to ATSC television, we're faced with very little good programming.
Stations no longer have to commit to a self assigned limit on commercial airtime (which in the past could be exceeded just two weeks of the year, usually election and holiday advertising periods).
It was interesting to see the new season Episode of Heros on NBC being presented "with limited commercial interruption". A normal Episode runs about 43 minutes out of an hour, this one was about 52 (with a major product placement, the car gift).
If one looks back it time, the normal Episode length was close to that. For instance episodes of Lost in Space originally ran about 51 minutes. Many stations run infomercials taking up huge blocks of time for advertising, and many overlap programs with various promotional banners.
Letting marketplace "competition" work for the public good has been a dismal failure. Clear Channel and others are operating in a loot and pillage mode. The whole mindset that should be behind broadcasting has been replaced with a very unhealthy one.
So much for "trustees of the public interest".
Most of the corruption in our political system relates to campaign contributions for media advertising. Instead of ineffective regulations on campaign spending regulations loaded with loopholes, we should instead have a situation where broadcasters provide fair and totally free airtime for qualified candidates, issues, and legitimate members of the public a station serves.
Do away with all paid political advertising.
Let's see the FCC bring back restrictions on the ownership of stations, require most to be locally owned, require no financial ties to news, political and public affairs programming, and restrictions on the type and amount of advertising carried.
And the spectrum they're taking from us with the shutdown of NTSC should be allocated based strictly on the public good, not commercial interests or auction proceeds.