FCC Plans To Repeal 39% TV Ownership Cap (engadget.com) 69
The FCC plans to vote on repealing local TV ownership limits, including the 39% national audience cap that currently restricts how much of the U.S. market a single broadcast group can reach. Engadget reports: On August 6, commissioners will hold a ballot to repeal Section 303 of the Communications Act, and with it the 39 percent rule. In essence, the rule limits the reach of a local TV network to no more than 39 percent of the U.S.' total audience market. In its place, the FCC would move to a system whereby it would personally approve or reject TV ownership deals on a case-by-case basis.
It's not clear if the FCC even has the authority to reject Section 303 without the explicit consent of the legislature. As Lawrence J. Spiwak wrote in the Yale Journal on Regulation back in January, Section 10 of the Communications Act expressly forbids the FCC from bending the rules around Section 303. "Americans no longer trust the legacy national media to report the news fairly or accurately," wrote FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in an op-ed published on Breitbart. "In fact, only eight percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in mass media. That figure is even lower among Republicans -- sitting at a mere three percent."
"... Many local broadcast TV stations are getting hollowed out as a result and turning into little more than mouthpieces for programming produced in New York and Hollywood," he alleged. "That is not what Congress or the FCC intended."
It's not clear if the FCC even has the authority to reject Section 303 without the explicit consent of the legislature. As Lawrence J. Spiwak wrote in the Yale Journal on Regulation back in January, Section 10 of the Communications Act expressly forbids the FCC from bending the rules around Section 303. "Americans no longer trust the legacy national media to report the news fairly or accurately," wrote FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in an op-ed published on Breitbart. "In fact, only eight percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in mass media. That figure is even lower among Republicans -- sitting at a mere three percent."
"... Many local broadcast TV stations are getting hollowed out as a result and turning into little more than mouthpieces for programming produced in New York and Hollywood," he alleged. "That is not what Congress or the FCC intended."
Legal authority no longer is controlling (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not clear if the FCC even has the authority to reject Section 303 without the explicit consent of the legislature.
In case one has have not noticed, legal authority is no longer a requirement for actions. Whether the action survives legal challenges cannot be known at this time.
Re:Legal authority no longer is controlling (Score:5, Interesting)
Wasnt there a SCOTUS ruling recently that ruled that agencies cannot enact their own rules, but can only enforce rules as laid out in law? And if Congress wanted the agency to enforce a rule, it should pass a law to that effect?
We all know that that was targeted at agencies like the EPA, FDA etc, to get rid of the agency-created limits on things, but it feels like it should equally apply here - the law says X, the agency cant change the law.
People want biased news. (Score:5, Insightful)
When news is presented that fits with one's political biases (or other biases), they tend to find it believable. And it if does not align with their biases, they tend to distrust it. This is even true of people who claim they want politically-neutral unbiased news....they still tend to react to it through the filter of their own biases.
It is natural enough to do this, and largely unconscious. It is VERY hard to overcome and even people who can overcome it don't do so ALL the time. It is the nature of bias to work this way.
On the flip side, there are ALSO powerful groups who have a clear interest in controlling narratives.
So, any news source that makes a sincere effort at being unbiased will be distrusted by viewers at least half the time, and will be fighting a losing battle against wealthy special interest groups. With cards stacked against them like that, it is no surprise that there aren't very many.
Re:People want biased news. (Score:4, Informative)
> So, any news source that makes a sincere effort at being unbiased will be distrusted by viewers at least half the time
I disagree with that. In general the left is more likely to consider centrist or center right media trustworthy. How many on the left do you think like MSNow? It's fewer than you think.
I'm not saying it's impossible to produce an openly left wing news outlet that the left finds credible, look at the Alan Rusbridger Guardian, for example, as a paper that did its best to have integrity while focusing on issues important to the left. But this cable-news shit is killing everyone. I'm not interested in Trump's gaffes, There's more important things this administration is doing the media - all of it - needs to cover. And do so objectively - but not in a bipartisan way, which isn't the same thing at all.
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I'm not interested in Trump's gaffes, There's more important things this administration is doing the media - all of it - needs to cover. And do so objectively - but not in a bipartisan way, which isn't the same thing at all.
Most people under 50 don't pay much attention to the news. People such as yourself are the minority. The majority are primarily entertainment consumers. Fact consumers such as you are a small sample of voters, like it or not. The challenge is motivating and messaging the indifferent majority without alienating the fact-driven and motivated minority...because democracy is a game of getting the most total votes.
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"Fact consumers such as you are a small sample of voters, like it or not."
This is such a partisan take, presented as though it is not. The entire Republican strategy is to drive contempt and hatred to cause disengagement, "like it or not". Your point is the same as Scalia's point was when Bush stole the election in 2000, "Get over it". Republicans have won, get over it, right? Fact consumers are NOT a "small sample", they are a targeted group.
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In general the left is more likely to consider centrist or center right media trustworthy
Clearly you are incapable of having an unbiased view. Pigeonholing people is intelletually dishonest.
"In general" and "more likely" doesn't sound like pigeonholing to me. Whether the statement is correct or not is a different question.
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"the left" certainly does "sound like pigeonholing" though. American politics no longer has anything to do with left, right or center. Saying otherwise is pigeonholing.
Also, the claim is not correct. Objectivity is not monopolized by "the left", nor critical thinking, nor naivety. Conservatives USED to be critical thinkers and centrists are principally defined by that. While conservatism is influenced by selfishness, liberalism is idealist. Both alignments are subject to bias.
In fact, the entire bogus
No they don't (Score:3)
People in America are in the habit of blaming individuals for either systemic problems or what our Epstein class is doing. It's a bad habit and I wish we would stop but well, there
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"There is no Epstein class, there was just Epstein" And those redacted names on the Epstein files were for Ma and Pa Kettle and their kids? Grow up.
Re:People want biased news. (Score:4, Insightful)
News is a business. And it's not the business of selling news. It's the business of selling advertising. And selling advertising is all about demographics and nothing else.
You want eyeballs to sell to advertisers? You have to attract viewers that match the demographics your advertisers want to advertise to. That means your "news" programs must be echo chambers, telling people what they want to hear, and the most proven method to attract viewers is to peddle FUD via outrage monkeys.
There is no "left wing media" or "right wing media," there's only "Madison Avenue media" who have divided up the demographics they advertise to between them. They people who run the news programs really don't care about politics, because the moment they do, they go bankrupt. It's a dying business, and there's no margin left for personal agendas.
Re: People want biased news. (Score:2)
Listening to these quaint conversations about the business is news is so 30 years ago. We should have a public funded source. We should have public finance of elections.
Itâ(TM)s too late. Thereâ(TM)s more being spent on bunkers than water infrastructure right now.
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We should have a public funded source.
We tried that with Radio Free America. One of the few "news" services that openly admitted they were just propaganda.
Turns out, that wasn't that useful either.
Re: People want biased news. (Score:3)
The demographics that the media caters to are divided more by income than by political ideology. Poor white trash that thinks that investing in gold through some website they heard on the radio is one demographic. Rich white woman that is looking for an all natural facial scrub that will reverse aging while donating a portion of the profits to the whale. Take your pick how a talk show schedule is built around those ad markets.
Re: People want biased news. (Score:2)
This is ignoring the corporate interests and rampant propaganda. We can pontificate about the feedback loop of confirmation bias, but thereâ(TM)s not a news outlet that isnâ(TM)t giving tips to North Korea right now.
To have a democracy you need valid information. What we have is totally manipulated pretense of a meritocracy and PR for war crimes.
At this point itâ(TM)s just grifters and suckers and a few people opting out or depressed. Itâ(TM)s too late to repair the corruption. The best
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When news is presented that fits with one's political biases (or other biases), they tend to find it believable. And it if does not align with their biases, they tend to distrust it.
If someone is far enough to the right, everybody else is going to be on their left, and vice-versa. That isn't necessarily bias, it's just geometry.
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I don't want biased news. In fact, I don't want any news at all. [aaronsw.com]
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"On the flip side, there are ALSO powerful groups who have a clear interest in controlling narratives."
Which is why there used to be checks on influence in media and why Republicans since Reagan have been destroying those checks. The creation of Fox News, and Rush before it, was deliberate, as is this furthering of that agenda.
"So, any news source that makes a sincere effort at being unbiased will be distrusted by viewers at least half the time."
False. You are assuming distrust is inherent but it is not a
Re:Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score:5, Insightful)
It's now in their best interest to lie and make sure that lie is repeated and told from multiple "sources" so it becomes the alternative truth.
For example "The USA has the hottest economy in the world" without saying how much borrowing is going on and how interest payments are now the US's biggest expense. The maxing out of the US "Credit card" will be a burden generations of Americans will be left with.
Meantime the wealthy are hiding wealth in other countries, into gold, into bunkers elsewhere in the world...
The only good thing is that the world is increasing its decoupling from the USA so the its implosion will have less of an impact on them.
Who knows, maybe they will have the cash/gold to buy up the husks of profitable US companies and take them overseas...
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The maxing out of the US "Credit card" will be a burden generations of Americans will be left with.
It is the same here in Canada. Parents worry about climate change, which they have virtually no control over, while saddling their kids with large forever interest payments, which they do. Funny stuff, glad I won't be here for the result.
Re:Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score:4)
Electric cars and solar panels ARE the sensible choice.
Counties are not going to able to afford the impact climate change will bring, whole communities will need to be relocated, food production will be reduced, tropical diseases will impact countries that had been free of them, and so on.
That is another "debt" that my Grandkids will start having to pay for. I suspect WW3 will be over food and water resources.
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The EU has shown moving to the green economy will have a 7-1 pay off, especially when Trump does something stupid in the middle east.
Looking at what the EU pays for both electricity and fuel compared to here and I don't think they have any useful advice to offer in that regard.
Re: Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score:4)
Fuel is more expensive, which gives a great incentive to ditch fossil fuels. Fuels in the US are subsided to make them cheaper.
Looking at residential electricity prices in Europe, every single country is cheaper than what I get from SoCal Edison. That's why I installed solar and a battery. My bill is negative now.
Re: Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score:4)
Re: Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score:2)
âoeA burden for generations.â
Only if we allow it. Go socialist and change the rules or continue the same path and end up in a forced labor camp. I donâ(TM)t see any middle ground here.
Itâ(TM)s not my debt any more than itâ(TM)s my yacht parked off Epstein island. Until we get class consciousness we are going to be forever in debt to someone elseâ(TM)s excess.
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Even the IMF has raised concerns about the US ability to service that debt given how Trump has made the world worse at every turn.
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historically, it's the socialists and communists with an exclusive on forced labor camps
Read the 13th and tell us which one we are
Re:Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Without a doubt, restricting the target audience a local broadcaster can reach to 39% is a form of censorship, no matter the reasoning behind it.
So if someone can't have a monopoly on local TV broadcasts they are being censored?
In the past the FCC had to balance censorship with censorship, and the cap did that by preventing a broadcaster who refused to air a show from affecting more than 39% of the national audience.
No, the FCC had to balance public interest vs corporate and political interests because it's more beneficial to give the public more choice and different views.
If it is not addressed, local broadcasters will be regulated out of existence by forcing them to compete with one hand tied behind their back.
Where's the competition if all the local broadcasters are owned by the same company?
Now that programs from major studios can reach 100% of the national audience via online streaming services
Oh, so every American has internet? Funny that, about ~25 million Americans lack access to reliable internet access.
If it is not addressed, local broadcasters will be regulated out of existence by forcing them to compete with one hand tied behind their back.
If addressed, there will not be any competition at all because most of the local broadcasters will be bought up by one company. Sinclair Broadcast Group tried this in 2018 by hiding their purchasing of Tribune Media through shell companies which resulted in them being sued and fined 48 million in 2020.
If FCC repeals the 39% national cap Sinclair will quickly dominate local broadcast and considering what has happened to every other local broadcaster they bought, those broadcasters will be gutted and start to air mostly news-slop that is produced centrally.
I guess it has escaped your notice that a consolidation of media is happening which means that a handful of billionaires are becoming the sole owners of a majority of all media which in turn means they get to decide what everyone can see, not you or the public. Anyone with a smidgen of critical thinking knows that is bad, like dystopian bad.
Re:Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score:4, Informative)
According to their Web site [nexstar.tv], "Who is Nexstar? Nexstar and its subsidiaries and partners own or operate 265 stations in 132 markets in 44 states, reaching more than 70% of U.S. television households."
"Sinclair, Inc. (Nasdaq: SBGI) [sbgi.net] is a diversified media company and a leading provider of local news and sports. The Company owns, operates and/or provides services to 177 television stations in 79 markets affiliated with all major broadcast networks ....
Our media properties [sbgi.net] (including the investment in regional sports networks) have a local focus with national reach, with local and regional platforms reaching approximately 70% of the U.S. population and digital assets collectively reaching an average of 80 million unique visitors each month."
Evidently they don't feel 70% is enough and want more.
Mr Carr sure does repeat the rage-bait keywords "Hollywood" and "New York" a lot
Sinclair Broadcast Group (now Sinclair, Inc.) is headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Hunt Valley, Maryland.
Nexstar Media Group is headquartered in Irving, Texas, with additional major operational offices in New York City and Chicago.
I'm not great at geography, but I don't think Irving, Texas, or Baltimore is close to New York or Hollywood. Maybe Sinclair produces a lot of content in New York, who knows?
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Re: Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score:2)
Is this a real human being saying not having a monopoly is censorship?
The FCC works for the bad guys. Larry Ellison will soon have half the media. News Corp and Doctor Evil control the rest.
These discussions are so weird. Itâ(TM)s like being in the Mad Max world where warlords fight over water and oil and someone is talking about tax incentives. Do we even live on the same planet? The country is nearly a fascist dictatorship and we have masked ICE Agents kidnapping people for camps. Why are we still ar
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The country is nearly a fascist dictatorship and we have masked ICE Agents kidnapping people for camps. Why are we still arguing about anything?
Because around half the country either doesn't believe that's happening or is in favor of it happening, and "their" side is in control.
Re: Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score:2)
I effectively don't have the same level of free speech as the members of the board of directors at iHeartMedia. So I am not terribly sympathetic yhat corporate entities have to operate under restrictions and regulation. They still enjoy a power that us individuals cannot obtain.
How will this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Americans no longer trust the legacy national media to report the news fairly or accurately," wrote FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in an op-ed published on Breitbart. "In fact, only eight percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in mass media.
And how will allowing even more of the media to be owned by a single business help that? Honestly, this feels like clearing the way to make sure only the "correct" message is allowed out on mass media. And we all know that means more alternative facts and less actual reality.
Re: How will this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That may work for people who only have TV as their sole source of news.
That isn't a lot of people these days unless you're very old.
A lot of us get our news on the Internet. They would have to pass a bill in Congress to allow the FCC or some other government agency do that.
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This. The FCC controls licenses for broadcasters, radio and television. As in, over the electromagnetic spectrum, from stations to receivers. They don't control what is broadcast on cable or the internet.
Yet?
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The FCC controls licenses for broadcasters, radio and television.
That's the 1934 legislation (also included telephony). Since then, modified by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to include broadband. And the beloved CDA (Section 230).
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And how will allowing even more of the media to be owned by a single business help that?
Did you miss the part about "approve or reject... on a case by case basis"? The people this is designed to "help" are the grifters currently occupying the white house and its cabinet.
MOAR (Score:2)
Consolidate power and increase corporate profits! Let nothing stand in the way.
The modern Republican Party Sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Established laws?Meaningless.
Established social norms? Meaningless.
Legal precedents? Meaningless.
Established and well researched science? Meaningless.
Sure they will pretend differently when it suits their goals. But their overriding goals are more power and wealth for themselves and to hell with the consequences.
To be clear I am not saying the Democratic Party doesn't have it issues. They suck at messaging. There are plenty to still seek power and wealth while being selective about the truth. But the pervasiveness and unabashed shameless boldfaced lying to achieve their goals is simply unmatched by the modern Republican.
As yourself this: Who does this policy benefit? Follow the money.
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As my local democrat officials, and a 3rd party official said to me in person over the years of talking about the matter say: their messaging does not get out to people no matter how good or poor it might be; that is, unless it's a massive screw up. They will give coverage if they crash and it'll help burn them afterwords.
Oh, and I knew a former news director for a major city's local news show... and his job was picking typical news topics from the news feed and sending the couple staff out to follow up if
Re: The modern Republican Party Sucks. (Score:3)
For hundreds of years, conservative is the label given to the political wing that desires maintaining social and political and economic hierarchies. It is a faction label given in the past to those who supports monarchy.
Broadcast TV is dying (Score:2)
Does a significant portion of the American populace even watch news from local TV stations any more?
When the universe which supports a specific business model starts to contract, then it is normal business practice to consolidate many vendors into one.
I was a long time ago (2008) when I canceled my cable TV subscription.
What I'd really fear is the FCC controlling news organizations and video on the Internet, but without an act of congress this seems unlikely. Of course, I wouldn't put it past them to try.
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What I'd really fear is the FCC controlling news organizations and video on the Internet, but without an act of congress this seems unlikely. Of course, I wouldn't put it past them to try.
If they can get this done you can be sure they'll try to invent ways to prevent "unfriendly" news providers from being on the Internet. Most Internet providers are small and lack sufficient money, legal representation and political influence. It would actually be pretty easy for the government to convince their Internet service providers to deny their access and get their domains removed from DNS. If Russia and China can do it, so can the U.S.
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The US government has the capability to track every person by their cell phone and drop a nuclear bomb on them, and yet we're all here typing idiotic comments into a box here on slashdot.
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The 60+ year old MAGA crowd never switches their tv off Fox News. If you did change the channel the logo would be burned in.
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Aim: 100% FoxNews 24h? (Score:2)
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Some of us don't trust those media companies either. Well, at least I don't. I can't speak for anyone else.
Not sure this will make much of a difference (Score:2)
It's quite expensive to operate broadcast TV stations because they're designed to keep the barriers to access to their programming very low. No subscriptions or intermediate distribution networks between the licensed transmitter and the consumer...just some cheap and easy to find commodity hardware. At least, that was how TV used to be.
ATSC screwed that up in the US. The transition was huge bungle at a time when internet bandwidth was about on-par for the purpose of delivering video content. These days a ce
that's some twisted logic. (Score:2)
The reason we don't trust the media is that, to use one bad example, Sinclair media. They have run op-ed peices framed as news, across every one of their stations. You can find videos on youtube where they start with one presenter reading from a TelePrompTer and by the end of the video, all of the example 'news casts' are synchronised in a way that would make a choir ashamed. There are lots of rules that most large media companies break because the possible FCC penalties are less than their ill-gained
the final death of fact (Score:2)
When Bill Clinton signed the CDA in 1996, he chortled that it would increase competition. Of course it did the exact opposite, and led to the dominance of Fox News and Sinclair Media and the death of factual reporting. It's not quite ded yet, but this is the move that will lead to our having ONLY full-on state media allowed in our supposedly free country.
Translating... (Score:2)
the FCC would move to a system whereby it would personally approve or reject TV ownership deals on a case-by-case basis.
Translation: "Give us a bribe and we'll approve your deal."
I know it's difficult to write hard and fast rules but giving politicians unbounded discretion is just asking for corruption.
Americans no longer trust the legacy media (Score:2)
More of this?! (Score:2)
More of this?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]