Could this be considered the Nuclear option regarding expanding to cover Talk Radio under the Fairness Doctrine?  Speaking at the Heritage Institute, I think the FCC commish just threatened us...

 "I think the fear is that somehow large corporations will censor their content, their points of view, right," McDowell said. "I think the bigger concern for them should be if you have government dictating content policy, which by the way would have a big First Amendment problem."

"Then, whoever is in charge of government is going to determine what is fair, under a so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine,’ which won’t be called that – it’ll be called something else," McDowell said. "So, will Web sites, will bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?"

McDowell told BMI the Fairness Doctrine isn’t currently on the FCC’s radar. But a new administration and Congress elected in 2008 might renew Fairness Doctrine efforts, but under another name.

You can try to put Red State shit on this site, But I won't click the links...

The media has an agenda, every time we fail to understand their motives, we hurt the cause and our hope for a better future.  The media stands to lose billions of dollars if we get a decent FCC chair, they WILL lose billions if Obama is elected.

End of story, end of discussion.

    Like King Pyrrhus who won the battles but lost the war we might refrain from indulging a similiar attribution and reconsider the F.C.C. ruling before so eagerly crowning Chairman Martin, our digital tribune, with the laurels of his pyrric victory.  
   

The FCC's ruling against Comcast could actually be a Trojan horse, giving Comcast and other internet providers a way to get around net neutrality.

Instead of throttling Bittorrent, providers like Comcast will get the green light for implementing monthly data caps. This sounds all well and "net neutral" in theory, until you realize that data caps specifically cripple video.

This means that users will think twice before watching a political video, and they'll think twice before downloading a TV show from iTunes or renting a movie from a Netflix online service.

For the first time ever, the FCC has handed down a pro-Net Neutrality ruling.

Federal regulators voted 3-2 on Friday to declare that Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic last year was unlawful, marking the first time that any U.S. broadband provider has ever been found to violate Net neutrality rules.

The Federal Communications Commission handed Comcast a cease-and-desist order and required the company to disclose to subscribers in the future how it plans to manage traffic. Comcast had said that its measures to slow BitTorrent transfers, which it voluntarily ended in March, were necessary to prevent its network from being overrun.

"We need to protect consumers' access, said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican. "While Comcast has said it would stop the arbitrary blocking, consumers deserve to know that the commitment is backed up by legal enforcement."

Republican FCC chair Martin has been subject to a lot of backlash since he indicated a few weeks ago that he was likely to join the two Democratic members of the five-person board in ruling against Comcast. That includes a nasty warning from everyone's favorite orange-hued villain, John Boehner:

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- A day before the Federal Communications Commission is set to formally reprimand cable giant Comcast Corp. (CMCSA, CMCSK) for slowing certain Internet connections, the top House Republican says the action reflects "poor policy judgment" that will "hijack the evolution of the Internet."

In a letter sent Thursday to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, House Majority Leader [sic] John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the FCC is improperly inserting itself into a self- governing entity. "Congress has intentionally refrained from imposing the heavy hand of government, which is precisely why we have seen such rapid growth in the Internet," the letter said.

Right, just like Congress intentionally refrained from imposing the heavy hand of government in sanctioning illegal spying on Americans. Boehner and his fellow Republicans aren't acting from some deep civil libertarian let-the-Internet-run-free position. They're trying to protect their favorite constituency, the telcos and big ISPs.

Major kudos need to be paid to Free Press, which did all the research and filed this suit. Free Press didn't exist just a couple years ago, and this victory for them is a huge testament to the importance of building progressive infrastructure. In their words,

"The FCC's bipartisan decision to punish Comcast is a major victory. Defying every ounce of conventional wisdom in Washington, everyday people have taken on a major corporation and won an historic precedent for an open Internet.

"Comcast's history of deception and continued blocking show contempt for the online consumer protections established by the FCC. We commend Chairman Martin and Commissioners Copps and Adelstein for standing up for Internet users and working across party lines to protect free speech and the free market.

"Today's order makes it clear that there is nothing reasonable about restricting access to online content or technologies. Moving forward, this bellwether case will send a strong signal to cable and phone companies that such violations will not be tolerated.

"But the fight is far from over. A duopoly market -- where phone and cable companies control nearly 99 percent of high-speed connections -- will not discipline itself. We look forward to working with the FCC and Congress to ensure proactive measures keep the Internet open and free of discrimination, and accessible to all Americans."

Kudos too are due to Commissioners Martin, Adelstein, and Copps for standing up against really strong corporate and political pressure and doing the right thing. You can send your thanks to Kevin.Martin@fcc.gov, Jonathan.Adelstein@fcc.gov, and Michael.Copps@fcc.gov.

God, I hate the media!  I hate them with the white hot fire of a thousand suns.  I hate them with every fiber of my being.  I hate them for lying and trying to destroy my country and the principles it was founded on, every single day. I hate them for smearing good men, destroying the economy, this war and basically damn near everything they do.

I'm pulling my hair out and you should be, too.  Wrigley has commissioned hip hop performers (I'm not going to call them artists anymore) to re-make their jingles.  And then releasing them as songs.  Putting them on albums.  Watching them rise to No. 4 on the Billboard chart.  All  before revealing they are, in fact, delivery systems for gum.  

The campaign was conceived and executed by Mr. Stoute, a former senior executive at Interscope Records who counts rapper Jay-Z as a partner in his business. The idea was to connect the hit song and the jingle in listener's minds. That way, Mr. Stoute says, "by the time the new jingle came out, it was already seeded properly within popular culture."

There are a ton of folks out there whose expertise in marketing, advertising and sociology (not to mention law) far exceeds my own, so I hope you all chime in about this ridiculous development.  It makes my skin crawl to watch the gasping behemoth that is the modern music business (multinational corporations) further pervert an already herpetic art.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC will approve the merger of the two satellite radio companies, Sirius and XM.

FCC Reaches Tentative Deal
To Approve XM-Sirius Merger
By AMY SCHATZ
July 23, 2008 2:34 p.m.

WASHINGTON – A tentative deal has been reached by a majority of commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission to approve the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., a FCC source close to the review said Wednesday.

Republican commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate is the only FCC member left to vote on the deal and she is expected to do so shortly, two FCC officials close to the negotiations said. She is expected to sign off on the deal in exchange for a consent decree that resolves several enforcement issues involving the satellite radio companies and a combined fine of about $20 million, an FCC source close to the deal said.

Score a big one for the First Amendment today.

"The First Amendment precludes the FCC from sanctioning CBS for the indecent expressive conduct" of Janet Jackson's nine-sixteenths-of-a-second exposed breast, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today, and in striking down the FCC's obscene $550,000 fine, the Federal appeals court not only saved CBS lots of money, but struck a blow for freedom of expression on television, and media in general.

It's good to remember that this current reign of FCC terror, in which fines of millions of dollars have been levied by the FCC against offending media, was ignited by that split second of Janet Jackson's breast in the Super Bowl Halftime show on CBS in 2004. The FCC said it received more than a million complaints from outraged Americans about indecent broadcasts that year, and even though it was later revealed that at least half were instigated by Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council (see my debate with Bozell below), the race to trample the First Amendment was on.

Remember this?

More lolz below the fold........

The head of the Federal Communications Commission reported late Thursday that he was recommending harsh punishments for Comcast as a result of the company's violation of net neutrality practices.  The unfair blockage of Internet access caused a flood of criticism to come at Comcast, one of the largest Internet service providers in the country, and this site was one of the main sources of that criticism, which almost certainly caused this decision.

More below the fold.

These days, in the quest for ratings and money, some news programs cease to be factual.

The FCC should look into this. Fox News is a misnomer. It should be called Fox Entertainment or The Republican Channel or Fox Rumors, but it does not qualify as a news channel.

Caveat emptor: buyer beware the lowly pay phone. Any of you use one of these lately? I have, and it’s certainly not my parents’ pay phone! And I don’t mean in a good way. Never the consumer's friend, the telecoms have really ratched up the rip-off sweeps, big time.

In a recent first, the Personal Democracy Forum held a "Twitter Debate" between Obama and McCain surrogates. The PdF is a really interesting collection of people from various backgrounds, who jointly hope to promote, understand, and evolve technology in democratic uses.

The moderator of this debate was none other that Wonkette Emeritus herself, Ana Marie Cox. The surrogates in question were RNC Director of Communications, Liz Mair and Michael Nelson, Clinton's Director for Technology Policy at the Federal Communications Commission, IBMer, and Visiting Professor of Communication, Culture, and Technology at Georgetown University.

Everyone here probably already knows the story of Michael Reagan making statements on the air to the effect that he offered to pay for the killing of Mark Dice, an anti-war activist, and that all mothers and babies of Arab descent in the West Bank and Gaza territories be killed; in the case of some, have hand grenades put up the babies butts and "lit" (an inappropriate reference, which he would know, had Reagan served in the military – perhaps he meant "pull the pin").

But the real story is that main stream media has totally ignored the story. The son of a US president and spokesperson for the conservative movement makes death threats on the air, and not one newspaper, network radio station, or TV station thinks it's news.

(Cross-posted at The Christian Dem Home Journal)

I was about to head to bed last night when I read a shocking story in which Michael Reagan called for the murder of an anti-war activist.  

The object of Reagan's anger?  Mark Dice, a fundie Christian conspiracy theorist.  In looking more into this Dice fellow, I find myself concluding that while he may be a loathsome character, we nonetheless need to defend him against Reagan's criminal threats against him.

The FCC is spending millions supposedly informing the public about the transition from analog to digital TV on Feb. 18, 2009.  But they are deliberately concealing the fact from the public that with the transition to broadcast digital TV the number of available broadcast channels will multiply by two, or four or ten.  The FCC is issuing no new TV station licenses, however --- ALL the new channels are to be allocated exclusively to the wealthy individuals and corporations who already have station licenses.
Why has the FCC, acting as sock puppet for the National Association of Broadcasters, crafted a process that quietly gives broadcasters exclusive rights to newly available channels?  Why shouldn't new local operators, community organizations, colleges and schools, local unions and churches, local entrepreneurs, blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and women get some of those channels?  Why does the FCC want to avoid public notice and public debate on this $70 billion dollar giveaway of public spectrum?

I have spent today watching/listening to the National Conference on Media Reform, which is being carried in its entirety on Free Speech TV. It is a tremendous public service and I would strongly encourage any of you who have access to watch this Conference and support Free Speech TV. It is a national treasure. The Conference is also streaming live at the sponsors’ web site: freepress.net.

This is a great Conference, which I had the opportunity to attend last year when Bill Moyers was the keynote speaker. Tonight’s keynote is Dan Rather. I was disappointed that I was unable to attend this year, but now I think that watching it may be even better for two reasons:

1. I get to see all of the concurrent presentations, not just the ones I can physically get to. FSTV ran the break-out sessions last night, and I think they will again tonight.

2. In between sessions, I get to watch Amy Goodman interview a bunch of very interesting people.

But that’s not what I came here to talk to you about.