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News :: Media |
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Mediageek News For Week Of Sept. 19: Senate Votes To Veto FCC; 3rd Circuit Says FCC Case Will Be Heard In Philly; Radio Spectrum Land Grab |
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by Paul Riismandel
Email: paul (nospam) mediageek.org (unverified!)
Address: P.O. Box 2102, Champaign, IL 61825 |
20 Sep 2003
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These are the media news headlines as read on the Mediageek Radio Show, which aired Friday, Sept. 19, at 5:30 PM on WEFT 90.1 FM. Mediageek airs every Friday at 5:30 on WEFT.
Catch up on other media news at the mediageek website: http://www.mediageek.org. You can also listen to the program on-line in mp3 and the open source ogg vorbis format. |
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Senate Votes to Veto FCC
On Monday, Sept. 16 the Senate passed a resolution to block the implementation of the FCC’s new, loosened media ownership rules. The resolution enjoyed bipartisan support with a vote of 55 to 40. The President has promised to veto the resolution if it passes the House, and as of yet, the resolution does not appear to have the 2/3 majority support in the Senate that is required to bypass a presidential veto.
Democratic Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, the chief sponsor of the resolution, told reporters that FCC Chairman Michael Powell, "has made a horrible mistake. His leadership at the commission has led the commission to cave in to the special interests as quickly and as thoroughly as I've ever seen."
The vote was only the second time in history that the Senate has used a parliamentary procedure known as a resolution of disapproval to, in effect, veto an action by a regulator.
In an unusual twist, this resolution was made possible by the Congressional Review Act, a little-known law adopted seven years ago at the urging of Republicans who thought the Clinton administration issued too many burdensome regulations and wanted to make it easier for Congress to repeal them. It has only been used once before, in 2001, to repeal ergonomics regulations adopted under Clinton.
However, the prospects for the resolution in the House are less certain. After the Senate vote, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, summed things up, telling reporters, "It's going nowhere — dead on arrival."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said if the Republicans held a vote on the measure "it would pass overwhelmingly."
Democrats will try to collect the 218 signatures needed for a petition to force a House vote on the resolution, said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.
If the resolution fails to pass the House or is vetoed, Sen. Dorgan and a large group of other senators, ranging from Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the minority leader, to Trent Lott of Mississippi, the former Republican leader, vowed to continue to take steps to repeal the media rules by attaching amendments to other measures headed for floor action.
3rd Circuit Says FCC Case Will Be Heard in Philly
Also on Sept. 16, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia decided in a 2 – 1 vote that it would be the Court to hear the case filed by the Prometheus Radio Project against the FCC to block the new media ownership rules.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals is where FCC regulatory cases are usually heard, but in making its decision the 3rd Circuit Court said that it is “no less qualified than any other Court of Appeals to determine whether the FCC has appropriately considered the public interest in its decisionmaking.”
The DC Circuit is considered to be friendly to the media industry and its deregulatory goals, and had previously ruled that many of the FCC’s existing ownership rules were insufficiently justified. Companies like NBC, Fox, and the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns local NBC affiliate channel 15, along with the FCC itself, were among the parties that petitioned to move the case to the DC Circuit.
The Prometheus Radio Project, the plaintiff in the case, is a Philadelphia based organization dedicated to advocating for and helping to build non-commercial low-power FM community radio stations. In a written statement, Prometheus applauded the Court’s decision to try the case in Philadelphia, saying,
“On behalf of the hundreds of community groups that we work with around the United States, who dream of building a community-oriented media that goes beyond the glibly homogenous soundbite assembly line, we thank the court for affirming that Washington DC is not the only appropriate place where decisions about our media future can be made.”
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled to begin November 5.
Radio Spectrum Land Grab
The industry journal Radio World reports that there is growing controversy in the radio industry over the FCC’s recent application window for translator stations. When it accepted applications for translator frequencies this spring, the FCC received approximately 13,000 requests, which could result in more could produce more authorizations than the commission has allowed in more than 20 years
Translator stations are low-power FM stations that rebroadcast the signal of a regular full-power station to fill in signal gaps. Commercial stations may have translators only in areas near the originating stations, while noncommercial stations may have translator stations anywhere, even thousands of miles away from the originating stations.
Although they also run at low power, unlike low-power FM stations, translators are prohibited from originating any programming – they may only rebroadcast another station.
Presently, there are about 3650 translator stations on the air, which has led many observers to call the mammoth influx of 13,000 new applications as a land grab of valuable and increasingly scarce radio broadcast spectrum.
Many radio engineers are concerned that the new translators are an interference risk to existing full-power stations, since they are allowed to be placed closer together on the dial than full-power stations. Because there are so many applications to sort through, radio engineers fear that they will not have the time to identify new translators that might interfere with existing stations and file petitions against those applications with the FCC.
Of even greater concern to community media advocates is the enormous quantity of translator applications filed by religious broadcasters. In the last ten years religious broadcasters have created huge networks of hundreds of translator stations that take up valuable spectrum space, especially in the reserved noncommercial end of the dial, from 88 to 92 MHz. Community media advocates fear that these translators for religious stations that are thousands away from the communities they broadcast in are taking up spots on the dial that would otherwise be filled with community stations or translators for those stations.
The top two applicants for translator stations are religious broadcasters. Radio Assist Ministry and Edgewater Broadcasting approximately filed a combined 4,000 short-form applications. The FCC approved 157 of Radio Assist Ministry's applications and 97 from Edgewater Broadcasting.
In the Central Illinois Area alone, Radio Assist Ministry filed 34 applications for translator stations just within 60 miles of Champaign. In some cases Radio Assist Ministry filed multiple applications for the same frequency in several adjacent towns. Edgewater filed 12 applications, mostly in rural communities, but including 2 each for stations in Rantoul and Danville.
If granted, these translators will take up many spaces on the dial that could be filled with low-power FM community radio stations which are required by the FCC to originate the majority of their own programming, rather than rebroadcast another station.
Because Champaign-Urbana’s FM radio dial is amongst the most crowded in Central Illinois, only one translator application was filed for the twin cities. That application came from the Calvary Chapel of Twin Fall Idaho, which hopes to rebroadcast its signal on 89.7 FM. Calvary Chapel is the largest owner of translator stations in the Country, with 332 in its stable along with 21 full-power stations.
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See also:
http://www.mediageek.org
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