In exchange for obtaining a valuable license to operate a broadcast station using the public airwaves, each radio and television licensee is required by law to operate its station in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” This means that it must air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community of license. In addition, how other media facilitate community discussions.
Localism
Will the US Invest in Next Generation Broadband?
[Commentary] The Senate Commerce Committee held three hearings this week on infrastructure.
Cities to FCC: Stop Scapegoating Us on 5G Deployment
In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission Next Century Cities is pushing back on the FCC's efforts to exempt some wireless deployments from local historic or environmental reviews, saying they are being scapegoated unfairly as impediments to broadband deployment. Three dozen mayors and other elected officials signed the letter defending local decisionmaking in 5G small-cell deployments.
This major challenge to local news has gone almost unnoticed
[Commentary] The proposed acquisition of Tribune Media by the Sinclair Broadcast Group is under consideration by the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department. Approval would likely trigger a hemorrhage in local reporting and voices and a sharp decline across much of the nation in balanced coverage of politics and government.
Free Press Sues the FCC for Dramatic Reversal of Media-Ownership Limits That Pave Way for Media Mergers
Free Press has joined Common Cause, Communications Workers of America and the Office of Communication, Inc. of the United Church of Christ to file suit against Federal Communications Commission efforts to repeal local media-ownership limits.
FCC says small cells will close the digital divide. Most say they won't
Many local officials, engineers and wireless consultants contend that changes Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai advocates to limit local regulation of small-cell permitting, design, fees and other charges used to access cities’ public rights of way won’t do anything to close the digital divide.
5G wireless pits cities against telecoms and their friends in the FCC
Many people are worked up over so-called small cells, the next generation of wireless technology that telecommunications firms and cell-tower builders want to place on streetlights and utility poles throughout neighborhoods nationwide. The small cells come with a host of equipment, including antennas, power supplies, electric meters, switches, cabling and boxes often strapped to the sides of poles. Some may have refrigerator-sized containers on the ground. And they will be placed about every 500 or so feet along residential streets and throughout business districts.
A Crazy Idea for Funding Local News: Charge People for It
[Commentary] There may be another way to save local news. The plan, for any would-be entrepreneur brave enough to try it, goes like this: Hire some very good journalists; just one or two are O.K. to start. Turn them loose on a large metropolitan area — try San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston or any other city going through waves of change, and whose local press has been gutted by digital disruption. Have your reporters cover stuff that no one else is covering, and let them ignore stuff that everyone else is covering.
Members from both sides of the aisle say they want to work together to increase broadband for more Americans, and that they see access to the internet as essential. Unfortunately, so far local voices have too often been missing when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Congress are debating issues like 5G development and infrastructure investments that impact all Americans.
Community Broadband: Privacy, Access, and Local Control
[Commentary] Communities across the United States are considering strategies to protect residents’ access to information and their right to privacy.
As Low-Power Local Radio Rises, Tiny Voices Become a Collective Shout
Low-power nonprofit FM stations are the still, small voices of media. They whisper out from basements and attics, and from miniscule studios and on-the-fly live broadcasts. They have traditionally been rural and often run by churches; many date to the early 2000s, when the first surge of federal licenses were issued. But in the last year, a diverse new wave of stations has arrived in urban America, cranking up in cities from Miami to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and especially in the Northwest, where six community stations began to broadcast in Seattle.