I have written at short and great length about the desirability of opening up more wireless frequencies to flexible uses, and in particular freeing up spectrum currently devoted to television broadcasting.
Now those opposed to indecency are helping the cause. As I noted in an op-ed yesterday, the Supreme Court's decision in FCC v. Fox affirms indecency regulations that make life worse for local stations.
Much ink has been spilled about the possible demise of print newspapers. Local broadcasters have been a bit better off. Their viewership has long been declining, but they had an ace in the hole – coverage of local events. If people wanted to witness live local events, they needed to watch a local television broadcaster. But that has started to change. Viewers, and thus advertisers, are being siphoned off by websites covering local issues and new local offerings from cable providers.
And now some local stations are halting coverage of live local events out of fear of FCC indecency fines that the Supreme Court upheld in FCC v. Fox. The FCC has long emphasized the importance of helping local broadcasters, but more recently it has focused on indecency – ruling that even a fleeting expletive can subject a broadcaster to fines in the tens of thousands of dollars for each fleeting expletive.
National networks can afford tape-delay systems, but many local broadcasters cannot. The problem, as Justice Breyer noted in his dissent in Tuesday’s opinion, is that the FCC’s indecency policy “places all broadcasters at risk when they broadcast fleeting expletives, including expletives uttered at public events.” And, indeed, some stations have responded to the FCC’s policy by ending their coverage of local live events.
Viewers who want to see live coverage of a contentious city council meeting, or (more likely) a celebration of a local sports team’s victory, thus may have better luck with a locally oriented website than with their local broadcaster, since the First Amendment forbids indecency penalties for the website but not for the broadcaster.
The Supreme Court in FCC v. Fox did not rule that the FCC’s policy was consistent with the First Amendment, so the courts still have to address the argument (made by Justice Thomas in a separate opinion) that there is no basis for lessened First Amendment protection of broadcasters. But as matters stand right now, local television broadcasters have a new disincentive to airing live local events – and viewers have less reason to watch local broadcasters.
As I suggested above, this is probably for the best. Only 14% of households rely on over-the-air television broadcasting (86% subscribe to cable or satellite). The government could reclaim and auction the spectrum used by broadcasters –- as it has auctioned most other frequencies –- and use a small fraction of that money to subsidize cable or satellite for those who cannot afford it. The reclaimed airwaves could then be opened to other uses that would allow for new and enhanced cellular and wireless internet services on newly plentiful frequencies. Many telecommunications policy analysts have long favored this option as the best fiscal and technological policy, but so far little has happened. Maybe the FCC’s revulsion at the “f-word” can achieve what fiscal and technological arguments couldn’t.
Related Posts (on one page):
- FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Part IV: The FCC's new standards in action.
- FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Part III: Bono and the FCC's change of course.
- FCC v. Fox and the Demise of Local Broadcasting:
- FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Part II: The FCC v. Pacifica case.
- FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Part I: The Late, Great George Carlin.
- Is Scalia's "F-Word" Opinion Good News for Obama?
- Glitteratae:
- Holy F-Word, Batman:
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however, when it comes to "live local coverage", most of it still comes from broadcast stations that are carried on cable systems.
It will be interesting to see Pacifica re-argued when scarcity is no longer really an issue and tech solutions exist to the problem of unwanted content being unavoidable.
I wonder, does hi-def radio have an equivilent to v-chip?
Yes, I realize satellite does require a spectrum allocation but I still think it's more cost effective even considering this.
But as more and more people actually view those stations over cable or satellite, the broadcast nature of the stations becomes superfluous. At some point, they could just shut off the transmitters and practically no one would notice.
And they could save some money if they didn't have to operate an antenna to reach that 14%.
Where did this "means testing" idea come from? I choose not to spend $600 a year to receive television signals that I can catch from the air, as I have since television began in this country. That lets me buy thirty books, or 60 DVDs, a year. Other than "The Daily Show," cable has nothing of any particular appeal to me.
If the feds would pay for me to receive my local broadcast channels via cable, regardless of my economic situation, it might be worth it.
I am going to go even farther than Mr. Tutins: TV reception is not an essential service that should be provided or subsidized for anyone, regardless of means. It's not the best way to be an informed voter, because the medium tend toward short sound bites rather than cogent analysis. Relative to battery powered radios, it's a lousy way to distribute emergency information. It is entertainment, and deserves subsidies as much as movie or concert tickets do.
Harumph :-)
BTW, the telecos know that internet access is essentially a low margin commodity. They're no more interested in losing control of the higher margin content market than cable or satellite. Don't count on any of the major providers to do what's "right" for the consumer. They're rational from their POV and will do whatever they need to to protect their profits, even if it doesn't make long term sense from society's POV.
So you would rather have AT&T and Verizon decide content?
So in your unregulated, unsubsidized utopia, where all telecommunications would be controlled by Verizon and Bell South (sorry AT&T), which of course would soon become VERIZONAT&T, exactly how would one become an informed voter?
The roadblock right now is that the cable companies own most of the programing and are forcing the telcos to use a "bundled" business model.
So you would rather have AT&T and Verizon decide content?
Rather than the cable companies? Any day. Because the cost for the Telcos to carry a channel is far, far below the cable companies, they will want to carry as many as possible, but they need to be able to offer them one at a time. That way each of us can decide what we want to pay for unlike the cable companies which only offer a few packages.
Offering channels one at a time is great way to significantly reduce the amount of channels offered and/or the quality of content offered to any one individual. Bundling is better. Here is why: The average consumer probably only normally watches 3-6 channels. If they only have to pay per channel, then they will only pick the few channels that they normally watch. For channels keep the price per household the same, they will significantly reduce the amount of income and thus have to offer less expensive content. Other channels, probably most, will increase their price per household in order to not have as a large a drop off in the amount that they make per month. This will mean that most people will probably pay more for less channels.
I'm not sure what your version of utopia is, but that's not mine :-)
Great question! First, pay attention in school - you need to understand the basics of math, science, etc. Second, read history. Politics is applied human behavior, and human behavior hasn't changed in recorded history - you need to understand why Rome fell, how Hitler came to power, the psychology of witch hunts, and why LBJ ran the VN war the way he did. Third, understand current events.
The first will be provided in school, if you try at all. The second is available at the library, at any of the online used book sellers, or whatever is convenient for you. The third is available in newspapers, magazines, blogs and other online sources.
Television is not the optimal (in the sense of maximum information transfer in minimal time) medium for any of those. There is simply no comparison between reading Shirer's 'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' and spending the same number of hours watching the History Channel.
I have nothing against video - Attenborough's nature series are pure magic, and after a hard week, vegging out while watching a netflix vid is very relaxing. But that isn't something we need to subsidize.
Let me put it another way: if you wanted to spend a few bucks a month to increase the ability of some poor family to be an informed voter, would you provide them with basic internet service, or broadcast TV?
No. Standard free market rules will be in play. If HBO raises their price, fewer people will pay for it. The good channels will make money; the poor ones will go away.
When they get the system rolled out, there is no technical reason why they couldn't offer you a local channel from any city in the world, just like you can view any web site.
For technical reasons, frequencies above about 50MHz are best for local and mobile use. As the frequencies get higher, the power required for the same transmission distance rise (antenna capture area vs. directionality), so the best ones are below 2GHz (it used to be below 1GHz before technical advances). Of that approx 2000 MHz, 360 is reserved for over-the-air TV.
I watch lots of local TV. But it comes over Dish network into my DVR, bypassing both the most critical bandwidth, and (bad for business models) the commercials.
The argument about local content is no different from that for newspapers.
There is no such thing as analog vs digital spectrum. Broadcast digital uses the same spectrum as analog. It does transmit more information over that bandwidth, bit it's all still controlled by the channel owner (the local station).
Just saying. Live spots are labor-intensive and expensive, and let's be honest, how many stations have been fined because of a fleeting expletive on the local news? It takes Bono or Cher on an awards show to get enough people watching to ensure the one blue-nose with a beef will complain.
I intented to refer to the current analog spectrum, I am under the impression that DTV uses a different set of frequencies coupled with a much narrower band allocated to each channel.
In addition, many noncommercial local broadcasters have contacts with much larger and wealthier commercial broadcasters who will donate their old equipment and expertise. Just recently I helped install an audio delay at a teapot noncomm. Among the volunteer engineers with whom I worked are the top engineers in the one of the largest radio markets west of the Rockies.With this I agree, but it doesn't go far enough. The policy puts all broadcasters, and especially small noncomms, at the mercy of any jerk who wants to exercise a heckler's veto at any public event a broadcaster covers live. The heckler only has to start shouting "indecent" words at random. If he does it long enough, the chances are good that a board op will slip up and one will get through. Even if he doesn't manage to get an "indecent" word through, he can still break up the broadcast material sufficiently to make it unlistenable.
I wouldn't put it past the "concerned citizens" in the organizations that specialize in filing indecency complaints to try that technique to sink some broadcast licensee upon whom they have focused their misbegotten rage.
The real solution is repeal of the Communications Act sections which prohibit "indecency". That will get the government out of the broadcast censorship business. But it's unlikely to happen. After all, it's "for the children".
No, it uses existing channels, with the same bandwidth (6 MHz). However, unlike analog, it can tolerate adjacent channel use, so the large number empty channel slots required to support analog TV can be used for other purposes. It also gets much better usage of its 6MHz, capable of sending multiple information streams.
I strongly doubt this is true. Today, every TV station has sophisticated digital signal processing, include frame synchronizers that delay signals. The technology for a "tape" delay is trivial in cost compared to the other wizardry at the station.
Moreover, as has pointed out, the reason local broadcaster don't have tape delay systems is tape delay technology is obsolete. Delaying a digital broadcast is trivial. Anyone with a cheap webcam or camcorder could do it.
To operate a live a remote feed, a broadcaster must have board ops who monitor and control the content of the signal that ultimately reaches the transmitter. These personnel are generally concerned with technical matters such as audio and video mix, which camera or mic is broadcast, etc. Now these technical personnel (or an additional operator downstream in the feed) must also be concerned with eliminating anything that is even colorably "indecent". An operator's failure to remove as little as one word of slightly arguably "indecent" material can result in huge expenses for every broadcaster who transmits the signal to the general public. The penalty for the broadcaster is "one strike and you're out".
Organizations of "concerned citizens" have small armies of volunteers ready to fire off fusillades of indecency complaints to the FCC for the slightest offense, real or imagined. Yes, you can file an indecency complaint by email. No, you will not be punished for a frivolous complaint, even if you make it up out of whole cloth.
Many of these organizations have longstanding grudges against various broadcasters, whom they consider "too liberal" or "too conservative". Indecency complaints are a powerful and cheap weapon with which to convert political disagreement into a legal and cultural war, with the government both picking up the tab for the complainer, and deciding what ideas, words and expression of opinion are acceptable for the general public to hear or see.
Even if a broadcaster prevails against an NAL for indecency, the expense of legal defense is sufficiently great that smaller broadcasters, and especially noncomms, may be economically unable to bear the cost and continue operating. Compounding the burden for broadcasters, and the incentive for self-appointed censors and culture warriors is the rule that inadvertence is no defense.
If a cultural or political warrior wants to cause costly trouble for a broadcaster, he can create the indecency offense by shouting "*&^#" at some event the broadcaster covers, then complaining to the FCC if the broadcaster inadvertently transmits his words.
Anyone familiar with radio talk show production has seen a similar phenomenon: the caller who says he wants to talk about one thing, then when on the air talks about something else entirely inappropriate to the show.
While this ability of any person to create criminal liability for another from whole cloth is not entrapment in the strict legal sense because the government is not the actor, it is nevertheless a perverse incentive for the most ethically challenged ideologues to smite their real and imagined enemies in the pocketbook. To my knowledge, no person has ever suffered any legal detriment for filing an entirely unfounded and frivolous indecency complaint with the FCC.
If you don't believe that religious and ideological whackos make (and religious and political organizations encourage) frivolous complaints to the FCC, read this account (Snopes) of 10 million letters to the FCC in the now nearly 35 year ongoing saga of RM-2493.
No more. All that has been compressed into a one hour show called AM Buffalo, an insipid "'let's see what's exciting today!" type crap.
I have a friend who works in public TV, and asked him about local programming. He said the higher ups don't want it because it's more work. Easier to broadcast another Sherlock Holmes installment than do something on how the Civil War affected the area. And also, the cost of doing it is enormous.
So, unless the costs coem down dramatically, I don't see much of a future of local works. Incidently, whenever the local PBS actualyl does some local feature, donations go sky high. So clearly, there is a demand for it.
http://www.newsish.com/v/fcc1
We live in Northern West Virgina and are 4 miles from the WV public televison tower; 32 miles from the NBC affiliate; and 36 miles from the CBS affiliate stations.
Someone in their lack of wisdom made our 'local area' part of the Pittsburgh, PA ADI. Not that I don't like Pittsburgh, (I don't) but their news and weather is NOT the same as ours.
Anyone have an idea as to how to fight for a change in our ADI? Open to information!!!!
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