Chapter 9: Electronic Media Regulation

Topic Overview:
The FCC originally started as the Federal Radio Commission in 1927 but then changed as new media forms came about in 1934 becoming the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The point of the FCC is to regulate interstate and international communications. In this chapter, regulations that apply broadcasters and system operators will be discussed.


Defining Terms:

• Federal Radio Commission: A federal agency established by Radio Acct of 1927 to oversee radio broadcasting. The Federal Communications Commission succeeded the Federal Radio Commission in 1934.
• Federal Communications Commission: An independent U.S. government agency, directly, responsible to Congress, charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, cable, and broadband. The Communications Act of 1934 established the Federal Communications Commission; its jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District Columbia and U.S. possessions.  
• Notice of proposed rulemaking: A notice issued by the FCC announcing that the commission is considering changing certain of its regulations or adopting new rules. 
• Spectrum Scarcity: The limitation to the number of segments of the broadcast spectrum that may be used for radio or tv in a specific geographical area without causing interference. 
• Broadband: A high-capacity transmission technique that uses a wide range of frequencies, which enables a large number of messages to communicate simultaneously. 
• Fairness Doctrine: The FCC rule requiring broadcast stations to air programs discussing public issues & include a variety of views about controversial issues of public importance. 
• Lowest Unit Rate: A station's min advertising rate & the max rate a broadcaster or cable system may charge a politician for advertising time during the 45 days before primary elections and the 60 days before general elections.
• Zapple Rule: A political broadcasting rule that allows a candidate's supporters equal opportunity to use broadcast stations if the candidate's opponents' supporters use the stations. 
• Must-carry Rule: Regulations enacted under the federal cable law that require multichannel video programming distributors to transmit local broadcast tv stations. 
• Retransmission Consent: Part of the federal cable law allowing broadcast stations to negotiate. 
• Satellite Market Modification Rule: Allows a tv station, satellite operator or county government to request the addition or deletion of communities from a broadcast station's local tv market to better reflect current market realities. 
• PEG access channels: Channels that cable systems set aside for public, educational and government use. 
• Online video distributor: Entities that provide video programming using the internet or internet protocol-based transmission paths provided by an outside entity.
• Net Neutrality: The principle that holds that internet service providers cannot charge content providers to speed up the delivery of their goods-all treated equally.

Important Cases: 

Red Lion Broadcasting Co. Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission (1997): Established spectrum scarcity as the main justification for the government's intervention in broadcasting. The Supreme Court refused to accept the cable industry's argument that the must-carry rules were content specific. 

Turner Broadcasting System Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission: The Supreme Court held that cable operators were required to carry signals of local broadcast stations. Applied the First Amendment test it uses for print media to cable: if the regulation is content-neutral, apply an intermediate standard. 

Current Issues or Controversies: 

Net Neutrality, the Obama administration was on its way to helping internet usage become a utility to stop the monopoly holds of the companies providing service. Everyone is to be charged in the same way and given the same access. However, in 2017 the Trump administration started to deregulate and go back on open internet, what the Obama administration was trying to protect. 

My Questions/Concerns:

References:

Trager, Robert., Ross, Susan Dente., & Reynolds, Amy (2018), The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.