Here’s a question from featured Media Information Bureau columnist Ken Benner that many readers may also have wanted to ask, but have refrained from doing so aloud for various reasons?
“Why has it taken so long for the long-term abuses profiting the few from the many to be addressed by the FCC?”
Don’t mistake this column for a grumble session from our octogenarian Alternative Broadcast Inspection Program (ABIP) pioneer. Rather, he’s come to praise, not bury.
By Ken Benner
Speaking at the 2018 NAB Show in Las Vegas last month, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai explained the function of the FCC.
He said the agency’s purpose is to “create a regulatory environment that enables you to keep doing great work like this. A big part of that is modernizing our media rules to match the marketplace and technology of today.”
I put you in italics to emphasize that he was addressing ”the Broadcast Fraternity.”
Chairman Pai explained that, under his regime, the FCC’s decisions are made with “a basic philosophical choice about moving forward or looking backward.” Further, he said, “broadcasters should be permitted to innovate, that rules should match the modern marketplace, and that outdated regulations should be scrapped.”
To the thunderous applause from NAB attendees in Las Vegas, Pai then said, “When you look at all of our media decisions together, the larger picture becomes clear: we are simply allowing any and every broadcaster the ability to compete in a free market, unshackled by regulations that no longer make sense.”
Could the Chairman of the FCC be reading — and digesting — what your meek and humble columnist, who will turn 81 years of age this month, has been writing and preaching over the past 2 1/2 decades?
It is gratifying to hear, just as it is to see the FCC with great ferocity take on all of these pirate radio stations. Some 200 unlicensed broadcast operations have been located, and there’s been a more than 100% increase in pirate enforcement in 2017, compared to the previous year.
Allow me to flash back to an era many of you may be wholly unfamiliar with.
I was in eighth grade when I built my first single tube battery-operated AM pirate radio transmitter. It could be heard almost two blocks away, as I aired music from a hand-cranked Victrola phonograph.
At that time, I had never heard of the FCC. I was so proud.
Today I could be visited by an FCC inspector with a red pen and fine-assessment notebook in hand, along with a music licensing organization, for airing music without their license. They could likely move to confiscate the two dollars per week I earned peddling newspapers in the late 1940s.
Ahh … the good ol’ days, free from massive fines, licensing, fees, forfeitures and legal expenses.
Of course, my example is nothing compared to the egregious antics of many in the New York Tri-State Area, Boston, and across South Florida.
And, that’s my point. There is a fine line between taking advantage of broadcasters, and smart enforcement.
The FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai is all about smart enforcement, and deserves a note of appreciation.
I suggest we all take a moment to express our sincere appreciation for Pai’s most extraordinary common sense in addressing the massive garbage regulations that have long plagued broadcast media.
These regulations have also financially well served entities external from the FCC, but there are ways they can continue to reap the benefits of why the Commission exists.
Tough pirate radio enforcement and rule modernization are emblematic of what the FCC has needed, and what can serve as a foundation for a better Washington for both radio and television.
Ken Benner is an independent Alternative FCC Compliance Certification Inspector and a research analyst for the Coalition for Transparency, Clarification and Simplification of Regulations pertaining to American Broadcasting. Benner has more than 55 years of experience providing service to the broadcast industry.
The views expressed by Media Information Bureau columnists are those of the writer only and not of the editorial board of the Radio + Television Business Report or its parent, Streamline Publishing.
