We’re not in a fascistic takeover. But in fascistic takeovers, one milestone is the new “leadership” taking over the media. Onto today’s diary: The FCC deregulated so many things today and last month and is scheduled to deregulate so much next month and some big media companies are poised to gain big, it’s hard to write a diary headline. Some papers are calling it a “deregulatory blitz.”
If you care about Net Neutrality this is how it’s going to be rolled back: the day after Thanksgiving, the FCC will publish their proposal to eliminate Net Neutrality and allow for public comment. Dec 14th they will vote to eliminate Net Neutrality.
Today the FCC voted to roll back 40-year-old ownership limits for local media tv and newspapers, like they did in the 1990s with radio. Now the same owner can buy up two or more of the top four TV stations in a market (FOX, NBC, CBS, ABC.) Before today’s vote, one owner could buy only one top four station in any one market.
Also voted on today, an owner of two top four stations now can buy up the main newspaper in that area. Sinclair broadcasting, for example, could buy up your FOX, NBC affiliates and buy up your area’s newspaper. Also voted on today, one TV station can now control programming on a station it doesn’t own, through something called a “Joint Sales Agreement.”
One company, Sinclair broadcasting for example, could buy your NBC and ABC affiliate TV stations and run the same newscast on both stations. It could then form a “JSA Joint Sales Agreement” to control programming on that area’s CBS newscast. Next it could purchase the area’s main newspaper, as it’s trying to do in Chicago where it’s in antitrust review to acquire the Chicago Tribune company.
Last month the FCC eliminated the 78-year-old “Main Studio Rule” which required each station to keep a main studio in the area they broadcast to. (Smell the pending consolidation yet?)
House Democrats and Senate Democrats have asked the FCC Inspector General to investigate the FCC Chair Ajit Pai for conflict-of-interest violations. Senate Democrats on Wednesday formally asked Republican FCC Chair Ajit Pai to recuse himself from any decisions that could benefit Sinclair broadcasting.
To those who say it’s OK we get all our local news on the Internet now, Wired magazine disagrees “The FCC Says Local Media is Thriving. That’s Not So Clear.”
To those who say newspapers still matter, John Oliver’s people put together this segment that shows you are right. To those who want the full 20-minute John Oliver-on-journalism segment you can find that over here.
To those who say it’s OK it won’t hurt me because I pay for cable TV, your bill is about to go up even more than it’s been rising lately (and it’s been rising.) Because another thing the FCC approved today was “NextGen TV” aka ATSC 3.0, which has some upsides, but many of the patents to roll this platform out are owned by Sinclair broadcasting which means Sinclair will make money on these upgrades. This means Sinclair can bargain the cable providers into charging consumers more to recoup the costs their affiliate stations will “suffer” by broadcasting this higher-tech signal. Even though broadcasting the higher-tech signal is as of now voluntary.
Eventually we’ll all have to buy new TVs or converter boxes. None of the HDTVs in American homes today are compatible for ATSC 3.0. And ATSC 3.0 is not backward-compatible with the HDTVs we have today.
And to those of your friends who say it doesn’t matter because they don’t read a newspaper, they go online to read news, you know in your head Net Neutrality will be eliminated soon and we’ll be back to citizen-watchdogging the cable providers and big media companies to ensure they’re not prioritizing their content over others. Because soon the companies who run the pipes (the companies who are Internet service providers) will also own content, if the AT&T-Time Warner merger goes through and now the Comcast-FOX merger goes through after that.
It’s amazing that three appointed Commissioners, non-elected officials, were able to vote so much away today. And vote so much away last month Oct 25th. And vote so much away next month on Dec 14th. Freepress urged Congress in September to fire Ajit Pai before re-appointing him to the FCC. Was freepress.net onto something?