It is a Movement
By Steve Macek & Mitchell Szczepanczyk, Zmag.org

"The media business," they used to say, "was a license to print money,” wrote the TV trade journal Broadcasting and Cable in 2001. As media mogul Barry Diller put it: “The only way you can lose money in broadcasting is if somebody steals it from you.”

Why?  Broadcast licenses for television grant exclusive control over the airwaves to their holders. The original rationale for this was that the scarcity of broadcast spectrum required that access to it be strictly regulated. A government-appointed referee, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), awarded licenses to those parties deemed most able to serve “the public interest, convenience and necessity.”  If they didn’t fulfill their duties, the FCC could revoke a license and award it to another party that might better serve the public.
 
But the FCC’s practice in this regard has been dismal to say the least. Though licensed broadcasters have been required to operate in the public interest since the early days of radio, for decades the industry-friendly FCC did little or nothing to penalize stations for ignoring their public service obligations. Indeed, not once since the FCC’s founding in 1934 has the Commission revoked a single license of its own accord.

The upsurge of media activism nationwide in recent years has brought with it increased efforts to bring a measure of accountability to broadcast licenses and the media conglomerates that hold them.

Click here to read the full article.

Note:  You can add the petition filed by IBLTV against the license of Sinclair owned KGAN Channel 2 to the list of activities included in the article.  

In other news:

Lobbyist, lawyer Robert M. McDowell has been nominated to fill the vacant FCC commission seat.  AP story here, Rueters story here.  

Robert Kennedy argues that the current state of the Media is partially to blame for inability to adequately address environmental issues.  His argument was summarized as “mainstream media, unfettered by obligations to serve the public interest, have created a nation of distracted voters, too ignorant or indifferent to act in their own best interests.”  He described Americans as “the best entertained, least informed people on the face of the earth."  Click here for the story.
 
The Houston Chronicle profiles Paula Kerger, whose three-year reign as president of PBS begins in March, and Patricia Harrison, who became CPB chairwoman last June here.