Friday, August 31, 2007
TNT, Fred Thompson, and the FCC
I read this morning that TNT will not pull episodes of Law & Order after Fred Thompson declares his candidacy for President next week.
In a country where 87 percent of viewers presently get their broadcast newtork and network affiliated programming over a wire or dish, not broadcast, the differentiation betweeen broadcast and cable no longer makes sense. (My reading of 47 CFR ยง76.205 seems to already apply to cable).
The FCC should either drop Section 315 for stations (fat chance) or enforceably extend it to nonbroadcast reception of broadcast AND cable-originated content (thus possibly triggering a nice Supreme Court case that might finally answer why, in multichannel 2007, stations are still regulated as if it was broadcast-only 1947). Scarcity is nonsense, because local newspapers are far more monopolistic with ironclad economic barriers to entry and yet they are totally unregulated, largely because of their luck in being launched in an era of government noninterference (1790-1850), contrasted against the regulatory mood in the early 20th Century.
In a country where 87 percent of viewers presently get their broadcast newtork and network affiliated programming over a wire or dish, not broadcast, the differentiation betweeen broadcast and cable no longer makes sense. (My reading of 47 CFR ยง76.205 seems to already apply to cable).
The FCC should either drop Section 315 for stations (fat chance) or enforceably extend it to nonbroadcast reception of broadcast AND cable-originated content (thus possibly triggering a nice Supreme Court case that might finally answer why, in multichannel 2007, stations are still regulated as if it was broadcast-only 1947). Scarcity is nonsense, because local newspapers are far more monopolistic with ironclad economic barriers to entry and yet they are totally unregulated, largely because of their luck in being launched in an era of government noninterference (1790-1850), contrasted against the regulatory mood in the early 20th Century.
