February 01, 2010

Net “Neutrality”: FCC Power Grab

Craig Parshall is the Senior Vice-President and General Counsel of the National Religious Broadcasters. He joined Vic Eliason to discuss new threats and issues to broadcasting and the Internet that people need to know about.

One of the powers of a president select the Chairman for the Federal Communications Commission, the government body that licenses and regulates broadcasters. President Obama wanted media reform and Craig feels regulations being proposed would give the government control of day-to-day programming decisions made by broadcasters. These proposals deal with areas listed below such as:

Localism—The localism concept is supposed to make certain that every broadcaster meets the news and information needs of their local community. The FCC proposed a rule that requires that at license renewal time, a station has to be able to prove that there’s enough local information being aired during the broadcast day. Unfortunately, the definition of what constitutes local news that meets community needs hasn’t been clearly defined.

Community Advisory Councils—In order to help define these needs, the FCC has suggested that every broadcaster be required to have a local advisory council that would meet with them on at least a quarterly basis. This council would suggest to a local broadcaster how to determine programming decisions. Those that would be a part of this would include every leader of every group in your community. That could be the local Muslim Imam, a local gay activist, an occult group representative, etc.

Music License Fees—In the past, song composers were given revenue based upon the amount of airplay their music received. Now the industry wants a royalty for performers as well. Craig noted, however, that the industry has admitted that much of that money wouldn’t go to the performers but to the music industry.

Internet—The FCC proposed an “Open Internet” proceeding in order to help establish formal regulations for everything that takes place on the Internet. The claim is that this is to protect the consumer so that the Internet stays open for equal access. This sounds fine until you realize that there’s a possibility that this will define what can and can’t be posted on the Internet.

Spectrum Space—The switch from analog to digital TV took away a significant amount of spectrum space from broadcasters in a method similar to the way eminent domain can remove land from landowners.

The remainder of the program featured callers and their thoughts concerning what Christian radio and the work of the NRB means to them.

More Information

National Religious Broadcasters website:

http://www.nrb.org

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Action Points

Write to the FCC concerning their proposal called "Net Neutrality" which would increase federal regulation of the Internet, plus their other proposed restrictions on broadcasters:

Federal Communications Commission
Attn: Chairman
445 12th St. S.W.
Washington, DC 20554

Federal Communications Commission website:

http://www.fcc.gov