Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

The TVs Are Coming! Station ID Cards From 1951

September 25, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
WBZ-TV in Boston, channel 4

Think TVs are expensive today? In early 1947 a high-end 24-inch television set would set you back $2,500 (about $24,000 adjusted for inflation). And unless you lived in New York, there really wasn't much to watch, with just eight TV stations operating in the United States and three of those only seen in New York City. But over just a few short years the television industry would see tremendous growth, with TV prices slowly coming down and dozens of stations rapidly opening up shop across the country. By early 1951 there were 107 TV stations operating in the United States which had the ... Read More

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The FCC and Indecency: Here We Go Again

December 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

“It is a violation of federal law to air obscene programming at any time. It is also a violation of federal law to air indecent programming or profane language during certain hours...The courts have held that indecent material is protected by the First Amendment and cannot be banned entirely. It may, however, be restricted in order to avoid its broadcast during times of the day when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience.” — The Federal Communications Commission In 1973, a public radio station in New York City broadcast comedian George Carlin’s “Seven ... Read More

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Fixing the FCC, America’s Broken Regulator

May 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker announced earlier this month that she's leaving the agency for a job as the senior vice president of government affairs for Comcast-NBC Universal. The decision wasn't particularly surprising or even unusual. Public servants exit government all the time for K Street suites where their expertise is more profitable. Baker's timing, however, caused an uproar: In January, she voted to approve the merger of Comcast and NBC, creating the very company for which she'll be lobbying later this summer. Politicians and pundits denounced what looked like a ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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Broadband Needs Truth in Labeling

August 26, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

The Federal Communications Commission recently released a technical paper confirming what most technology insiders - and many movie fans who have tried to stream a high-definition Netflix trilogy at 8 o'clock at night — have long suspected. Actual download speeds on broadband connections in America lag way behind what most providers advertise. On average, the FCC concluded, you're probably only getting about half the speed you signed up for. The figure highlights a unique quirk of the broadband industry in the U.S. General Mills isn't allowed to sell you cereal labeled with "as many ... Read More

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Court Decision Could Lead FCC to Redefine Internet

April 9, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

A federal appeals court in D.C. earlier this week threw up a roadblock to the Federal Communications Commission's plans for the future of the Internet in America. The details of the case were relatively straight-forward: Comcast was caught interfering with traffic by customers using the cumbersome file-sharing application BitTorrent, flouting a 2005 FCC Internet policy stating that Web users are entitled to access the content and applications of their choice. The FCC tried to sanction Comcast. Comcast sued. And on Tuesday — to the surprise of no one who has been following the case — the ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs, Media, The Idea Lobby
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Is the Net Best Stuck in Neutrality?

January 20, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Advocates of net neutrality have a debilitating disadvantage in their camp: the topic is messy and technical, with the stakes for the average Internet user lost in a web of arguments over concepts like common carriage, structural separation and data discrimination. The Federal Communications Commission and Congress are mulling new guidelines for how the Internet will be used in the future and who can control how people access it. It seems like an odd debate to have — and one about the very core of what we think the Internet should be — a full two decades into the technology's ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs, Media, Politics, The Idea Lobby
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