After threatening ABC over Kimmel, FCC chair may eliminate TV ownership caps
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The only freedom in the US is economic freedom.
The freedom to buy influence.
The freedom to control the messaging.
Everything else is 2nd.
The freedom to buy influence.
The freedom to control the messaging.
Everything else is 2nd.
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When the groups that own a lot of the stations are conservative - it would suit the administration to have starion control in the right hands for 26 & 28, which almost certainly won't allow elections to be run above board.
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Failing to enforce antitrust, allowing industries to self-regulate and generally not busting the balls of business before it became too big to regulate is going to go down as one of the core failures of the Democratic Party.
It was too, too easy to take the money and look the other way, despite all of us screaming about how these entities were a threat to democracy. We said you'd get pants'ed eventually and lo and behold, you did.
The worst part, though, is watching Abundance Democrats (and Labour in the UK, and the Liberals On Canada, etc, etc) continue to believe it's still 1994, whistling past the graveyard.
It was too, too easy to take the money and look the other way, despite all of us screaming about how these entities were a threat to democracy. We said you'd get pants'ed eventually and lo and behold, you did.
The worst part, though, is watching Abundance Democrats (and Labour in the UK, and the Liberals On Canada, etc, etc) continue to believe it's still 1994, whistling past the graveyard.
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Congress is also supposed to have unilateral control over the money they budget out, but the SCOTUS said that Trump can pre-empt appropriated funds because he wants to. If Congress tries to hold back the FCC then Trump will make a scene and tell the FCC to let the propaganda stations take over the other ones.
Laws don't matter to this administration except when it's in their favor.
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I've got a question about who has standing to sue when the Executive Branch clearly violates a statute Congress passed in the Public Interest, or Constitutional clauses in the public interest. In theory, it hurts the entire public so any citizen of the US ought to, it seems to me, have standing to sue against something like the FCC ignoring Congress's statutory nationwide cap on ownership.
But, I suspect we will end up in a black hole where the administration is clearly violating the law, but nobody will have standing according to the Court to sue over it, because they aren't personally harmed in a way you can put a dollar figure on.
It's like when Trump illegally violates the Constitution by striking foreign boats with missiles. I'm not one of the direct victims of the attack, so I likely can't sue to get him to follow the Constitution but I think as a citizen, his illegal acts harm the entire country - for one thing, it puts us at much greater risk of him starting a war in which US soldiers, sailors, airmen, contractors, etc will die, get injured, or end up stuck in POW camps. But as a citizen I also have an interest in our Constitution being enforced. If it wasn't important, it wouldn't be in the Constitution.
But, I suspect we will end up in a black hole where the administration is clearly violating the law, but nobody will have standing according to the Court to sue over it, because they aren't personally harmed in a way you can put a dollar figure on.
It's like when Trump illegally violates the Constitution by striking foreign boats with missiles. I'm not one of the direct victims of the attack, so I likely can't sue to get him to follow the Constitution but I think as a citizen, his illegal acts harm the entire country - for one thing, it puts us at much greater risk of him starting a war in which US soldiers, sailors, airmen, contractors, etc will die, get injured, or end up stuck in POW camps. But as a citizen I also have an interest in our Constitution being enforced. If it wasn't important, it wouldn't be in the Constitution.
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I agree with you that the Democrat party shares the blame for failing to enforce anti-trust laws, but I think you're completely misunderstanding the point of the Abundance movement. It isn't cart blanche deregulation across every aspect of society. The point of Abundance is to make it easier to build things. Renewable energy, homes, public transit, etc. That largely comes down to removing veto points at the local and state level, and as a side affect lowers the barrier to entry for smaller players in the market. To my knowledge it was never intended to kill anti-trust regulation or had anything to do with control of the media environment.
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I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic here. But I will say, just because the market works sometimes, doesn't mean it works in every case - ask all the black journalists who got pushed off the air after Trump was inaugurated and started his war against minorities and women.
One very famous white man having his job saved isn't really winning the war.
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Currently, only three companies can and do own all the “local” channels. If they remove the limit, it could become 1. How does that support Carr’s supposed goal of letting local stations decide what they want? It doesn’t! Didn't they see John Oliver’s takedown of Sinclair from many years ago??
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Will the new majority conglomerate station be showing HypnoToad? Because that is probably best-case-scenario here.
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This is an easy one. If you're a Republican suing to stop a Democratic initiative, you always have standing. If you're a Democrat, you never have standing.
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Anti Jimmy
Ars Centurion
If Carr is trying "to empower local TV stations to serve the needs of the local communities," how does allowing a single billionaire or megacorp to own all the media in a particular locale achieve that?
The level of doublethink required here is astonishing. It truly is a wonder that MAGAts don't all have two heads.
The level of doublethink required here is astonishing. It truly is a wonder that MAGAts don't all have two heads.
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IANAL, in theory it seems any smaller market competitors would have standing to sue over this decision. The problem would be that they will likely be interested in letting the rule change either to expand or be acquired.
For understandable reasons, it's made sense for appeals courts to not declare laws or government actions unconstitutional simply because no one has standing to sue over those acts; but when the system is flipped upside nothing works like it was intended.
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What’s keeping the national networks like NBC, ABC, and the like from just not renewing their affiliate contracts with these stations? Every cable package I ever had in my life had the national stations as well as the local. Only real reason to watch the local station was for the news. Seems like if Sinclair and Nexstar want to push their views on the larger networks the larger networks can just walk.
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I don't know much about the Abundance movement as a whole, most of what I know is from the book Abundance. I don't think the idea of making it easier to build things is a bad one. Some portions of the book reads like their idea is just a democratic/liberal version of trickle down economics, especially because the authors seem to be fine with modern corporate monopolies and Silicon Valley culture.
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He wants the station owners, who are directly subject to FCC licensure, and thus to coercion, to have more power than the networks, so that by bullying the stations he can bully the networks. Right now, the Networks have more power than individual stations, because no station operator owns enough stations that they can effectively take the network off the air.
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They sure make it easy to file a comment with any of these FCC NPRM's (public comment window.). /s
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/
Then search: 2022 Quadrennial Regulatory
Then click: +New Filing / +Express (to file complaint in word/.PDF/etc. format)
Am I reading this correctly, only 37 comments?!
(You have to open the comments and download the .PDF file to view)
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/
Then search: 2022 Quadrennial Regulatory
Then click: +New Filing / +Express (to file complaint in word/.PDF/etc. format)
Am I reading this correctly, only 37 comments?!
(You have to open the comments and download the .PDF file to view)
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I'm currently reading through it, but I've listened to the authors speak on it on podcasts and the like. As far as I'm aware, monopolies and VC culture is beyond the scope of the movement. The purpose of Abundance is to remove the regulatory burdens driving up the cost of building things that are useful for society. That's it. The futuristic AI-driven utopia it describes in the opening pages is a hypothetical to juxtapose to today.
It is not trickle-down economics. The idea behind trickle-down economics is that by cutting taxes at the top end, you give businesses and entrepreneurs more money to grow and create more jobs. That's proven to be a failed economic policy. What it sounds like you're describing from the book is the housing filtering effect, which is real and does work. Essentially, building more housing at the top end depresses rents for older housing in the same area. This happens because there is a maximum price a landlord can charge for a brand new square foot of housing. Any older unit trying to sell for the same price is going to go unsold, because why buy the old when you can buy the new? And that in turn drives down the price for the even older housing. And when you build enough new units overall, the median rent goes down in real terms.
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Yes, further concentration in media ownership will surely improve America.
Time for a modern Teddy Roosevelt.
Time for a modern Teddy Roosevelt.
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Happened in Russia too. Navalny, in his autobiography told how the old Soviet Empire broke up and the oligarchs stole or bought everything that wasn't nailed down, including media markets. Soon, they and Putin were sitting pretty as they owned it all.
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The free market is working perfectly right now. We have an executive branch unhindered by checks from the other branches, and unlimited political "donations". Might as well call ourselves the Serene Republic of America.
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I honestly thought I would never detest a FCC Chair more then Ajit Pai, but it was only 4 short years and this guy makes Pai look like an enlightened public servant.
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Another step in the spread of authoritarianism in the US. In other countries under authoritarian leadership like Hungary, the ruling party and its allies bought up broadcasters to ensure partisan reporting. This rule change would be a step towards the same in the US, coming after a naked attempt at censorship.
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How about one station per arms-length family unit? Go the entirely other way around.
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FCC ownership caps were created precisely to prevent the kind of consolidation we see today, where companies like Sinclair and Nexstar control vast numbers of local broadcast stations and act as gatekeepers of information. By lobbying to eliminate these caps, they are seeking to expand that control even further.
At a time when public trust in national news has collapsed, local news remains one of the few sources trusted by a majority of Americans, according to Pew Research. Yet Sinclair and Nexstar’s recent blackout of Jimmy Kimmel Live! across their ABC affiliates shows how easily corporate station groups can withhold programming for political or financial reasons. This episode underscores the danger of allowing a handful of conglomerates to dominate local broadcasting.
Their track record demonstrates that their primary loyalty is to growth and profit, not to the public interest. Weakening or eliminating ownership limits would only accelerate the erosion of viewpoint diversity and undermine the trust that local news still holds.
That being said, I'd put my money on ownership caps being removed.
At a time when public trust in national news has collapsed, local news remains one of the few sources trusted by a majority of Americans, according to Pew Research. Yet Sinclair and Nexstar’s recent blackout of Jimmy Kimmel Live! across their ABC affiliates shows how easily corporate station groups can withhold programming for political or financial reasons. This episode underscores the danger of allowing a handful of conglomerates to dominate local broadcasting.
Their track record demonstrates that their primary loyalty is to growth and profit, not to the public interest. Weakening or eliminating ownership limits would only accelerate the erosion of viewpoint diversity and undermine the trust that local news still holds.
That being said, I'd put my money on ownership caps being removed.
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So when/how do we provide public comment? Because raging on Internet fora does nothing.
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The neo liberal dem party needs to age and die out, and we badly need a massive swing towards antitrust enforcement and regulation with the next election. I just don’t see it happening until we experience economic collapse to snap people out of their delusions.
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The next Democratic administration needs to reimpose the caps from the OG days and force divestment
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ie "our regulation killing scheme funded by billionaires is totally going to only surgically kill the "bad" regulations that we dont like for all our benefit"
*bad being ill defined but as a non rich person just imagine only the regulations that personally annoy you those are the ones we are talking about only
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