BC/DC: Eggerton on Washington
BC/DC is the media executives\' must-see view from Washington, delivered by yours truly without the aid of rose-colored glasses and without the need, quite yet, of bifocals.
Putting Our Finger On FCC Indecency Policy
There was lots of chatter and twitter Monday over the bird flipped during the Super Bowl half-time show on NBC Sunday and whether that could possibly draw the FCC’s attention as a violation of indecency policy. Currently, there are over a million complaints pending due to the current court challenges and ongoing uncertainty about the FCC’s ability to enforce its policy, but the middl ...... Read More
Comments (0)Gergen Keeps Me Coming Back to CNN
Essentially wedded to CNN coverage of the Iowa caucuses Tuesday night by reception troubles on other cable news channels on my cable system-and pixilated coverage of the Sugar Bowl– I was reminded why I often gravitate to that channel anyway come election night. No, it is not political, or even my fondness for the fleet fingers of John King and his magic graphics manipulation. It is instead ...... Read More
Comments (1)C-SPAN: Don't Kill the TV Messenger
A C-SPAN spokesperson said the Twittersphere lit up Wednesday — after House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said the plug had been pulled on TV coverage Wednesday after the Republican acting speaker walked out. Some of that Twitter reaction was seeking answers from C-SPAN on why it pulled the plug. It didn’t.”It was not us,” said the spokesman. “We take a dir ...... Read More
Comments (0)Stand-Up Chairman
Was that Julius Genachowski or Julius Marx? FCC Chairman Genachowski skewered friend and foe alike at a banquet Thursday during a stand-up routine that included a bleeped F-word from his chief of staff, clips from South Park, and words he said the Third Circuit court found indecent. And that was just for appetizers. The decibel level in a roomful of lawyers is akin to that on the tarmac of a major ...... Read More
Comments (0)About Town
JOBS Bill There were rumblings around D.C. Friday that the Republicans want to attach the just-passed-out-of-subcommittee spectrum bill, the JOBS (Jumpstarting Our Broadband Spectrum) Act, to some must pass end-of-year legislation, using the $15 billion for deficit reduction as an offset, perhaps for payroll tax extension. If so, they would likely have to jettison the amendment on auction conditi ...... Read More
Comments (0)Mixed Signals
At least in Washington, the FCC’s coordinated national test of the Emergency Alert System at 2 p.m. Wednesday seemed to be all over the map. Of course, the test was an effort to reveal any issues, and it may have. Unless I had my mute button on, I did not hear the tone when I tuned to the test on one channel. And the alert had must have already ended on WRC, though one viewer said they had ...... Read More
Comments (5)Spectrum, Spectrum, Who's Got the Spectrum
There seems to be some confusion over whether or not there is a spectrum crisis. The FCC’s chairman has usually been careful to talk of a looming crisis, not one currently at hand, but even the “looming” seemed to be called into question by a report that a Sprint executive told a 4G conference in Chicago that there was “no impending [spectrum] crisis” and that it ...... Read More
Comments (2)McDowell: Beware Incremental Speech Encroachments
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell evoked the FCC’s network neutrality rules and its abandoned Fairness Doctrine policy, which he pushed to scrub from the books, when speaking Tuesday of the threat of creeping government censorship to the Freedom of Speech. And while he talked of Chinese government Internet speech “protections” undercut by enumeration or rendered meaningless by ...... Read More
Comments (1)Death By Anthrax
CNN reminds us that it has been 10 years since the deadly D.C. anthrax attacks on Congress and media outlets that left five people dead and the country even more on edge than it already was. The attacks were only a week after 9/11 and magnified the sense of vulnerability.The cable network will mark that anniversary with Death by Mail: The Anthrax Letters a documentary that airs Sunday Oct. 3 ...... Read More
Comments (1)Guest Blog: Allocate the D-Block
A guest blog from David Paulison, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from 2005 to 2009. He is currently for senior partner with consulting firm Global Emergency Solutions. I write to offer a different opinion to Chairman Greg Walden’s (R-Ore) op-ed on the spectrum auction of D-block. Some key factors were overlooked in Mr. Walden’s argum ...... Read More
Comments (1)Approval of Portion of Net Rules To Be Published
The seemingly endless paperwork of getting the FCC’s network neutrality rules into effect is almost over, but not quite. According to the FCC, look for the Federal Register Wednesday (Sept. 21) to publish the Office of Management and Budget’s approval of the paperwork-related portions of the new rules, which were adopted by the FCC last December but have yet to go into effect. Any ru ...... Read More
Comments (1)Guest Blog: Shrinking News Coverage Leaves Voters Susceptible to Attack Ads
Meredith McGehee is policy director of the Campaign Legal Center and heads McGehee Strategies, a public interest consulting business. In this guest blog she weighs campaigns for more local coverage. Attack ads will once again be a primary source for public information in the 2012 election. Just as the new media conglomerates are putting their pieces in place for their election teams, a new report ...... Read More
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