Archive | September, 2003

It’s worth mentioning that there’s a really good interview with Pete TriDish from the Prometheus Radio Project over at Columbia Journalism Review on-line.

Although, as he mentions in the interview, Pete caught a lot of crap from the pirate radio community for working on licensed low-power FM, the work he’s done is amazing, and I think he’s been able to do it without selling out unlicensed radio. Obviously, in his position he can’t be out there putting pirate stations on the air, yet much of the work Prometheus has done has been to benefit of all citizens (like the lawsuit against the FCC’s new media ownership regs).

Importantly, it should be noticed that Pete hasn’t gone about trashing the pirates, or publicly declaring that the unlicensed broadcasters have hurt the licensed low-power FM movement. Frankly, the neutereing of LPFM by Congress in 2000 gave the unlicensed free radio movement a big ol’ shot in the arm, and demonstrated that neither the radio industry nor our “elected” officials are much interested in seeing new community voices in the cities where they’re needed.

It is a war to win back our media and, especially, our airwaves, and there are many fronts. Some can and will fight it legislatively and with the FCC, others will be more underground. What matters is results.

Pete was also interviewed by Bob McChesney on his local radio show, Media Matters, on public station WILL-AM. You can listen to it in Real Audio by clicking here.

John at DIYmedia.net notes that the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia decided on Monday that it would retain jurisdiction over the Prometheus/Media Access Project suit against the FCC’s media rules loosening.

As John observes, this is important because the DC Circuit Court is the one that usually hears challenges to FCC regulation, and their decisions over the last ten years have been decidedly industry/“deregulation”-friendly:

“…when Mikey Powell waves his hands and says ‘don’t blame me, blame Congress and the courts for making me do it,’ he speaks partial truth.

A series of legal challenges brought by media companies, using the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as the chisel, have systematically attacked the FCC’s media ownership rules over the years. This doesn’t excuse how Mikey and friends wrote the rules, but it did provide the impetus to do so.

These challenges have all been conducted in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which traditionally retains exclusive jurisdiction over legal challenges to FCC rules. …

Keeping the case in Philly doesn’t necessarily increase or decrease the chances that some or all of the rules will be overturned, but the D.C. Circuit’s record of buying the Big Media line would’ve surely resulted in different results.