A Trump FCC and Pirate Radio: Prepare for Struggle
By John Anderson
The United States is still trying to come to grips that it has elected a proto-fascist as its next chief executive. With the Republican Party in firm control of the legislature and the ability to shape the judiciary for the next several decades, lobbyists of all stripes are drooling at the prospects of a bona-fide kleptocracy.
Of all the things expected to be decimated in the Trump era, media and communications policy are among them. Others have already written about the potential for a GOP-run Trump FCC to undo several years’ worth of media reform efforts, such as network neutrality, media ownership limits, and many other things. We still don’t know who Trump may nominate to chair the Commission, though there’s talk that one of the two sitting GOP Commissioners may get the nod.
Neither will be good: Ajit Pai is a trenchant disciple of neoliberal economic theory, and pretty much sees all regulation as bad regulation; Mike O’Rielly, who helped write the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (though tellingly does not crow about it), is pretty much the same. But O’Rielly’s crusade to eliminate unlicensed broadcasting from the nation’s airwaves has gotten a significant boost with this election.
In the short-term, it’s unlikely that current FCC leadership will take any significant actions against pirate stations, and might even further deprioritize broadcast license-enforcement efforts during this lame-duck period. When the Trump administration takes over, it’ll inherit an agency bereft of meaningful operational revenue and adequate staff, demoralized and generally seeking to preserve their own rice-bowls. Many at or near retirement-age may see this as a good time to leave, further decimcating the agency’s institutional knowledge.
But what we can’t know is what the influx of Trumpsters into staff and management positions at the agency will do to the interpretation and execution of media policy. On the unlicensed broadcast front, here are some possible things to watch out for.
The first is the unabashed criminalization of unlicensed broadcasting.
Read more:
http://diymedia.net/a-trump-fcc-and-pirate-radio-prepare-for-struggle/8617#more-8617
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