The little guy

The Federal Communications Commission, since it’s inception in 1934, has been more of an enforcement arm of the broadcast networks and the electronics industry than a protector of that public property known as the electromagnetic spectrum. One of its first efforts was to thwart the spread of FM radio on behalf of RCA and NBC by placing severe power restrictions on FM stations, particularly educational broadcasters and by moving the band allocation in the 1940’s to give it to the infant television industry, thus making all FM radios built earlier obsolete. Col. Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of FM, committed suicide after decades of struggle with the FCC, RCA and NBC. Some historians would say they were all one and the same thing.

Under the Reagan Administration, the FCC embarked on a deregulatory approach toward communications policy and began chipping away at the protections in place for ensuring media diversity and the protection we had against monopolistic control over the media.

More recently, the Bush administration FCC under Michael Powell came under fire from the Amateur Radio community for actively promoting BPL: technology allowing Electric companies to send broadband internet over power lines, causing in some cases, massive radio interference contrary to its own Part 15 rules.

The FCC has long been instrumental at promoting the interests of large corporations at the public expense, although the spectrum belongs to the public. Under the Bush administration, the FCC has taken on a further role; that of promoting the interests of Corporate Christianism. I read in the Boston Herald
that Maynard High School in Maynard Massachusetts which has operated WAVM, a ten watt FM radio station for educational purposes for the last 35 years will have its license taken away and given to a “Christian” broadcast network.

There is of course, no lack of Christian broadcasting on the radio and the few of us who sometimes scan international short wave radio know that every available radio broadcast band is heavily populated by Jesus, Inc. From the world’s most powerful broadcast station, HCJB down to your local 500 watt AM station, radio evangelism uses gigawatts galore.

That’s not enough for our corporate theocrats. There’s no money in teaching kids about electronics and broadcasting when compared to the preaching business.

`The little guy does not stand much of a chance. Legally, we don't have a leg to stand on,’’ faculty advisor Joe Magno said. He’s right.