[Hrgeeks] Save the Internet: Support Net Neutrality!

[Scott Dorsey]

> > As a broadcast "professional" I have to agree with Sean. The FCC is
> > broken and as long as the "F" stands for "Federal" it will remain that
> > way.

The FCC is broken, but it didn't used to be that way and it doesn't have to be
that way in the future.
 
> Little baby powell took over after Kennard left. Kennard wanted to give 
> all the LPFM licenses to churches. Not like the airwaves aren't already 
> full of that stuff from repeaters.

Don't get me started on the translator license issues.

I do think the LPFM allocations are a really good thing, and there are some
folks using them very effectively, including Revolutionary Radio 102.5 up
here in Williamsburg.

Yeah, it's true the big religious broadcasters got a lot of them, and I think
that's shameful.  A lot of those shouldn't be treated as noncomms, but that's
the business of the IRS and not the FCC.

Yeah, it's also true that there aren't actually a lot of places where they
can be effectively shoehorned in, because the bands are already too crowded.
But that's not the fault of the LPFMs, that's the fault of 25 years of lousy
band management come to roost.

The LPFM really is nothing more than a slightly higher power version of the
old Class D noncommercial license which the FCC discontinued in 1978.  
A lot of college stations in the seventies started up as Class D stations
and then later on upgraded to higher power facilities; even Thomas Nelson
had a small Class D station for a while which was operated in conjunction
with William and Mary's class C, WCWM.  The Class D allocation was a great
thing, and it allowed smaller stations to be shoehorned into crowded bands
in larger cities.  It was removed mostly because NPR lobbied Congress to
get rid of it.
--scott