by Gugliemo Marconi
Saturday, Sep. 02, 2000 at 8:39 PM
NAB's agenda to abolish the FCC and grab the entire broadcasting spectrum is right on schedule. The people must act on S20-23 and afterward to stop the greatest theft in US history.
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is the greediest lobby in the country. It's the WTO of the broadcast industry, a tight elite group of media owners who seek to exclude anyone without the price of admission. It's at least partially responsible for the destruction of broadcast ownership laws, and the closing of the airwaves to 99% of the people.
NAB is as powerful as the NRA and Big Tobacco. It spends many millions of dollars yearly to keep Congre$$ doing the bidding of powerful media conglomerates who seek total monopolization of the electromagnetic spectrum. Nothing is beyone NAB's reach. It seeks to appropriate ever-greater hunks of spectrum for ever-more-potent consumer enslavement technologies.
NAB has been at least partially behind many ill-advised attempts by Congre$$ to make its own radio law, sometimes in violation of physics itself, from the Wheeler Resolution to the disastrous 1996 Telecom Act which caused several mega-mergers within days of its passage. Most recently, it has been behind the digital TV debacle, an engineering disaster and financial monster that not only puts all television far beyond public reach, but also allows the insidious grab of spectrum from existing services.
NAB is so greedy that it has made the FCC a friend of the people. (There's a strange one for you!) Sensing a constitutional disaster in the making with illegally restricted airwaves and court cases of radio pirates who won't take any more crap, the FCC has wisely chosen a new low-power broadcasting service (LPTV/FM) instead of a legal nightmare. Unfortunately, NAB has screamed, yelled, and spent big bucks at every turn.
NAB has called in favors all over Congre$$, causing it to cut two million dollars from the FCC budget, holding FCC hostage to NAB's demand for a virtual elimination of LPTV/FM. NAB has submitted false engineering data, and scared Congre$$ with completely fake recordings that don't follow the laws of physics. Since the FCC refuses to give in, NAB is now calling for its total elimination as a "rogue agency." Read this sentence again. NO FCC.
A little anarchy is a good thing. Opening the door when a bear is banging on it is a stupid thing. Do you really want Rupert Murdoch and Michael Eisner appointing people with total power over the electromagnetic spectrum, the most expensive resource in the country? Such a thing would be the most egregious transfer of assets from the many to the few in US history.
NAB must learn, like WTO, that bully tactics and backroom deals are no longer acceptable to the majority of the people. Do not let NAB complete its agenda of spectrum theft.
Thank you.