The New York Times reports that the office of Federal Communications Commission's inspector general is now investigating FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's handling of deregulation over the past year that seems to favor Sinclair Broadcasting. In April 2017, Pai led efforts for the FCC to change rules about the number of stations television broadcasters may own. A few weeks after that change was made, Sinclair Broadcasting announced a $3.9 billion deal to buy Tribune Media, which would not have been allowed under the old rules. Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey told the paper the Pai is now under investigation by the nonpartisan FCC inspector general's office. “For months I have been trying to get to the bottom of the allegations about Chairman Pai’s relationship with Sinclair Broadcasting,” Pallone said in the statement to The New York Times. “I am grateful to the FCC’s inspector general that he has decided to take up this important investigation.” The FCC inspector general's office said it would, “not comment on the existence or the nonexistence of an investigation.” Pai’s office and Sinclair Broadcasting officials declined to comment. In the past, though, Sinclair’s chief executive, Chris Ripley, has said that Pai’s relaxation of media ownership rules is a “landmark” development for his company. The Sinclair and Tribune merger would create the nation’s biggest television broadcaster, reaching seven out of 10 American homes. Public interest advocates have said the proposed merger would reduce the number of voices in media and change the coverage of local news. Already, Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns the CBS and CW affiliates in Albany, New York, injects conservative views into its local news programs. The New York Times has previously reported that Pai met and spoke with Sinclair representatives several times before announcing the new media ownership rules. A March 2017 story in The New York Post said President Donald Trump met with Sinclair’s executive chairman, David Smith, and discussed FCC rules. "The FCC and Justice Department are widely expected to approve the merger in the coming weeks," The New York Times story says.

David Oxenford at the Broadcast Law blog reports that as of March 1, all full-power commercial and non-commercial radio stations will have to post online their public files. This means the public will now have access to every full-power radio stations pending applications, ownership reports, and a contour map showing the stations coverage. Stations with five or more full-time employees must upload all of its Annual EEO Public Inspection File Reports. And stations must upload all of their Quarterly Issues Programs, showing that stations met the needs and interests of its community of license, and new political file documents, showing interviews or interactions with political officials. While many radio stations find this extra work a pain, these documents do provide more transparency about station operations.

Jon Brodkin reports at Ars Technica that the infrastructure plan the Trump administration unveiled Feb. 12 does not include any money specifically for broadband internet. The 10-year plan for "rebuilding infrastructure in America" doesn't include much federal money for anything, leaving most spending up to the states. But the plan's $50 billion Rural Infrastructure Program does list broadband as one of five categories where governors can spend their money. Rural broadband facilities would also be eligible for Private Activity Bonds, so private projects could "benefit from the lower financing costs of tax-exempt municipal bonds." The plan would also let carriers install small cells and Wi-Fi attachments without the same environmental and historical preservation reviews required for large towers, according to Ars Technica. A report from the Federal Communications Commission says it would take $40 billion in broadband funding to raise broadband availability from 86 percent to 98 percent of the country.

Ernesto Aguilar, the membership program director of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, writes in Radio World about how the Federal Communications Commission is considering increasing the power of Class A FM radio stations. Class A stations are currently limited to six kilowatts of effective radiated power and antenna towers of only 100 meters in height. The new proposal could double the wattage to 12 kilowatts. Aguilar worries that these new Class C4 stations could interfere with low-power FM stations, but those could also get a power boost. There is some discussion, Aguilar writes, that the ceiling for low-power FM stations could rise from 100 watts to 250 watts. Hopefully, the FCC will conduct a deliberative, thorough public hearing process before adopting any new power levels on the FM dial.

Jon Brodkin in Ars Technica reports that FCC Commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel rarely agree on anything. The Republican and Democrat on the commission are about as far apart on most issues as two people could be. But the two wrote an op-ed in The Hill Feb. 9 complaining about states stealing money meant to support emergency calling services, and using it for their general funds. On everyone's phone bills, there is a line item for 911 service, and those funds are meant to keep those emergency services running. But in 2016, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Illinois, New Jersey, and West Virginia "diverted" 911 funds totaling $128.9 million to their own uses. Seven other states wouldn't even tell the FCC what they are doing with the money. New York, for instance, did not submit a report about the matter to the FCC, "but sufficient public record information exists to support a finding that New York diverted funds for non-public safety uses," according to the FCC. Besides lying to consumers, diverting 911 fees "can be tragic," the two commissioners wrote. "It can lead to understaffed calling centers, longer wait times in an emergency, and sluggish dispatch for public safety personnel. It also will slow the ability of 911 call centers to update their systems to support digital age technologies." O'Rielly and Rosenworcel propose threatening states that divert 911 funds with loss of federal public safety programs funding. "We also may need to examine more aggressive actions at the FCC's disposal," they wrote.

Wave Farm Radio is a new, free app, which allows users to listen to live audio from any of the Wave Farm webstreams including WGXC 90.7-FM, Standing Wave Radio (formerly known as Wave Farm Radio), Quintron's "Weather Warlock," Zach Poff's "Pond Station," and other partner streams. Users may also create custom playlists from thousands of archived audio files. Wave Farm transmit partners and WGXC broadcast partners may now stream their own audio feeds. Wave Farm Radio is available in the App Store (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wave-farm-radio/id1284966744?ls=1&mt=8). An Android version of the app will be developed as soon as funding allows. In the past week, local citizens have used the app to webcast the Town of Catskill meeting Feb. 6, and Hudson Downtown Revitalization Initiative meeting Feb. 8, and the History of the Black Community in Hudson presentation Feb. 8 at the Hudson Library.

John Anderson reports for DIYMedia.net only about 15 percent of radio stations have gone HD, and many of them switched to HD, and then abandoned the format. Less than half of all new cars in America can receive HD radio, and there are virtually no HD radio receivers out of automobiles. In an ideal world, HD radio could be useful -- stations can broadcast two or three different signals on one channel, and the metadata of song titles and program information is also transmitted. But, long ago, the U.S. choose one bad way to do HD, while the rest of the world picked a better option. What's worse, because so few stations broadcast high definition radio signals, those that do transmit a hybrid digital signal, combining analog and HD signal. The results are not pretty. Many cars that could receive HD radio instead have problems with the hybrid signals, and "the dealer fix is to lock the car HD Radios into ‘analog only’ mode to resolve it, and that’s bad for broadcasters,” according to David Day, president of audio-conditioner Orban Labs. Instead, radio listeners are more likely to soon be able to get a new "European-developed system that allows compatible receivers to switch between a station’s over-the-air signal and its internet-stream depending on the quality of reception."

Ars Technica reports that John Perry Barlow, who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, died Jan. 7 at age 70. Barlow was also a rancher, and wrote some lyrics for the Grateful Dead, but is best known for his early visionary views about the internet. "He’s the one that came up with the metaphor of the electronic frontier," said Mitch Kapor, who created Lotus 1-2-3, an early spreadsheet application, and co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in 1990, with Barlow and John Gilmore. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California to promote Internet civil liberties. The group, "provides funds for legal defense in court, presents amicus curiae briefs, defends individuals and new technologies from what it considers abusive legal threats, works to expose government malfeasance, provides guidance to the government and courts, organizes political action and mass mailings, supports some new technologies which it believes preserve personal freedoms and online civil liberties, maintains a database and web sites of related news and information, monitors and challenges potential legislation that it believes would infringe on personal liberties and fair use, and solicits a list of what it considers abusive patents with intentions to defeat those that it considers without merit," according to Wikipedia. "It is no exaggeration to say that major parts of the Internet we all know and love today exist and thrive because of Barlow’s vision and leadership," Cindy Cohn, the group’s executive director, wrote in a blog post after his death. "He always saw the Internet as a fundamental place of freedom, where voices long silenced can find an audience and people can connect with others regardless of physical distance.... What he saw in the early Internet was the idea that we could transcend our bodies, regardless of who we were or where we were," she told Ars Technica.

Gizmodo reports that the Federal Communications Commission is refusing to release records related to a video produced last year with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and a Verizon executive joking about installing a “Verizon puppet” as head of the FCC. It is “reasonably foreseeable,” the FCC's response to a Freedom of Information Act request said, that releasing the records would injure the “quality of agency decisions.” So public records are not available to the public because the FCC did something that, if made public, would hurt the “quality of agency decisions.” The video in question came from Pai speaking Dec. 7 at the Federal Communications Bar Association convention. Pai ended his "monologue" with a video skit about how he got to be FCC chief that works as wonderful radio theatre. It takes place at “Verizon’s DC Office” in 2003, where Pai then worked as an attorney. Kathy Grillo, Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, tells him: “As you know, the FCC is captured by the industry, but we think it’s not captured enough, so we have a plan.” “What plan?” Pai asks. “We want to brainwash and groom a Verizon puppet to install as FCC chairman,” the executive says. “Think ‘Manchurian Candidate.’” “That sounds awesome,” Pai responds. Click here to hear a short excerpt of Ajit Pai Radio Theatre. Adam Marshall, an attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, can't fathom how the FCC cannot release the public records. “To argue that this video amounts to the same kind of deliberative process that goes on behind the scenes in terms of an agency deciding an official policy on a topic, or what actions it’s going to take, is absurd,” Marshall said. “The deliberative process is frequently used to withhold embarrassing information or inconvenient information. I have no idea how a draft of a skit that was supposed to be funny would impair the FCC’s decision-making process on anything, except on, I guess, maybe future skits.”

Ars Technica reports about Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai crowing about how successful stopping net neutrality has been. Citing the new Broadband Deployment Report, the FCC chairman says that broadband deployment is going great in the United States, and it is mostly because of the Dec. 14 vote to repeal of net neutrality rules. Trouble is, the new report only covers broadband deployments through December 2016. So, the Obama administration's FCC is actually responsible for any growth in broadband cited in the report. While the commission voted to repeal net neutrality in Dec. 2017, a full year after the period covered by the report, the repeal does not actually go into effect until two months from now. So the rules -- which are not yet affecting anything -- to allow ISPs to block and throttle Internet traffic or prioritize traffic in exchange for payment are helping spread broadband throughout the country, according to Pai. In the future when ISPs won't need to be as transparent with customers about hidden fees, that will mean more customers in the past will have better access to broadband, according to Pai.

The Los Angeles Times reports the Federal Communications issued a record fine last week to a non-profit broadcaster for violating underwriting rules. The Cesar Chavez Foundation, an affiliate of the United Farm Workers union, received a $115,000 fine and a one-year moratorium on new underwriting from for-profit sponsors on its stations KUFW-FM (90.5) in Woodlake, California, and KNAI-FM (88.3) in Phoenix, Arizona. The stations ran underwriting announcements comparing an underwriter's business with competitors' and listing discounts, and urging listeners to contact a business. All that is against the rules for non-profit stations running underwriting spots, which are meant to just be an endorsement of the station by the business, not an advertisement for shopping there. KUFW got fines of $12,500 in 2010 over similar violations, so they should have known the rules by now.

Karl Bode reports at TechDirt that several states are considering legislation to keep net neutrlity in their borders, even though the FCC's order rolling back those rules prohibited states from exactly that. New York and Wyoming have done something different. Governors in those states signed executive orders barring those state governments from doing business with any Internet company not following the old net neutrality rules guaranteeing consumers equal access to the Internet for consumers without excess charges or special fees for faster service. But Rhode Island, Washington state, and California, are just trying to reinstate the old rules within their borders. California, for instance, just passed SB-460 21-12, prohibiting ISPs from paid prioritization and other anti-competitive acts. But states do not regulate the airwaves, Internet airwaves included. Ernesto Falcon at the Electronic Frontier Foundation says California legislators ignored his group's recommendations to avoid endangering the new law in court. So while California is currently suing the FCC over the net neutrality rollback, ISPs will likely soon be suing California if it passes this new law bringing net neutrality back to the state.

Ars Technica reports that the Federal Communications Commission issued a preliminary report Jan. 30 about the false missile alert sent to mobile phones and television and radio broadcast stations in Hawaii in early January. The employee who sent the alert claims he did not hear a recording saying a missile announcement was just a test. The employee, in a written statement because he refused to be interviewed, says he did not hear, "exercise, exercise, exercise,” but heard "this is not a test." Proving what he heard may or may not be difficult, but the fact that one person could send a missile alert to everyone in Hawaii, and no one retracted that warning for 38 minutes, is not in question. The report says a shift change a few minutes before the incident helped to make it possible. "As a result, the day shift supervisor was not in the proper location to supervise the day shift warning officers when the ballistic missile defense drill was initiated," the FCC wrote. The report blames, "a combination of human error and inadequate safeguards contributed to the transmission of this false alert" and that "HI-EMA has taken steps designed to ensure that an incident such as this never happens again." Now, in Hawaii, there is a two-person process to send out missile alerts and a new process to cancel an alert in case of an error. Read the full story at Ars Technica.

For a few hours last weekend, the administration of Donald Trump was touted not for efforts to "Make America Great Again," but for an idea to bring America into the future. Axios reported that the Trump administration was proposing a federal takeover of a portion of the nation’s mobile network, bringing 5G technology to the entire country. 5G is the fifth-generation mobile network that transmits data 10 times faster than the current 4G LTE standard. That means just about anyone with a cell phone gets virtually unlimited data. It means that there is enough bandwidth for self-driving cars, home appliances, the electrical grid, traffic lights, health equipment, air quality monitors, and all sorts of other devices hooked to the internet. FCC chief Ajit Pai quickly put out a statement saying he was very much against the idea of nationalizing 5G. “I oppose any proposal for the federal government to build and operate a nationwide 5G network,” he said in a statement. “The main lesson to draw from the wireless sector’s development over the past three decades — including American leadership in 4G — is that the market, not government, is best positioned to drive innovation and investment.” Of course it was not long before Recode reported that, no, a national effort to give America a state-of-the-art wireless system was not happening. The regime has no plans to build its own ultra-fast 5G wireless network. White House officials said the original story was based on a dated document, floated by a single staff member, and not reflective of their thinking on the issue. What Pai wants -- to give more public spectrum to commercial carriers such as AT&T and Verizon to create private 5G networks -- is what will most likely happen.

Ars Technica reports that the mayor of San Jose, California quit the Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee Jan. 25 because the recommendations of the comittee favor the interests of private industry over municipalities. The problem, "became particularly apparent at our most recent meeting in Washington, DC," Sam Liccardo told FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in his resignation letter. "One working group, which did not have a single municipal representative among its 30-plus participants, created a draft model state code that included provisions to eliminate all municipal control over when, how, and whether to accept industry applications for infrastructure deployment. Another working group had an industry representative dramatically re-write its draft municipal code in the eleventh hour, pushing aside the product of months of the working group’s deliberations. The result, in each case, were provisions that plainly prioritized industry interests." Vice's Motherboard got a copy of Pai's schedule in the months leading up to his vote to rollback net neutrality, and it seemed to back up Liccardo's claim. Their reports says, "From July 1, 2017 through December 21, 2017, Pai met or spoke with high level executives from Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile three times each. He met with AT&T twice, and Charter twice as well. These included calls and meetings with: T-Mobile CEO John LeGere; AT&T CEO John Donovan; Craig Silliman, the executive vice president—public policy and general counsel at Verizon; Hans Vestberg, Verizon's executive vice president and president of Global Networks and Chief Technology Officer; Kathryn A. Zachem, Comcast’s executive Vice President, Regulatory and State Legislative Affairs; and Executive Vice President of Field Operations at Charter, Tom Adams. All top-level FCC officials meet and talk to corporate honchos regularly, "but his schedule definitely shows a preference for large corporations over consumer advocacy groups," the Motherboard report says. One of the Democrats on the FCC commission, Mignon Clyburn, also recalled the same issue. "I noticed that there was an expressed preference for industry over municipalities in broadband deployment efforts. As I have said many, many times before, one size does not fit all, and private industry infrastructure investments do not always flow to communities that are most in need."

Rick Karlin reports in Capitol Confidential that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is keeping up his efforts to promote New York as a radio-controlled drone state with the second annual film competition for the unmanned aircraft. He's calling the part of Central New York and the Mohawk Valley along Interstate 90 the Drone Corridor, where companies are building and testing drones. So the New York State Fair now holds a film festival for camera-equipped drone operators. “We are building the unmanned aerial vehicle industry from the ground up in Upstate New York, with the goal of becoming a global hub in drone research and development,” Cuomo said. “This film festival and competition highlights our investment and draws attention to the amazing work being done with drones, while continuing the economic growth seen in Central New York.” There are many categories to enter, and a small cash prize with a screening at the state fair in August. June 30 is the deadline for entries at https://filmfreeway.com/NYSFairDroneFilmFestival.

Recode reports that Burger King released an pro-net neutrality, pro-Burger King ad this week. In the video, customers in a Burger King restaurant are told they'll get their food quicker if they pay more. On Dec. 14, the Federal Communications Commission rolled back net neutrality rules, allowing internet companies to charge customers more for quick access to the internet. The video, called "Whopper Neutrality," is clearly a metaphor for the end of net neutrality, and fast and slow lanes online. The ad is embedded above. "Burger King did not weigh in at the FCC in 2015 when it wrote the net neutrality rules that the agency’s Republican leaders later scrapped in December," Recode writes. "Burger King has not filed a lawsuit to challenge the repeal. A spokesperson declined to say [Jan. 24] if it would launch or join one later."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a 19-year-old Michigan man, Brandon Griesemer, made 22 calls to CNN threatening to go to Atlanta headquarters and kill employees. The FBI arrested him last week, and he was released hours later on $10,000 bail. “I’m smarter than you. More powerful than you. I have more guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours.” He allegedly told a CNN operator in one call, "Fake news. I'm coming to gun you all down." The same day news of the threat was announced, President Donald Trump tweeted about "Crazy Jim Acosta of Fake News CNN," about another issue. A CNN statement said, “We take any threats to CNN employees or workplaces around the world extremely seriously. This one is no exception. We have been in touch with local and federal law enforcement throughout and have taken all necessary measures to ensure the safety of our people.” Griesemer had made a threatening call to an Ann Arbor mosque in September.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that two months after cutting ties with radio host Garrison Keillor, Minnesota Public Radio revealed some details about why Jan. 23. MPR said the host of “A Prairie Home Companion” subjected a woman to “dozens of sexually inappropriate incidents … over a period of years” including “unwanted sexual touching.” On Nov. 29 MPR said it would no longer distribute and broadcast the 75-year-old Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac” and “The Best of A Prairie Home Companion Hosted by Garrison Keillor” after allegations of “inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him.” What was first thought to be a single incident is now one woman detailing a number of alleged incidents in a 12-page letter. That letter is still not public, but the Star Tribune says she was a longtime writer for the show, and one of several women who claim to have received inappropriate messages from the host. A friend of the woman said, the messages turned “threatening," and that, "he is not the nice guy that all of his fans think he is.” Keillor criticized MPR for releasing details of the complaint, and then wrote, "She signed her e-mails ‘I love you’ and she asked if her daughter could be hired to work here, and so forth. She attended the last show in L.A. She still features ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ prominently on her Facebook page."