Techcrunch reports that the Federal Communications Commission has backed off from lowering what constitues a broadband signal. Currently, the FCC considers a fixed signal with speeds of 25 megabits download and 3 megabits upload broadband. They were considering lowering that to a mobile signal with 10 megabits download and 1 upload, which would then allow them to claim that much of the country has broadband internet. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, was happy her Republican colleagues kept the current standards, saying “I’m glad that the FCC has backed away from its crazy idea to lower the broadband speed standard. But it defies logic to conclude that broadband is being reasonably and timely deployed across this country when over 24 million Americans still lack access.” Republican FCC head Ajit Pai seems to agree, recently proposing a $500 million project to expand rural broadband.

Shashank Bengali and Aoun Sahi report in the Los Angeles Times that on Jan. 19 Pakistan closed Radio Mashaal, a U.S. government-funded radio station. Pakistani authorities said Radio Mashaal broadcasts were “against the interests of Pakistan,” saying the station's reports made the country seem like “a hub of terrorism” and “a failed state.” The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, part of the Pakistani military, made the decision, according to the report. Recently the administration of Donald Trump says it will withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance from the country because, it said, terrorists from Pakistan are crossing into Afghanistan to attack U.S.-led coalition troops there. Trump himself has called out “lies and deceit” from Pakistan recently on Twitter. Pakistan said the U.S-funded station's broadcasts were “in line with [a] hostile intelligence agency’s agenda.” The station broadcast in the Pashto language and was popular in the northwestern part of the country where many Pashtun refugees who have fled from Afghanistan live. The Los Angeles Times wrote, "The station is part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a nonprofit broadcasting organization funded by Congress and based in Prague, Czech Republic. Started during the Cold War as an alternative to pro-Soviet propaganda, the organization airs programs in 23 countries that it says face media restrictions, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran." Radio Free Europe president Thomas Kent said the station has, "no connection to the intelligence agencies of any country."

The Hill reports that the Federal Communications Commission says it will stay open for a week after the government shut down at midnight Jan. 19. “In the event of a partial government shutdown, because of available funding, the Federal Communications Commission plans to remain open and pay staff at least through the close of business on Friday, January 26,” FCC spokesman Brian Hart said in a statement. After that, only 227 of its 1,492 employees get to keep working -- emergency personnel, the five commissioners, and 185 workers whose salary doesn’t come from annual appropriations. The FCC's monthly open meeting on Jan. 30 might get postponed. The commission is set to vote on updating the country’s Wireless Emergency Alert system at that meeting.

Radio Corax in Halle, Germany and the Goethe-Institut launched a new international fellowship program for radio art this year. The Radio Art Residency is the first fellowship program of its kind throughout Europe, giving artists from abroad the opportunity to work for a period of three months at Radio Corax. "What that sounds like is to be decided by the artists: the radio is not only an exhibition space for their acoustic art works, but provides a space for experimentation. Artists are invited to experience and to question the medium with all its techniques and narratives," according to the residency website. Artists should contact Tina Klatte at tina-klatte@radiocorax.de for more information.

The Communications Law blog reports that the Federal Communications Commission issued a record $13.4 million fine to Sinclair Broadcasting for not adequately disclosing sponsored content in its programming. That's because Sinclair violated FCC rules 1,700 times on its 64 stations. The FCC requires broadcasters to identify anyone who has paid for programming, and Sinclair repeatedly did not. The FCC has been criticized during the past year for going easy on Sinclair, weakening limits on the number of stations a company can own in individual markets, easing the way for the conservative broadcast group to buy Tribune Broadcasting for $3.9 billion. Sinclair currently owns 193 stations including the CBS affiliate and the CW affiliate in Albany, and Tribune owns another 42 broadcast television stations. If that deal goes through, Sinclair would be the largest local TV operator in the country, broadcasting to an estimated 72 percent of all American households. While most polls show local TV news is trusted, Sinclair does not just hide its paid programming, but also its conservative slant on the news. So, while everyone knows when they watch Fox News, they are watching a conservative version of the news, when viewers watch the CBS and CW stations in Albany, they mostly believe they are just watching the local news. But just like this FCC fine indicates, with Sinclair, you don't always know who is behind their programming. In fact, the Democrats on the FCC Commission argued the fine was too small. "The ‘punishment does not fit the crime’ against a company that grossed more than $2.7 billion in revenue last year. [The] meager fine... fails to match the scope and egregious nature of the violations that were committed," Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel wrote in a statement.

Radio artist Joe Frank died Jan. 15, 2018, after a lifetime of surreal and influential radio works. While most Americans are probably not familiar with his work, many have heard his voice or his echo. He could be best known for his 1982 monologue "Lies," which Martin Scorsese used, without permission, as the basis for the movie "After Hours." (Scorsese settled out of court.) His distinctive, resonant voice can be heard on voiceover work for The Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, and commercials for Zima and the Saturn Corporation. He worked at WBAI in New York, and was a co-anchor for the weekend edition of National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" in the late 1970s. In 1993 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Radio Art, and in 2003 he won a Third Coast International Audio Festival Lifetime Achievement Award. One of the first jobs of "This American Life" host Ira Glass was working for Frank. He was truly, won of radio's most unique voices. A feature-length film, Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There, about Frank's life and work, is scheduled for release in 2018. The film was completed prior to Frank's death and includes interviews with collaborators and other radio personalities.

Variety reports that the Federal Communications Commission has received at least "a handful" of complaints about bad language on network newscasts. CNN and NBC anchors were quoting the president of the United States, who reportedly called many African countries an expletive in a White House meeting last week. The FCC does not regulate speech on cable networks, so CNN has nothing to worry about, and over-the-air broadcasters may air profanity during "safe harbor" between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. NBC, though, did quote the president during its evening newscasts, so, technically, it could get in trouble with a fine up to $383,038 per incident. “Factors in determining how FCC rules apply include the specific nature of the content, the time of day it was broadcast, and the context in which the broadcast took place,” the FCC says on its website. So, while there may be a rule against such language over the air, the enforcement is arbitrary. Generally, the FCC does not fine stations when a station reports a newsworthy expletive, which would seem to be the case this time.

A new study from the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard finds that when municipalities in the United States build their own broadband networks, they are significantly cheaper for consumers then the services provided by telecommunication companies. The study only includes 27 community-owned broadband networks with at least the federal minimum 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload in communities where there was also comparable commercial service available. "We found that most community-owned fiber-to-the-home networks charged less and offered prices that were clear and unchanging, whereas private ISPs typically charged initial low promotional or “teaser” rates that later sharply rose, usually after 12 months.... We also made the incidental finding that Comcast offered different prices and terms for the same service in different regions," the study reports. While large companies such as AT&T, Time Warner/Charter, or Verizon can save money on economies of scale because they are larger, municipal broadband networks don't require high profits for the owners, nor do they need to spend so much on advertising. The telecommunications industry has convinced several states to not allow cities and towns to create their broadband networks because they do create cheaper access to the internet, which the study confirms. New York is one state that does not block communities from creating their own networks, with a bunch of municipal internet in the western part of the state near Rochester, and in that city. Chattanooga, Tennessee has the nation's largest municipal broadband network, with generally great reviews. Consumer Reports says that, "Some of the best-loved Internet providers are owned and run by local governments."

Matt Sebastian reports in Boulder's Daily Camera that the Colorado city is a hotbed of pirate radio, with at least five stations in the area broadcasting recently. Four of them are working together as the Colorado Community Radio Network, and a fifth recently got the attention of the Federal Communications Commission. Longmont's KROC (106.5-FM) did not get a visit from FCC enforcement officials trying to stop their illegal broadcasts. Instead, one of the five FCC commissioners -- not an enforcement officer -- sent a threatening letter to a Colorado news organization that wrote a story about the microradio station. "Pirate radio should never be romanticized or its negative impact minimized. In learning of a pirate station, the proper action should have been to alert the Federal Communications Commission’s Field Office in Denver to initiate an investigation and potentially enforcement proceedings, not suggest people listen while they can," FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly wrote to the news outlet. "The Longmont Observer generally doesn't comment on letters to the editor, however, we do find it odd, and by what we can tell, unprecedented, that an FCC commissioner would write a tiny digital-only, locally focused news outlet in Longmont, Colo., and tell us what story we should write, and how to write it," Sergio R. Angeles, president and co-founder of the nonprofit Longmont Observer, wrote in an editor's note appended to the Jan. 3 letter from O'Rielly. "It is absolutely unprecedented for an FCC commissioner to attempt to badger journalists for simply doing their jobs," John Anderson, director of the Journalism and Media Studies program in the Department of TV & Radio at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and a member of Wave Farm's board, wrote on his DIYmedia.net blog, where he tracks pirate radio enforcement actions. Why is an FCC commissioner sending letters to news organizations rather than enforcement officers? Congress has dramatically reduced the FCC budget, and the FCC has reduced the number of its field offices. FCC Enforcement Bureau chief Rosemary Harold told Inside Radio that “less than 50 people” are working pirate radio cases across the country out of 13 field offices. But, Anderson reports, FCC enforcement actions were up in 2017. "There were 383 enforcement-actions across 18 states, compared to 207 actions in 2016 covering just nine states," he writes. Many of those actions were multiple warning letters sent to pirates and their landlords.

Thuy Ong reports in The Verge that Samsung will unlock the FM radio chips in their cell phones. Most cell phones have FM radio chips, and most are locked, blocking use. Now Samsung phones will play the radio, even when the internet is down. Apple says its iPhone 7 and 8 models don’t have the FM radio chips, so they won't be turning on the radio. Federal Communication Commission chairman Ajit Pai claims that about 44 percent of the “top-selling smartphones” in America have activated FM radios chips compared to 80 percent in Mexico.

Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica reports that the Federal Communications Commission is about to lower the standard of what it considers a "broadband" internet signal. Current FCC policy says that everyone should have access to both fast mobile data and quick home Internet signals over fiber or cable. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai may soon release a new standard, declaring that America's broadband problem is fixed if everyone has access to either fast home Internet or cellular Internet service with download speeds of at least 10Mbps. Internet activists, though, think there is a big difference, and that one cannot do everything with mobile service. So these activists have created the "Mobile Only Challenge." "The FCC wants to lower broadband standards," the Mobile Only Challenge's website says. "Pledge to spend one day in January 2018 accessing the Internet only on your mobile device to tell them that's not OK." It is an odd protest -- no one making decisions over everyone's internet service will take the test, and those feeling the pain have already decided they are for broadband for everyone. The only way anyone with any decision-making authority could see the results for themselves is by accident. "I was forced to participate in the #MobileOnly challenge when Cox was a no-show for three days after I moved over the weekend," Joe Miller, a tech policy podcaster tweeted. "Sure, I was able to consume content. But producing anything was impossible. By no stretch of the imagination was I 'adequately served.'"

Karl Bode at TechDirt reports that there will certainly be legal challenges once the Republicans at the Federal Communications Commission publish their order rolling back net neutrality. But Democrats in Congress might also try to force a vote on legislation returning the even-playing-field internet rules. In the Senate, they just need one more Republican to vote with them, as Maine Republican Susan Collins has already voiced her displeasure with the FCC's Dec. 14 vote to end net neutrality rules. Then in the House, they need to find about 20 Republicans in swing districts willing to buck their party. In the Hudson Valley in New York, Rep. John Faso is in a swing district, and his seat in the November election is very much in play. He was one of three New York Republicans to vote against the repeal of internet privacy rules earlier this year. So far, he hasn't directly said how he would vote, but expressed some skepticism about rolling back net neutrality rules, talking by phone to constituents in December. Whether Republicans such as Faso actually join them to vote to restore net neutrality rules, the Democrats are also trying to get Republicans on the record about whether they prefer fast lanes for internet users who pay more, or a system like telephones, where everyone has the same access. Of course, Republicans, in the majority, may block any bill from getting to a floor vote. But under the Congressional Review Act, Democrats just need 30 senators to force a vote on the issue, and right now they have 29.

Glyn Moody at TechDirt reports that Vietnam has an internet army of 10,000. The country has an internet monitoring unit called "Force 47" looking over posts for anti-government views. Bloomberg reports that "Facebook this year removed 159 accounts at Vietnam's behest, while YouTube took down 4,500 videos, or 90 percent of what the government requested, according to VietnamNet news." China also looks to quash its citizens online views, and Germany requires internet companies to delete "hate speech." Now England is threatening tax penalties on companies that don't take down "extremist" material. And The Intercept is reporting that Israel is forcing Facebook to remove pro-Palestinian views from its pages. So while Vietnam may have a 10,000-strong internet army, Google and Facebook say they are increasing their "safety" -- or censorship -- teams to 20,000 people.

Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica reports that while the Federal Communications Commission rolled back net neutrality rules Dec. 14, the FCC has not yet released the repeal order. Apparently, though the vote already took place, the Republicans on the commission that voted to end net neutrality are still writing the order. "The goal is to release it as soon as possible," an FCC spokesperson said. Sometimes FCC orders are released the same day as the vote, sometimes weeks later. This one is taking awhile. "It's certainly possible that this document will have more significant changes from the circulated draft stage than we've seen in other Pai orders," Policy Director Matt Wood of advocacy group Free Press said. "Free Press and others pointed out not just scores of substantive flaws in the commission's arguments, but a number of procedural errors and notice fouls that frankly cannot be fixed with a post-vote band-aid. But that doesn't mean they aren't busily trying to apply those band-aids as we speak." No one can challenge an order that has not been released publicly in a court of law, but expect lawsuits to be filed as soon as the order is published.

Nate Anderson at Ars Technica reports that a Haitian pirate radio station near Miami, Radio Touche Douce (90.1-FM), has received the largest possible fine from the Federal Communications Commission, $144,344. The Miami Herald says, the station is, "the pulse of the Haitian music industry in Miami, organizing some of the most popular big-ticket parties while promoting bands and guiding konpa music fans to the next hit." The station has a website, Facebook page, and an internet webstream on the TuneIn app. FCC records indicate they've been chasing the station's signal at least since 2012. DJ Polynice was fined $25,000 in 2013 for the station's illegal signal. The Miami Herald reports that the Radio Touche Douce studio is "located in a North Miami storefront," while the transmitter is nearby in a backyard shed that belongs to Harold and Veronise Sido. The trio were hit with the joint fine of $144,344 this past September. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn supported the fine but gave reasons why the three might have taken to the pirate radio movement. "According to US Census data, there are 213,000 foreign-born Haitians living in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area," she wrote. "This represents nearly four percent of the metro area population yet, research by my staff found just a single FM station serving the Haitian community of the almost 60 FM stations in south Florida. If these unlicensed operators were ever afforded the opportunity to transition to a licensed station, would they take it? Unfortunately, in most large media markets, that opportunity may never exist, both because of the lack of an available license and high financial hurdles." A local musician agrees in the Miami Herald. “We need it,” said Wilky “Kikko” Saint-Hilaire, a songwriter for several konpa musicians. “This was probably the only station that played our music genre, konpa, exclusively on a daily basis.”

Radio World reports that there is a new search engine designed for audio, called Audioburst. “Our system’s core technology listens in real-time to online sources of audio content, and processes it on two levels,” said Assaf Gad, Audioburst’s vice president of marketing and strategic partnerships. “In the first level, the audio is fully transcribed to text using our ASR (automatic speech recognition) software engine. This text then goes through our NLP (natural language processing) algorithm: It allows us to understand what is being said, and to use this information to categorize, classify and store each topic for online searching.” Audio becomes text, which is simpler for searching, and then that text search reappears to the user as audio. While text and video have been easily shared and searched for years, audio is more inscrutable, and the computing technology to search live audio was not available until now. Whether the mass public wants to search for audio or not is still an open question, there are certain audio aficionados who will certainly be testing Audioburst.

When the Federal Communications Commission rolled back net neutrality rules Dec. 14, they also added a "Blue Alert." While Amber Alert's detail missing children, Blue Alert's relay "information related to a law enforcement officer who is missing, seriously injured, or killed in the line of duty." Soon cell phone notifications and radio emergency sounds could be more common, though, there is "a 12-month implementation period for Blue Alerts to be delivered over the Emergency Alert System and 18 months for delivery over the Wireless Emergency Alert system." Tim Cushing at TechDirt writes that, "There's nothing out there that suggests distributing this information outside of law enforcement networks will have any net safety benefit for the public. Taking it nationwide only adds to "Alert" market saturation. Cops have strong support systems and plenty of firepower on their side, unlike missing seniors (Silver Alert) or kidnapped children (Amber Alert). And, unlike targeted weather alerts, a Blue Alert offers up almost no information usable by the general public."

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Dick Orkin, the man behind the "Chickenman" radio serial and other shows, died Dec. 24 in California. “He had been struggling with health issues for a while and lately was on the mend, but Saturday night he had a stroke and Sunday evening he passed away,” Lisa Orkin, posted on Facebook. “He was an incredible father and we all feel blessed that we had him in our lives as long as we did.” Orkin, 84, created the "Chickenman” radio series as a production director at WCFL in Chicago. The show, usually about two minutes long, featured a deadpan superhero who lacked any special powers, It started in 1966 and lasted into the late 1970s, and was syndicated to more than 1,500 stations worldwide at one point. The character was the alter-ego of shoe salesman Benton Harbor, who fought crime in Midland City in a chicken costume. The show evolved the character to an environmental warrior in "Chickenman vs. the Earth Polluters" and finished up in 1977, as "Chickenman Returns for the Last Time Again." In 1996 Orkin explained about the show, "I was never clear about what 'camp' meant, except that I guess it had something to do with the sacredness of absolute values that, when extended to irrational limits, became just plain silly... Thank God I hadn't known 'camp' was later considered a literary technique, or that would have killed the doing of it for me."

Paul Riismandel at Radio Survivor reports that while social media feeds that many people saw recently suggest Norway is shutting down its FM radio band, that is decidedly not the case. The government there did shut down some state-run FM radio stations last week, but got all sorts of resistance. There are many reports of unlicensed FM broadcasts in Bergen, Tønsberg, Ålesund, Fredrikstad, and Førde. Norway is shutting down analog broadcasters, to have them switch over to digital signals that need new receivers to be heard. In Norway's largest city, Oslo, the CEO of a radio company and the chairman of the Norwegian Local Radio Federation told the CBC’s “As It Happens” show that he has not turned off his transmitter. While he is facing $10,000-a-day fines for staying on the air, he said, "The main question is, why do you switch off a system in Norway where we have 10 to 15 million radio receivers? And you just say to the public, you’re not going to use this anymore because you need to buy new ones. What sort of logic is that for media companies to operate that way? I mean, you operate on behalf of the listener. Here, the big players are saying to the listeners: 'No. You need to go out and buy new radio receivers.'" A recent poll found that 56 percent of Norwegians are “dissatisfied” with the conversion to digital radio. The country has a little more than five million residents, but 15 million FM radio receivers that, until last week, could receive all the signals. Another poll found that half of Norwegians don’t have a Digital Audio Broadcasting radio in their car, and have no plans to buy one. So while, from a glimpse at a social media story, it may seem like Norway is doing away with FM radio, it is really involved in another attempt to sell something. In this case, a different sort of radio. And, so far, Norwegians aren't buying.