[caption width="100" align="alignright"] Michael O'Rielly. From FCC website.[/caption]Leslie Stimson in Radio World reports that last week FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly released a jeremiad on pirate radio broadcasting. His proposal would let corporate broadcasters take pirates to court, and is modeled after the CAN-SPAM Act that lets ISPs sue spammers. But the Republican commissioner's declaration of war is a strange one, as it admits that, "stopping pirate radio is not at the top of the priority list." It also seems to use the form of a posted-online-press-release to fight the public relations battle the FCC's been losing to glamorous pirates. "They are not cute; they are not filling a niche; they are not innovation test beds; and they are not training grounds for future broadcasters," O'Reilly writes. He also says, "pirate radio does not increase media diversity. From time to time, arguments have been made that we should look the other way because some pirate radio operators may be minorities, or the stations’ content appeals to minority listeners." Instead, O'Reilly offers that, "approaches like the NAB’s Broadcast Leadership Training Program should be encouraged to prepare underrepresented populations for leadership and ownership positions in broadcasting." Then, for the underrepresented minorities with lots of money to spend, he says, "Alternatively, those truly interested in operating a legal broadcast station can seek to participate in the Commission’s July 2015 auction, in which 131 FM construction permits will be available, many in smaller and less expensive markets." A day after O'Reilly's statement, on April 9, the FCC issued a $15,000 fine against Jose Alejandro Aguilar for operating a pirate radio station in Louisville, Ky. Aguilar was operating “Radio Pasion 316” on 87.5-FM and 99.5-FM MHz in Louisville. Currently, other broadcasters cannot sue him, but he has 30 days to pay the FCC, or the case may be turned over to the Justice Department for collection, Radio World reports.

Randy J. Stine in Radio World noted last week that two TV antennas were installed atop One World Trade Center in New York City, with test broadcasts now for the UHF and VHF trial arrays. The Durst Organization, owners of the now-tallest building in New York City, will test transmissions on Channel 12 for VHF and Channel 32 for UHF. Many of the antennae for radio and television stations were on top of the former World Trade Center towers, before the Sept. 11 2001 attacks brought down those towers. Since then, many antennae have moved to the Empire State Building, at 1,254 feet, with a 200-foot steel tower on top. The new skyscraper stands at 1,776 feet, and will generate larger signal patterns with the additional height. The Associated Press reports that anohter tower, this one in Crimea, is coming down, as Russian officials turned off Crimea's independent television station ATR March 31, by repeatedly refused to give it a broadcasting license. ATR broadcast to the Crimean Tatars, a native ethnic group of about 300,000 that was deported from the region by the Soviet authorities in 1944, and was a lone voice against the Russians after they took over the area from Ukraine last year. Lenur Islyamov, ATR's founder, said at a news conference March 31 that four of its filings have been rejected on technicalities. "They don't give us a license because not a single official can guarantee that at some point we won't go on air calling on people to do something," Islyamov said. Crimea's new leader, Sergei Aksyonov, said last month that ATR has filed the documents "with errors on purpose in order flare up a conflict involving the TV station." Finally, another station will never get to hang a tower, even after the WKMJ Radio Live the People Station filed to get a new low-power FM license through the Federal Communications Commission. Paul Riismandel at Radio Survivor reports Kervenson Joseph from the Pinellas Park, Florida group applying for a station, was arrested for unlicensed broadcasting while waiting for the LPFM application to be processed. Florida, New Jersey, and New York have unconstitutional state laws against unlicensed broadcasting, even though the states have no authority to regulate the public airwaves. And the FCC has a rule against awarding LPFM licenses to former pirate radio enthusiasts. So because Johnson couldn't wait for the FCC's application process to play out, he won't be broadcasting any more, at least not legally.

John Anderson at DIYmedia.net reports more of the details about the proposal to dramatically cut the Federal Communication Commission’s enforcement field offices. Two-thirds of the FCC’s 24 field offices would be closed under the budget proposal, with total enforcement staffing cut in half. Instead, the FCC would establish a “tiger team” of enforcers, who might not be that familiar with the area's airwaves, would be able to use pre-positioned equipment. Last week at the U.S. House's Financial Services Subcommittee budget hearing for the FCC, chairman Tom Wheeler was asked about the new, leaner enforcement strategy. Rep. Jaime Herrera Butler (R-WA) asked Wheeler about the new plan and the lack of any field office in the Pacific Northwest in the proposal. The question comes around one hour and fourteen minutes into the hearing above.[audio mp3="http://newsroom.free103point9.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Congressionalquestion_TomWheeler_enforcementcuts_20150402.mp3"][/audio]

The revolution may be televised after all, just not in the way Gil Scott-Heron considered in 1970. Instead, everyone will be transmitting from their personal hand-sized computer. Last week Periscope joined Meerkat in the race to establish a generic platform for livestreaming through Twitter accounts. Both are quick, easy-to-use apps that allow anyone with a cell phone to turn it on during their local town council meetings, or school board meetings, potentially radicalizing small town politics. Of course, it will mostly be used at concerts and by tourists walking around exotic locales. But, in the past week, the number and quality of technological breakthroughs that could be used for good by all wired citizens soon, was breathtaking. Micron and Intel announced new 3D NAND technology, stacking layers of flash cells vertically to increase density. Now, "2.5-inch SSDs could come in 10TB capacities, compared to the 1TB drives most laptops max out at today," according to Wired magazine. So computers and tablets and phones are about to hold many more apps and songs and videos, and are also about to work faster, as 5G standards get adopted. The Economist says that new 5G "networks will need to have a 'latency' (ie, response time) of about one millisecond. The speed at which two devices can begin to communicate with one another over today’s 4G networks is about 50 milliseconds, and around 500 milliseconds for the still widely used 3G services." Some of the shiny new roll outs can be scary too. Slate reported last week about StringRrays, devices which pretend to be cell towers so mobile devices will be tricked into connecting to them and revealing their data, and manufactured by the Florida-based Harris Corp. There's also a cheaper version called a KingFish, and both can skim call and messaging logs, geolocation data, and handset information. Some of the new innovations, though, are meant for good. The Freedom of the Press Foundation released a new version of SecureDrop last week, their open-source whistleblower system for media organizations to communicate with anonymous sources, and receive documents from whistleblowers. The Toronto Globe and Mail and Gawker Media are among the early adopters for SecureDrop. Others harnessed the new breakthroughs for their own purposes. On March 30, Jay-Z launched a streaming music service called Tidal with Beyoncé, Daft Punk, Kanye, Arcade Fire, and Rihanna as co-owners contributing exclusive content. Tidal reportedly has higher artist royalties then Spotify, and definitely costs more with subscriptions at $20 for high-definition streaming and $10 for regular quality, and no free ad-supported option. The sound quality is said to be similar to Neil Young's Pono app.

When talk turns to radio hoaxes, generally the conversation begins with Orson Welles and the Mercury Players 1938 on-air dramitization of H.G. Wells' novel "The War of the Worlds." Americans running screaming into the streets, reportedly, at the idea that Martians were invading, got lots of Congressmen mad at the time, David Oxenford reports at the Broadcast Law Blog, but didn't change anything. "Essentially, through some well-publicized apologies by Welles and others involved in the program, and a promise by the network to take steps to prevent it from happening again, the FCC closed its investigation and no law was passed by Congress," Oxenford wrote. Fifty years later, in the early 1990s, several on-air April Fool's Day incidents did cause the Federal Communications Commission to update their rules, Oxenford reports. Announcers at a one station claimed someone had taken them hostage, and another station pretended that a local trash dump had exploded like a volcano, sending burning trash airborne. Both times, first responders were called to non-existent emergencies, risking lives. So the FCC adopted Section 73.1217 of the Commission’s Rules, preventing stations from discussing a "crime or catastrophe" on the air, if the broadcaster (1) knows the information to be false, (2) it is reasonably foreseeable that the broadcast of the material will cause substantial public harm and (3) public harm is in fact caused. The FCC defines public harm as "direct and actual damage to property or to the health or safety of the general public, or diversion of law enforcement or other public health and safety authorities from their duties."

Two radio legends announced their broadcast ends this week. New York City-area legend Vin Scelsa announced his retirment March 28. Scelsa was a freeform FM radio pioneer since 1967, lately hosting "Idiot's Delight" on WFUV (90.7 FM). Scelsa began at WFMU in East Orange, NJ, in November, 1967, and worked at WBAI, WABC-FM, WLIR-FM, WNEW-FM, WXRK-FM, and moved to WFUV in 2001. He also hosted a show on SiriusXM's "The Loft" satellite channel. "The kind of programming autonomy I've enjoyed, on both commercial and public radio over all these years, is unique," Scelsa said in a statement. "I am grateful to all the stations I've worked on for the privilege of being allowed to wander through their airwaves wherever my interests have taken me. I am grateful to my listeners for their support and their indulgence as we shared this journey together." Ben Sisario in The New York Times wrote that, "Mr. Scelsa had his playlists meander in sometimes whimsical fashion, mixing underground rock, folksy singer-songwriters, even show tunes. Between songs, he spoke passionately and at great length about the music he loved." Scelsa, who is mentioned in the 1981 Ramones song "It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)," will host his final shows on May 2, from 8-10 p.m. on WFUV, and April 30 on satellite radio. Also on March 28, Deutsche Welle transmitted its final broadcast from its Kigali, Rwanda relay station on 17,800 kHz, the SWLing blog reports. Deutsche Welle is Germany's international broadcaster, similar to the BBC World Service, France 24, Voice of America, Radio Canada International, Radio Free Europe, and Radio France Internationale. Lately, more and more of these services are cutting back their international broadcasts. Fortunately, a 2012 report in The Communication for Development Journal, found, "In 11 countries surveyed across Africa, local commercial radio grew by an average of 360 percent between 2000 and 2006, whereas community radio grew by a striking 1,386 percent, on average, over the same period."

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Recording of an improvisation session made in April 2014.
Squetti was birthed out of the common interest of musicians Artur Matamoro Vidal (Alto Saxophone, objects, radio), Maria Papadomanolaki (transmitters, electronics), Yiorgis Sakelariou (electric guitar) to initially merge heavy guitar riffs and free-improv combined with lo-fi noise electronics.

Protesting museums reached a critical mass this week, for two different reasons. First, three dozen scientists sent a letter to two science and natural history museums, and started a petition, calling on them to cut ties with the Koch brothers and anyone else with connections to the fossil fuel industry. The petition calls for David Koch to be taken off the boards of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. The Koch brothers are billionaire donors to both musuems, and own Koch Industries with extensive fossil fuel holdings and have funded climate denial. There is currently a large protest movement to get companies, schools, and others, to divest fossil fuel funds, similar to the efforts in the 1980s to get companies to divest from investments in South Africa during the apartheid era. The scientists writing the letter say museums of science and natural history should not be associated with, “those who profit from fossil fuels or fund lobby groups that misrepresent climate science,” according to The Washington Post. The campaign is backed by the new mobile Natural History Museum. At the same time, in the art world, voices are rising against the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and its Curator-at-Large Klaus Biesenbach. Earlier this week, Christian Viveros Faune at artnet News wrote a through account of the issue calling for the firing of Biesenbach. He's being criticized for celebrity exhibitions that are not art, most recently one celebrating the pop singer Bjork. That show was called out by prominent art critics as a “fiasco" by Jerry Saltz, an “abomination" by Deborah Solomon, and the show that turned “MoMA into Planet Hollywood" by Michael Miller. Others complain about Kraftwerk's eight-gig show “Retrospective 12345678" in 2012, and the actress Tilda Swinton sleeping inside a glass box at MoMa, a rip-off of conceptual artist Chris Burden's 1972 "Bed Piece." And Biesenbach has organized only one solo show by a black artist at MoMA and MoMA PS1 since 1996. One anonymous source told artnet News, “Lots of trustees are unhappy with Biesenbach right now, but breaking ranks is a big deal. Change will come about only when the trustees who are in dissent get enough ammo to make their will explicit."

The print journalism business lost revenue from many sources in its transition to digital, online news. Craigslist, the common wisdom goes, sucked the classified ad business out of newspapers. Now another online force, even larger, Facebook, is threatening to do more of the same. The New York Times reported this week that Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies, including The New York Times, about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than users clicking a link to an external site. Bloggers these days are having problems with Facebook: they write an article that goes viral on Facebook, but no one clicks on their site, because all the information is on Facebook. Without clicks on a site, ad revenues plummet. So The Times' announcement has a can't-beat-'em-so-join-'em quality to it. "Such a plan would represent a leap of faith for news organizations accustomed to keeping their readers within their own ecosystems, as well as accumulating valuable data on them," The Times article says. The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and National Geographic are said to be the first partners willing to post their reporting to Facebook in exchange for a cut of their ad revenue. Others are pushing back. "Several employees of The Guardian, for example, have informally suggested to colleagues at other publications that publishers should band together to negotiate deals that work for the whole industry, and should retain control of their own advertising, whether content is hosted on Facebook or not, a person with knowledge of the discussions said," The Times reported. Will Oremus at Slate summed up the two sides: "Collectively, news media would be foolish to put their fate in Facebook’s hands. Individually, however, they might be foolish not to."

New York City is getting into the field recordings game, just like Washington, Boston, Oakland, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. Those cities have installed ShotSpotter, a series of open microphones around the cities that pinpoints the location of gunfire, and wirelessly sends that information back to police. “Today, we are rolling out cutting edge technology to make the city safer, to make our neighborhoods safer, to keep our officers safer,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in The New York Times. “This gunshot detection system is going to do a world of good in terms of going after the bad guys.” William J. Bratton, the New York City police commissioner, claims, “On average, 75 percent of shots fired called in by ShotSpotter are never called into 911.” Critics of the program cite other percentages, such as seven percent. Newsday reports a 2013 study found out of 212 potential shootings picked up by ShotSpotter, about one third were false alarms and only 7 percent turned out to be verified shootings. Eben Moglen, a privacy law professor at Columbia University, told The New York Times that potentially incriminating evidence picked up by the microphones constitutes a warrantless search and seizure by collecting public sounds. Why then, would New York City pick a dubious technology that may violate the Fourth Amendment and only works seven percent of the time? Perhaps because Bratton used to be on the board of California-based SST Inc., the company that makes SpotShotter. He left the board just before he became police commissioner in January 2014, according to Newsday.

[caption width="200" align="alignright"] Norman Stockwell of WORT in Madison, WI.[/caption]Norman Stockwell, operations coordinator for WORT (89.9-FM) in Madison, WI, in Tunisia at AMARC's World Forum of Free Media discussed the forum, the recent terrorist attack at the museum on Tunis, and impact of community radio around the world, in a phone call with Wave Farm Radio. The 4th edition of the World Forum of Free Media (WFFM) is from March 22-28, at the El Manar University in Tunis. The World Forum of Free Media was born as part of the World Social Forum. Bloggers, radio activists, journalists, developers, hackers, academics, and independent researchers gather at the conference to discuss issues related to community media, and access. The WFFM begins two days before the World Social Forum, which convenes from March 24-28, and continues for the duration of that event. This edition of WFFM will also is also constructing the World Charter of Free Media, with the draft Charter here: http://charte.fmml.net/

The U.S. House's Financial Services and General Government Committee held a budget hearing for the Federal Communications Commission Tue., March 24.

[caption id="attachment_2072" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Jeff Kolar created this image. See his website: http://jeffkolar.us/[/caption]

After the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, and the infamous Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) imposed a $550,000 fine against CBS and its affiliates for airing a woman's breast on the public airwaves in the early evening hours, when children might be watching. On March 23, Michael Malone at Broadcasting and Cable reports, the FCC's Enforcement Bureau, plans to fine the Vriginia television station WDJB $325,000, its maximum amount, after it aired "graphic sexual images" from an adult film, during a news story. The report, from the 6 p.m. news July 12, 2012, was about a former adult film star then volunteering with a rescue squad, and was accompanied by images of the volunteer's past roles. The video clip in the news story briefly showed male genitalia and a sexual act being performed, according to the Roanoke Times. "Our action here sends a clear signal that there are severe consequences for TV stations that air sexually explicit images when children are likely to be watching," said Travis LeBlanc, FCC Enforcement Bureau chief. But Jeffrey Marks, the Roanoke station's general manager, said in a statement, "We are surprised and disappointed that the FCC has decided to propose to fine WDBJ for a fleeting image on the very edge of some television screens during a news broadcast. The story had gone through a review before it aired. Inclusion of the image was purely unintentional. The picture in question was small and outside the viewing area of the video editing screen. It was visible only on some televisions and for less than three seconds." That sounds like a "fleeting image," sort of like a "fleeting remark." In 2003, U2 singer Bono said, during a televised Golden Globes ceremony, "this is really, really, f------ brilliant." "We have previously found that fleeting and isolated remarks of this nature do not warrant commission action," then FCC Enforcement Bureau chief David Solomon said after calls for a fine in the Bono incident. That decision may have led to another, in 2012, when the Justice Department argued that there was no "fleeting images exemption from indecency enforcement," but the Supreme Court and Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals disagreed, and tossed out the fines against CBS for the brief Super Bowl nudity. So, WDJB might consider appealing this fine too.

The “Local Radio Freedom Act” is winding its way through Congress now, and the name sounds like something almost anyone could get behind. Of course, generic friendly named bills are standard practice in Washington D.C. now. Similar versions of this bill have failed before with names such as the "Performance Rights Act" (2009), and the "Free Market Royalty Act" (2013). So forget the name, this is a non-binding resolution backed by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), and introduced by U.S. Representatives Gene Green (D-TX) and K. Michael Conaway (R-TX). The resolution proposes: “…Congress should not impose any new performance fee, tax, royalty, or other charge relating to the public performance of sound recordings on a local radio station for broadcasting sound recordings over the air, or on any business for such public performance of sound recordings.” Songwriters get paid each time a song airs on terrestrial radio, but performers do not, though they get paid from airplay on digital or satellite radio, a distinction these days, that's not all that clear. Radio airplay is considered promotion for the record, advertising that drives sales, which leads to the performer getting paid. The radio industry has long argued that heavy airplay leads to record sales. Does that sound reasonable? It does in China, Iran, and North Korea, some of the only other countries that also do not pay performance royalties for airplay, according to Olivia Brown at the Future of Music Coalition. "For decades, local radio airplay has jump-started and sustained the careers of countless musicians and record label moguls," said NAB president and CEO Gordon Smith, in a statement in Billboard magazine last month. "Local radio's unparalleled promotional value drives increased record and merchandise sales and sells out concert venues. NAB applauds lawmakers for standing with hometown broadcasters in opposing a job-killing performance royalty that would damage the number one platform for exposing new music." And while the "Local Radio Freedom Act" sounds like something concerning mom-and-pop locally-owned broadcasters, the NAB mostly represents just five corporations. Billboard says that of 11,357 AM and commercial FM stations in the U.S., 850 are owned by iHeartMedia, 450 belong to Cumulus Media, 300 are run by Townsquare Media, 130 belong to CBS Media, and 130 are owned by Entercom. AllAccess.com reports that last week, 13 more House members signed on as co-sponsors of the bill, with two more Senate co-sponsors. Radio World reports that four lawmakers — Darrell Issa (R-CA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Conyers (D-MI), and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) — publicly oppose the LRFA, noting in a letter that the resolution, “impedes future debate, it stifles innovation, and it will continue to maintain an unfair playing field.”

David Oxenford at the Broadcast Law Blog reports that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will hold an auction for 131 commercial FM channels July 23. Most frequencies are in Texas, and the minimum bids range from $1,500 to $75,000. Eighteen frequencies are left over from previous auctions, so they might go without bids again. Most are in very rural areas -- Columbia, Missouri and Maysville, Georgia command the top minimum bids. The FCC has made non-commercial FM frequencies available in recent years, including two rounds of low-power FM stations and one full-power non-commercial stations, and those did not require money, just filling out an application by a non-profit group and competing in a scoring system among other non-profits. These commercial licences are more of a capitalistic outing. Winning bids get construction permits to build out radio stations. Oxenford guesses that applications would be due in May, and "upfront" payments of at least the minimum bid would be required in June. "If you win the auction and decide that you can’t really find a transmitter site, then you may well be on the hook for the full amount of the bid even if you don’t build the station," Oxenford writes. Full applications, with the location of transmitter sites, would be required about a month after the auction, he also guesses, based on past FCC actions. The FCC is also taking comments through April 1 on its auction procedures, so anyone who does not like the process can suggest other ways the FCC could make these frequencies available. Refer to Auction 98 in your comments. Read the full story at the Broadcast Law Blog.

Paying all the bills at any sort of radio station can be difficult in this multi-media age. The studio of Berkeley Liberation Radio was broken into and robbed, March 2, and now the legendary pirate radio station has a Gofundme campaign to get back on the air. As of March 18 the station had raised $1,250 of the $2,000 it says it needs to get back on the air. The station was founded as Free Radio Berekely in the early 1990s by Stephen Dunifer, the Johnny Appleseed of the microradio movement then. Legal stations also have many costs, especially streaming their signals online. Paul Riismandel at Radio Survivor reports SoundExchange, the non-profit organization that collects so-called “mechanical” royalties for recorded music, just reached a settlement with National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on the rates that affiliated public and community stations will owe from 2016 to 2020. The details of the agreement have not been made public yet, and the settlement must still be approved by the Copyright Royalty Board. Last October, SoundExchange also reached a settlement with College Broadcasters Inc. Riismandel also reports he spoke with another writer who said that a pirate station had received notice from ASCAP and BMI demanding that the station pay up for its internet stream. Last year, East Village Radio, which began as a pirate station in 2003 and then went just online, closed because “licensing fees and internet costs” were too large for the station to cover. Recently, new apps have emerged that make it easier then ever for anyone to start their own streaming online radio station. Mixlr and Fradio (launched this week) both let anyone use their phones as a transmitter, with just a few touches to start broadcasting. The question is now if BMI and ASCAP will be tracking down each user who is playing music for royalty payments. Already, a quick look through Mixlr's streams show many traditional radio stations using the app to stream their signals. Both apps also make it very simple for anyone to broadcast royalty-free events such as town council meetings, and local lectures or political debates, so not all streams must pay these fees. StoryCorps, an American non-profit organization whose mission is to record, preserve, and share the stories of Americans, launched their own app this week, allowing oral historians and other interviewers to share the audio with the U.S. Library of Congress, on the website StoryCorps.me, and on social media sites such as Facebook and SoundCloud.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Tom Wheeler testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the FCC's relationship with the Obama administration March 17. The hearing was about the FCC’s 3-2 approval along party lines of “net neutrality,” rules designed to prohibit internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against legal content moving through their networks. Republicans focused their questions on their theory that President Obama ordered or coordinated the Democrats on the Commission to favor the rules that they previously did not all support. Committee chair Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) opened explaining those views.
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Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), countered that the four million comments from the public weighed more than the single comment from President Obama.
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Chaffetz then questioned Wheeler on any coordination with the White House.

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Chaffetz also announced at the hearing that the FCC’s Inspector General has launched an investigation into how the agency’s net neutrality rules were crafted. Amy Schatz at re/code reports, "The FCC’s Inspector General isn’t exactly known for investigating the conduct of commissioners, so this might not amount to much. FCC investigators mostly focus on stopping fraud in the FCC’s multi-billion dollar federal subsidy program for phone and Internet services."

Video from C-Span.

[caption width="603" align="alignright"] FCC enforcement actions by year, from DIYmedia.net.[/caption]The American Radio Relay League reports that, according to an internal Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau memorandum, the bureau wants to cut two-thirds of its field offices and eliminate nearly one-half of its field agents, from 63 to 33. The March 10 memo says the bureau would keep offices in New York City; Columbia, Maryland; Chicago; Atlanta; Miami; Dallas; Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Instead, the bureau would create a so-called flexible “Tiger Team” of field agents it could deploy as needed with necessary equipment in other cities, initially to include Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Seattle, San Juan, Anchorage, Honolulu, and Billings, Montana. John Anderson, at DIYmedia.net, a site that tracks pirate radio enforcement, writes that less than two weeks ago FCC Managing Director Jon Wilkins was asked about this issue at a Congressional hearing regarding the FCC’s budget. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) said she recently received complaints from NYC-area broadcasters about many pirate stations, and asked about funding in the FCC's budget fight pirate radio. “The only way we can manage is to find out where is the highest density of need and how can we deploy the people and the resources that we have against that,” Wilkins said. Rep. Michael Pompeo (R-KS) followed up: “I asked a direct question, you gave a generic response. Is there [a] recommendation to close field offices for the FCC and relocate people to your headquarters?” No final recommendation on that, Wilkins replied. The broadcast industry is not happy about the leaked memo. “The ARRL is concerned that there is already no sense of urgency in the FCC’s enforcement activities targeting spectrum polluters, such as utilities with noisy power lines, or the few violators in our own ranks,” ARRL CEO David Sumner, K1ZZ, said. “It is troubling to see recommendations for such drastic reductions in the Commission’s geographic footprint and the number of field agents at a time when the Field staff is facing ever-increasing challenges.” Radio Ink, an industry trade magazine, wrote, "Considering... the data showing that the FCC has taken fewer actions against pirates in recent years, and now the confirmation of the FCC considering downsizing of the field office personnel, the worry for licensed broadcasters has to be that this "perfect storm" may lead to even more problems, and fewer actions against pirates." And while the FCC's enforcement efforts may be scaling back, some local police are now using AM radios to find marijuana grow rooms, EDN.com reports. The grow rooms use large 1000W high pressure sodium or metal halide lamps, driven by electronic ballasts. Many of the ballasts are imported from China and the manufacturers are not complying with FCC emission standards. Which means the lights produce radio frequency interference (RFI), which is often heard by local radio amateurs as static. The ARRL's lead RFI investigator, Mike Gruber, says the group made formal complaint to the FCC, dated March, 2014, about the lights. Gruber also conducted tests on three electronic ballasts and found peaks as high as 100+ dBuV (50 dB over the limit) in the range 6 to 8 MHz, with lower peaks at 14, 18, and 21 MHz, and also in the AM broadcast band, where the police are tuning their radios to detect the grow rooms from as far away as 2,500 feet. The FCC's enforcement bureau would usually investigate this sort of interference, but, apparently, the cut backs may affect resolution of this sort of radio interference.

Full disclosure: John Anderson is on Wave Farm's board.

The Federal Communications Commission's recent ruling allowing "net neutrality" may give some consumers the idea that companies can't pay more money to create fast lanes on the internet for certain services. Corporations have many ways around those rules, John Bergmayer and Shiva Stella in Slate.com report. Comcast, for one, is refusing to sell its own video programming to other online video providers, such as Netflix. The HBO Go app launched March 3 for the PlayStation 4, but not for Comcast Xfinity subscribers who already pay for HBO. "If you try to access HBO Go on a Comcast Internet connection using Verizon-provided credentials, you can. But if you try to access HBO Go on a Verizon Internet connection using Comcast-provided credentials, you can't," the Slate story says. Last year it was reported that Comcast had blocked people with Rokus from accessing HBO Go and Showtime. Slate says Comcast also refuses to authenticate Hulu even though it shares Hulu ownership. Generally, if a company will pay enough, companies such as Comcast will allow authentication, if not, consumers are out of luck. This happens on the radio too. Edward Ericson Jr. in Baltimore's City Paper recently reported about how local non-commercial NPR affliate WYPR (88.1-FM) regularly blurs the line between programming and underwriting. "Programming produced by a Johns Hopkins public-relations professional, the CEO of the National Aquarium, a pair of local restaurateurs, and a prominent local economist -- all of whose corporate employers underwrite programming on the station -- blend in with work by radio journalists and talk-show hosts with no other allegiance or means of support," Erickson wrote. On one WYPR show, “Baltimore’s Future," host David Warnock touts the work of the recipients of grants dispensed by the Warnock Foundation, its subsidiary “Baltimore Social Innovation Journal,” and nonprofits he chairs. Warnock donates more than $200,000 a year to the Warnock Foundation, and the weekly four-minute show contains no disclaimers about his finance company or its many corporate clients, and was, until recently, underwritten by the Warnock Foundation. Does that sound like pay-to-play? Current FCC rules actually allow pay-to-play, if the payment is disclosed at the time of the airplay. Record companies could, right now, pay radio stations to play certain songs if they disclose that fact as they play the music. But no radio station wants to come on and say, "that Beyonce track was paid for by Columbia Records." Radio broadcasters and the recording industry would like to change that, however. Last November, the Radio Broadcasters Coalition, nine corporations that own most commercial radio stations, filed a petition with the FCC seeking a class waiver of the Commission’s requirement that broadcasters air sponsorship identification announcements at the time sponsored material is broadcast. Instead, the Coalition wants radio broadcasters airing "sponsored" music or sports programming to be permitted to air less frequent on-air announcements with "enhanced" online disclosures. The FCC is asking for comments on this proposal on or before April 13 and reply comments on or before May 12. All filings must reference MB Docket No. 15-52. Here is the link to file comments with the FCC: http://wireless.fcc.gov/index.htm?job=file_comments_fcc