• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

The Next FCC

Status
Not open for further replies.
And much like they have many times before, they'll make lots of noise about doing it and when it comes time to actually vote on it, it won't pass.
Sometimes, past isn’t prologue. The party coming into full, unchecked power has been remade. There is a giagantic playbook that tells us clear as day what the plan is—and where something like defunding CPB didn’t actually make the manifesto, the contextual clues aren’t exactly hard to read.

There may be bigger things on the immediate agenda to be carried out by executive orders, but make no mistake that what we’ve seen happen before is wholly irrelevant. We’re in uncharted waters. Anything on the chief toddler’s hit list, or that of his supporting cast, will make it into the budgeting process. Or make it out of the process, as the case may be.
 
Sometimes, past isn’t prologue. The party coming into full, unchecked power has been remade. There is a giagantic playbook that tells us clear as day what the plan is—and where something like defunding CPB didn’t actually make the manifesto, the contextual clues aren’t exactly hard to read.

There may be bigger things on the immediate agenda to be carried out by executive orders, but make no mistake that what we’ve seen happen before is wholly irrelevant. We’re in uncharted waters. Anything on the chief toddler’s hit list, or that of his supporting cast, will make it into the budgeting process. Or make it out of the process, as the case may be.
I agree with everything you said except for the part about "full unchecked power" - it's not full or unchecked, because which party controls the House of Representatives has yet to be decided.
 
The key in that interview is that the potential new head of the FCC has limited interest in broadcast stations and likely will not look to do anything except relax regulations on group ownership and market concentrations.

It doesn't matter what he said in the interview. Trump has an intense intertest in mass media and attacks anyone not on his side. He's going to weaponize the FCC against media outlets he doesn't like whether it's because Soros owns a percentage or just because they don't give him the never-ending fawning positive coverage he demands.

Any efforts to regulate programming content will immediately hit the First Amendment wall and that is not likely a mission the administration can benefit from.

Since when did Trump care about rules? The Republican commissioners will hold the majority and they will do what Trump tells them to do. If it violates the First Amendment, so what? Who's going to stop him, the Supreme Court?

On the other hand, outside of the FCC there are possibilities of the reduction of NPR funding

I think you spelled certainty wrong.
 
It doesn't matter what he said in the interview. Trump has an intense intertest in mass media and attacks anyone not on his side. He's going to weaponize the FCC against media outlets he doesn't like whether it's because Soros owns a percentage or just because they don't give him the never-ending fawning positive coverage he demands.



Since when did Trump care about rules? The Republican commissioners will hold the majority and they will do what Trump tells them to do. If it violates the First Amendment, so what? Who's going to stop him, the Supreme Court?



I think you spelled certainty wrong.
We're assuming there will be a First Amendment or Constitution?
 
On the other hand, outside of the FCC there are possibilities of the reduction of NPR funding, scaling down or eliminating the VOA and the like.

There is no line item in the budget for NPR. So it's all about congressional funding of CPB. That is federal money for local stations, many of which are owned by state governments. I don't see a majority of state reps stopping federal money from going to their states. But stranger things have happened.

As for the VOA, as I said, Trump likes the VOA if he can control the message. At the end of the last administration, he brought someone in who did that.


 
I doubt that radio and broadcasting are going to be the head of the line when it comes to the next administration's active priorities. Last time Trump was inaugurated he had roughly two years of R control of both houses of Congress. In that time period he could have destroyed NPR, CBP, etc..

NPR still exists. CPB still exists.

If the new admin and Congress is going to look anywhere to attempt to control public discourse, it would probably be online, because online is where nearly everything news, information, journalism, etc. has all been going. There was at least one mention in (I think) the WA Post recently where they referred to this election as "the Podcast election". Because podcasts are starting to take precedence over network and cable TV -- and other legacy media, like newspapers and radio -- in information dissemination.
 
As has been correctly noted, the last administration (of his) had some people who weren’t as hell-bent on burning everything they dislike to the ground (figuratively). He’s got some familiar advisers, yes. But this term will have exactly no one who isn’t a sycophant and acting like the German generals he admired so wistfully. Any guardrails and norms that however tenuously held last time are gone.

And for whatever diminished mental capacity he possesses, his Project 2025 crew does not suffer from that liability. They fully understand the timeframe they have to work with and how to put that framework into place. We cannot compare what is coming to any other period in our history. Ever.

As for the first amendment…that will mean whatever he and his administration says it means, and the personally appointed judiciary is neither going to disagree nor restrain any of his whims.

The sooner all of us grasp the enormity of what is about to happen the better. Throw out the history books (I mean, they probably will anyway, but this is more figurative). Protocol? Precedent? Meaningless.
 
And for whatever diminished mental capacity he possesses, his Project 2025 crew does not suffer from that liability.

I already posted the Project 2025 priorities, written by Brendan Carr, in another thread because none of it deals with radio at all. It's all about regulating big tech and the internet. So my expectation is that all of the FCC staff hired to control radio piracy will be fired. The media bureau will be shrunk. The part of the FCC that deals with enforcing broadcast regulations will be cut. Radio & TV isn't a priority. And of course ownership rules will be cut further. No need to focus attention on something that has diminishing audience.
 
I get that they packed project fas…er, 2025 with other things they want to implement to control every nuance of human life. All 900 whatever pages of it. But not being atop the list of grievances at this moment doesn’t mean it won’t be tomorrow or whenever some perceived slight makes the ketchup fly.

Lots, and I mean lots, of damage can happen under the radar while the public is focused on what’s happening to things like bodily autonomy. To take anything, like any single thing, they have written or said as an indication that they’re not going to do far more is simply not reality. They’re not coming in to nibble around the edges and a little trimming here and there. They’re coming in to nuke whatever they feel like.
 
So my expectation is that all of the FCC staff hired to control radio piracy will be fired.

If I read Trump's rhetoric as being indicative of his true feelings, the pirate stations will disappear relatively quickly, since most of them are operated by people whose ethnicity he dislikes ... and you know what he has threatened to do about "those" people.

Hard to run a pirate station from either a concentration camp or from whatever country he deports you to.
 
What do all of the apocalyptic posters here think of the outlook of Kevin McCarthy? It kind of makes sense, given that this was Trump's last campaign and he has no reason to keep pounding away at campaign themes ... but then, Trump has always been Trump, a narcissist with a huge megalomaniac streak, so McCarthy is likely overly optimistic.

 
One way the new FCC can stay above the fray regarding the ownership caps is to refuse to mount a vigorous defense in the pending lawsuit. By allowing a court to strike down the cap, the FCC can say, "Well, the courts have spoken, and we'll abide by their decision. Now we can implement a new ownership cap to better reflect the times".

Then, they can concentrate on some of the other useless rules and regulations that hamper broadcasting.
 
One way the new FCC can stay above the fray regarding the ownership caps is to refuse to mount a vigorous defense in the pending lawsuit. By allowing a court to strike down the cap, the FCC can say, "Well, the courts have spoken, and we'll abide by their decision. Now we can implement a new ownership cap to better reflect the times".

Then, they can concentrate on some of the other useless rules and regulations that hamper broadcasting.
It’s not like public perception is a concern. If they want the courts to do their bidding for whatever reason, it’s not going to be because they’re out to protect some supposed image.
 
What do all of the apocalyptic posters here think of the outlook of Kevin McCarthy? It kind of makes sense, given that this was Trump's last campaign and he has no reason to keep pounding away at campaign themes ... but then, Trump has always been Trump, a narcissist with a huge megalomaniac streak, so McCarthy is likely overly optimistic.

It’s only “apocalyptic” because that’s what’s going to happen.

Former Speaker McCarthy is full of bovine excrement with that take.
 
Great analysis of the likely changes under the next FCC from Inside Radio:


According to this, he's a big proponent of deregulation, especially for radio, and wants to "level the playing field with other media.

“If ever there were a moment for the FCC to modernize its regulations so that broadcasters could compete on a level playing field, that moment would be now. Yet the agency does the opposite today,” Carr wrote. He also has said that if the FCC does not help local broadcasters compete against the large technology companies that don’t face the same level of regulations, it could put radio and TV on the same path as newspapers.
 
I have little faith in some sort of "change" in tone or practice from the incoming administration. The more moderate and considered voices were purged the last time. This is the revenge tour with a lousier lineup.

I absolutely believe with control of all three branches, they would pursue defunding of CPB. Look at Elon Musk, who's supposed to have a role in trimming the budget. Remember what he thought of NPR? "State-affiliated media." Ted Cruz, and many others, also strongly against public broadcasting funding. "Public broadcasting" is an easy target for the culture wars. It costs the taxpayer very little but is worth way more to stir up people wanting to stick it to "the libs."

Do you think after how the incoming president and his partisans feel they've been treated by the media, NPR being an often used example, that they wouldn't relish the revenge?
 
I absolutely believe with control of all three branches, they would pursue defunding of CPB.

They might pursue it, but chances of actually doing it are slim. They last time congress passed a budget was 1997. Since then, it's been endless continuing resolutions. During all four Trump admins, and all four Biden admins. When you pass a continuing resolution, that means all department budgets are locked at the previous funding levels. It shouldn't be this hard. It's really the only thing congress is constitutionally mandated to do. And it can't get it done. So chances aren't good that things will change in 2025. Not that CPB should count on that. They should all be talking internally about a plan b.

Elon Musk will learn the difference between running a company and a government. The states all depend on federal funding. It's been that way for over 100 years. Sure there are a handful of states that probably don't need it. But a lot of red states have public broadcasting authorities that need CPB funding, and they won't vote no. A lot of red states have NPR stations owned by state universities, such as Texas, Ohio, and Iowa. They need that CPB funding to balance their state budgets. They don't want to raise local taxes to replace federal funding. So we'll see how they handle services their local constituents love.

The country is operating under a continuing resolution right now that expires December 20. We'll see how motivated these lame ducks are to get things done when they return.
 
I already posted the Project 2025 priorities, written by Brendan Carr, ... Radio & TV isn't a priority.
Carr did not write about it, but read the section about CPB. It goes well beyond CPB and gets into NCE stations, regardless of whether or not they get CPB funding.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.


Back
Top Bottom