Wasn't there something about General Tire "strongly suggesting" their dealers use their (co-op?) money on RKO stations?
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The Trump Administration rants about ABC News And NBC, Says They Should Lose FCC Licenses
- Thread starter Y2kTheNewOldies
- Start date
A federal judge ruled last week this lifetime ban might not be legal. Stay tuned for appeals.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Which gives him another chance to whine ... "you can't do that to me, I'm Trump!"
In fact, all this nonsense about the networks and the stations and Kimmel and all those "nasty" journalists who cover the White House all evoke much the same reaction from him.
"You have to do what I say, because I'm Trump!"
The license issues had to do with bribes in Algeria and Argentina.
He's so stuck up, it would be hysterical if it wasn't so pathetic.
But you know why he made that speech; He knows November doesn't look good for his party. And he's terrified. If they lose both the House and Senate, he's done. The House will impeach and if the Senate flips, they will convict and remove. Aind that's why he's panicking. Without the president title, he's vulnerable to arrest. Possibly jail. (Epstein, war crimes, human rights abuses-the Supreme Court can't bail him out of any of that.) That's why he's freaking out so hard over the midterms. He knows he's in trouble. So he's doing what he did in 2020; Sow doubt about the election so when November comes up and should he lose, he will have a "See? I told you so" narrative he can foist on his most violent followers because he wants another January 6th to save him. (He was almost successful the first time.)
And you just know that the puppet masters (Bannon, Miller, etc.) won't allow Trump to announce the release of the most damaging "evidence" they have until it's too late for the Democrats to disprove it convincingly enough to prevent a critical number of undecided voters to go along with the 2020 fix story and vote Republican in November. The quintessential "October surprise" strategy.
Of course, if the Democrats swing farther to the left and flood ballots nationwide with non-Christians, "woke" women and Mamdani/Sanders types, regardless of their virtues, they are doomed. And that's what I fear is going to happen in November.
Primaries are by and large completed. Or at the very least the candidates in the primaries are set. So not sure what “flooding” is going to happen.
Nor how “non-Christian”, “woke women”, or Mamdani types are pejoratives. As a Christian male, I’m what the right would call woke—precisely because of my faith. Senator Warnock would likely fall even more into that category, being a preacher and all. And to the best of my knowledge and research, beyond the ongoing histrionics from right wing media, the mayor of New York is hardly flailing.
Nor how “non-Christian”, “woke women”, or Mamdani types are pejoratives. As a Christian male, I’m what the right would call woke—precisely because of my faith. Senator Warnock would likely fall even more into that category, being a preacher and all. And to the best of my knowledge and research, beyond the ongoing histrionics from right wing media, the mayor of New York is hardly flailing.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Without belaboring the point or going farther off-topic, I am also Christian and in my opinion Jesus Christ was the most "woke" of anyone. The conservative so-called "Christians" (in name only, because they pick and choose what they believe) apparently never embraced Matthew 22:36-40. Even the other religions of the world understand and follow "love thy neighbour as thyself".
Trump, of course, has his own version of the first part of that passage, which in his warped mind reads "thou shalt love Trump, thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind". To bring this back to what we are discussing, he treats his executive orders as if they were divine proclamations with punishment in Hell for anyone who dares defy them. And with "disciples" like Brendan Carr, he still clings to the delusion that he will get his way.
I am convinced that his own ego prevents him from surrounding himself with knowledgeable people and following their advice when they say he can't do something. We have often compared his actions to that of a dictator -- although he covets the title of "king" -- and the only thing that breaks his power is enough resistance by those he wants to control to the point where even SCOTUS can't be swayed in his favor. (I still believe that sooner or later he will want to dictate chapter and verse to the Justices, at which point they will rule against him, and I shudder to think of what could happen next.)
And, to sync this up with the actual thread topic, his constant insistence that the networks have licenses, that non-broadcast entities like CNN can be stopped by the FCC, and his gloating when things appear to go his way (and his anger when that turns out not to be the case ... e.g., Kimmel) proves how intractable he is once he believes something is fact when it isn't.
That is the real danger with this POTUS.
In his head, the networks have licenses because they own stations. So he's targeting the companies. He doesn't understand the licenses are tied to the communities. The communications act is about public service. That's a concept he doesn't understand. He and Carr think they can twist the public interest into controlling what companies say or do. The "public" doesn't mean the government. The president thinks that because he was elected by the public, that his interest is the public interest. That's wrong. The government doesn't get to decide what's in the public interest. They really don't have any latitude in deciding what's obscene either. I think when this gets to the courts, that's how this will be decided.
Add to this the fact that the FCC no longer views itself as an independent agency but rather an agency of the president puts the communications act in constitutional trouble.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And a follow-up from this post in a now-closed thread* about the Los Angeles Times not having coverage of the Thursday speech in the Friday edition (since they no longer own their own printing plant, I presume they now have hard deadlines in order to meet the window they have at their vendor):
They finally did have an article this morning, taking up the two rightmost columns on the front page above the fold before jumping to page six (!). They did gain the advantage of being able to include next day reaction and more blather from officials in the administration, so this probably worked out better from a journalistic POV.
But you-know-who probably ranted for much of Friday about his speech not being front page news, oblivious as usual to reality. Probably threatened to revoke the Times' license to publish.
(*- It has become obvious that Lance is growing increasingly tired of threads turning purely political, which is why I try to keep a connection between my observations in that area and the issues the broadcast industry is continually facing because of those politics. I offer -- as personal advice only -- a suggestion that if you guys want to still have somewhere to discuss the government interference with radio and television, you should take a hint from the frequency of those thread closures.)
They finally did have an article this morning, taking up the two rightmost columns on the front page above the fold before jumping to page six (!). They did gain the advantage of being able to include next day reaction and more blather from officials in the administration, so this probably worked out better from a journalistic POV.
But you-know-who probably ranted for much of Friday about his speech not being front page news, oblivious as usual to reality. Probably threatened to revoke the Times' license to publish.
(*- It has become obvious that Lance is growing increasingly tired of threads turning purely political, which is why I try to keep a connection between my observations in that area and the issues the broadcast industry is continually facing because of those politics. I offer -- as personal advice only -- a suggestion that if you guys want to still have somewhere to discuss the government interference with radio and television, you should take a hint from the frequency of those thread closures.)
The LA Times is really off his radar. The speech was made for one group: Senators in DC. The speech was front page news on the Washington Post and other DC media. That's the fishbowl he lives in. It's why he devotes so much time to various buildings in that city.
I started that thread for a simple reason: There's a debate in the news business about how to cover this president. There were discussions before the speech over whether or not to pre-empt entertainment programming. The white house knew about this and knew they were crossing a line and didn't care. That's going to continue to be an issue between the white house and the media. I have no problems with the thread being closed. We can just start another one the next time an issue like this comes up.
It seems we are trying to active a lack of knowledge as the primary issue when it comes to these regulatory discussions. As to the president, yes. As has been abundantly demonstrated on topic after topic, including broadcast regulatory ones, what he understands could fit in a thimble with room to spare. That is never going to change.
But the others in the administration, the supposition that they lack an understanding isn’t supported. What is supported via Project 2025 is that they fully understand and do not care. They further suppose, rightly in many cases, their most ardent supporters don’t understand and/or don’t care. They say whatever they wish to say knowing full well what the regulations, law or constitution has to say about it is meaningless. They don’t concern themselves with, at least in public, wonky discussions of how such regulations actually apply. They throw red meat to a hungry base and invent whatever legal arguments they wish when cases go to court (the most common legal reasoning seeming to be a variant of “because he said so.”) Regulations, be they about media, about the media environment, about safety, about consumer protection, are all lumped into one bucket.
Of course the bigger focus here is on the media impact. And the discussions circle back to that. But when we view it in totality, there is no way all those puppet masters are that ignorant. They may not be masters of the arcane, but they’re not clueless. It may just be a helpful veneer to seem that way at time.
No they're not ignorant or clueless. It's about strategy. I said this a while back: This is a reality TV government. The president views this as an extension of The Apprentice, and all these people around him are contestants. What we've seen with all these changes thrown at us in the first year or so is strategic. It overwhelms the system. So many court cases that the courts can't deal with them. That was the strategy. Attacking some parts of the media while making it easier for other parts is the strategy.
Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos realized this a long time ago. That's why they've been left alone and their companies have prospered. Comcast is starting to catch on, and that's why they're spinning off NBC and the cable companies. Disney has a new CEO, so we'll see how he handles this. It's against the Disney culture to spin stuff off. So far, they're taking an aggressive approach. But if you watched The Apprentice, that's part of the game.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And I, for one, object strenuously to our democracy being the equivalent of being a contestant on Jeopardy! (even though I know that's a lot higher bar that POTUS could ever hope to hurdle, it was the best example I can think of where actual knowledge is how you win or lose).
At this point, all I can do is hope that the sh!thead-in-chief's warped agenda keeps having roadblocks put in its way until his term ends and further hope that the next POTUS has a better grasp of the basis of our nation and a willingness to work within the framework instead of taking a bulldozer to it.
I long for a normal FCC again.
FCC watchers have been complaining about that since the 70s. There's been a systematic replacement of engineering people with lawyers. I wonder how many people at the FCC know anything at all about radio. Most of what Carr focuses on with regards to broadcasting is TV. That could be because radio is completely off his radar. That's not a problem unique to this administration. It gets back to what I said about the communications act. Al Gore was the one who called for the rewrite in the 90s. He said it was obsolete. He wasn't wrong. It may be time to revisit it. The problem is that the potential fixes will open up a huge hornet's nest. Just like they did in the 90s. My view is the only role for the FCC in broadcasting is spectrum management. Everything else gets deleted.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I'm with you there. Vet new applications to make sure they don't improperly overlap existing licensed facilities. Reserve the right and authority to inspect transmissions to ensure same. Handle administrative details such as ownership changes and the like. Approve changes affecting the licensed service contour but not to the point where changing the antenna requires anything more than notification if the contour is unchanged. Approve call letter changes (but get rid of §73.1201, for crying out loud ... let the stations decide if the call letters are part of their branding or not, and stop the fallacy of the community of license; that would likely eliminate 99% of the call letter change requests). Leave regulation of the telephone, broadband, and cable services to the local and state authorities. Handle any international agreements about spectrum and stuff like undersea cables but otherwise let those matters self-regulate.
There are no issues outside of that basic set of responsibilities that cannot be decided between parties, with or without lawsuits.
True and also everytime we hear about chairman Carr and Trump rant about going after TV Networks we always have to put a disclaimer that only the FCC investigates local TV affiliate licenses when that takes place. The issue here is way systemic from Donald Trump putting that image from decades past that the CEO is a dictator type stuff to how some countries around the world actually issues licenses to radio and TV networks.
It does not matter how many disclosures we have to put here because it’s about the administration demanding that everyone to watch the propaganda the White House is doing.
After the Thursday Night speech, there is an saying my neighbor says that is appropriate:
"If his lips are moving he's lying".
"If his lips are moving he's lying".
Similar to what Judge Judy says about teenagers.