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Here's the most important thing happening for music today that you haven't heard about: the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in Prometheus Radio vs FCC. What's that about? We'll tell you in this THREAD.
Too few companies have too much power over radio broadcasting, and it makes it harder for diverse musicians to reach the listening public. It means that the range of viewpoints and sounds you hear on the air is constricted.
Public radio, college radio, community radio, and some mom & pop commercial radio stations do their best to serve communities, but big radio companies under the influence of private equity have been laying off DJs and replacing them with robots.
This doesn't just impact music. It also impacts communities' access to relevant local news and information. One important barometer to understand the problem is gender and racial diversity of broadcast ownership; it's a problem when white men control too much.
Radio is still the #1 source of music discovery, and it's where a lot of working-class folks get much of their news and information. The public owns the radio airwaves; broadcasters are granted licenses by the govt only if they abide by rules to serve the public interest.
Every four years, the FCC reviews its media ownership rules, including the rules about how many stations a single company can own in a single market and cross ownership rules with radio/TV and newspapers. And unfortunately the trend has been toward deregulation, weakening rules.
FMC has fought against this trend through our research and advocacy before the FCC & congress, and we're not alone. Civil rights groups, media reform groups and watchdogs, public interest advocates, music lovers, unions, journalists and more have opposed further consolidation.
Our friends at Prometheus Radio Project were one of the key groups that led the charge to pass the Local Community Radio Act of 2010 that allowed hundreds of new LPFM stations to have access to the airwaves, and they've taken the fight to the courts.
The FCC is required to study impacts on gender and racial diversity before making a change in media ownership rules. Prometheus has repeatedly sued the FCC over failures to do the required studies, and federal courts have four times agreed that the FCC failed to do so.
President Trump's handpicked FCC Chairman (and most famous person to block us on Twitter) @AjitPai suggested in a speech in December that he believes the rules shouldn't exist at all! And his actions at the FCC reflect that.
When courts told the FCC the fourth time they needed to study impacts on ownership diversity, Ajit Pai appealed the issue to the Supreme Court. They are hearing oral arguments today, the last day of the Trump Administration and the last day of Pai's disastrous tenure at the FCC.
It's happening right now, streaming live here https://www.c-span.org/video/?506851-1/telecommunications-act-1996-consolidated-oral-argument
As there's lots of anti-monopoly attention on big tech right now (and deservedly so), what's happened in traditional broadcasting hasn't gotten enough attention. The monopoly problem isn't fundamentally about specific technologies but about power.
Siding with the current FCC leadership is the National Association of Broadcasters, the lobby group that represents big corporate radio and has consistently pushed for deregulation.
NAB argues that more consolidation will keep local stations broadcasting in the face of digital competition. But the record shows that the real threats to local broadcasting are ownership consolidation itself and extractive private equity.
The ad-tech duopoly and the impact on revenues is a factor, but that's addressed by effectively regulating digital, not by rolling back public interest protections. NAB won't argue for that, though. Why is that?
Big radio companies don't actually want digital companies regulated, because they're operating digital products themselves (look at I Heart Radio's market share in digital radio, for example). They just want to complain about digital so they can justify more deregulation.
It's part of a bigger monopoly problem that goes beyond digital/analog divides. Liberty Media (controls Sirius XM, Pandora, 1/3 of LiveNation/Ticketmaster) was just allowed to buy 50% of I Heart Radio. Allowing more consolidation in radio just makes this problem worse.
Some of this issue hinges on data. Some justices are asking "why isn't better data on women and minority ownership harms available?" That's an important question and it requires acknowledging power disparities.
Huge companies can hire economists to generate studies and datasets. Small underfunded nonprofits like us and our allies on these issues usually can't. Data that's available tends to reflect questions interesting to those with economic power. #prometheus
The FCC ought to be using its resources to collect better data and meaningfully present it so we can all better understand what's happening in the marketplace, as @JRosenworcel has argued. #prometheus
Oral arguments before SCOTUS have now concluded, but the fight for diversity in broadcasting will continue.
