shakran

There's plenty of reason for the FCC. Television content regulation is actually only a very small part of what the FCC does, although it is the most visible. Without the FCC your cell phones, FRS radios, cordless phones, wireless routers - -all of 'em would probably stop working because there would be no regulation as to what frequencies various devices were allowed to use or how much power they were allowed to put out. So, for instance, some jackass could build a FRS radio, put it on the same frequency as a cell phone, and then have it transmit 50watts of power (currently they're limited to 5). End result? Every cell phone anywhere near this radio would instantly stop working.

You know that little notice printed on every electronic device you own that says it can't cause interference with any other devices? That's the FCC that makes that rule. Without that, manufacturers wouldn't bother to shield their stuff because that would be expensive, with the end result that everything would be putting out and receiving massive interference to and from every other device.

FCC regs keep TV stations that compete with mine from installing a 5 million watt transmitter that burns through our frequency and knocks us off the air. They prevent them from installing active jamming devices to knock us off the air. All of this would almost certainly happen if the FCC weren't there to police it.

In short, the FCC actually does a LOT of things VERY well - - from a pure frequency regulatory point of view, it's a very vital and a very good service.

The problem is that the FCC has also expanded to include decisions that should be left to elected officials. The FCC used to be purely regulatory - -they enforce the "hardware" rules that I discussed above. Now, however, they're essentially making laws without the consent of the governed. Their biggest blunder is not that they require educational programming, but that they are so lax in their other TV content and ownership regulation. Used to be you could only own 1 TV station in a market, and only a few nationwide. What that meant was that the viewers were guaranteed to get a local voice that informed them of the issues they needed to know about. Now that megacorporations are allowed to own scores of TV stations and networks, we not only have companies who's HQ's are on the other side of the country dictating how we run our newscasts, but we also have an inherent economic conflict of interest. GE is not going to be very happy if NBC (who they own) comes out with a story that reflects poorly on the corporation. THIS is the kind of bullshit we should be angry with the FCC about.