I'm listening to Rush Limbaugh again these days. Limbaugh has been assuring his listeners that he is still not on the John McCain for President bandwagon just because he protested the New York Times' article on the Arizona Senator's relationship with a lobbyist. McCain's various collaborations with liberals are still unforgivable, Limbaugh insists.

"This is what you get when you walk across the aisle and try to make these people your friends," he explained. "Why should any of us be surprised or even angry at what the New York Times is doing here trying to take out John McCain?"

Read the rest at allvoices.com . . .  

Super Tuesday is coming on, well, Tuesday. Twenty four states and American Samoa will hold primary elections or primary caucuses for Democrats and Republicans. And while the horse-race watchers obsess over which candidate will be most electable, LLFCC has kept track of their positions on broadcasting and telecommunications related issues.

Democrats

Of all of the contenders for the Democratic nomination, John Edwards had the most clear and comprehensive set of positions on Federal Communications Commission related matters. Unfortunately, the former United States Senator has withdrawn from the race.

Candidate Edwards repeatedly pledged to strengthen rather than weaken the FCC's media ownership rules. "Edwards believes extreme media consolidation threatens free speech," his media page declares, "tilts the public dialogue towards corporate priorities and away from local concerns, and makes it increasingly difficult for women and minorities to own a stake in our media."

Nevada's Supreme Court today upheld NBC's exclusion of presidential contender Dennis Kucinich from tonight's MSNBC Democrats' debate. But the TV network's own appeal to the court reveals that its managers changed the program's qualification rules—a move that threw Kucinich off the program.

An NBC Emergency Petition's "statement of facts" filed today admits that Kucinich may have qualified for the debate under the rules outlined by Democratic party consultant Jenny Backus. Those guidelines said that a candidate had to finish in at least fourth place in the New Hampshire primary or Iowa Caucus to participate in the January 15th debate.

A candidate could also qualify by being included "in the top four in one of six credible random-sample telephone national news media polls conducted since the Iowa Caucus."

NBC's statement acknowledges that in a Gallup Poll completed soon after the Iowa Caucus, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama received the support of 33 percent of those polled, John Edwards obtained 20%, and Kucinich won 3%. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson picked up only 1% of those surveyed.

Remarks of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin at the Rainbow Push Coalition 's
11th Annual Wall Street Project Economic Summit
(As Prepared for Delivery)

January 7, 2008

I want to begin by thanking Reverend Jackson for inviting me to be here today and for hosting the FCC’s media ownership hearing held at Rainbow Push headquarters in Chicago.

Technology today touches almost every aspect of our lives. We are dependent upon it for our news, our information and our entertainment. It’s an exciting time in the media and telecommunications industries—but it is also a challenging one. The Commission has taken a number of steps to improve the communications landscape for all Americans, including minorities.

A particular point of focus has been promoting the availability and adoption of broadband internet access. We have made significant progress on this point. The Commission has acted to remove regulatory barriers to broadband deployment, and the result has been a significant increase in the number of Americans subscribing to broadband at the same time that the price for broadband services has declined. This success has been confirmed by studies by the independent Pew Internet and American Life Project.

LLFCC's regularly updated chart on the presidential candidates and their positions on FCC related issues is firming up. Some candidates, such as Kucinich, Clinton, Obama, and McCain, have a lot to say about these matters. It's harder to track the ex-governors (Huckabee, Romney) stands on various questions, such as net neutrality and media ownership. We'll add more data before the big state primaries in late January and early February.

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission, by a bare majority, voted to lift its over three decade old prohibition against an entity owning a newspaper and a television station in the same market. Most FCC watchers will now shift their visors to Congress and the circuit courts, where media reform activists will doubtless turn in a bid to reverse this ruling.

But the agency also made four important decisions this month and last that deserve a second glance, not only because they could have an impact on broadcasting, but because they illustrate the extent to which the Commission can promote measures that clearly serve the public interest—when it wants to.

Low Power FM

When the FCC created its Low Power FM (LPFM) service in the 1990s, it ruled that these new, locally based non-profit frequencies did not have to protect so-called "third adjacent" full power FM stations. The National Association of Broadcasters moved almost instantly to quash the provision, using its enormous influence to get Congress to pass the "Radio Broadcast Projection Act," which restored the third adjacent rule.

Adam Candeub

On Thursday, October 4th, the Federal Communications Commission's Office of Inspector General completed a detailed audit of "allegations that Senior Management Ordered Research Suppressed or Destroyed." The research in question consisted of two draft studies that came out the FCC's Media Bureau. One titled "Do Local Owners Deliver More Localism?" suggested that, in fact, locally owned TV stations indeed do produce more local news than non-locally owned broadcasters. The second, a "2003 Draft Radio report," noted that advertising market share among radio stations had become more concentrated immediately after the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed corporations to own many more radio signals.

Yet the FCC released neither of these studies, at least not until United States Senator Barbara Boxer confronted FCC Chair Kevin Martin with the first report—"deep sixed," as she put it—during his 2006 reconfirmation hearing. The plot further thickened when Adam Candeub, a former Media Bureau staff attorney, told journalists that the Local TV news report "was stopped in its tracks because it was not the way the agency wanted to go"—that is, towards publishing evidence implying that retaining some of the FCC's media ownership caps might be prudent.