Chicago recently earned the dubious distinction of having the parent companies both major newspapers and the largest alternative weekly declare bankruptcy. And Chicago is not alone in having troubles with its newspapers. It’s getting so bad that even ardent anti-consolidation acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps is showing signs of softening on cross-ownership. We explore this issue, and the FCC’s new National Broadband Plan.
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mediageek 9 April 2009 broadcast quality mp3
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Tags: bankruptcy, broadband, chicago, Conrad Black, consolidation, creative loafing, cross-ownership, fcc, Hollinger, journalism, michael copps, national broadban plan, newspapers, ownership, reader, sun-times, tribune
Download, Listen Now, Podcast | admin | 
April 11, 2009 6:43 am | 
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Now that President Obama has finally gotten down his nominations list to FCC Chair, Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer things are starting to heat up in Washington, so that means we need to catch up and consider what this means for our communications environment. We also review some noncommercial TV stations asking the FCC to turn off their analog signals before the extended April 12 deadline, and the FCC opening up public comment regarding the public service channels to be allocated on Sirius/XM as a condition of their merger.
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Tags: CIO, CTO, dtv, fcc, julius genachowski, sirius/xm, Vivek Kundra, Wiconsin Public TV
Download, Listen Now, Podcast | admin | March 8, 2009 11:15 pm | Comments (0)
Another year, another bill to restore LPFM is introduced into Congress. Only, this time, with GW Bush out of the White House and Democrats in charge of Congress, it looks like LPFM has a fighting chance. Also, we listen to excerpts from the Chicago Journalism Town Hall tackling head on the future of local news as the commercial papers stand on the brink of extinction.
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mediageek 26 February 2009 broadcast quality mp3
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Tags: #cjth, chicago, chicago journalism town hall, community radio, Congress, fcc, journalism, localism, low-power FM, lpfm, newspapers, online, radio
Download, Listen Now, Podcast | admin | March 1, 2009 9:23 pm | Comments (1)
Matthew was able to stick around for a little longer than the usual half-hour show, so we were able to continue our discussion to talk about the upcoming digital television transition.
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mediageek 15 January 2009 part 2 – broadcast quality mp3
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Word on the streets is that Obama’s nominee for FCC Chair is a law school classmate of his, and former counsel to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, Julius Genachowski. However, until recently most observers hadn’t heard of him. Arstechnica‘s Matthew Lasar has been doing his research and joins us again to share what he knows, and what he forsees for a Genchowski FCC.
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mediageek 15 January 2009 broadcast quality mp3
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Tags: ars technica, chair, communications, fcc, fcc chairman, julius genachowski, matthew lasar, media, nominee, obama, policy
Download, Listen Now, Podcast | Paul | January 18, 2009 10:21 pm | Comments (0)
In the second half of the Jan. 1 program guest John Anderson and I talked about the FCC’s record of enforcement action against unlicensed and pirate broadcasters in 2008. Hot spots continue to be New York and Miami, though there’s reasons to doubt that FCC action is resulting in any significant decrease in piracy.
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John Anderson of DIYmedia.net joins for our annual look back at the year that was for media policy, reform and democracy. For all the hoopla, not much actually happened for real, so we get to talking about Prof. Larry Lessig’s recent salvo to “Reboot the FCC.”
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This week Mitchell Szczepanczyk from Chicago Media Action joins us to talk about some of their top media reform issues right now. In particular, we get into the digital TV transition, and the folks who will be left behind, along with CMA’s challenges to Chicago TV broadcasters’ FCC licenses over the poor quality of their local election coverage.
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mediageek 16 October 2008 broadcast quality mp3
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Tags: broadcast license, chicago, chicago media action, cma, digital transition, dtv, fcc, wnur
Download, Listen Now, Podcast | Paul | October 17, 2008 11:45 am | Comments (0)
The FCC finally took action against Comcast for its discriminatory network management practices that blocked its internet customers’ BitTorrent file-sharing traffic. However, while it’s good to see the FCC action, it’s still a mixed decision.
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Matthew Lasar is an astute observer of the American media policy landscape. A media historian and lecturer at U-C Santa Cruz, he’s authored two definitive books on the Pacifica Network, and currently writes for his own website, the Lasar Letter on the FCC, and for the tech new site ArsTechnica. Matthew joins me to talk about the importance of understanding media policy and regulation and what he thinks the most important issues are right now.
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