Comments on: FCC: America’s New Speech Police

By: mark

mark — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:41:50 +0000

What law gives the FCC power over Arbitron?
Government continues to grow like a weed.
A lack of ethics and morals will do that.

By: ExNYer1995

ExNYer1995 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:00:26 +0000

Some people seem to be convinced that Obama's big government ideas are a net positive:

Pravda Observes 'American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper'

(And BTW – the part that I found funny was decidedly NOT intentional… Worth a try on your part, though…)

By: Alericc

Alericc — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:57:20 +0000

Well according to Eric Holder it seems that you can be brought up on charges for supposed war crimes. What will we charge PEBO when he stands around and does nothing when North Korea and Iran kill a lot of people in the next 3 years?? He will do what Carter and Clinton did, nothing, and mouth words no one outside of the US will take seriously.

By: Andrew P

Andrew P — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:46:48 +0000

The FCC will assert any jurisdiction that it can get away with. I mean, who can stop them? The communications acts effectively give the FCC lawmaking power, so it can do whatever it wants unless Congress says otherwise.

By: Adrienne1001

Adrienne1001 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:20:38 +0000

No one in the story implied that data was being misrepresented. The PPM Coalition is complaining that to become an Aribtron listener, you need to have a land-based telephone and, since so few minorities have land-based telephones (what?), they are unfairly underrepresented in the Arbitron audience.

I hope you're right and the investigation reveals Arbitron's counter-arguments disprove the PPM Coalition's complaint. But most likely the FCC will refuse to let facts get in the way of its preconceived opinions and Arbitron will be forced to alter its information gathering to prevent such disparity in ratings gathering ever again – maybe even in such a way as to give an advantage to those underrepresented folks to make up for being overlooked before.

Like GM, like the banks, Arbitron is run by people who have been doing this for a long time and know what they're doing. Unlike the first mentioned industries, Arbitron isn't crashing and burning as a result of crazy-ass government regulations set up to insure its demise. Obama's FCC is about to rectify that situation.

By: TexiCon

TexiCon — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:48:35 +0000

"The FCC is in no way attempting to stop this. If anything they are attempting to keep as much diversity as possible on the air as opposed to keeping it all one sided – like Soviet Russia did."

The FCC has no jurisdiction over a ratings company, they shouldn't be involved at all. And do you see the irony in advocating government intervention in radio, and then bashing Soviet radio which was completely controlled by the government?

By: TexiCon

TexiCon — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:48:08 +0000

The problem with this line of thinking is that you don't just hurt the "people", who voted on what they wanted to hear with their time and radio dials and now don't get to hear the programs they enjoy (assuming their shows are cancelled due to skewed ratings data), but also the radio stations, who don't get as much money from their advertisers (because of false lower ratings) and their advertisers who don't get to reach as many people with their commercials, and the people who work for the companies that provide the products or services advertised and so on down the line.

By: TexiCon

TexiCon — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:48:08 +0000

By: TexiCon

TexiCon — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:46:30 +0000

post

By: TexiCon

TexiCon — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:43:04 +0000

"The problem is the PPM system makes ratings a science that ends up killing a lot of good radio. "

This statement cuts to the heart of the issue here. You don't like the actual results of what people really want to listen to and therefore support the FCC's intervention.