Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency, directly responsible to Congress. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 as the successor to the Federal Radio Commission and is charged with regulating all non-Federal Government use of the radio spectrum (including radio and television broadcasting), and all interstate telecommunications (wire, satellite and cable) as well as all international communications that originate or terminate in the United States. The FCC took over wire communication regulation from the Interstate Commerce Commission. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions.

Table of contents 1 Organization 2 History of Federal Communications Commission 2.1 Report on Chain Broadcasting 2.2 Allocation of Television Stations 3 Regulatory Powers 4 External links:

Organization

The FCC is directed by five Commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for 5-year terms, except when filling an unexpired term. The President designates one of the Commissioners to serve as Chairperson. Only three Commissioners may be members of the same political party. None of them can have a financial interest in any Commission-related business.

As the chief executive officer of the Commission, the Chairman delegates management and administrative responsibility to the Managing Director. The Commissioners supervise all FCC activities, delegating responsibilities to staff units and Bureaus.

History of Federal Communications Commission

Report on Chain Broadcasting

In 1940 the Federal Communications Commission issued the "Report on Chain Broadcasting." The major point in the report was the breakup of NBC (See American Broadcasting Company), but there were two other important points. One was network option time, the culprit here being CBS. The report limited the amount of time during the day, and what times the networks may broadcast. Previously a network could demand any time it wanted from an affiliate. The second concerned artist bureaus. The networks served as both agents and employees of artists, which was a conflict of interest the report rectified.

Allocation of Television Stations

The Federal Communications Commission assigned television the Very High Frequency, VHF, band and gave TV channels 1-13. The 13 channels could only accommodate 400 stations nationwide and could not accommodate color in its state of technology in the early 1940s. So in 1944 CBS proposed to convert all of television to the Ultra High Frequency band, UHF, which would have solved the frequency and color problem. There was only one flaw in the CBS proposal, everyone else disagreed. In 1945 and 1946 the Federal Communications Commission held hearings on the CBS plan. RCA said CBS wouldn't have its color system ready for 5-10 years. CBS claimed it would be ready by the middle of 1947. CBS also gave a demonstration with a very high quality picture. In October of 1946 RCA presented a color system of inferior quality which was partially compatible with the present VHF black and white system. In March 1947 the Federal Communications Commission said CBS would not be ready, and ordered a contiuation of the present system. RCA promised its electric color system would be fully compatible within five years, in 1947 an adaptor was required to see color programs in black and white on a black and white set.

In 1945 the Federal Communications Commission moved FM radio to a higher frequency. The Federal Communications Commission also allowed simulcasting of AM programs on FM stations. Regardless of these two disadvantages, CBS placed its bets on FM and gave up some TV applications. CBS had thought TV would be moved according to its plan and thus delayed. Unfortunately for CBS, FM was not a big moneymaker and TV was. That year the Federal Communications Commission set 150 miles as the minimum distance between TV stations on the same channel.

There was interference between TV stations in 1948 so the Federal Communications Commission froze the processing of new applications for TV stations. On September 30, 1948, the day of the freeze, there were thirty-seven stations in twenty-two cities and eighty-six more were approved. Another three hundred and three applications were sent in and not approved. After all the approved stations were constructed, or weren't, the distribution was as follows: New York and Los Angelas, seven each; twentyfour other cities had two or more stations; most cities had only one including Houston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. A total of just sixty-four cities had television during the freeze, and only onehundredeight stations were around. The freeze was for six months only, initially, and was just for studying interference problems. Because of the Korean Police Action, the freeze wound up being three and one half years. During the freeze, the interference problem was solved and the Federal Communications Commission made a decision on color TV and UHF. In October of 1950 the Federal Communications Commission made a pro-CBS color decision for the first time. The previous RCA decisions were made while Charles Denny[?] was chairman. He later resigned in 1947 to become an RCA vice president and general consel. The decision approved CBS' mechanical spinning wheel color TV system, now able to be used on VHF, but still not compatible with black and white sets.

RCA, with a new compatible system that was of comparable quality to CBS' according to TV critics, appealed all of the way to the Supreme Court and lost in May, 1951.16 In October of 1951 CBS was asked to stop work on color TV by the National Production Authority, supposedly to help the situation in Korea. The Authority was headed by a lieutenant of William Paley, the head of CBS.

The Federal Communications Commission, under chairman Wayne Coy, issued its Sixth Report and Order in early 1952. It established seventy UHF channels (14-83) providing 1400 new potential stations. It also set aside 242 stations for education, most of them in the UHF band. The Commission also added 220 more VHF stations. VHF was reduced to 12 channels with channel 1 being given over to other uses and channels 2-12 being used solely for TV, this to reduced interference. This ended the freeze. In March of 1953 the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce held hearings on color TV. RCA and the National Television Systems Committee, NTSC, presented the RCA system. The NTSC consists of all of the major manufacturers. On March 25, CBS president Frank Stanton conceded it would be "economically foolish" to pursue its color system and in effect CBS lost.

December 17, 1953 the Federal Communications Commission reversed its decision on color and approved the RCA system. Ironically, color didn't sell well. In the first six months of 1954 only 8,000 sets were sold, there were 23,000,000 black and white sets. Westinghouse made a big, national push and sold thirty sets nationwide. The sets were big, expensive and didn't include UHF.

The problem was that UHF stations would not be successful unless people had UHF tuners, and people would not voluntarily pay for UHF tuners unless there were UHF broadcasters. Of the 165 UHF stations that went on the air between 1952 and 1959, 55% went off the air. Of the UHF stations on the air, 75% were losing money. UHF's problems were the following:(1) technical inequality of UHF staions as compared with VHF stations; (2) intermixture of UHF and VHF stations in the same market and the millions of VHF only receivers; (3) the lack of confidence in the capabilities of and the need for UHF television. Suggestions of deintermixture (making some cities VHF only and other cities UHF only) were not adopted, because most existing sets did not have UHF capability. Ultimately the FCC required all TV sets to have UHF tuners. However over four decades later, UHF is still considered inferior to VHF, despite cable television, and ratings on VHF channels are generally higher than on UHF channels.

The allocation between VHF and UHF in the 1950s, and the lack of UHF tuners is entirely analogous to the dilemma facing digital television of high definition television fifty years later.

Regulatory Powers

The Federal Communications Commission has one major regulatory weapon, revoking licenses, but short of that has little leverage over broadcast stations. It is reluctant to do this since it operates in a near vacuum of information on most of the tens of thousands of stations whose licences are renewed every three years. Broadcast licenses are supposed to be renewed if the station met the "public interest, convenience, or necessity." The Federal Communications Commission rarely checked except for some outstanding reason, burden of proof would be on the compaintant. Fewer than 1% of station renewals are not immediately granted, and only a small fraction of those are actually denied.

Note: Similar authority for regulation of Federal Government telecommunications is vested in the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C

See also: frequency assignment, open spectrum

External links:

• FCC webpage (http://www.fcc.gov/)

FCC is also the initals for Canada's Farm Credit Corporation.