In the past couple years the FCC has received written comments and input at local hearings in which the public has expressed that broadcasters are doing a poor job at serving in the public interest.  In other words, due to the last decade of consolidation, stations have tightened playlists, automated operations, abolished news departments, and minimized coverage of local events and elections.  Most of this precipitated from changes in ownership rules in the 90’s, and eradication of FCC station public ascertainment requirements and fairness doctrine in the 80’s.  The abolition of these requirements has eliminated any minimum public service standards for broadcasters, and has crippled the public’s ability to demonstrate that a broadcaster is not serving the local public interest.

Nowadays, when a broadcast station wants its license renewed, all it has to do is send a form to the FCC where it is stamped “approved”.  Because of this, broadcasters determine themselves how to serve the public interest, which means, providing automated programming at the lowest cost (“Jack FM”), or programming that solely reflects the ideology of the license holder.  The problem with this is that Title III Section 307(b) of the Communications Act requires the FCC to make laws for broadcasters regarding the oversight of local community needs—regulations similar to those abolished in the 80’s during radio’s qualitative decline.  Currently, if a broadcaster is not serving the local public interest, it is amazingly difficult to prove this to the FCC—and even if guilty, the broadcaster faces virtually no repercussion of any sort.  Additionally, since the AM/FM bands have limited capacity, there is no way anyone from the public can demand additional full power channels to start a stations to serve the local community.  Broadcasters will continue to automate local stations and maintain tight playlists that omit local and independent artists if the public doesn’t step up and comment about it to the FCC.

What is the FCC Doing About This?

The FCC released a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” which details a bunch of suggestions regarding how Commission could better regulate radio to serve the local public interest.  You can read the entire document here or read a summary of what it all means here.  These aren’t new ideas.  For the most part, they are thinking about returning rules that forced broadcasters to be accountable to the public, pre-80’s, before the rules were dismantled.  The process for rulemaking at the FCC is based somewhat upon the public’s commenting to the FCC regarding their proposals.  The FCC Commissioners read these comments to reveal what the public feels about the issues, and then make judgments accordingly regarding which rules seem in the public interest.  This means any person, group, or corporation can influence which rules get made.  

Fortunately, the FCC has made it extremely easy for the public to file comments on a proposed rulemaking; they want your ideas about how to inject public participation into local radio.  Unfortunately, very few members of the public actually file comments because few people know about rulemakings, or have time to keep up with rulemakings.  Because of this, larger broadcasters end up making policy because very few provide comment.  As of March 4, if you search for public comments about the rulemaking (http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/comsrch_v2.cgi, type ‘04-233’ into “proceeding”), the overwhelming majority is against it.  Religious broadcasters are prodding their listeners to lobby against it by filing comments.  Note:  Comments regarding the FCC’s latest Localism release go back to December 2007.  

It is expected that many of these rules won’t fly because broadcasters do not like them.  
Major broadcasters object to the proposed rules because it will require them to ask the local communities for feedback about their programming, and make automated programming tougher to implement.  Additionally, if a broadcaster cannot show that they serve the community with a small percentage of local programming, license renewal will include more than sending a form to the FCC for an automatic OK.

The proposed rulemaking deals with the the following

-    Should all radio stations should have a “community advisory board” made up of people from the community, or something to that nature, to procure input on how to best serve that local community?  Should only commercial radio stations participate?  College and community stations?  Religious radio stations?  Should there we focus groups or town meetings?  

-    Should radio stations be required to do local surveys (phone, email) on how the public thinks they are performing in the community?

-    Should radio stations be forbidden to operate on automation?  Should there always be someone in the studio for emergencies?  

-    Should religious broadcast networks be allowed to own dozens of stations nationwide with no local studio, linked together via satellite?

-    Should radio stations broadcast a certain amount of hours of local news or public affairs?

-    Should stations be obligated to play local music?

Articles:
http://www.dwt.com/practc/broadcast/bulletins/02-08_LocalismReport.htm
http://www.freepress.net/news/30637
FCC Proprosed Rulemaking:
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-218A1.pdf