Word: fcc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...broadcasting licenses have been accusing the chain of unethical conduct. That is a serious charge against any broadcaster, since the Federal Communications Commission can revoke the licenses of companies it considers to be of questionable character -- even if they are not convicted of violating the law. Last week the FCC may finally have pulled RKO's plug. Edward Kuhlmann, an FCC administrative law judge, denied RKO's application to renew its license for KHJ-TV in Los Angeles, and stripped the company of its licenses for twelve radio stations and one other TV outlet. Declared Kuhlmann: "No case ever before...
...titan, AT&T, was blessed last week with the prospect of a regulatory windfall. The Federal Communications Commission proposed scrapping the system of controlling AT&T's profit margins, which the agency has done for more than two decades as a means of limiting long-distance prices. Instead, the FCC aims to protect consumers by another method: setting price caps, which would freeze long-distance rates at current levels but could adjust them upward to account for inflation and other factors. AT&T rejoiced at the decision, which Wall Street analysts say could allow the company's profits to jump...
...major problem when its station WTVH in Syracuse broadcast some ads in favor of a nuclear power station in 1982. But the Syracuse Peace Council charged that the company had violated the Federal Communications Commission's "fairness doctrine" by failing to broadcast any material opposing the nuclear plant. The FCC, which receives thousands of such complaints every year (and generally does not act on them), somewhat reluctantly decided that Meredith had indeed broken the rules. But Meredith went to court, arguing that the 38-year-old FCC rule violated the First Amendment ban on any law abridging freedom of speech...
...from encouraging the free discussion of public issues, the FCC argued, Government regulation had a "chilling" effect on TV. Said FCC Chairman Dennis R. Patrick: "We seek to extend to the electronic press the same First Amendment guarantees that the print media have enjoyed since our country's inception." Or as Meredith's attorney, Floyd Abrams, put it: "This is the beginning of the end of government control over the content of what appears on television...
...Houses passed legislation earlier this year to "codify" the fairness doctrine, but President Reagan vetoed it as "antagonistic to the freedom of expression." Congressional backers of the doctrine are preparing to try again, and one of them, Democratic Senator Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, denounced last week's FCC action as "wrongheaded, misguided and illogical." They face an uphill battle, though, against both the Administration and the press. As the Washington Post pointedly editorialized, "The FCC has done the right thing, and Congress should take no action to overturn its decision...