From AM radio to color television, broadcasting raised enormous practical and policy problems in the United States, especially in relation to the federal government's role in licensing and regulation. How did technological change, corporate interest, and political pressures bring about the world that station owners work within today (and that tuned-in consumers make profitable)? In Radio and Television Regulation, Hugh R. Slotten examines the choices that confronted federal agencies—first the Department of Commerce, then the Federal Radio Commission in 1927, and seven years later the Federal Communications Commission—and shows the impact of their decisions on developing technologies. Slotten analyzes the policy debates that emerged when the public implications of AM and FM radio and black-and-white and color television first became apparent. His discussion of the early years of radio examines powerful personalities—including navy secretary Josephus Daniels and commerce secretary Herbert Hoover—who maneuvered for government control of "the wireless." He then considers fierce competition among companies such as Westinghouse, GE, and RCA, which quickly grasped the commercial promise of radio and later of television and struggled for technological edge and market advantage. Analyzing the complex interplay of the factors forming public policy for radio and television broadcasting, and taking into account the ideological traditions that framed these controversies, Slotten sheds light on the rise of the regulatory state. In an epilogue he discusses his findings in terms of contemporary debates over high-resolution TV.

The broadcasting industry’s trade association, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), sought to sanitize television content via its self-regulatory document, the Television Code. The Code covered everything from the stories, images, and sounds of TV programs (no profanity, illicit sex and drinking, negative portrayals of family life and law enforcement officials, or irreverence for God and religion) to the allowable number of commercial minutes per hour of programming. It mandated that broadcasters make time for religious programming and discouraged them from charging for it. And it called for tasteful and accurate coverage of news, public events, and controversial issues. Using archival documents from the Federal Communications Commission, NBC, the NAB, and a television reformer, Senator William Benton, this book explores the run-up to the adoption of the 1952 Television Code from the perspectives of the government, TV viewers, local broadcasters, national networks, and the industry’s trade association. Deborah L. Jaramillo analyzes the competing motives and agendas of each of these groups as she builds a convincing case that the NAB actually developed the Television Code to protect commercial television from reformers who wanted more educational programming, as well as from advocates of subscription television, an alternative distribution model to the commercial system. By agreeing to self-censor content that viewers, local stations, and politicians found objectionable, Jaramillo concludes, the NAB helped to ensure that commercial broadcast television would remain the dominant model for decades to come.

A state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the effects of digital technology on democracy.

Addresses a critical analysis of major media policies in the European Union and Council of Europe at the period of profound changes affecting both media environments and use, as well as the logic of media policy-making and reconfiguration of traditional regulatory models. The analytical problem-related approach seems to better reflect a media policy process as an interrelated part of European integration, formation of European citizenship, and exercise of communication rights within the European communicative space. The question of normative expectations is to be compared in this case with media policy rationales, mechanisms of implementation (transposing rules from EU to national levels), and outcomes.

"An exemplary study of how media regulation works (and, by implication, how it could work better) set within a wider discussion of democratic theory and political values. It will be of interest not only to students and scholars but to people around the world grappling with the same problem: the need to regulate markets, and the difficulty of doing this well." - James Curran, Goldsmiths, University of London In Media Regulation, two leading scholars of the media examine the challenges of regulation in the global mediated sphere. This book explores the way that regulation affects the relations between government, the media and communications market, civil society, citizens and consumers. Drawing on theories of governance and the public sphere, the book critically analyzes issues at the heart of today′s media, from the saturation of advertising to burdens on individuals to control their own media literacy. Peter Lunt and Sonia Livingstone incisively lay bare shifts in governance and the new role of the public sphere which implicate self-regulation, the public interest, the role of civil society and the changing risks and opportunities for citizens and consumers. It is essential reading to understand the forces that are reshaping the media landscape.

In this interdisciplinary study of the laws and policies associated with commercial radio and television, Thomas Streeter reverses the usual take on broadcasting and markets by showing that government regulation creates rather than intervenes in the market. Analyzing the processes by which commercial media are organized, Streeter asks how it is possible to take the practice of broadcasting—the reproduction of disembodied sounds and pictures for dissemination to vast unseen audiences—and constitute it as something that can be bought, owned, and sold. With an impressive command of broadcast history, as well as critical and cultural studies of the media, Streeter shows that liberal marketplace principles—ideas of individuality, property, public interest, and markets—have come into contradiction with themselves. Commercial broadcasting is dependent on government privileges, and Streeter provides a searching critique of the political choices of corporate liberalism that shape our landscape of cultural property and electronic intangibles.

Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this analysis of media law in Malaysia surveys the massively altered and enlarged legal landscape traditionally encompassed in laws pertaining to freedom of expression and regulation of communications. Everywhere, a shift from mass media to mass self-communication has put enormous pressure on traditional law models. An introduction describing the main actors and salient aspects of media markets is followed by in-depth analyses of print media, radio and television broadcasting, the Internet, commercial communications, political advertising, concentration in media markets, and media regulation. Among the topics that arise for discussion are privacy, cultural policy, protection of minors, competition policy, access to digital gateways, protection of journalists’ sources, standardization and interoperability, and liability of intermediaries. Relevant case law is considered throughout, as are various ethical codes. A clear, comprehensive overview of media legislation, case law, and doctrine, presented from the practitioner’s point of view, this book is a valuable time-saving resource for all concerned with media and communication freedom. Lawyers representing parties with interests in Malaysia will welcome this very useful guide, and academics and researchers will appreciate its value in the study of comparative media law.

This book provides an in-depth introduction to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Radio Regulations (RR) and the policies that govern them. Established in 1906, these regulations define the allocation of different frequency bands to different radio services, the mandatory technical parameters to be observed by radio stations, especially transmitters, and the procedures for spectrum use coordination at the international level. The book analyzes the interactions between different national policies and the ITU RR, noting how these interactions influence spectrum policy on the national level, setting up a comparative framework within which to view these regulations and their effects. Beginning with an overview of the history of the origins ITU RR, the book takes a deep dive into the components of spectrum management including radio communication service allocation, wireless technology selection, radio usage rights, and spectrum rights assignment, placing each analysis within the context of the push and pull between national and international regulations. The book concludes with chapters discussing issues affecting the future of spectrum policy, including spectrum policy reform in developing countries, the WRC-19, and IMT-2020. Shedding light on the longest-running treaty documents in the history of modern telecommunications and arguing for reforms that allow it to address the needs of all nations, this book is useful to scholars and students of telecom policy, digital policy, ICT, governance, and development as well as telecom industry practitioners and regulators.