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Federal Communications Commission: Communications Act
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The Federal Communications Commission is an independent regulatory government agency. It derives its powers to regulate various segments of the communications industries through the Communications Act of 1934. Congress appropriates money to fund the agency and its activities, though recently the FCC raised revenues through an auction process for non-broadcast frequency spectrum. The Act enumerates the powers and responsibilities of the agency and its commissioners. Government radio stations are exempt from FCC jurisdiction. The Communications Act is divided into titles and sections which describe various powers and concerns of the commission.
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The Federal Communications Commission’s highly anticipated 700-MHz spectrum auction kicked off last week, and after almost three days of bidding, the tally stands at just over $4.4 billion. The hottest bidding action continues to be around the highly prized “C” block spectrum, which could be used to build a new national wireless broadband network.
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Throughout its history, a primary goal of the Federal Communications Commission has been to regulate the relationship between affiliated stations and broadcast networks, because the Communications Act does not grant specific powers to regulate networks. When the Commission issued Chain Broadcasting Regulations the networks challenged the commission's authority to promulgate such rules, and sued in National Broadcasting Co., Inc. et al. v. United States. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the 1934 Act and the FCC's rules related to business alliances, noting the broad and elastic powers legislated by Congress. The FCC has used The Network Case as a precedent to ratify its broad discretionary powers in numerous other rulings.
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Soon after the Project Roadblock cases were filed, both the Commission and the FCC took further action to stem fraud involving paging licenses. In February 1996, the FCC froze the issuance of paging licenses to new applicants pursuant to the initial NPRM in WT Docket No. 96-18. In March and April 1996, the Commission mailed brochures about telemarketing fraud involving FCC licenses to over 17,000 consumers who had applied for or received paging or Specialized Mobile Radio ("SMR") licenses. The brochures warned not only about traditional scams, but ... about "reloader" firms that fraudulently induce existing licenseholders to pay large up-front fees to broker their licenses. The FCC also began sending the brochures to licensees upon the grant of each paging and SMR license.
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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.
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In 1934 Congress passed the Communications Act, which abolished the Federal Radio Commission and transferred jurisdiction over radio licensing to a new Federal Communications Commission. Title III of the Communications Act contained provisions very similar to the Radio Act of 1927, and the new FCC largely took over the operations and precedents of the FRC.
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Communications Act