Piggie

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bicker

Some of that is pretty ridiculous. The changes you are alluding to are mostly a reflection of our society changing what it values, from being more so in synch with what you value, to being less so in synch with what you value. It isn't uncommon that, at times in our lives, as we get older, we find that we've ceased changing with the times, and are therefore left behind. It's actually the general case.

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EscapeVelocity

All those greedy privately owned broadcasters have been leaching off the public airwaves for long enough. They should never have been given use of the publics airwaves for their private greedy concerns.

Only the government should be allowed to use these valuable communal resources, and hold them in the public trust.

Nationalize all industry....stop the greedy use of public communal goods. Abolish private property!

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Don_M

The FCC sold the spectrum as if it were deeded real estate rather than treating it like the natural resource that it is. The feds have done the latter for more than a century with the extractive industry: The Interior Department leases federal land to oil, natural gas and coal exploration concerns and collects rent on those leases, regardless of whether they contain extractable resources or not. If a lease does become productive, the producer pays an annual royalty to Interior over and above the rent, and continues to do so until the well runs dry or the coal is gone. Why not lease the spectrum in the same way? Interior's model could have been fully adaptable here. Instead of measuring volumes of minerals and acres of land, the basis could have been gross revenue per frequency allocation. IMHO, this is where FCC muffed the auctions big time.

Beyond that, however, I don't see anything like what this economist envisions happening any time soon:

• The stated reason for delaying the DTV transition early this year was a concern about leaving some OTA viewers out of the public-safety loop. The risks of doing this, even if temporarily, were deemed sufficiently high enough to warrant the delay. The (relatively) high number of broadcasters in many markets is redundant, which is exactly what's needed in emergency communications, when some broadcasters might be knocked off the air and one's receive antenna might be damaged -- but perhaps not so badly that a signal or two still gets through. (This is also why governments around the world value "ham" operators and do so much to promote amateur radio: They're not all going to be knocked off the air permanently.) The fewer licensed OTA transmitters there are, the less likely emergency messages will get to everyone. This public-safety function is cited in federal law going back to the 75-year-old Communications Act. All of these statues would need to be amended by Congress and signed by the President before the spectrum got reduced in this way.

• If this did come to pass as the study envisions, think what that implies: CEA's "toymakers" get all the benefits while cable and satellite providers get all the mandates for providing universal service and disseminating emergency information? That's one lawsuit blizzard that would be easy to forecast!

Frankly, the thing reads like a kid's Christmas wish list.

bicker

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HTNut

I do think OTA will go away, but now for at least 20 years. As mentioned already, way too many legal issues.

Piggie

I thought I knew it all when I was younger. I was mostly wrong.

I totally disagree that every generation things they are different. That times are not grandpas.

Guess what it's the wisdom of years, not stuck in time that allows older people to see what doesn't change with the times and what does.

It only really becomes apparent as you live longer. Then the next generation can call your values wrong.

If you think mega mergers, selling of public property are cool and advance the society, then I really hope you have a great left of your life.

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EscapeVelocity

Interestingly enough, the result of the US Civil War was the era of the Robber Barons. The Northern Capitalist Industrialists freely exploiting non slave immigrant labor, and robbing public lands blind from the people and ravishing their resources in an environmentally and socially criminal manner....in order to amass wealth and power in the North East...and keep it there.

Former slaves were left to continue picking cotton for the Northern mills under Jim Crow, segregation, seperate but unequal.

And Lincoln was a hero.

Pffftt!

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bicker

And I'm sure some older person thought the same of the changes in society when you were younger, changes that you appreciated because of where you were in your life.

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Piggie

History is written by the victories. To me the history actually more the cause of the civil war has been distorted into a war about freeing slaves, when it was all about what you said economic exploration of many groups of people.

And don't forget our country has had more than one of these. Shay's Rebellion is often called the first Civil War, which again was caused by bankers "robbing" landowners with impossible mortgages to repay. Nothing that has happened recently?

And every generation suddenly becomes old? old hat, to the point of implied stuck in the mud stupidity?

There are a lot of things my parents told me I dismissed as hog wash, that my generation was different. Well hell's bells, we got into 2 more Vietnams, had another massive bank failure (which I don't think has really hit yet), and huge monopolies. And President General Eisenhower was an old fuddy duddy when he warned of too large of an industrial military complex.

In another 15 to 20 years many here will have all the control to prove us wrong, and good f-ing luck.....

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