CW wrote:

"Kevin Alfred Strom" wrote in message
...

[...]

Even if the beam is to Canada, and the ads are intended to appeal to
Canadians at least in part, then no law is being broken.

Now I don't want to listen to lunatic religious rants (except for a
laugh, maybe during a party after everyone's tired of dancing) any
more than you do -- but still it must be admitted that the law
itself is absurd.


No, it isn't.


There's no rational reason why domestic shortwave broadcasting
shouldn't be allowed.


Yes, there is.





Please elucidate. It doesn't seem to have harmed Canada in any way.



The real reason for the original law (they gave a few spurious
reasons, of course) was a desire on the part of large media
corporations to protect their big investments in mediumwave networks
from competition from lower-expense shortwave upstarts, who could
easily have covered the nation with a couple of 50,000-Watt
transmitters. Can't have that!


You know that is BS. That law is older than both of us. It was put in place
long before any "large media".



Sure, the law was put over before even I was born (though they did
still make Packards in 1956). But the big networks were well in
place by the 1930s.



The sole purpose was to PREVENT large media
from controlling the airwaves. It was thought that it would be far more
beneficial to have small, reasonably local stations that would reflect the
view of local communities and provide a voice for differing points of view.



I doubt your assertion. That's the argument that was made, of
course, but like practically everything else that comes from the
mouth of a bought politician, it was just a screen for the real reason.

The presence of regional stations on shortwave programmed for a
domestic audience would have had essentially zero impact on people
wanting to hear local programs about the doings in Punkin Holler or
Peoria. And the local advertisers would have known that and kept
their dollars flowing to the small local stations.

But domestic shortwave would definitely have reduced the revenues of
the big networks. It would have let low-expense competition cut in
on the national accounts. _That_ was intolerable. Hence the law.

The goal of the law wasn't to freeze out the mom-and-pop AM
stations. That would have been too blatant -- and really bad PR,
too. Mom and Pop posed little threat to the big chains -- in fact,
in time they would almost be forced to join them in one way or another.

The law's real goal was to squelch the possibility of new
entrepreneurs with big ideas popping up and challenging the big
networks, which looked awful easy to do as the incredible
propagation of shortwave began to be understood and exploited.

The money-men got their way. The law was enacted. So anyone wanting
to start a national chain had to go the very expensive and difficult
route of buying or signing up hundreds of stations -- a very high
bar to competition. The big guys like it behind that kind of bar.
They _hate_ leveling the playing field. That's why they like IBOC.

It's a parallel situation to big corporations, their "foundations,"
and the tax system.

The super-rich love the "progressive" tax system that is sold to the
boobs as "soaking the rich."

Why? Because 1) their bought "liberal" and kosher "conservative"
politicians make them so many exemptions and writeoffs that it takes
volumes the size of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ merely to record
them (probably no one person has even read them all); 2) a tax
system that ratchets up the rates the higher your income (a
so-called "progressive" system) makes it harder -- and this is the
key -- for new people (who can't yet play the fancy accounting and
writeoff games) to rise into the ranks of the super-wealthy and
powerful; and 3) a complex tax system that requires the serfs to
report all their economic activity to Big Brother makes people
easier to control -- and easier to indict and jail if they miss some
jot or tittle of the law, as practically everyone has.

What they _don't want_ is too many people (there will always be some
who succeed nevertheless, of course) who own a few million and a
factory or business or two to be able to rise the next step up the
ladder to the level of the super-rich and powerful. That might be
bad for "stability."

And they certainly don't want the old American upper middle class,
which once had a degree of real financial independence and the
ability to create and fund new political movements, to regain that
independence. (Now this class has been reduced mainly to being
glorified employees of the corporations.)




It is the same reason that you need federal approval to buy a media outlet
such as radio stations, TV stations and newspapers. It was thought, and they
were correct, that diversity of views was a good thing and having a few
giant companies controlling the media would be counterproductive. You are
right in that the FCC seems to be more and more attracted to the money but
that is a relatively recent thing, counter to the old rules under
discussion.

[...]



And exactly how would keeping religious zealots and Timtron and me
off U.S. shortwave stations help "diversity of views" on the airwaves?



With every good wish,



Kevin.
--

Kevin Alfred Strom.

News: http://www.nationalvanguard.org/
The Works of R. P. Oliver: http://www.revilo-oliver.com
Personal site: http://www.kevin-strom.com