Perhaps Lloyd said this, and perhaps not.

IBD Editorials are known for being pretty ignorant and full of propaganda. A few weeks ago, trying to demonize health care reform, they said that the British National Health Service would kill Stephen Hawking if they had the chance since they would judge his life worthless.

Stephen Hawking responded that "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he said. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

So maybe these are Lloyd's views and maybe they are IBD's nonsense.

My own views? I was told all my life these are the public airwaves and are licensed to the stations. I think licenses should be time limited. ABC, NBC, FOX or whomever get that license for say 6 years, with maybe one renewal, and then get kicked out. They can apply for another license when someone else's license expires.

Making the licenses time limited with one or no renewal would dramatically reduce the value of that license, which is used these days to prop up monopolies and stifle competition. It's basically a taxpayer gift to ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX/...

We are to stupid to think for ourselves so the government has to balance it out for us.

HAHAHAHHAH.

So Amy is who going to be your other side/socialist blogger when they demand fairness?

I actually like this! Yes we need to balance the right with the left. So thus the Playboy Channel can share time with the 700 Club. The Hallmark Channel can be balanced by ScyFy Channel. The Super Bowl can have some nice Romantic Comedy before and after the game.

Never mind giving the people what they want! We have to give a leg up to the other side.

This is, and has always been, about getting Limbaugh off the air. He influences too many people for the socialists to be comfortable.

Of course, a good chunk of this asshole's agenda would go away in brian-land. There'd be no NPR.

When government has the ability to decide that radio's not diverse enough, you end up with what the AM dial became during the LAST "fairness doctrine" era - a vast wasteland of uselessness.

There's a reason Air America failed - NOBODY WANTS TO LISTEN TO WHINY BITCHES COMPLAIN THAT THEY DON'T HAVE THEIR SOCIALIST PARADISE.

Making the licenses time limited with one or no renewal would dramatically reduce the value of that license, which is used these days to prop up monopolies and stifle competition. It's basically a taxpayer gift to ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX/...

Spoken like someone who has no clue what it costs to put together a broadcast business.

The reason those licenses are so valuable is that you need that license before you can even begin to put up a tower and start broadcasting. Which can take millions of dollars and several years.

And that's before you ever have a chance to turn a profit.

Jerry, don't just contend IBD is irresponsible, say maybe Lloyd said this and maybe he didn't, and toss in another story. Here's a bit more on this:

http://www.newsmax.com/ruddy/obama_talk_radio/2009/08/30/253646.html

Lloyd made a stunning statement at a hearing by praising Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez, calling his regime "an incredible revolution, a democratic revolution" and noting that after a rebellion against his rule, Chavez "began to take very seriously the media in the country."

Whatever your background or leaning, the notion that the government should force the market to play and listen to shows of any particular ilk is extremely dangerous and disturbing -- and anti-democractic.

I think licenses should be time limited. ABC, NBC, FOX or whomever get that license for say 6 years, with maybe one renewal, and then get kicked out. They can apply for another license when someone else's license expires.

Making the licenses time limited with one or no renewal would dramatically reduce the value of that license, which is used these days to prop up monopolies and stifle competition.

According to the FCC web page licenses are renewed every 5 years. Most markets have more licenses available than TV stations, so there's plenty of room for additional competition.

You would seriously force every local TV station to go bankrupt every 5-10 years? Surely you realize that's a terrible idea?

Note that that would not affect the big four networks much: if the local CBS affiliate goes under, an existing independent station becomes a new CBS affiliate in order to gain access to CBS's prime time programming. The people who would be hurt would be the local employees of the TV station: the local news staff, the engineers and technical people, the managers and administrators, the advertising staff, and so on. Why would you have those people lose their jobs?

The FCC has always been a joke. For years I listened to Howard Stern talk about being harassed by the FCC and people didn't listen or believe him. He would get fines for saying breast or some other ridiculous thing and then play a tape of Phil Donahue or Oprah talking in more graphic terms with not even a raised eye. Now, because of the FCC and it's personalized agenda, I have to pay to listen to Howard. I don't care for Rush Limbaugh but I certainly would never try to ruin his show because I don't like the free speech coming out of his mouth.
The FCC is going to kill radio. It will become so watered down and boring that the stations will not be able to get advertising. When Serius and XM are the only things with program choices, hopefully it will be the FCC that is out of a job.

Well, thankfully Stevens is out of Congress, because he wanted to extend the FCC's authority over content to satellite radio and pay TV.

The problem is there are still plenty of motherfuckers in DC that agree with him and want to do it.

And you're right about the FCC having a hard-on for Stern. He just picked on the wrong guy because he (Stern) hated Bush. It was the other Michael (not Powell) that was constantly after Stern. The Democratic Clinton appointee whose name escapes me.

Honestly, Brian, I don't remember the name either. I'd have to look it up. I just remember him always talking about it and then making very good points on his show regarding the words he used and the same words being used by Donahue or Oprah. Some of the Oprah stuff was pretty graphic at one point and nothing was ever said about it.
When it reaches the point where people are powerful enough to interfere or attempt to interfere with a person's right to free speech and livelihood it is more than a Democrat/Republican issue. It is about one person or agency having too much power and using that power in a way that goes against what a democracy is all about. Unfortunately, politics being what it is, I don't see it changing. It would only be another control for power by both parties where the only losers are the citizens of this country.

Amy,

I don't know if he said it or not. All I was saying is that IBD editorials don't have a sterling reputation, and I backed that up with one of their wacky editorials that occurred within the past two weeks.

That you have now second sourced this seems appropriate. I am certain you don't believe that all papers are unbiased tellers of the truth.

As Lloyd writes, the "part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads (Rush Limbaugh fans) upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay." Or worse.

The commercial radio station owners ARE playing by the rules. They're putting programming on the airwaves that people want to listen to. And they're selling advertising during that programming.

Lloyd praises Hugo Chavez's "incredible revolution" in Venezuela and the way "Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country" by imposing restraints on cable TV and revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio stations that insufficiently toed the Chavez party line.

This is disturbing. The head of the government agency charged with guarding free speech in this country is praising a dictator for limiting free speech.

Kristen and Brian, the FCC already has content control over satrad. That happened because Mel Karzian was willing to sell his soul to the devil in order to get approval for the XM/Sirius merger; in the consent decree, SXM agreed to turn over a percentage of its bandwidth for "minority access". Two of my favorite channels got the boot because of that.

And Brian is right; there's plenty of support in Congress towards extending the FCC's authority to all forms of electronic communication. That bit about "public airwaves" was always a convenient legal fiction to sidestep the First Amendment, but now Washington has realized that so many people take government regulation of communication for granted, that they figure that they can bare-face their way into cable and Internet regulation. I contend that both are blatantly, prima facie unconstitutional, and I will never vote for a pol who supports either, regardless of that person's positions on any other issue.

I think it is time for some high ranking military officers who swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution to fight enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC to intervene in this debacle and remove this COMMIE Administration lock stock and barrell. McCarthyism isnt such a bad idea at the moment. Obama and company need to be arrested for treason against the U.S. Constitution.

There's a reason Air America failed -

Air who?