What John Kerry should have said is, "If you don't pay attention in school, you'll end up working for the FCC. 16 years in broadcasting and I doubted their very existance, until now.
I live in a part of the country where I cannot receive a local TV signal with ABC programming. This is not my fault. I should also mention that I have a 60 foot TV antenna at my house and I still cannot recieve a TV signal with ABC programming. I also have a Dish Network satellite dish and I pay a couple bucks a month to receive WABC out of New York. I see nothing wrong with this. Now, the local stations have succeeded in convincing the FCC that I should not be able to receive out-of-town network affiliated TV stations. Fine, but there's no ABC station around here!
Let's review some basics. The Federal Communications Act of 1934 said that the airwaves beling to the public. The broadcast stations are public trustees licensed by the FCC. If the airwaves belong to the public (you and me) why should we have to pay to receive TV reception? The answer, because we don't want to watch local infomercials, we'd rather watch movies, news, sporting events, etc. That's why we pay Dish Network and the cable systems...to give us what we can't get locally. I can't get ABC locally.
The problem is that these decisions are being made by people who live in urban areas where all of the major network tv programs are readily available on their local stations. Well, this kind of thinking doesn't play in Terre Haute, Indiana. My advice to the FCC, get a clue, and maybe a map.
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