Judging by the looks on my students’ faces, last week, in my Media & Entertainment Law class, I gave what may have been the most boring lecture of my career. It was the lecture in which I explain how the FCC allocates frequency spectrum and doles out broadcast licenses.
What’s so strange is that the same lecture was a huge hit when I first taught this class back in 2005.
Of course, after class, I realized what the difference is. As recently as 2005, frequency spectrum and FCC licenses represented – as they had for nearly a century – the keys to the kingdom. If you wanted to get your message out there, you found a radio or television station.
Just six years later, it’s hard to talk about broadcast licenses without feeling like they are a quaint anachronism.
By the way, you may wonder how it is that I could tell my students were bored. Well, I’ve never witnessed a higher level of IM’ing, Facebooking, and Tweeting in class. And no, I don’t have mirrors in the back of class to see what’s on students’ laptops. I can see it clearly reflected in students’ faces. Messages were zipping through the wireless and around the internet at a furious pace.
And, of course, that’s the irony: Web 2.0 was not merely the symptom of the boredom; it was the cause.
Who cares about getting an FCC license, a giant steel tower, and a gargantuan electric bill when you can better reach an audience with your laptop and a wireless connection?
For an ex-radio-disc-jockey, I have to say it’s a little sad for me to face up to the reality. But, then again, it’s nothing I didn’t know. I mean, look at me: I’m off the airwaves and blogging to you. I’d like to say that I’m BLOGGING TO YOU FROM THE TOP OF MCCLELLAN PEAK WITH EIGHTY-SEVEN THOUSAND WATTS OF POWER IN THE MIDDLE OF 45 MINUTES OF CONTINUOUS HIT MUSIC.
But of course, I’m not. And I gotta say, it’s not the same to type that. Even in italics and all caps.
Video didn’t kill the radio star. But Web 2.0 sure did.
Today the FCC is slated to consider a new net neutrality order that will be binding on American telecom companies. It looks like it will be adopted on a 3-2 vote with the three Democrat commissioners supporting it and the two Republican commissioners opposing it.
