I suppose it’s a matter of semantics. The FCC grants permission to broadcast on a specific frequency for the sole purpose of making sure stations don’t interfere with each other. Think of it in terms of the FAA regulating the spacing between airliners so they don’t run into each other. The government doesn’t own the airspace or the airplanes, but it does have the responsibility of trying to prevent passengers from being killed. If you don’t maintain airspace separation, you can’t keep your pilot’s license. Similarly, if we don’t keep our signal from jamming someone else’s signal, we can’t keep our broadcast license. Take that similarity a step further – because only so many airplanes will fit in the air at one time, the federal government then assumes power over airline scheduling and routing – power that no one ever gave it – and pretty soon the government is dictating business practices, ticket prices and a host of other aspects of airline operation that have nothing to do with passenger safety. Similarly, FCC power over broadcasting began with assignment of frequencies and quickly ballooned to cover content, ownership and myriad other aspects of operation having nothing to do with signal clarity.
This brings us to **Renob’s ** other point – serving the “public interest.” Because old broadcasting equipment couldn’t maintain the frequency separation that is now possible, the FCC assumed that only a few frequencies were available in any given location. That meant only a few radio (and later TV) stations could operate in any given community. So the FCC successfully circumvented the First Amendment by arguing that the rarity of available frequencies put them in the public domain. That meant that anyone lucky enough to land one of these rare, prized frequencies, had to devote a certain amount of content to the public good.
Technology quickly outstripped this need but, as I said earlier, once the government had grabbed a power, it wasn’t going to relinquish it. Until the mid-1980s (one thing for which I am thankful to the Reagan presidency is what little de-regulation of the broadcast industry it accomplished) the FCC set guidelines on how many hours per week stations had to devote to “public interest.” It also dictated how many minutes of commercials we could air per hour and a host of other content requirements. The Reagan de-regulation eliminated all but the barest of public interest requirements. We are still required to keep every letter, postcard and thank-you note we get from the public; we are supposed to declare how much PI programming we’re going to do, then stick to it; and we have to be sure we don’t grossly offend anyone who might accidentally hear something they think is offensive. Beyond that, there is little content regulation nowadays.
We still don’t have the First Amendment freedom that other media enjoy, but we’re working on it. Once we have that, then you’ll begin to see true fairness in broadcasting.
