{"id":117,"date":"2015-06-01T23:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T23:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?page_id=117"},"modified":"2026-03-17T17:46:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T17:46:31","slug":"broadcast-reg-content","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/broadcasting\/broadcast-reg-content\/","title":{"rendered":"8.2 Broadcast Regulation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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THE CURRENT CRISIS (2025- )<\/h3>\n

Direct Threats<\/a> — <\/strong>March 14-15, 2026\u00a0 \u2014<\/strong> President Trump and FCC chair Brendan Carr\u00a0threatened to revoke broadcast licenses<\/a> over what they claim to be\u00a0 incorrect news items.\u00a0 This followed a Trump social media post March 14<\/a>\u00a0 and March 15\u00a0<\/a> claiming that damage reports from a minor incident were deliberately distorted. \u201cTheir terrible reporting is the exact opposite of the actual facts!\u201d Trump wrote. \u201cThey are truly sick and demented people that have no idea the damage they cause the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

The disparagement and threats ar\u00a0 facially unconstitutional.\u00a0 Historically, the only instance in which a broadcast TV license was revoked by the FCC over content issues was in the WLBT case<\/a> of 1954 – 1969 \u00a0 (More below).\u00a0 \u00a0<\/a>\u00a0 More recently, in NRA v Vullo<\/a> (2024), a unanimous Supreme Court decision said:<\/p>\n

A government entity\u2019s threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion\u201d against a third party\u00a0 to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech violates the First Amendment… Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Early Regulations<\/h3>\n

Radio telegraphy was invented in the 1890s by Guglielmo Marconi<\/a> and put into widespread use about twenty five years before radio\u00a0 “telephony” (voice and music) became available commercially. The inventor formed the British company Marconi as well as American Marconi (which later became RCA, the Radio Corporation of America, which in turn formed\u00a0 NBC radio network).<\/p>\n

The first use of radio telegraphy was to improve the safety of ships at sea, and by 1900, marine insurance companies like Lloyds of London insisted that every ship have a radio for emergency messages.\u00a0 But there were no rules as to training, monitoring or priority of emergency messages, and this loose set of regulations\u00a0 was a factor in the Titanic disaster of April, 1912.<\/p>\n

Before the Titanic struck the iceberg, its radio operators were in touch with a nearby ship, the Californian, which was warning\u00a0 about the ice field that the Titanic was entering. The Titanic radio operators passed along four messages to the captain, but later told the Californian to get off the air.<\/p>\n

Getting off the air, at the time, meant leaving the one existing frequency.\u00a0 Unlike today, \u00a0radio technology had not been fully developed, and only one signal could be heard on the airwaves at a time. One could not “tune” a radio.<\/p>\n

The Titanic’s radio\u00a0 operators were trying to send private\u00a0 telegrams to New York, and when they told the Californian operator to get off the air, he simply turned off the ship’s radio. Then the Titanic steamed off into the night, and the Californian was unaware of the disaster that took place only a few hours later.<\/p>\n

The New York Times said on May 2, 1912: \u201cSixteen hundred lives were lost that might have been saved if the wireless communication had been what it should have been.” (See Radio and the Titanic<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The Radio Act of 1912<\/a> was passed by Congress <\/strong>only a few months after the Titanic disaster. It\u00a0 required all ships to have radio telegraph operators on duty 24 hours a day and it licensed all radio stations both onshore and onboard ships.\u00a0 The Radio Act of 1912 also stopped many of the unsafe and anti-competitive business practices of the Marconi company, including refusal to deal with non-Marconi radio operators and controlling Marconi radio employees.<\/p>\n

This refusal to deal with competing technologies had also been a factor in establishing the International Radiotelegraph Union in 1906. That organization was a predecessor to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union based in Geneva, Switzerland.<\/p>\n

During World War I, all US radio communications devices were controlled by the government. After the war, radio became a popular hobby and over 700 radio stations were in existence by 1927. Some were small, some were affiliated with churches and universities, and a few started growing into large institutions.<\/p>\n

Centralizing radio control<\/h3>\n

The Radio Act of 1927<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong> allowed a licensing and frequency allocation system for commercial stations after courts found that the US Dept. of Commerce did not have that authority.\u00a0 The new Federal Radio Commission moved quickly to consolidate radio licenses for major corporations, especially favoring the new NBC network.<\/p>\n

On May 25, 1928, the FRC issued\u00a0General Order 32<\/a>,<\/strong> which notified 164 stations\u00a0 that “From an examination of your application for future license, [the FRC] does not find that public interest, convenience, or necessity would be served by granting it.”<\/p>\n

Many low-powered independent and educational stations were eliminated, and while some stations such as WEVD of New York<\/a> managed to survive the financial and political pressures of the early radio era, most did not survive.<\/p>\n

What remained was an AM broadcast band of 96 frequencies with 25 super stations (also called “clear channel” stations). Of those, 23 of these were NBC owned or affiliated.<\/p>\n

Overall, the controversial restructuring of America’s radio networks by and for\u00a0 commercial interests contrasted with government control in Europe. The British BBC, for example, was far more educational and culturally oriented than the US NBC. However, central control by government also had many negative consequences, for example, easing the path to complete Nazi totalitarianism in 1930s Germany.<\/p>\n

The FRC\u00a0 issued a Public Programming Policy Statement in 1929 which said:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe tastes, needs and desires of all substantial groups among the public should be met, in fair proportion, by a well-rounded program schedule, in which entertainment, religion, education and instruction, important public events, discussions of public questions, weather, market reports, news and matters of interest to all members of the family find a place. (Great Lakes Broadcasting, 3 FRC Annual Reports 32, 1929)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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First FRC content regulation cases\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Along with organizing the structure of radio, the Federal Radio Commission began content regulation in the 1920s and 30s. Some radio stations like WEVD (Eugene V Debs), a socialist radio station established in 1927 in New Jersey, and\u00a0 WCFL (Chicago Federation of Labor), a labor-oriented radio station established in 1926 in Chicago managed to survive the pressure, but had to change to a more commercial orientation.<\/p>\n

Radio station owners balked.\u00a0 After all, if J. M. Near’s\u00a0 Saturday\u00a0 Press newspaper could be exempted from a Minnesota state “prior restraint”\u00a0 in the 1931 case Near v Minnesota<\/a>, could the government directly censor radio? In two major cases, the courts said yes, and prior restraint of radio through licensing by the FRC and the new FCC.<\/p>\n

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John Brinkley, fake doctor and radio station owner shut down by the Federal Radio Commission in 1930.<\/p><\/div><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

KFKB v FRC, 1930<\/strong>\u00a0— “Doctor” John Brinkley ,<\/a>a Kansas man passing himself off as a doctor, bought a radio station to broadcast his quack medical philosophy of implanting “goat glands” to rejuvenate men. Brinkley had no medical training but, for a while, he did have a license to practice medicine in Kansas.\u00a0 On radio station KFKB,\u00a0 Brinkley spoke for hours each day about his goat gland treatments. “He variously cajoled, shamed and appealed to men’s (and women’s) egos, and to their desire to be more sexually active. In between Brinkley’s own advertisements, his new station featured a variety of entertainment including military bands, French lessons, astrological forecasts, storytelling and exotica such as native Hawaiian<\/a>\u00a0songs, and American\u00a0roots music<\/a> including old-time string band, gospel and early country.”<\/p>\n

When his medical license was rescinded in 1930, the Federal Radio Commission took away his radio station’s broadcast license as well.\u00a0 Brinkley appealed on the grounds that this was\u00a0 censorship, but a federal appeals court backed the FRC:\u00a0 \u00a0“There has been no attempt on the part of the (Federal Radio) Commission to subject any part of appellant’s broadcasting matter to scrutiny prior to its release. In considering the question whether the public interest, convenience, or necessity will be served by a renewal of appellant’s license, the commission has merely exercised its undoubted right to take note of appellant’s past conduct, which is not censorship.”\u00a0 In response, Brinkley built a “border blaster” radio station in Mexico, XER. He continued to broadcast his goat gland philosophy until legal problems and a US – Mexican radio agreement stopped him in 1941.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Robert P. Shuler, pastor of Trinity Methodist Church<\/p><\/div><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Trinity Methodist Church KGEF v. FRC,<\/a> 1933<\/strong> \u2014 \u00a0Robert Shuler<\/a> was a controversial and outspoken evangelist in Los Angeles in the 1920s whose church acquired folk hero status for his sermons and broadcasts that attacked evil and its agents on earth, among whom he numbered gamblers, bootleggers, grafters, and corrupt police and politicians; the president of UCLA for allowing evolution to be taught; the Los Angeles public library for allowing certain evil books; the YWCA for allowing dances; and fellow evangelists such as \u00a0Billy Sunday<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Aimee Semple McPherson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In November 1931, the\u00a0Federal Radio Commission<\/a> revoked Shuler’s broadcast license, and KGEF went off the air. \u00a0Shuler appealed the revocation, but a federal appeals court affirmed the decision, denouncing Shuler’s broadcasts with the idea that if this use of the airwaves were permitted, “radio will become a scourge and the nation a theater for the display of individual passions and the collision of personal interests.” \u00a0While the ACLU supported Shuler’s right to free speech and challenged the courts’ decision, the Los Angeles Times published an editorial that delighted in the termination of his radio broadcasting license.<\/p>\n

Unlike “doctor”\u00a0 Brinkley, Schuler was a genuine minister with training at Emory & Henry university in Virginia, and was nothing more than a public irritant, rather like J.M. Near with his newspaper.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the FRC and the courts took a very different approach to regulating the new medium of radio.<\/p>\n

The new Federal Communications Commission<\/h3>\n

Questions about the FRC’s authority to regulate the entire radio spectrum led to the Federal Communications Act in 1934. This gave the new FCC\u00a0 \u00a0expanded\u00a0 authority over a variety of areas, including: Mass Media licensing, Wireless (ham, aeronautic, marine), Common Carrier (telephone, telegraph) and field operations. The FCC also said that because the broadcasting spectrum belonged to the public, stations must operate in the \u201cpublic interest, convenience and necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n

One decision for the public interest was to create the 1949 Fairness Doctrine, which was repealed in 1987.\u00a0 This\u00a0 described on a separate page on this site.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Content Regulation and civil rights<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

The WLBT Civil Rights media case\u00a0 1964-1969\u00a0\u00a0