There are MANY dinosaurs living amongst us. Lumbering hulks from long-bygone eras.

Kept alive by idiotic, dinosaur D.C. policy. Because the dinosaurs spend a lot of money hiring a lot of lobbyists to ensure their dinosaur policy doesn’t go extinct, and they with it.

We speak today of one subset of dinosaurs: The government-subsidized broadcast networks.

(Ostensibly) private television – FOX, NBC, ABC, and CBS. And (ostensibly) private radio – the very many stations you hear all across the country.

And public television – PBS. And public radio – NPR.

We say “ostensibly” private because these networks are built upon the wireless spectrum to which the government granted them nearly-free exclusive access via broadcast licenses oh-so-many decades ago.

Nearly-free? “(Radio) stations serving large populations, such as six million or more, may face annual fees in the range of ten to twenty thousand dollars….Full-service television stations (also) determine their annual fee using a population-based methodology based on the number of people within the station’s projected service contour.”

By way of comparison, cellular phone companies use the same wireless spectrum. They, too, need exclusive access via government license. Except they pay through the nose for it via government spectrum auctions. The last auction brought in $19.12 billion.

Spectrum is a finite resource. And it exists on a spectrum (SWIDT?) of usefulness. Think of a Monopoly board. Some........

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