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The Broadcasting industries of television and radio went through massive deregulation in
the 1980s and 1990s. Prior to the eighties radio announcers had to pass
a Federal Communications Commission exam to be granted a radio license. They were
expected to know the technical aspects of radio. Then in the eighties,
licensing for announcers was simply a formality in which you requested a license and as long as
you were a U.S. citizen and at least 14 years of age, you would get your license in the mail soon
afterward.
Radio operators, however, as well as television operators and broadcast engineers, must undergo an extensive licensing process with the FCC in order to operate on a frequency.
They must prove to the Commission that they will serve a public need.
Once the station is licensed by the FCC to serve a specific city (the "city of license")
and the station is on the air, the station must announce its call letters and city of license
at the top of every hour. This is known as a "Legal ID."
The term "broadcasting" is usually thought by many people to be the more popular media such as
television and radio, but broadcasting means delivering messages over a broad terrain.
This includes other forms of media such as Amateur Radio (27 bands, 6 classes), which also
requires licensing through the FCC.
Commercial Broadcasting, since its inception, has always been regulated on a federal level.
It was originally regulated by the U.S. Commerce Department as radio became the first broadcast
medium to gain a mass audience in the 1920s, pre-dating the rise of television by a few decades.
In 1934 the Roosevelt Administration established
a government overhaul (The New Deal) that created the FCC and many new rules for broadcasters.
For several decades the FCC placed ownership limits on media, as an effort to keep programming local
and competitive. Then the Telecom Act of 1996 created a wave of further deregulation that allowed big
companies to gain significant market share in any given market, as many smaller companies have been
bought out or forced out of the market.
