wirevicus

Wired Nation is a course about broadcasting and telecommunications regulation in the United States and elsewhere. The class focuses on the subject from both historical and present day policy perspectives.

Contact the instructor, Matthew Lasar, here.

Time/place: Tuesday Thursday 10:00 AM – 11:45 AM Porter Acad 148

Requirements
The requirements for the course are the completion of five in-class examinations and one eight page term paper.

The exams will take place in the second half of class on alternate Thursdays. Each will consist of five questions which will require an answer of no more than two paragraphs, each about four or five sentences in length. Each answer will be worth a maximum of 20 points, adding up to a possible total of 100 points per exam.

These tests will review your understanding of material we have covered since the last test.

The term paper will require you to explore a contemporary media regulation problem and recommend your constitutive choice.

Grading
The exams will be worth 60 percent of your grade; the term paper worth 25 percent of your grade. Class participation the remaining 15 percent.

Syllabus:
The syllabus for this course consists of Paul Starr’s, The Creation of the Media and selected online readings. The readings will be posted to the syllabus here.

Week 1: Thursday, September 24, introduction to the class

Week 2: September 29 and October 1

Current events: How the Federal Communications Commission works.
Readings: The Public and Broadcasting and How to Comment with the FCC

History: Telegraphy, cartels, and the birth of modern news
Starr, Creation, introduction and chapters one through four.

Slides on colonial and early United States

Week 3: October 6 and 8

History: Tortoise and hare: telephone and wireless
Starr, Creation, chapters five and six

Slides on telephone
Slides on wireless

Thursday: Exam one, second half of class, bring a blue book.

Week 4: October 13 and 15

History: The dawn of modern broadcasting and regulation
Starr, Creation, chapter seven.

Current events: The controversy over the Fairness Doctrine.
Congressional Research Service analysis of the Fairness Doctrine
The Supreme Court’s Red Lion decision.
The WLBT case
The furor over the Fairness Doctrine today

Is spectrum still scarce? Read here and here.

Slides on Fairness Doctrine

Week 5: October 20 and 22

History: Good culture, bad culture, and the movies
Starr, Creation, chapters eight and nine

Thursday: Exam two, bring a blue book.

Week 6: October 27 and 29

History: Radio, just add commercials
Starr, Creation, chapters ten and eleven

Current events:
Pacifica vs. FCC (1978)

Slides on Pacifica decision;
slides on culture

Since Pacifica.

Ex-FCC Chairs urge Supreme Court to Ex-chairs: FCC must stop “Victorian” indecency crusade”>dump indecency rules. Their commentary here.

Week 7: November 3 and 5

History: TV. “Vast wasteland”?
Starr, Creation, chapter eleven

Thursday: Exam three, (bring le bleu book).

Week 8: November 10 and 13

FCC Chair Newton Minnow’s Vast Wasteland speech
Carnegie report on Educational Television
National Public Radio Purposes report

Week 9: November 17 and 19

History: The Internet

Thursday, exam four

Take home exam: Write a three to four page double spaced essay answering this question: Citing Starr’s ‘Constitution of the Air’ chapters, Minnow, Carnegie, and National Public Radio Purposes, what was public broadcasting responding to and hoping for? Do you think we need public broadcasting now? If not, why not? If so, why, and how should it be constructed today?

Paper due first ten minutes of class, November 19

Week 9: November 24 and 26; Class on Tuesday; happy holidays on Thursday

Week 11: December 1 and 3
Current events: The challenge of regulating cyberspace

The FCC’s Order sanctioning Comcast
Slides on Comcast controversy

EXTENSION: Term paper and take home final due at my office (Stevenson 280), Wednesday, December 9 by 5 pm. I will be in my office from 9 am through 5 pm with a break from noon to 1 pm for lunch. You can also leave it under the door or in my mailbox in Stevenson 203.

Take home final: 5 pages, double spaced. Review the FCC’s Order against Comcast. On what basis did the agency take the actions against Comcast that it did? Reading the opinions of the five Commissioners, explain the pros and cons of the FCC’s decision. Did the FCC go too far? Not far enough? Explain what the “constitutive choice” is here, and its implications for the future of the Internet.