Hi Greg,
>It started in the 1920s, but the passage of laws that regulated what
>the broadcasters could do happened in 1934, with the passing of the
>first Telecom Act and the establishment of the FCC.
I believe that occurred with the passage of the
Radio Act of 1927 - which was principally targeted
at radiobroadcasting regulation and resulted
in the creation of the Federal Radio Commission
from which the FCC morphed. Much of this was
the initiative of Herbert Hoover as Secretary of
Commerce - which had had jurisdiction over US
radio regulation since 1912, but found it's
jurisdiction challenged by broadcasting interests.
There were all kinds of interesting things occurring
at that time. A treaty conference met in 1927 to
establish the CCIR and the first set of international
radio standards. The following year, the League of
Nations held an international conference for
"Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace" and actually
adopted a treaty signed by a few countries (not the US).
It instituted the first provisions concerning broadcast
media content control - which unfortunately shoved
much of the broadcasting infrastructure in subsequent
years under Ministries of Information or the PTT,
worldwide. As one of the more interesting historical
footnotes, the old Soviet Bloc in the late 70s
resurrected the treaty and sought to push it via
UNESCO to establish content controls on DBS and
emerging data communication services.
The attitudes and tendencies remain the same; only
the technologies change.
-tony
