“Deleting” Rules That Are Outdated But On The Books at the FCC

You wouldn't think a government agency like the FCC would be a source of interesting news, but every once in a while something pops up that just begs to be shared.

What's going on?

As part of an ongoing effort to get rid of regulations that are unnecessary, late last month, the FCC announced that they had repealed 11 rules involving "obsolete technology, outdated marketplace conditions, expired deadlines, or repealed legal obligations".

Sounds boring, right?  It gets better.

When they say obsolete technology, they aren't kidding.  The repealed rules covered things like telegraphs, rabbit-ear TV antennas, and phone booths.  When's the last time you saw any of those in service?

If you want more specifics, the stuff about telegraphs was removing language from regulations that were repealed 14 years ago, but was still showing up.  Which is still pretty funny, when you think about it.  There were laws regarding telegraphs that were in effect until 2011.

The part on rabbit-ear antennas was focused on regulations for closed captioning for analog TV broadcasts.  Full power TV stations in the US made the transition from analog to digital broadcast signals back in 2009.  Low-power stations followed in 2015.  Maybe you remember having to get a voucher for a converter box so you didn't have to buy a new antenna and / or TV.

The phone booth regulation just sounds crazy.  A footnote from the official notice mentions that it's a 1963 regulation where if a phone company wanted to shut down a phone booth and they had another booth nearby, they had to submit the request in quintuplicate (five copies, if you needed the translation), along with other data like distance between the booths and call volume.

But wait, there's more!

Earlier this month, the FCC came out with additional rules that would be going away.  These ones aren't nearly as funny, though, just unusual in the sense of "wait, that used to be a thing?".  Some are also being removed because newer rules have replaced them.

Some of the items repealed in this round include:

• 1970's regulations covering specific types of monitoring equipment radio and TV stations were required to have.
• Authorizations for commercial (like us, for example) and educational (think NPR) FM radio stations to play "stereophonic sound programs".  I'm not entirely sure what was meant by that.  Maybe they're talking about stereo audio?
• Specifying that a broadcast station can operate 24 hours a day.  (Yes, children, once upon a time, radio and TV stations didn't run 24/7 and would turn or "sign" on or off at certain times every day.)