"When the government allocates monopoly rights to frequency, and there are only a handful in each community, it's picking the winners in the competition"
About this Quote
He’s not talking about an abstract market glitch; he’s pointing at a rigged starting line. McChesney’s phrasing turns the mundane mechanics of spectrum licensing into a moral and political act: “allocates monopoly rights” makes regulation sound less like neutral stewardship and more like a state-issued deed. The key move is collapsing the distance between “the government” and “the winners,” insisting that concentrated media power isn’t an accident of capitalism but a product of policy.
The subtext is a challenge to a favorite civic myth: that broadcast competition naturally sorts itself out, and that regulators merely keep the interference down. By emphasizing “only a handful in each community,” he frames scarcity as manufactured and consequential. Frequency is finite, yes, but the choice to grant long-term, exclusive control over it - and to structure it in ways that privilege incumbents, deep pockets, and consolidation - is optional. The “picking” language is deliberately blunt; it denies the audience the comfort of thinking of this as technical governance.
Context matters: McChesney has spent decades arguing that media systems shape democratic capacity, and that U.S. broadcast policy historically favored commercial operators over public, local, or civic models. Read that way, the quote is less anti-government than anti-backroom government: a critique of regulation captured by industry, where “competition” is invoked rhetorically while barriers to entry are quietly hardened. The intent is to re-politicize the airwaves, forcing listeners to see spectrum as public property and licensing as a decision about who gets to speak, to whom, and at what scale.
The subtext is a challenge to a favorite civic myth: that broadcast competition naturally sorts itself out, and that regulators merely keep the interference down. By emphasizing “only a handful in each community,” he frames scarcity as manufactured and consequential. Frequency is finite, yes, but the choice to grant long-term, exclusive control over it - and to structure it in ways that privilege incumbents, deep pockets, and consolidation - is optional. The “picking” language is deliberately blunt; it denies the audience the comfort of thinking of this as technical governance.
Context matters: McChesney has spent decades arguing that media systems shape democratic capacity, and that U.S. broadcast policy historically favored commercial operators over public, local, or civic models. Read that way, the quote is less anti-government than anti-backroom government: a critique of regulation captured by industry, where “competition” is invoked rhetorically while barriers to entry are quietly hardened. The intent is to re-politicize the airwaves, forcing listeners to see spectrum as public property and licensing as a decision about who gets to speak, to whom, and at what scale.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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