@Checkerboard Strangler, being an engineer in that space, had good info on when companies need broadcast licenses. Given what I know now, I don't think my original suspicion was correct.
Here it is in black and white on the FCC website.
Mea Culpa time:
They MOVED it from Part 95 to some word salad Title 47 something or other but it's the same as it always was even as far back as the Seventies:
WE DO NOT LICENSE TV or radio networks
FCC Regulation of Broadcast Radio and Television. The FCC allocates a portion of the broadcast spectrum to new broadcast stations based upon both the relative needs of various communities for additional broadcast outlets, and specified engineering standards designed to prevent interference among stations and other communications users. Whenever we review an application – whether to build a new station, modify or renew the license of an existing station or sell a station – we must determine if granting the application would serve the public interest. As mentioned earlier, we expect station licensees to be aware of the important problems and issues facing their local communities and to foster public understanding by presenting programming that relates to those local issues. Broadcasters – not the FCC or any other government agency – are responsible for selecting the material they air. The First Amendment and the Communications Act expressly prohibit the Commission from censoring broadcast matter. Our role in overseeing program content is very limited. We license only individual broadcast stations. We do not license TV or radio networks (such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox) or other organizations that stations have relationships with, such as PBS or NPR, except if those entities are also station licensees. In general, we also do not regulate information provided over the Internet, nor do we intervene in private disputes involving broadcast stations or their licensees. Instead, we usually defer to the parties, courts, or other agencies to resolve these disputes.
---READ again CAREFULLY:
"Our role in overseeing program content is very limited. We license only individual broadcast stations. WE DO NOT LICENSE TV or radio networks (such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox) or other organizations that stations have relationships with, such as PBS or NPR, except if those entities are also station licensees."
And again, the reason is simple...
Networks transmit over privately owned or leased subscriber lines, not the public airwaves.
EXAMPLE:
CBS only transmits its raw content to network owned stations, affiliate stations or member stations.
In the olden days of so called Big Ugly Backyard satellite dishes, people were picking up those private casts but later on all the networks scrambled them, but in the early days
it was possible to watch stuff that wasn't even intended for air, sometimes boring, like a half hour of a camera turned on waiting for a press conference, with people standing around
ignoring the camera and talking amongst themselves.
I once watched a technician sneak a quaff off a beer on a hot summer day as they were baking in the hot sun waiting for some talking head to start yapping.
I've seen crews disappear around the back of a truck and come back seconds later obviously baked off a joint.
Anyway, I am calling Trump's bluff and Brendan Carr's because there is no teeth to the FCC threats other than making broadcast antennas go dark, which is minimal damage for reasons
I've literally beaten to death, very few people use antennas anymore.
How come TV stations don't pipe up and bring this to the attention of the American people?
