A couple weeks ago the Erie Times-News and P&T’s comments pages were flooded with angry readers responding to sports writer John Dudley’s column taking to task Indianapolis Colts star and Erie native Bob Sanders over his lack of “media savvy.” When we asked if you agreed or not with Dudley in a Press and Tower poll, just over half said “No.” However, a strong minority noted that Dudley at least made some good points in his calling out of Sanders.

Last week a huge announcement out of Washington: the Federal Communications Commission rolled out their National Broadband Plan. You might remember that Chairman Julius Genachowski was in Wattsburg along with Vice President Biden back in July touting the efforts to reach out to rural and poor areas of the country to bring broadband Internet to every home. One of the goals embedded in the plan is  100 mbps download speed and 50 mbps of upload speed for 100 million households by 2020.

The FCC says to make that happen they will need much more wireless spectrum. They have unabashedly targeted broadcast television for 120 MHz of that spectrum. You might recall that the TV industry gave up channels 52+ when the industry converted from analog to digital. Now the FCC is asking for at least channels 46-51, and may require stations to begin sharing 6 Mhz channels. I’m working on a story regarding any local impact.

On the other side, the proliferation of smartphones means that a spectrum crisis is looming unless something is done. What do you think?

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