I was watching a “free” movie on Tubi the other day, when a commercial came on and blasted my eardrums. It really took me back.

For it was my late childhood and early adolescence that our family finally achieved cable television. If you fell asleep with the TV on, god help you when it woke you up at 2 AM with a commercial louder than an atomic blast playing Enya and Enigma in Pure Moods.

Glory to Cable Networks and bless the FCC for the awakenings. For even though everyone hated the constant volume change, the FCC was powerless to stop it against the might of The Telecommunications act of 1994, which they themselves crafted with the wisdom of the telecom industry. Specifically these glorious sentences:

Title III: Regulatory Reform - Bars any State or local statute, regulation, or legal requirement from prohibiting the ability of any entity to provide interstate or intrastate telecommunications services.

and

Title VII: Media Diversity - Requires the FCC to complete a proceeding to: (1) modify or remove national and local ownership rules on radio and television broadcast stations to ensure that broadcasters are able to compete fairly with other media providers and that the public receives information from a diversity of media sources; (2) review a certain ownership restriction with respect to cable operators and report to the Congress on whether such restriction serves the public interest; and (3) consider the applicability of the FCC’s rules regarding network non-duplication protection, syndicated exclusivity protection, and sports programming exclusivity to programmers whose programs are transmitted on common carrier video platforms.

Which, among other things, allowed monopolies in media including ClearChannel which quickly ruined radio for everyone. Bless us all.