I don't know if this will prove useful for someone else, but it can't hurt. And I appologize, some of this seemed incredibly boring as I started reading.
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but it seems like these ascertainment rules would have to go hand in hand with a future attempt to re-implement localism(which we know obama supports) and may help to spot it if it's inserted into some omnibus bill at some time.
If any of this is even 100% accurate. I didn't work in radio at the time of all this. I say that because of a few other links I have on the matter.
One thing that seems fairly clear, is that I keep seeing 'local' this and that, 'community' this and that when it comes to these ascertainment requirements.
METRO BROADCASTING, INC. v. FCC, 497 U.S. 547 (1990)
http://www.tourolaw.edu/PATCH/Metro/Brennan.asp
The FCC in late 2009 promulgated a “Community Broadcasting Standards Structure,” which, as amended through 2012, remained in effect until the collapse of the fundamental social and political order that same year.
The Structure required that stations place 51% of their broadcast content under the control of community leaders as part of the station’s duty to address community issues. Stations were also required to file Problem Viewer/Listener Lists with the FCC, identifying viewers who complained publicly about such programming. The Lists, never popular with broadcasters, soon became search-and-arrrest lists for the FBI’s Race Crimes Unit.
In the end, the Lists became important tools for uncovering so-called white supremacist groups challenging the new racially-oriented broadcast policy. Beginning in 2010 but accelerating swiftly until 2012, Congress and the FCC began monitoring the communications industry. Broadcasters were among the most vocal opponents of this monitoring, arguing that the Lists were being used to violate the civil rights of audience members to watch what they pleased.
The “racial justice” rationale which had, as a constitutional matter, permitted the federal government to compromise the First Amendment rights of broadcasters, had superseded the “free speech” model under which the FCC had, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, operated since its beginnings. This was replaced by the ”public utilty” model championed by the Executive Branch, a model in which the government, acting as an impartial arbiter of racial justice, would dictate the content of programming according to their assessment of the needs of the general public.
Research conducted before the enactment of content requirements set out in the Structure indicated that most broadcasters viewed the federal government’s “justice” efforts as propaganda designed to indoctrinate the local public. Indeed, a large percentage of broadcasters surveyed indicated that they would cease broadcasting, and in some cases destroy their own broadcasting equipment and facilties, rather than comply with the new requirements. Broadcasters cited the rules as an example of the type of heavy-handed “media of coercion” practiced in dictatorships. In respose, the FCC moved to consolidate and nationalize most private broadcasting networks by the summer of 2011, and to close down those local broadcasters who refused to carry the new federal satellite feeds.
The collapse of the social and economic order in the winter of 2012-2013 destroyed the broadcasting industry, the FCC, the entire federal regulatory system, and, indeed the federal government itself. In the chaos that followed, the spectrum was taken over by amateur broadcasters using home-based (and often home-built) equipment.