The FCC was chartered in 1934 on the theory that the "radio airwaves" were a scarce resource, which needed to be managed by the government in the public interest. The result was a byzantine, often seeminly arbitrary and capricious, licensing system for stations and operators, restrictions on free speech, and a lack of true market competition in electronic media.

Today, technology has made it possible for practically anyone to go on the air for just a few hundred dollars, with a remarkably clean signal (technically speaking) that at least covers their town. Advances in signal quality have allowed more regularly licensed broadcasters to go on the air as well: the "scarce resource" argument is obsolete. Today, there are more over-the-air TV and radio stations than daily newspapers in the US (not to mention the plethora of cable, satellite, and internet media offerrings) yet broadcasters are still not adequately protected by the First Amendment, as newspapers and magazines are.

When groups of citizens gets together to provide true choice in media, as the various "Free Radio" stations across the country have, they must operate in fear of FCC raids, onerous fines, and forfeiture of equipment, even if their signals are not interfering with any other station on the air.

Rather than act as the guardian of the public interest, by simply making sure that stations do not interfere with each other or threaten public safety (via high-level RF emissions), the FCC acts as gatekeeper, telling some that they can have access to radio spectrum, while preventing others, sometimes with violence, from having the same access. They stifle true broadcast competition, letting conglomerates own hundreds of transmitters across the country and homogenizing the airwaves, without also allowing alternative voices or even commercial competitors to go up against those behemoths; they annoint industrial concerns that seek to create captive niches for their proprietary technologies (e.g., the recent announcement of "digital radio"). They twist the arms of television broadcaters to convert to expensive Digital Television transmission by arbitrary deadlines, which will eventually make all existing TV receivers obsolete (unless you have a signal converter). Does the market really want this "advance"? Does the 21st century US need an FCC? I don't think so.