broadcasts as all of the rest along with the same conservative commentary on the news. In August of 2018 the FCC denied Sinclair's request to purchase Tribune Media. Sinclair would have acquired 42 more local television stations. The FCC opted not to waive media ownership rules. Spam Calls-Robocalls Robocalls are those dialed by banks of automated dialers that call thousands of households each hour. It's illegal to call phone numbers on the national-do-not-call (DNC) list without explicit permission. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in 2017 2.4 billion robocalls were placed every month. Not only are these calls annoying, but many telemarketers that place these calls defraud people by impersonating the Internal Revenue Service and asking for a credit card payment to settle a supposed debt to the IRS. Others make false promises for non-existent goods and services. One telemarketer was fined for trying to sell fake auto warranties. Another issue is that robocall traffic can flood 911 centers to such an extent that legitimate emergency calls are blocked. This occurred in 2017 in large swaths of the United States. The telemarketers' automatic dialers sent thousands of calls to the ten-digit numbers associated with each 911 call center. Because call centers are designed SO that calls forward to backup call centers when there are large volumes of calls, the robocalls affected 911 centers nationwide. The following is a quote from an October 4, 2017, Federal Trade Commission press release, "FTC Testifies Before U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging on the Continuing Fight to Combat Illegal Robocalls": www.TechnicalPDF.com The FTC's most recent victory in the fight against illegal Robocalls came this past June, when a federal district court in Illinois issued an order imposing the largest civil penalty ever in a DNC* case-$280 million against satellite television provider Dish Network. The case charged Dish and its telemarketers with making tens of millions of calls-often Robocalls-to consumers on the DNC 