FCC API: addressing unexpected error

[snippsat]

from fcc.census_block_conversions import census_block_fips

Show your import code.

You are using python 2.7 and Python 3.6(anaconda).
With 3.6(anaconda):

JSONDecodeError: ('Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)'

This usually mean.

• non-JSON conforming quoting
  
• XML/HTML output (that is, a string starting with <), or
  
• incompatible character encoding
  

Tells you that at the very first position the string already doesn't conform to JSON.

A test with Requests and Python 2.7.
Requests read it without Unicode error.

import requests
r = requests.get('http://data.fcc.gov/api/block/find?format=json&latitude=32.35204448&longitude= -106.77485461&showall=true')

Test:

>>> r.json()['County']
{u'FIPS': u'35013', u'name': u'Do\xf1a Ana'}
>>> print r.json()['County']['name']
Doña Ana