Alternate title: Less is more (and other nonsense)!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NAB has come out with its latest interesting opinion on radio station ownership in comments to the FCC regarding the 2014 Quadrennial Regulatory Review.\u00a0 They state that “Retaining the local radio ownership rule unchanged would be arbitrary and capricious” because the audio marketplace has changed radically over the last ten years.\u00a0 The introduction of online listening via Pandora seems to have created a competition that can only be adequately dealt with by further consolidation, it seems.\u00a0 Also, the Commission cannot demonstrate that the current rules promote localism or viewpoint diversity.\u00a0 That last sentence is a fair statement.\u00a0 What the NAB does not say is that there is no evidence that further consolidation will promote localism or viewpoint diversity either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The comment then goes into a lot of information and statistics on smartphone usage; who has them, what they are using them for et cetera.\u00a0 It is very interesting to note that there is no reason given for the sudden and alarming upswing in mobile online listening.\u00a0 But, let us examine a few interesting data points first:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let us assume that the average commute to work these days is one hour.\u00a0 That would mean two hours per day of driving and mobile listening.\u00a0 That adds up to 1.16 GB of data per month just in online listening.\u00a0 Assuming that the smartphone functions as more than just a radio and will be used for email, maps, news, web browsing, and other downloads, a fairly hefty data plan would be required of the smartphone user to accommodate all this data.\u00a0 Why would somebody pay considerably extra per month just to listen to online radio?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you get where I am going with this?\u00a0 Good, compelling programming is what people are searching for.\u00a0 If they cannot find it on the radio, they will go elsewhere.\u00a0 Nature abhors a vacuum.\u00a0 Want to compete against Pandora, Spotify, XM, or whoever?\u00a0 Offer up something good to listen to.\u00a0 These days, competition seems to be a dirty word.\u00a0 Yes, competition requires work, but it, in and of itself, is not bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NAB seems to be saying that relaxing ownership rules and thus, presumably, allowing more consolidation will promote diversity.\u00a0 In my twenty-five years of broadcasting, I can say that I have never seen this to be the case.\u00a0\u00a0 Some of the most diverse radio stations to be heard are often single stations, sometimes an AM\/FM combo, just out there doing their thing.\u00a0 Stations like WDST<\/a>, WHVW<\/a>, WKZE<\/a>, WHDD<\/a>, WJFF<\/a>, WTBQ<\/a>, WSBS<\/a>, WNAW<\/a>… I am sure that I am forgetting a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can read the entirety of the NAB’s comments here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alternate title: Less is more (and other nonsense)! The NAB has come out with its latest interesting opinion on radio station ownership in comments to the FCC regarding the 2014 Quadrennial Regulatory Review.\u00a0 They state that “Retaining the local radio ownership rule unchanged would be arbitrary and capricious” because the audio marketplace has changed radically … Continue reading Fewer owners means more diversity!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[300,93],"class_list":["post-8028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-fcc","tag-nab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8028"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11252,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8028\/revisions\/11252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}