Editor’s Note: Prof. Terry also guests on this week’s Radio Survivor Podcast, which is a companion to this post.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals recently handed down a decision in a third round of the case Prometheus Radio Project v FCC. This decision, while reasonably straightforward, has the potential to be earth shattering to the current broadcast media environment.

I think the decision speaks for itself, but if you’re not in the mood to read through it (not everyone is a telecom nerd like me), the oral argument, which is a bit wonky, can be listened to here (the FCC Lawyer is up at about 36 minutes into the audio).

I have discussed the ongoing dispute in Prometheus v FCC on the Radio Survivor podcast and in a lengthy blog post in the past. While the agency’s 20 year failure on the regulation of media ownership continues, the most recent decision is setting the stage for another massive change, and my friends, not for the better.

“In some respects the Commission has made progress in the intervening years. In key areas, however, it has fallen short. These shortcomings are at the center of this dispute—the third (and likely not the last) round in a protracted battle over the future of the nation’s broadcast industry.”

Importantly, the Third Circuit has simply had enough of the FCC’s lollygagging, whining and outright nonsense on media ownership. The agency’s continuing failure to develop, and support with empirical evidence, and plan to create a policy plan to increase ownership of stations by women and minorities is pushing the court in the direction of something drastic, and we’re likely to see that before the end of this year.

“The FCC presents two arguments for why we should not order relief. Both fail. The first is that it is not yet in violation of Prometheus II because we instructed it to address the eligible entity definition during the 2010 Quadrennial Review, which is still ongoing. This contention improperly attempts to use one delay (the Quadrennial Review) to excuse another (the eligible entity definition). By this logic, the Commission could delay another decade or more without running afoul of our remand. Simply put, it cannot evade our remand merely by keeping the 2010 review open indefinitely.”

Unfortunately for us, that outcome might be a complete tear-down of the FCC’s structural scheme (essentially ownership-based approach) to media regulation. While I am not a fan of the current approach, at least it is an approach with rules. The agency’s failure to act may undermine those rules to the point of total repeal, which in turn, would open the doors to another round of ownership consolidation with essentially no controls on what could be owned by a single media organization. That is a terrifying reality, and one the court explicitly says it may resort to.

“Equally troubling is that nearly a decade has passed since the Commission last completed a review of its broadcast ownership rules….Several broadcast owners have petitioned us to wipe all the rules off the books in response to this delay—creating, in effect, complete deregulation in the industry. This is the administrative law equivalent of burning down the house to roast the pig, and we decline to order it. However, we note that this remedy, while extreme, might be justified in the future if the Commission does not act quickly to carry out its legislative mandate.”

The reality here is that we find ourselves at this point because the agency has failed to do the most fundamental job it has: ensure that citizens have access to diverse and antagonistic viewpoints. Early legal decisions regarding the FCC’s authority recognized the high societal goal attached to this responsibility.

So how did we get this point? It is a story 20 years in the making.

The passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act changed the face of broadcast radio in this country. The new limits, imposed by Congress, are as follows:

• In a radio market with 45 or more commercial radio stations, a single party may own, operate, or control up to 8 commercial radio stations, not more than 5 of which are in the same service (AM or FM).
• In a radio market with between 30 and 44 (inclusive) commercial radio stations, a party may own, operate, or control up to 7 commercial radio stations, not more than 4 of which are in the same service (AM or FM).
• In a radio market with between 15 and 29 (inclusive) commercial radio stations, a party may own, operate, or control up to 6 commercial radio stations, not more than 4 of which are in the same service (AM or FM).
• And in a radio market with 14 or fewer commercial radio stations, a party may own, operate, or control up to 5 commercial radio stations, not more than 3 of which are in the same service (AM or FM), except that a party may not own, operate, or control more than 50 percent of the stations in such market.

These changes to ownership limits (combined with the complete abolishment of a national ownership cap -ed.) transformed radio from a local to a national medium through consolidation.

More important for our current discussion, the 1996 Telecommunications Act required the Commission to conduct a biannual review of media ownership rules. This two-year review was extended to four years with the 2006 Quadraennial Review, but the FCC has not completed the media ownership proceeding in 2010, having rolled it on an ongoing basis into the 2014 rule review.

In June of 2003, in response to the requirement of a quadrennial review of the media ownership rules, the Commission, without a period of public comment or review, released a revised set of media ownership limits. At the heart of this order, which allowed substantial additional concentrations of media ownership, was the FCC’s new Diversity Index.

The Diversity Index was based on a system of Herfindahl–Hirschman Index measurements, an economic instrument commonly used in anti-trust inquiries. The Commission’s stated goal was to assure that at least six competitors would exist in each market. After multiple challenges were filed, a multidistrict panel assigned the case to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard eight hours of oral argument on February 11, 2004.

On June 24, 2004, (yes, almost 12 years ago!) the Third Circuit released a 2-1 decision, written by Justice Ambro. The verdict, while mixed, stayed and remanded most of the FCC’s 2003 order. Among the primary reasons was the FCC’s arbitrary and capricious decision making process for how it would determine what would count as a sufficient number of competitors, and the lack of evidence in the record supporting the FCC’s proposed standards.

The FCC retreated to lick its wounds. Having completed the required review from 2006, but also being exposed for having buried clear evidence that current media ownership policy was having unintended consequences, all of which were negative in terms of the agency’s stated policy goals, on November 13, 2007 the FCC released a proposed change to only one rule: a partial repeal of the longstanding prohibition on Newspaper-Broadcast Cross Ownership first implemented in 1975. The rule change was included in an order on February 4, 2008, and a month later, the FCC released one additional media ownership rule developed in a separate proceeding, which was designed, at least nominally, to help increase ownership of media outlets by minorities and women.

Relying on the Small Business Administration, the FCC created a class of applicants called “eligible entities.” The Commission argued that an increase in the number of “small media owners”—owners who operate either a single or small group of stations—would by itself result in an increase in the diversity of programming content, including programming content targeted at minorities, both stated goals of the agency, and essentially basic requirements of the remand the agency faced from the 2004 Prometheus Decision.

These policies, like the Diversity Index from 2003, were also challenged, and then reviewed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals panel, under the remand in the first Prometheus case. In July 2011, in the middle of the 2010 review process, the Court again remanded the agency decisions citing procedural and evidence problems with the FCC’s actions.

The remand, first handed down in 2003, and then again in 2011, in the Prometheus Decision remains at the center of the FCC’s media ownership rule review and the current dispute for a simple reason: the FCC has not acted in any meaningful way to answer the Court’s questions as detailed in the remand.

Fast forward to April of 2016. Having failed to deliver any meaningful response to the Court’s two mandates, the FCC found itself in front of the Third Circuit for oral argument again. It did not go well for the agency. The judges on the panel wanted a straight answer as to when the FCC would resolve this longstanding dispute. The response was essentially, “we’re working on it.” Which, of course, is the answer the FCC has been giving for the past ten plus years.

The agency proposed that a draft of new rules would be circulated among the commissioners by the end of June. I am skeptical that will happen, having studied the last 20 years of policymaking very closely. Either way, without a recognition by the agency of the “Legacy of Failure” that media ownership policy has been, the legacy we may be left with is even worse than the one already created by the agency.

Stay Tuned. Things are about to get a bit more consolidated in these parts.

Christopher Terry is an assistant professor of media law and ethics in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. A former radio professional, his primary research focus examines the effect of law and policy on political communication and has published research on regulatory topics in political advertising, media ownership policy and news production. He has been frequently interviewed by radio, television and print media on contemporary issues relating to media content and regulation.

The post Could the FCC’s Legacy of Failure Trigger Even More Consolidation? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Once upon a time no company could own more than 20 AM and 20 FM stations nationwide. Then came the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which removed any national restrictions on radio station ownership. In a recent edition of our podcast, Paul Riismandel and Eric Klein sat down with Dr. Christopher Terry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to learn exactly how the “Clear-Channelization” of radio (so to speak) happened, and how it led to radio announcers who couldn’t even pronounce the names of cities to which they broadcast. I thought the discussion was significant enough to produce a partial transcription:

Christopher Terry: I think that from a radio perspective [the Telecom Act] fundamentally changed the radio industry. The removal of the 20/20 rule in favor of a market based cap in which the largest markets could be eight stations under one ownership fundamentally changed how radio operated as an industry. It’s important now 20 years later as the FCC is still wrestling with this issue and is set to go to court here again in just a couple of months on the fundamental issue of media ownership as a regulation issue; it’s really important that we take a look at the last 20 years and that we understand that we made some mistakes and don’t make those mistakes going forward.

Paul: What does it mean to say that it changed the radio industry?

Terry: It took radio’s most important character out of the equation. Radio from its very inception was a local based media system . . . ‘Mom and Pop’ operations were the face, the design of the radio system. It was how it was implemented. It was how the system was supposed to work. And after consolidation that came with the 1996 Telecommunications Act it turned it into a nationalized industry where instead of 100 different stations producing content for each individual market, you had essentially one or two big producers and the same content, same music, same playlists, same voice tracked announcers, same everything, going out to stations all across the United States. Radio was not the same afterward.

Paul: Why did this have to happen?

Terry: As groups started consolidating, they started buying everything up in sight. Lots of mom and pop operators just sold out because it was a seller’s market. These companies that were absorbing stations at a rapid rate were paying top dollar for stations to grab all they could. It took a lot of the individual players out in favor of much larger companies that had plans to nationalize content.

Eric: . . . which meant people at these individual stations very quickly losing the work.

Terry: Part of the whole idea of consolidating stations was economy of scale. You take two individual stations and put them together as one group, you don’t need the extra secretary, you don’t need the extra engineer, you’ve got people there in the morning who can do the news in the afternoon. You can start getting rid of people. You are instantly making the station more profitable by cutting down on the labor costs. You take that, you do that a couple of thousand times, and all of a sudden you’ve got a ton of stations under one roof with lots of people out of work.

Eric: How did this affect the listener?

Terry: Programming wasn’t being done at the local level now. It was being done at the regional and the national level. Let me give you one example. The station I worked for in Milwaukee, we got rid of our news people and we were producing news through a Clear Channel news room in Cleveland, Ohio. So our newscasts at the top of the hour weren’t even being produced by people in Milwaukee. This generated a hilarious result. We tried to watch people from Cleveland, Ohio say all the Indian names for towns and stuff in the immediate area. It was painful. You took that local element out of radio and by nationalizing the programming they made it cheaper to operate, the profits went up, but they lost radio’s character.

Amen to all this. One format that took a uniquely royal beating from the Telecom Act was classical radio. Check out the rest of the interview here.

The post Can your local radio announcer pronounce your city’s name? Chris Terry on the Telecommunications Act of 1996 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Four years ago, on July 7, 2011, the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a second “remand” to the Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to weaken its media ownership rules. When a court remands an action by a government agency, it is telling the agency that the decision is somehow wrong, often procedurally wrong, and needs to be revised. The challenge to the FCC was initiated by the Prometheus Radio Project.

The controversy began in 2003, when, in the Prometheus Project’s own words: “the FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, sought to dismantle the remaining protections against media consolidation. Many large companies wanted media ownership rules abolished, allowing them to buy up unlimited media properties and monopolize local markets. Prometheus organized against these changes and commented to the FCC. Then, when the FCC ignored the millions of anti-consolidation comments, we sued the FCC in federal court.”

Christopher Terry’s essay below marks a crucial anniversary in a case famously known as Prometheus versus FCC. Terry teaches Media Law and Policy in the Department of Journalism, Advertising and Media Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has 15 years experience as a producer in commercial radio. His doctoral dissertation examined more than 1,000 FCC media ownership decisions between 1996-2010. “I thought we might take the opportunity of this anniversary to discuss how radio got so bad,” he wrote to us.  – Editor

July 7, 2015

On February 8th, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into the law the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Provisions within the Telecommunications Act implemented significant changes the legal, policy and social dynamics of media ownership. Although these changes could be felt across the media spectrum, the radio industry was fundamentally changed by the FCC’s implementation of the legislation.

In terms of legal changes, the Telecommunications Act implemented specific limits on media ownership, mandated by Congress, rather than limits created through rulemaking by the FCC. This change was significant, as prior to 1996, the FCC had determined the limits on media ownership and made decisions on media cross ownership prohibitions through developed rulemaking proceedings. These legal changes also resulted in a significant change in media ownership policy. While the FCC had been slowly raising the limits on media ownership, the changes brought about through rulemaking proceedings had been much smaller in scale. And the scale of the changes to the top end limits on media ownership, including the move to allow the creation of large numbers of commonly owned and operated radio stations at the market level, literally changed the radio business from a local to a national one.

Speaker at the FCC’s 2007 Seattle hearing on its media ownership rules.

The issue of empirical evidence (or rather the lack of it) in the FCC’s rulemaking process dealing with the limits on ownership of media outlets became a multi-prong problem for the agency. Even setting aside the usual administrative agency requirements for evidence to support rational decisions made when implementing policy, embedded within the 1996 Telecommunications Act was §202(h) which requires the agency to remove or modify rules that are no longer necessary to promote competition or in the public interest. Faced with this mandate, and the requirement to review the existing rules every four years, the Commission has found itself in a serious rulemaking quandary, and one in which policy decisions have suffered significant setback when rulemaking processes have come under judicial review.

Part of this problem stems from the Commission’s attempts to regulate media for three policy objectives, Competition, Localism and Diversity, simultaneously. Favoring the first through the implementation of structural limits on numerical broadcast station ownership, while paying lip service to the second through a seemingly endless rulemaking proceeding, in a vain effort to ensure the third which the FCC repeatedly claims to be the most important, the Commission has struggled to find evidence to support the decisions it has made regarding the media ownership rules, most notably during the release of new regulations in June of 2003. After proposing the Diversity Index, a new system for calculating concentration of media ownership, a diverse coalition of citizen groups ranging from the Sierra Club to the National Rifle Association spoke out against the new media ownership decision, and as nearly a million comments came into the FCC, the Commission faced judicial review of the new policy proposal in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Prometheus Radio Project v FCC.

Upholding parts, but remanding large sections of the FCC’s decision in 2003 to the Commission for further review and clarification, the majority in the Third Circuit encouraged the Commission to generate some evidence to support future rulemaking decisions regarding media ownership regulations.

Michael Powell, Chair of the FCC from 2001 through 2005.

Given the weight of evidence standard that applies in the legal review of administrative rulemaking, the deference typically given to an administrative agency’s expertise by the courts, and the lack of evidence in the form of a review of the effects of the implementation of its structural regulatory scheme, the Prometheus remand in 2004 and second remand issued by the Third Circuit in Prometheus II in 2011 has effectively cut-off any changes to the policy.

Unfortunately for the FCC, the agency’s media ownership policy has become a double-barreled combination of more of the same and evidence which undermines the last 19 plus years of policy implementation. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the FCC’s implementation of media ownership policy, has been, remains, and will continue to be an important democratic issue. The relationship between control of media outlets and the sources of and the diversity of information that citizens have access to is an important one to understand, even in the age of the internet. Broadcasting still plays an important central role in the media use of every day Americans. The use of broadcast media remains at high levels. Even in the face of the digital communications revolution, a large quantity of the informational content on the web is simply repackaged and redistributed from existing media, including “the dinosaurs” of newspapers, radio and broadcast television.

The FCC has failed through a continued reluctance to engage in any sort of meaningful policy evaluation that would provide a measure of viewpoint diversity available within the modern media environment.  This failure has been created out a series of interrelated problems. While failing to do any sort of meaningful evaluation of its media ownership policy and going so far as to ignore evidence which demonstrated the policy implementation was having the absolute opposite effect of the intent of the policy, the FCC justified a massive first wave of consolidation in media ownership using theoretical benefits, such as economy of scale, without logically applying the effects of the change, such as the massive reductions in staff and content sharing, to viewpoint diversity.  In fact, the FCC championed the benefits of economy of scale in media mergers, until such time as the mergers grew large enough that the control of advertising markets became an issue. As this new challenge arose, the FCC changed the criteria by which it judged mergers, until such a point that the agency was examining mergers that gave the top two competitors in a media market control of up to 99.5% of advertising in that market. With no more room to use advertising markets as a control mechanism, the agency again changed its approach, stating that numerical limits were the best way to ensure viewpoint diversity. And in what might be described as the ultimately craven move by the FCC, the agency justified this third change in approach by recycling nearly forgotten rhetoric about protecting the public interest in ensuring access to diverse and antagonistic viewpoints.

The FCC retains a longstanding belief that each individual owner in a media market will provide one viewpoint, and that competition, both internal (from commonly owned stations) and external (from competitors) will result in an increase in content diversity which meets the stated policy goal of a diversity of viewpoints. As commercial entities, media outlets generate income by selling audiences to advertisers, therefore, external competition limits a station’s audience in situations where competing media organizations provide similar or identical formats. When competing media outlets are providing similar programming, and thus splitting the potential audience for that programming choice between them, theoretically an economic incentive is created to provide alternative programming options to competitors. This incentive to create new programming options will therefore result in content diversity.

If external competition between media organizations theoretically produces content diversity, what about the internal competition between commonly owned media outlets? The theory of a relationship between internal competition and diversity rely on Peter Steiner’s 1952 proposition that a monopoly firm in media could provide more diversity than competing firms. The FCC has adopted this theory as part of the support for its continued reliance on a structural regulatory scheme, arguing that as more media outlets are consolidated into common ownership, an economic incentive is created for a media organization to provide a more diverse set of programming, rather than to provide multiple programming formats that compete for audience with other commonly owned stations.

Competition for audience then, according to theory, creates content diversity through economic incentive, as desirable programming content will be produced by competitors seeking to generate audiences. An audience makes choices, and by keeping marketplace mechanisms in place, you provide the freedom for these consumers to “shop” for the content they want.

Unfortunately for the FCC, among the critics of its structural regulation policies are the federal courts. The primary reason for these legal setbacks has been the Commission’s inability to produce rational empirical evidence supporting licensing and ownership decisions.

In June, 2003, in response to the requirement of a quadrennial review of the media ownership rules, the Commission, without a period of public comment or review, released a revised set of rules that relaxed media ownership limits. At the heart of this order, which allowed substantial additional concentration of media ownership, was the FCC’s new Diversity Index (DI). The Commission’s stated goal was to assure that at least six competitors, newspapers, radio, television and internet sites would exist in each market.

Following a large public response against the new ownership limits, a legal challenge to the order occurred in Prometheus Radio Project v FCC in 2004. The majority took a dim view of the FCC’s new Diversity Index and the relaxed ownership limits the methodology could mathematically justify. As the Commission had failed to provide any evidence to support its decision-making, the court remanded to policy to the FCC. In terms of radio, the majority cited two studies in the docket which demonstrated a 34% in reduction in owners and concrete examples of consolidated radio groups eliminating local news production, to support the majority opinion to retain the existing limits was not supported by the analysis in the docket.

The remand in the first Prometheus Decision remains the primary obstacle of the FCC’s media ownership policy. The Prometheus decision made clear that in order for the Commission to modify its regulations in any significant way, whether in favor on increasing concentration or some types of rollbacks, the FCC must to generate evidence that at least rationally supports the agency’s rulemaking decision.

After the remand was issued, the FCC retreated to lick its wounds. A new FCC chairman, Kevin Martin was appointed in March of 2005, and the media ownership process was set aside until June 21st, 2006 when the FCC began the first required quadrennial reviews under section 202(h) of the Telecommunications Act.

As the proceeding unfolded during the following months, a report was leaked to California Senator Barbara Boxer “indirectly from someone within the FCC who believed the information should be made public.” The report, was launched under the previous Chairman, and now industry lobbyist, Michael Powell’s tenure, after he tasked FCC Media Bureau staff to develop evidence on localism in broadcasting. Notably, the study demonstrated that the local ownership of television stations added almost five and half minutes of news to broadcasts including more than three minutes of “on-location” (i.e. local) news and conclusion that was in direct opposition to the FCC contention in 2003 that “commonly owned television stations are more likely to carry local news than other stations.” After the Senate hearing, news reports also surfaced that the Commission had ordered all copies of the draft study destroyed.

Five days later, a second unreleased draft study, which had been generated as part of the 2002 Review, also surfaced. This study, titled Review of the Radio Industry, contained evidence that was even more damning of the policy implementation than the television localism study. Examining the effects of consolidation on the radio industry between 1996 and March of 2003, the report reached five major conclusions, all of which would have been problematic for the FCC’s decision making in 2003. First, despite a nearly 6% increase in the number of radio stations overall, the number of owners had decreased by 35% and change brought about almost entirely by mergers between existing owners. Second, the largest group owner in 1996 had 65 radio stations which meant that the consolidation of ownership had been even more significant than the 35% reduction suggested. In just seven years, the top two companies, Clear Channel and Cumulus Media, had come to own more than 1,200 and just over 250 respectively. Third, at the local level, the report marked a downward trend in the number of owners in Arbitron markets. Fourth, in terms of advertising competition, the data demonstrated that the top firm in each market controlled an average of 46% of the advertising, and that the top two firms controlled an average of 76% of the advertising market. The report concluded that this level of control was at least partially responsible for an 87 percent increase in ad rates, despite falling ratings numbers. Finally, in terms of the effect of consolidation on the format diversity available, the study suggested that while the numbers of formats had remained largely steady overall, in the larger markets, there was actually a slight reduction in the number of formats being offered.

Each of the findings in these two “lost” studies should have provided the FCC the evidence necessary to reach the absolutely opposite conclusions than it had reached during the 2002 Review. While the localism finding is logical, the assessment of the effects of consolidation on the radio industry are damning of the policy decisions being made at the Commission during the rapid years of radio consolidation 1996-2003.

Kevin Martin, Chair of the FCC from 2005 through 2009.

Not surprisingly, facing the tough evidence and rationale obligations of the Prometheus Remand and the uncovering of evidence which demonstrated that the last ten years of policy decisions were having the opposite effect of their intent, on November 13, 2007, Chairman Martin released a proposed change to only one rule, a partial repeal of the longstanding prohibition on Newspaper-Broadcast Cross Ownership.

After a questionable process that included the circulation of two different versions of the order less than 12 hours before a vote was taken in December of 2007, the rule change was included in an order in February, and a month later, the FCC released one additional media ownership rule developed in a separate proceeding, which was designed, at least nominally, to help increase ownership of media outlets by minorities and women.

No longer allowed to favor minority applicants directly, the agency relied on the Small Business Administration, and created a class of applicants called “eligible entities.” The proposal adopted financial standards, created by the Small Business Administration (SBA), based on gross sales revenue for a radio or television company.

These decisions, like the ones from 2003, were also challenged, and then reviewed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals panel, under the provisions remand in the first Prometheus case. In July of 2011, the Circuit again remanded the agency decisions again citing procedural and evidence problems with the FCC’s actions. The elements of the judicial review in Prometheus II were very reflective of the issues raised in the decision from Prometheus I. The majority in both cases was critical of the procedure undertaken, the rationales provided, the policy decision reached, and the evidence used to support those decisions.

The majority was extremely critical of the agency’s failure in 2007 to meet the requirements of the earlier remand on the ownership of stations by women and minorities that was issued in the first Prometheus decision. Suggesting that the agency had “in large part punted” on the issue, the ruling imposes a mandate that the remand be addressed before the 2010 Quadrennial Review was completed.

The second Prometheus decision, much like the earlier Prometheus case, is illustrative, in  a crystal clear fashion, of the FCC’s ongoing problematic situation with the collection and development of  evidence. As the agency continues to struggle with this issue and then using the evidence to demonstrate a reasoned analysis for its decision making, it is important to summarize the process which occurred from 1996 to 2010. The agency, pursuant to the Telecommunications Act, launched into a proceeding without collecting any evidence. Then faced with multiple reviews of its decision making, the agency has failed to generate evidence which would support its decision making, ignored evidence which demonstrated that the policy implementation was failing to meet the stated objectives, and has proposed policies that even reviewing courts suggest “defy logic.” The agency’s decision making on media ownership has endured four remands on judicial review, or more specifically, one for each of the reviews in which changes were proposed. While faulty administrative procedure and poor policy design have each played a role in the failures of the FCC’s decision-making on media ownership, the evidence issues, specifically the lack of evidence, cannot be ignored.

In basic terms, the reality is that it does not matter what measurement method you apply, every existing evaluation of the FCC’s current policy implementation, including the two the agency temporarily “lost,” has demonstrated that the agency’s stated policy goals are not being achieved, and in many cases are being undermined, by the ownership policy decisions the Commission has made since the 1996 Telecommunications Act was handed down. No empirical results exist that support the theory that either internal or external competition is increasing the quantity or diversity of informational programming.

So what does all this jibber-jabber mean?  As we celebrate the anniversary of the Prometheus Radio Project, remember, radio is in the state it is in today because our regulators chose to make it that way, and still, in the face of overwhelming evidence, continue to refuse to admit they were wrong.

Dr. Christopher Terry is a Lecturer of Media Law and Policy in the Department of Journalism, Advertising and Media Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who spent more than 15 years as a producer in commercial radio. His dissertation examined more than 1000 FCC media ownership decisions between 1996-2010, and he has published research on media diversity, political advertising and of course, media ownership policy.

Contact him via email at crterry@uwm.edu or on twitter @christopherterr

The post A Legacy of Failure: FCC and Media Ownership Policy appeared first on Radio Survivor.

“I think radio did a very poor job of marketing itself, and everybody started talking all about the shiny new things.”

That’s Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman explaining why radio lost much of its public mindshare at Adweek’s Power of Personality event.

Sure, that claim is plausible to someone who hasn’t been listening to radio for the last eighteen years. We’re talking about a medium that was, for all intents and purposes, ubiquitous. Then, over the course of nearly two decades the largest players, led by Clear Channel, hoovered up stations like hoarders at an estate sale, firing staff, consolidating operations, outsourcing programming decisions away from local stations, tightening playlists, resulting in thousands of stations that sounded both alike and so bland that listeners were ready for any alternative by the time MP3 players, internet broadcasting and mobile broadband were available to the general public.

Pittman made his remark while revealing results from his company’s study on the influence of radio personalities. Now, the results of the study also shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who listened to radio before the bloodletting of the late 90s and early 2000s.

According to Adweek,

Findings from the radio conglomerate showed on-air personality endorsements were similar to a friend’s recommendation—and they trusted it more than a sponsored Facebook post, sponsored tweet or TV commercial. Six out of 10 listeners said that radio hosts were “like a friend” whose opinions they trusted. Forty percent argued that they felt radio personalities made the broadcast more personal, which turned listening to the radio into a more social event.

So, those “radio personalities” they’re talking about: we used to call them DJs. And in even the smallest towns there were at least a few of them, up to dozens upon dozens in major markets. Listeners knew their names, could call them and make requests, and maybe even meet them at a live appearance. Listeners thought of them “like a friend,” because not only were they on the radio, sharing their talent and expertise, but they were also in the community, much closer than your average television or movie personality.

Sure, 25 years ago there were national, syndicated radio personalities, too. Whether we’re talking about Kasey Kasem, Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh, listeners then, as now, tuned in for companionship, as well as entertainment. There are still plenty of national radio personalities, with public radio talent becoming much more prominent in the last decade or so. But local talent is another story.

Commercial radio lost the attention of audiences because these companies took listeners for granted. They said, effectively, “Hey, we don’t need some $7 an hour local DJ to man a board and play the same 40 tracks in rotation. We can get the same $7 employee to record voice tracks for a dozen stations in the same amount of time as one local airshift, and the audience will never be the wiser.”

Only problem is, the audience was the wiser. They didn’t necessarily figure out that the DJ they heard at 3 PM on Tuesday actually recorded that voice break last Saturday, 500 miles away. But they could tell that the DJ didn’t sound like s/he was really there. The DJ kind of said the same thing when introducing the same songs. There seemed to be fewer and fewer requests being played. And when requests were heard, nobody mentioned what town they came from. Most glaringly, there didn’t seem to be much attention paid to local artists or local favorites. Indianapolis had the same playlist as St. Louis, Louisville and Des Moines–a fact that couldn’t be avoided if you drove a day across the interstates.

Simply put: Commercial radio, especially Clear Channel, started delivering a cheaper, cut rate service, and listeners figured it out. Once they didn’t have to listen, when they could plug in iPods and smartphones to the car stereos or use their computers for Pandora, they stopped listening.

So, yes, when there is still a talented radio personality on the air, I don’t doubt audiences respond positively. It’s just that commercial radio trained a whole generation of listeners not to expect very much.

Go ahead, Bob Pittman, tell the current generation of high school and college students how fantastic some of Clear Channel’s radio personalities are. You’ll probably hook a few willing to flip on their car radios, or maybe check out their parents’ radio. But these kids mostly don’t even own radios anymore. They might tune you in online, but that’s where you’re at a distinct disadvantage.

Face it, Pittman, your “let’s just market ourselves better” pitch is at least a decade too late. Your company led the charge in ruining commercial radio, and lost a whole generation of listeners in the process.

You say you want to focus on personalities? How about hiring a few, at every local Clear Channel station in the country. I can’t guarantee that will fix the bind you’re in. But it’s a start.

The post Clear Channel Says Radio Hosts are Vital, Too Bad It Fired Most of Them appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This week the National Association of Broadcasters convention takes over Las Vegas. To kick it off, the lobbying group’s top man, Gordon Smith, took to the stage Monday to set the tone. And the tone was this: Hey, FCC what about us broadcasters?

Leading off Smith’s list of complaints is the FCC’s effort asking TV stations to auction off some spectrum to be reallocated to wireless. But he also complained about the Commission’s favoring of broadband technology in general.

He asked, rhetorically, “Why is there no focus to foster innovation and investment in broadcasting to ensure our business continues to be a world leader alongside our broadband industries? Where is the FCC’s gusto and determination to embrace broadcasting’s values and public service responsibilities?”

He called for a “national broadcast plan” that might “figure out how broadcasting can continue to be a competitive force in this country and continue to serve the public interest.”

In his speech Smith touted the value of broadcaster’s local service, especially in times of emergency. In principle, I agree with Smith on this point. It’s why we so often point out how when radio provides needed information during natural disaster, when power goes out and cell towers are off.

But I would counter that too many broadcasters, especially radio’s biggest groups, haven’t made good on their part of the public service bargain. Over the last 17 years hoarding stations, firing talent and staff, getting rid of local hosts and local programmers, and gutting news departments, all in the name of short-term profits, has hollowed out the public service offered by the vast majority of commercial stations.

Commercial radio’s abandonment of their listeners and real local service helped drive audiences to internet alternatives, not the FCC. Blaming the Commission is like an aging greasy spoon blaming the zoning board for allowing a nice, new fast casual restaurant to open down the street. Maybe if commercial radio offered a better product internet radio wouldn’t be such a threat.

But it’s the very fact that Smith sees broadband and wireless services as competition that indicates the very root of the broadcast industry’s problematic delusion. He accuses the FCC of regulating broadcast like it’s the 1970s. But it sounds like Gordon Smith wants to turn back the clock to 1999 rather than encourage broadcasters to double-down and provide the kind of programming and service that is so good that audiences don’t care whether it’s broadcast or not.

Broadband internet is a fact of life. Moreover, broadband is an opportunity, not competition, and not a threat. It is a platform that broadcasters can use to expand audiences, enhance local service and, commensurately, grow profits. Noncommercial and public radio has already been demonstrating this since the early 2000s. Though some commercial radio groups have started to grow investment in this decade, the industry as a whole is still some ten years late to the party.

I find it all the more ironic that in this same speech Smith complained about the FCC’s recent decision to improve enforcement of ownership rules, curtailing some TV joint sales agreements that amount to end-runs around local ownership limits. While Smith seems to be asking for the FCC’s help for improving broadcast’s future, it seems like the only actual help the NAB wants is even looser ownership regs to drive more consolidation, the very same force that contributed to the industry’s problems today.

Having watched the NAB, the broadcast industry as a whole and the FCC for the last 20 years, I shouldn’t be surprised at Smith’s take. Nothing about it deviates from the company line. That doesn’t make it any less myopic and provincial.

I hope we’ll hear some more news of broadcast innovation, and less retrograde whining, from NAB the rest of the week.

The post NAB Honcho Complains about FCC Neglect, Competition from Broadband appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Gigi Sohn

Given his history of heading up telecomm industry lobbing groups, there was some suspicion of Wheeler’s appointment amongst some in the media reform community. In April Public Knowledge released a statement supportive of Wheeler, authored by Sohn. She wrote, “I believe that he will be an independent, proactive Chairman who will not allow the FCC to become irrelevant as broadband becomes the dominant mode of communication in this country.”

Acknowledging that while she may disagree with him at times, Sohn said, “I also have no doubt that Tom will have an open door and an open mind, and that ultimately his decisions will be based on what he genuinely believes is best for the public interest, not any particular industry.”

Although it is too early to predict what her influence will be at the FCC, it is hard to argue that it is a bad thing to have an open internet advocate like Sohn having the chairman’s ear. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether or not the FCC should be able to regulate broadband providers in order to prevent them from blocking otherwise legal website or from privileging some sites over others.

In explaining Public Knowledge’s support for the FCC’s nondiscrimination rule Sohn said, “If the Federal court decides that the FCC doesn’t have the power to create open internet rules, there could be a residual impact on the FCC’s ability to make decisions that involve the future of what has now become our main communications tool.”

Principles of open internet could be pivotal for radio in the digital era, since nondiscrimination rules could stand between a new, innovative online service reaching listeners, or being blocked in favor of a well-heeled incumbent like iHeartRadio or iTunes Radio. This is even more important with regard to mobile internet, where bandwidth limits have more effect on the ability of listeners to choose and hear the stations of their choice. If a given wireless provider were to make a deal to provide customers access to particular streaming service without bandwidth limitations, or at a substantial discount, then all other services would be operating at an disadvantage.

The Commission still has a biennial review of media ownership rules to complete, and the future of the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule is at stake. Sohn and Public Knowledge have been critical of media consolidation and its effects, even if they have not been as active in this arena as groups like Free Press. It is reasonable to think she may have some influence on this issue, as well.

Casey Rae, interim executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, said, “Future of Music Coalition has worked closely with Public Knowledge over the years to insure that technology remains open, accessible and affordable to musicians and other creators. We applaud Gigi’s service to the public interest and know she’ll continue to be a staunch defender of consumer rights and innovation at her new post.”

On leaving Public Knowledge, Sohn said “I leave Public Knowledge with a mixture of sadness and great pride. In late 2001, I started the organization with a tiny budget and free office space in Dupont Circle. Now Public Knowledge has 17 full time employees and more importantly, has a reputation as an effective, thoughtful and pragmatic communications and technology policy advocacy organization.”

Sohn’s last day at Public Knowledge is November 8. Long-time Public Knowledge staffers Michael Weinberg and Brooke Hunter will replace her as acting co-presidents.

The post Public interest advocate Gigi Sohn named to FCC Chairman Wheeler’s staff appeared first on Radio Survivor.

KUSF space in advance of building construction in summer 2011

A lengthy article on The Deal Pipeline outlines some of the recent public radio transactions involving classical music radio stations in particular. For those of us who have monitored the deals mentioned in the piece, it’s a fascinating overview of what seems like increasing consolidation in public radio.

Of interest to me, since I have written extensively about the sale of University of San Francisco’s student radio station KUSF 90.3 FM to Classical Public Radio Network (affiliated with University of Southern California), was the article’s recounting of that deal. It points out that classical KUSC has “drawn loans from the University of Southern California to make acquisitions” and states that in 2011 it was able to buy commercial radio station KDFC‘s brand from Entercom, as well as the licenses for KUSF 90.3 FM and KNDL in that way. The article states,

“USC advanced the group $10.5 million to buy the station’s intellectual property and to purchase two stations from the University of San Francisco and Howell Mountain Broadcasting Co. to carry the signal. KUSC is raising capital to repay the loan. Entercom kept KDFC’s stronger signal, which it uses to simulcast a classic rock station from San Jose.”

The article doesn’t delve into the impact that some of these deals have had on student radio stations that have been sold off by universities (namely KUSF), but it alludes to the benefits seen by the sellers. According to the piece,

“Public broadcasters may not have the same appetite for consolidation as a large commercial group. The number of stations held by universities provides fodder for more transactions. A school’s board may decide that it does not want to be in the radio business and could otherwise deploy capital. ‘They can take that money and put it into building dorms,’ Public Radio Capital’s [Marc] Hand said.”

Certainly at USF, where dorm space was desperately needed, the re-purposing of KUSF’s old home for dorm space probably carried wide appeal among administrators. Another similar deal (the purchase of Rice University’s KTRU FM by University of Houston) wasn’t mentioned in this story, but when the plan to sell the license was announced, there was chatter about proceeds from the sale helping to fund the construction a new cafeteria.

The post Classical Radio Station Deals Hint at Consolidation in Public Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai visited Pittsburgh’s historic KDKA-AM on Tuesday, meeting with the Pittsburgh Radio Broadcasters’ Rountable. KDKA is the first commercial station in the US, and Pai reflected on Pittsburgh radio history as he told the roundtable that radio regulations are “overdue for an overhaul.”

Pai reiterated his support for the revitalization of the AM band, saying that he has called for an “AM Radio Revitalization Initiative” at the FCC. He also noted “very productive discussions” with acting chairwoman of the FCC Mignon Clyburn on the issue and expressed hope that there will be progress “in the coming months.”

Amongst the proposals that broadcasters have suggested is one made by a CBS Radio Vice President to convert the AM band to all digital, using HD Radio. None other than Clear Channel told Pai in May that such a move, especially with a set deadline, would be “challenging.” Another proposal is giving AM stations more FM translator repeater stations.

In the end, Pai told the Pittsburgh broadcasters that, "the FCC should look at all these proposals and post these to the public and see what sticks.”

Pai also cited the FCC’s “contest rule” as a regulation in need of revision. That rule requires stations to make periodic announcements detailing the rules of all on-air contests they run. He said that making these boring announcments doesn’t make sense “in today’s point-and-click world, where listeners would rather go to a webpage to read the contest rules if they want to read them at all.”

At the end of his prepared remarks Pai also expressed his opinion that the Commission needs to complete its Quadrennial Review of media ownership rules, begun in 2010. He said that it is “unacceptable” that the review is not finished, and called for elimination of the newspaper-radio cross-ownership rule altogether. That rule, though mostly toothless in its current incarnation, places some restrictions on the co-ownership of newspapers and radio stations by the same company in a single market.

Pai went on to say that “if you think that the combination of a newspaper and a radio station poses a real threat to competition and diversity, then I have one of Pittsburgh’s 446 bridges that I’d like to sell you.”

Given that the FCC is down to only three commissioners–a full slate is five–with an acting chair, it’s unlikely that the Commission will be moving on the ownership rules soon. AM radio may be a sufficiently uncontroversial topic that Commissioner Clyburn would be willing to set those wheels in motion before the commission is full again. Nevertheless, unless Clyburn and Pai are willing to take repsonsibility for ramming through new AM rules, one shouldn’t expect any sort of resolution before two new commissioners are seated.

The full text of Pai’s prepared remarks are available at the FCC website [PDF].

The post FCC Commissioner Pai advocates AM revitalization and radio regs revision during Pittsburgh visit appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Randy Michaels / Sam Zell

I had intended to post about this last week, but dealing with some website stability issues, and then moving our site to a new host, kept me from getting this up. But the article series is so good and well researched that it deserves a look.

The Chicago Tribune practiced a bit of self-analysis last week, publishing a four-part series about its parent company’s bankruptcy and other misadventures that followed Sam Zell’s highly leveraged acquisition of the Tribune Company in 2007.

Tribune owns only one radio station, Chicago’s WGN-AM, and is more highly invested in other so-called “old” media: newspapers and television. While the story doesn’t fail to document how the precipitous decline in ad revenue didn’t make things any easier, the mountain of exotic debt used to leverage Zell’s purchase of the company is the primary culprit.

Of particular interest is part 4 of the series, which takes on the culture clash that happened at the company, especially as a result of Zell installing ex-Clear Channel chief Randy Michaels as the CEO of Tribune.

Michaels, one might recall, was the mastermind of Jacor, which launched the careers of Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura, and was financed by Zell. Jacor would then get acquired by Clear Channel, putting Michaels in charge of its acquire-and-liquidate strategy to build up its empire that once counted some 1200 stations.

The article titled, “Culture Shock,” documents just how poor a fit Michaels and his cronies were with the culture and legacy of Tribune, observing,

“Instead of fostering innovation among current employees, Michaels brought in a coterie of his colleagues from the radio industry who could not deliver the innovative breakthroughs the company needed. In short, Zell and Michaels never bothered to understand the workplace they were trying to remake, which should be job one in corporate culture change.”

Less than a year after Michaels took over as CEO, he resigned, in October 2010 . This happened after New York Times media correspondent David Carr reported how Michaels was running the company headquarters like an 80s teen comedy frathouse, full of “sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective.”

It does not appear to be a coincidence at all how the article’s characterization of Michaels’ entrance at Tribune also applies to his next misadventure:

“What happened next could be seen as a case study of how to squander an opportunity at reinvention.”

After taking his leave from Tribune Michaels started a new radio company, Merlin Media, buying up stations in Chicago and New York City. His highly touted, but ill-conceived, “FM News” experiment in both cities came to a close this past July, after both stations sank to the bottom of the ratings.

The post Chicago Tribune chronicles Sam Zell’s and Randy Michaels’ mismanagement appeared first on Radio Survivor.

KUSF Rally April 2011 (Photo: J. Waits)

With 2012 drawing to a close, there’s a new twist in the nearly two-year-old saga of KUSF 90.3 FM. Although the FCC has approved the license assignment from University of San Francisco (USF) to Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN), various appeals are ongoing.

Former KUSF listener Ted Hudacko, who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request more than a year ago, just got word that the FCC is recommending the release of a document (a privilege log) that USF and CPRN have been shielding. In a December 21, 2012 memorandum, the FCC denies USF and CPRN’s “request for confidential treatment” and denies USF’s application for review. If USF does not seek judicial review within 10 days, the FCC will “direct the Media Bureau to produce the privilege log to Mr. Hudacko.”

Hudacko had previously filed a petition to deny the KUSF license assignment as well as a motion to dismiss and an application for review. Following the University of San Francisco (USF) station’s shut-down in January, 2011 and subsequent lease agreement with KDFC operator Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN), USF’s license assignment application was met with scrutiny by the FCC. In a June, 2011 letter of inquiry, the FCC sought additional documentation from USF and CPRN in order to evaluate the legality of the lease and purchase of 90.3 FM. Part of the letter also stated instructions in regard to confidential information. The letter stated,

“If either party withholds any information or Documents under claim of privilege, it shall submit, together with any claim of privilege, a schedule of the items withheld that states, individually as to each such item, the numbered inquiry to which each item responds and the type, title, specific subject matter, and date of the item; the names, addresses, positions, and organizations of all authors and recipients of the item; and the specific ground(s) for claiming that the item is privileged.”

In response to the letter of inquiry, USF requested that the FCC limit the scope of documents required. Despite objections by Friends of KUSF and Ted Hudacko (who had both filed petitions to deny the license assignment), this request was granted. Following the production of the documents in response to the letter of inquiry, Hudacko submitted a FOIA request in November, 2011 asking for copies of  “all documents submitted by University of San Francisco and Classical Public Radio Network as their Joint Response to the Commission’s June 28, 2011 administrative Inquiry in the matter of the KUSF-FM license transfer and which information has improperly been asserted as confidential by USF and CPRN.” As Hudacko pointed out in his FOIA request, as a petitioner he was provided with a redacted copy of the letter of inquiry response. His copy did not include 5 items which USF and CPRN asked for confidential treatment on, including salary information for USF and CPRN employees, donor and underwriting documentation for USF, donation and underwriting documentation for CPRN, and a privilege log.

According to the Memorandum Opinion and Order (PDF) released by the FCC on December 21, the FCC is affirming its earlier decision to allow the release of a privilege log that University of San Francisco is attempting to keep private. Although Hudacko’s initial request to have a privilege log released was granted by the FCC earlier this year, USF appealed that decision. The FCC’s memorandum from December 21 states:

“…the University of San Francisco (University) has filed an Application for Review challenging the Bureau’s decision to release a ‘privilege log’ submitted by the University in response to a Letter of Inquiry (LOI) from the Bureau. We find that the privilege log is an agency record subject to the FOIA, and that the University did not demonstrate that the log is a confidential attorney-client communication that can be withheld under FOIA Exemption. We therefore affirm the Bureau’s decision.”

The FCC denied USF/CPRN’s request for confidential treatment of the privilege log and denied USF’s application for review. According to the memo, “University of San Francisco may seek judicial review of this action pursuant…If University of San Francisco does not seek a judicial stay within ten (10) working days of the date of release of this memorandum opinion and order, we direct the Media Bureau to produce the privilege log to Mr. Hudacko.”

When I spoke with Hudacko over email today, he told me that he wanted to express “grateful appreciation to Chairman Genachowski and the four Commissioners who participated in reaching this decision on my FOIA request.” When I asked him about the specific implications of the privilege log, he told me, “As to the privilege log and USF’s efforts to shield it, the aphorism goes ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’  I look forward to reading and sharing it, then awaiting the Commission’s decision on our Applications for Review of the license transfer.”

The post FCC Affirms Decision to Allow Release of Privilege Log from KUSF Letter of Inquiry appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Family Radio to Sell off WFTI (Photo: J. Waits)

Family Stations, which owns and operates a network of Christian radio stations under the branding Family Radio, is in the midst of completing another sale of a station in its network. Last week the FCC granted the assignment of WFTI 91.7 FM in St. Petersburg, Florida to another religious broadcaster, Radio Training Network. Family Radio will receive $2.5 million for the sale. Radio Training Network plans to use the station as an outlet for the Christian contemporary music format The Joy FM, which is aired on their other stations throughout Florida. Radio Training Network owns 19 radio stations in Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama and has permits for two other stations.

This sale is the latest in a series of sales of other major Family Radio stations. Most recently, Family Stations is awaiting FCC approval for the assignment of powerful WFME 94.7 FM in Newark, New Jersey to NY Radio Assets (an affiliate of Cumulus). As part of the pending asset exchange agreement, Family Stations would be paid $40 million and will acquire the license for WDVY 106.3 FM in Mount Kisco, New York (currently a country music station) from Cumulus Broadcasting. Additional stipulations in the agreement allow for the possibility that Family Stations could be paid up to $10 million more if Cumulus relocates WFME to the New York City area.

Earlier this year, the sale of WKDN 106.9 FM in the Philadelphia area to Merlin Media garnered $22.5 million for Family Radio and the sale of WFSI 107.9 FM in Maryland to CBS earned the network $8.5 million.

An announcement by Family Radio President Harold Camping posted on the Family Radio website explains the financial struggles being faced by the network and also references Family Radio’s reluctance to ask for listener donations in light of the big campaign leading up to the uneventful Judgment Day on May 21, 2011. Camping writes:

“The decision to sell WFME-FM was very painful and difficult. However, God provided no other option. Either we sell WFME or go off the air completely. We held off on this decision for over a year, hoping God would provide other means of solving this present financial situation. Some may ask, why did we not inform our listeners of our situation sooner? My answer to this is that, given the present state of the economy, and the sacrifices many gave for the May 21 warning, it would not be kind nor proper to ask our listeners to dig deeper into their already-depleted pockets for more help.

Although there’s much chatter about the latest end of the world predictions based on the Mayan calendar, Family Radio’s website gives no indication that the network is concerned with selecting a date for the world’s demise ever again. Back in March, Camping stated that, “Family Radio has no interest in even considering another date. God has humbled us through the events of May 21, to continue to even more fervently search the Scriptures (the Bible), not to find dates, but to be more faithful in our understanding.”

The post FCC Grants License Assignment for WFTI from Family Radio to Radio Training Network appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This is what consolidation looks like.

Industry veteran Jerry DelColliano called it: hundreds of Clear Channel employees, including management like program directors and on-air talent, received pink slips Thursday. DelColliano also thinks that this move is anticipation of a possible merger.

News of firings has come in from Clear Channel stations in Tampa, Denver, Detroit, Chicago, Orlando, Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Seattle, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Austin, Cleveland and Columbus, OH. All Access has been keeping a running tab of all the staff who have been terminated, working off of emailed tips in addition to press reports.

Clear Channel is saddled with $10 billion in debt that was rung up in part during the company’s decade-long buying spree triggered by the deregulation of radio ownership that came with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. $8.2 billion of that is bank debt that is due in January 2016, a deadline that many analysts believe the company will miss, given current earnings projections.

While the company may face bankruptcy, right now the ones suffering are the staff who lost their jobs and the listeners who enjoyed their programming.

My opinion on this is clear. Clear Channel’s debt and these firings are not primarily due to the decline of the radio industry. They are the result of massive consolidation fueled by debt, that treated radio stations like interchangeable parcels of land and commodities to wring every cent out of, not build a sustainable broadcast business. Before ownership deregulation permitted a Clear Channel, there was no radio company big enough to fire this many people. That’s why folks are opposed to the FCC permitting even more consolidation.

The post Clear Channel says Happy Holidays with mass firings nationwide appeared first on Radio Survivor.

It’s an increasingly rare thing to find a station that has maintained its format (and call letters) for more than a decade, nevermind 40 years. This week Chicago commercial rock station WXRT

begins celebrating its fortieth year on air with something called “40 years in 40 days.” Starting Monday, each day the station is highlighting a different year from XRT’s lifetime, featuring music, interviews and other archive content from that year.

I’ve written before about how WXRT is one of my favorite commercial stations, in part because the station still airs programming that recalls the best aspects of stoned-out, home-taper 70s progressive rock radio, like the commercial-free concerts that air every Sunday night. A Gen Xer like me could tune in on a weekend and easily think he’s been transported back to the 80s or 90s as he hears local specialty programs like Breakfast with the Beatles, Saturday Morning Flashback and Local Anesthetic. In fact, when the station’s rock format debuted in ’72 it was nighttime-only, with the daypart broadcasting ethnic and foreign-language programming. It wasn’t until 1976 that the early bird or night owl could both enjoy progressive rock 24 hours a day.

The survival of WXRT as a rock station with live DJs and a programming ethic consistent with its foundational roots is all the more exceptional given that the station was bought by Westinghouse in 1995, the year before the devastating Communications Act of 1996, whose radio deregulation midwifed the massive consolidation that rapidly sucked the life out of commercial radio. The year of the Act delivered the newly legal merger of Westinghouse and CBS, which brought WXRT into the Infinity Broadcasting, then CBS Radio roster.

I am impressed that CBS has seen fit to keep WXRT largely intact, even as other stations became more tightly playlisted and automated. We’d like to hear from Radio Survivor readers about your favorite commercial stations that have maintained, rather than diluted, even as the waters of consolidation rushed around them. Tell us in the comments.

The post Chicago’s WXRT celebrates 40 years serving up an increasingly rare format appeared first on Radio Survivor.

KDFC Expands Range in SF Bay Area

The ongoing broadcasts of Classical KDFC in the San Francisco Bay Area have been made possible by a complicated series of transactions involving both commercial and non-commercial radio entities.

Today the KDFC brand is owned by Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN), although its broadcasts also appear on stations that are owned by University of Southern California (USC).

In a recent FCC filing, more details about the relationship between CPRN and USC are revealed. On June 18, 2012, paperwork was submitted to the FCC in order to transfer CPRN’s 90.3 FM Los Gatos translator to USC. In that filing, a “Bay Area Stations Operations” agreement spells out the role of each entity.

The document explains that CPRN will own and operate KDFC (Angwin, CA) and KUSF (San Francisco, CA) and that USC will own and operate KCNL (Sunnyvale, CA) and the Los Gatos translator. It states, “The parties acknowledge that this translator is currently licensed to CPRN, but was paid for and will be transferred to USC (subject to FCC approval).”

CPRN purchased the Los Gatos translator from Pataphysical Broadcasting Foundation (owner of Santa Cruz community radio station KUSP) earlier this year and the transfer of that Los Gatos translator was approved in March, 2012. CPRN is now hoping to transfer ownership of the translator to USC. Paperwork filed with the FCC indicates that no “financial consideration” will be provided to CPRN for the transfer of the license for the translator.

Additionally, the agreement explains that CPRN and USC-owned stations in the San Francisco Bay area may “simulcast the same programming,” “conduct joint fundraising campaigns,” and “share operating expenses.”

Here’s a quick recap of who’s who in the KDFC/KUSF landscape:

University of Southern California (USC): USC is the owner of public radio classical stations all over California, including flagship station KUSC. USC is also 90% owner of Classical Public Radio Network.

Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN): CPRN is a non-profit that was formerly focused on syndicated classical music services. Today it is 90% owned by USC and 10% owned by SF Classical LLC (which is 100% owned by Public Radio Capital). CPRN purchased KUSF (renamed KOSC) and KNDL (renamed KDFC), as well as branding for KDFC.

KDFC 102.1 FM (now KUZX): From 1946 until January, 2011, the KDFC call letters referred to the frequency 102.1 FM in San Francisco. Entercom took ownership of the station in 2008 and ran it as a commercial classical music station. In January 2011, the KDFC branding was transferred to Classical Public Radio Network and Entercom retained the frequency. The call letters for 102.1 FM were changed to KUZX and 102.1 now airs a simulcast of Entercom’s rock station KUFX.

KUSF 90.3 FM (now KOSC): College radio station owned by University of San Francisco and leased to Classical Public Radio Network for use in simulcasting KDFC’s classical music programming beginning in January 2011. Renamed KOSC after license transfer to CPRN was approved in June 2012. The sale has been contentious and due to formal complaints filed by KUSF supporters, an FCC investigation was launched. Although the FCC approved the license transfer, a consent decree ordered that CPRN and USF pay a collective fine of $50,000 for misdeeds related to the license transfer.

KNDL 89.9 FM (now KDFC): Religious broadcaster in Angwin, California known as “The Candle.” Howell Mountain Broadcasting sold KNDL along with two translator stations (89.7 FM in Eureka and 92.5 FM in Ukiah-Lakeport) to Classical Public Radio Network in January, 2011 for $2,725,000. When the FCC approved the license transfer, the call letters were changed to KDFC and the station now airs a classical music format.

KCNL 104.9 FM (now KXSC): Commercial radio station licensed in Sunnyvale, California. Principle Broadcasting, which had owned the license after purchasing it from Clear Channel in 2010, aired brokered Spanish language programming. KCNL’s license was sold to University of Southern California in May, 2012 and the call letters were changed to KXSC. The station was converted to non-commercial status after it was sold and now airs classical music programming from KDFC.

KUSF.org: The online-only radio station at University of San Francisco. Shortly after KUSF 90.3 FM was handed over to KDFC programmers in January 2011, KUSF.org resumed broadcasts with fewer DJs. In May 2011, the studio was dismantled and since that time, KUSF.org has been running a regularly updated, yet DJ-less, automated playlist of music. A new studio is being built and live DJs should resume broadcasts by the fall semester.

KUSF in Exile: An online-only radio station broadcasting from Lightrail Studios in San Francisco. KUSF in Exile‘s stream is being hosted by New Jersey community radio station WFMU. Many former KUSF DJs volunteer at KUSF in Exile.

Friends Of KUSF: Established in 2001 in order to help KUSF with fundraising, this is one of the entities that filed a Petition to Deny with the FCC following the transfer of the KUSF license to CPRN.

San Francisco Community Radio, Inc. (SFCR): A non-profit formed in 2011 and focused on the future of KUSF. Its main goal is to “establish and operate an FCC-licensed broadcast radio station providing cultural, informational and news programming that represents and serves the diverse communities of San Francisco, CA, and the greater San Francisco Bay Area,” according to SFCR Secretary Carolyn Keddy.

Save KUSF: On the day that KUSF 90.3 was shut down (January 18, 2011), the public volunteer group Save KUSF was formed. SaveKUSF.org, the Save KUSF Facebook page, and listserv have been used to build awareness about the details of the pending KUSF sale and legal fight. Supporters have organized fundraising events, collaborated with WFMU to establish KUSF in Exile, and have publicized details of the KUSF transaction and its connection to broader trends in college radio. According to SFCR’s Carolyn Keddy, Save KUSF is an overarching group that can be viewed as a “rallying cry.” She added, “It is a goal, not an organization.”

The post Classical KDFC Maps Future as Los Gatos Translator Transfers to USC appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The New KBLX

On June 21, the FCC approved the assignment of the radio license for Berkeley-based KBLX 102.9 FM from the bankrupt Inner City Broadcasting‘s subsidiary Urban Radio III to Entercom.

This sale marks the loss of yet another black-owned radio station. KBLX had featured a music format focused on R&B and smooth jazz under the brand “The Quiet Storm” and Entercom has stated that it will continue to air a similar urban music format, although it has already instituted a number of programming changes under the brand “The New R&B 102.9FM KBLX.”

Entercom took control of the KBLX frequency on May 1 under a lease agreement. By May 7, they had instituted some programming changes, including replacing KBLX’s local morning show with the syndicated Steve Harvey Morning Show. By mid-June, Entercom had hired new Program Director Stacy Cunningham to replace long-time Program Director (and host) Kevin Brown.

Listeners have expressed dismay over these changes and an online petition protests the firing of several key KBLX staffers and implores Entercom to bring Kevin Brown back to the morning show.

As Matthew Lasar pointed out in his recent post about the state of black radio, changes to the New York radio landscape prompted radio advocates to send a letter to the FCC expressing concerns about media consolidation and the dwindling number of black-owned radio stations.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, similar questions were raised by Rachel Swan in her piece about KBLX in the East Bay Express. Swan writes that the sale,

“…could also be a sign of devastation for black radio. KBLX’s former owner, Inner City Media Corporation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after creditors claimed the company owed $254 million, according to reports from New American Media. The company had owned 15 stations, 6 of which were geared to African-American audiences. That led broadcast watchdogs to question whether stations can sustain a profit margin by offering ‘urban’ programming, which warrants consideration in the Bay Area, where similarly-formatted smooth jazz station, 103.7 FM, saw its demise in 2009 — it’s now owned by Clear Channel and plays classic rock, exclusively.”

Harrison Chastang also writes about the changes at KBLX on BeyondChron and laments the firing of KBLX’s morning show host Kevin Brown (who was replaced by syndicated host Steve Harvey). Chastang writes,

“There are less than 200 Black owned commercial radio stations in the United States out of a total of 12,000 commercial stations. The sale of KBLX to Entercom and the firing of Kevin Brown comes as the National Association of Broadcasters seeks further deregulation of the broadcast industry that will allow the major broadcast companies to own even more stations in major markets.

The question Kevin Brown fans, and radio listeners in general need to ask Congress and the FCC is has deregulation of the broadcast industry increased the number of African Americans on the air or the number of non-White and female station owners, and will further deregulation increase or decrease the number of people like Kevin Brown on the air or increase Black radio station ownership?”

The situation at KBLX raises questions about the future of its format after the sale of KBLX to Entercom is finalized. Will KBLX continue to evolve under its new owners or will it remain true to its roots? Additionally, will the loss of another black-owned station help to increase scrutiny of the impact of media consolidation?

The post Berkeley Urban Radio Station KBLX Sold to Entercom appeared first on Radio Survivor.

SiriusXM announced positive first quarter results on Tuesday, with the number of subscribers growing to an all time high of 22.3 million. The company also said that its retaining 45% of subscribers who got a trial subscription with the purchase of a new satellite radio equipped car. Its stock (SIRI) price jumped a bit–from $2.26 to $2.31 a share–after the announcement, but then slipped to $2.23 by the close of Tuesday’s trading. On Wednesday it closed at $2.25.

SiriusXM has been fighting off a takeover attempt by 40% owner Liberty Media. In March Liberty petitioned the FCC to take control of the company, and SiriusXM fired back, telling the FCC that a 40% share does not add up to a majority stake.

The satellite radio company has also been fighting off a lawsuit filed by its most expensive talent, Howard Stern. The veteran shock jock claims that SiriusXM refused to pay $300 million in promised stock awards, but the suit was thrown out two weeks ago. Stern is now appealing the ruling.

Finally, CNet recently reported that the newest version of SiriusXM’s iPhone and Android has seen one of the most popular features cut back. The company has touted the app’s ability to rewind up to 5 hours of programming from favorite stations. But with the just-released version 2.0.2 the feature is unavailable for some stations, in particular some talk and news stations. According to the SiriusXM twitter feed, “In some cases, with our News channels, our ability to offer Start Now is restricted by third parties & our contracts with them.”

The post SiriusXM sees strong 1st quarter amid minor turmoil appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Corporate FM Premieres tonight

At Radio Survivor we obsess about radio consolidation every day of the year, but this topic isn’t pervasive across mainstream popular culture. Because of that, I was excited to hear about a new film, Corporate FM, which delves into the “downfall of commercial FM.” The movie premieres tonight at 8:30pm at the Kansas City Film Fest and will play at the festival again tomorrow (Saturday, April 14 at 3:45pm).

The film chronicles changes to the commercial radio industry following a lift on ownership caps in the late 1990s. It argues that corporate radio consolidation has led to a loss of local owners and local content on radio, which in turn has hurt communities.

To get more insight into the impetus for the film, I spoke with director Kevin McKinney over email. In our conversation he explains why he thinks that commercial radio has let down local communities. He points out that commercial radio has the potential to reach many more listeners than both community and college radio and argues that these non-commercial stations (and LPFM) can’t “fill the void” left by changes to commercial radio. McKinney says, “If an entire city is to be connected, there have to be commercial stations with a staff who can listen to their community and present it back to them.”

Jennifer Waits: What inspired you to make the film?

Kevin McKinney: I got the initial idea to make this film because it seemed ludicrous that a station could fire its listeners and then somehow profit.  If all the stations were losing listeners from their declining quality of programming, how could these stations sell for more and more?   The inspiration came when I realized that the people on the inside were fighting to be local but losing to the financial overlords that now owned the stations.

Waits: Does college/community radio make an appearance in the film?

McKinney: The film is about the downfall of commercial FM.  I believe that community radio, college radio and even NPR do not fill the void that was left when we lost commercial radio as a medium to support the community, because these stations do not have the same audience.  If an entire city is to be connected, there have to be commercial stations with a staff who can listen to their community and present it back to them.  By cutting back to only one or two people running an entire station, there is no room for audience interaction.

I did interview community and college stations to help me tell this story.  I wanted to show what the soul of a community through the medium of radio really looks like.  We see some of KJHK in Lawrence, Kansas as well as KKFI, a community radio station in Kansas City, Missouri.

Waits: Do you see a connection between consolidation in commercial radio and consolidation in public radio?

McKinney: Everyone is reading the same trades.  And because of that they are all prisoners of conventional wisdom that is INCORRECT.  The consultants who tell Clear Channel to abandon the term “radio” in their name also tell NPR to do the same.  It’s idiotic for NPR because it shows a lack of confidence in radio as a medium, after 40+ years of branding.  It also confuses their listeners into thinking that by supporting public “media” that they are also supporting PBS or that the terrestrial signal does not matter anymore. The worst part of this is that it perpetuates the lie that the internet can replace radio. 

Radio is powerful because it is the only infrastructure that reaches everybody in a community free and effortlessly. I’m hoping the new CEO of NPR will understand its power outside of other forms of media and change the name back to National Public Radio.  It would be a smart move because the terrestrial signal is the one thing that makes radio unique. The term “media” is vague, and it’s obvious that every business also has a multi-media web page now.  That thinking is sooo 2000.

Waits: Why is live, local radio important?

McKinney: ‘Live and local’ is important because without it, radio is no better than the internet or satellite radio. It’s what makes radio relevant.  But the most important reason for live and local is that radio is the only medium in which an entire city can hear itself. Imagine if you could not hear yourself think. How would you develop? This process of hearing ourselves think is how we understand larger more complex ideas. Radio can germinate ideas in the collective heart/brain of a city. Commercial DJs are often told to keep their speaking to 15 seconds or less because research (Arbitron) shows that listeners prefer music. They have to squeeze in the station ID in that time too. That point alone is killing local charities. Gone are the personal stories from the DJ’s own experience that would motivate the larger audience beyond the core givers.

Waits: Are you a radio activist?

McKinney: I think when you say “activist” the common image is of a grungy hippy who only cares about LPFM. I love LPFM on its own but I do not think it is an answer or excuse for commercial radio to suck. Any “penny whistle” sized signal is too small to do what commercial FM should be doing.  It has potential in high density populations in a large city or for religious compounds in the countryside, but I don’t see it unifying a large enough population to shape and establish a unique style of a city’s music and culture. I’m an advocate for giving our cities the power to create a critical mass behind local movements and new ideas.

Waits: Anything else?

McKinney: We are taking this message on the road to film festivals and independent theaters.  We believe that the local movement needs its collective megaphone back.  We are doing a Kickstarter to fund distribution expenses and purchase NPR underwriting along the way.

The post Corporate FM Premieres at Kansas City Film Fest appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Friday the 900 lb. gorilla of commercial radio announced that it is changing its name to Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, striking the word “radio” from its name. Even though the company still owns 850 terrestrial broadcast stations–down from its post-1996 height of 1200–Clear Channel is trying to emphasize its belated focus on the internet, seen most clearly with its recently refreshed iHeartRadio platform.

My most cynical response is that the name change represents nothing new; Clear Channel hasn’t really been in the radio business for more than a decade. Rather, the company was in the broadcast real estate business, buying up stations and repackaging them into clusters in order to reduce staffing and other costs. In the short term it was a wildly successful strategy from a profit standpoint, because it’s a ruthlessly simple formula: radically cut costs while keeping revenues mostly static. However, it wasn’t a sustainable approach because it also resulted in diluting the product–the programming itself–which listeners couldn’t help but notice, as they jumped ship to new competing platforms.

At the same time, I think it is true that the company’s shift in strategy really is a turn away from traditional radio, but at radio’s expense. By comparison, National Public Radio has used its internet platforms to compliment and court new listeners to its programming, on the air and online. While programming ostensibly is the product offered up in iHeartRadio, the overwhelming sameness of it all is rather striking. Sure there are dozens of active rock stations to choose from, but the distance between their sound and playlists can be measured in millimeters.

Now it is true that Clear Channel is actually a significant radio content company with its ownership of Premiere Radio Networks, home to such highly lucrative programs as Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s. And while you can listen to these programs by tuning in live broadcast streams from affiliate stations on iHeartRadio, there’s no way to listen at another time. Furthermore, iHeartRadio doesn’t provide a schedule for these stations so you know when to tune it. Sure, you can subscribe to on demand access to Rush or Hannity on their respective websites, but I argue that’s a scattershot approach. First, it limits the audience to the more dedicated, rather than casual listeners. Second, it takes place outside of iHeartRadio, fracturing the platform’s value as a one-stop shop for Clear Channel radio content.

The even more telling aspect of Clear Channel’s move away from radio as we know it is its Total Traffic Network which delivers real-time traffic reports over its stations’ HD channels. Why is this not a radio service? Because one of its primary purposes is to feed traffic data to navigation devices like Garmins and TomToms, not radios. In effect, this is a step towards making stations more valuable for the spectrum they occupy rather than the programming that they can deliver.

This isn’t to say that I believe Clear Channel is abandoning radio. Rather, it’s clear that Clear Channel is continuing to move away from relying on profiting from individual station revenues towards seeing stations as a nationwide commodity where local programming is more of an obligation than a raison d’être. I don’t see the company reinvesting in programming at local stations so much as using them as resources to create new data services and outlets to push national programming brands as consolidated under the iHeartRadio banner. This can be seen no more clearly than in the massive layoffs of on-air talent that Clear Channel imposed last October.

The change from Clear Channel Radio to Clear Channel Media and Entertainment is consolidation 2.0. For the sake of true local service and innovative programming, we could only wish that Clear Channel were actually leaving radio.

The post They can take the radio out of Clear Channel (but that won’t take Clear Channel out of radio) appeared first on Radio Survivor.

It is once more into the breach for Former Listeners of KGO, still furious over the Cumulus owned AM station dumping a slew of popular talk show hosts on December 1. The group has announced its second demonstration in front of the station’s studios: 900 Front Street in San Francisco.

KGO protest; San Francisco; 12/15/2011

The first was held two weeks ago (we were there; photo on right). Now the protesters say they will hold a candlelight vigil on Friday, December 30, at 5 pm, and collect food donations for the Bayview-Hunter’s Point YMCA Food Pantry. “The food donations are being made in honor of Ray Taliaferro, legendary bay area broadcaster who was fired on December 1 along with other well known radio personalities at KGO,” the Facebook press release says. “Mr. Taliaferro was born and raised in the Hunter’s Point neighborhood and had worked at KGO radio for decades.”

According to a Former Listener member, Taliaferro will be there himself. He was on KSCO  AM in Santa Cruz earlier this month, and in high dudgeon. The show started with KSCO’s Kay Zwerling offering some praise for Donald Trump’s ideas, especially his opposition to the Obama administration’s health care reforms.

Taliaferro was asked to respond.

“I think anyone who pays attention to Donald Trump is ridiculous, stupid, unknowing, absolutely ridiculous,” he began. “What the hell has Donald Trump done for poor people? What has he done to try to make sure to help the people that I grew up with, I grew up poor in Hunter’s Point?”

“Why on earth are people so stupid in the United States of America that they’ve got to come with a commentary like that?” Taliaferro demanded. The exchange got quite heated. Perhaps Taliaferro will have more to say about these larger issues at the Friday demonstration.

Radio Survivor readers are reporting that various dismissed KGO folk have found jobs elsewhere. One comment says that Len Tillem and Gene Burns have landed new DJ work at Clear Channel’s KKSF (910 AM), beginning January 3rd. Len’s show will run from 3-4 PM. Gene Burns show will follow from 4-7 PM. We contacted Clear Channel to confirm this, but have received no reply.

Noah Shanock from Stitcher Radio also posted an invitation:

We at Stitcher Radio were saddened to hear of KGO’s recent decision to remove their talk programming content. KGO’s change in formatting is lamentable, both for our community and for the outlook of terrestrial talk radio. We believe that some of the most interesting and engaging content on the radio are talk shows, and are fully committed to providing the best platform for talk shows to reach and engage their listeners online. We’d love to have these great talk shows on Stitcher and have reached out to each of the hosts who were laid off – offering up our San Francisco recording studio for free, no strings attached – where they can record live Internet radio streams and podcasts.

The commentary notes that Stitcher provided air time to the morning show duo Fernando and Greg “back in 2009 under similar circumstances.” Their program on Energy 92.7 FM in San Francisco was cancelled following the station’s sale.

And KSCO has been trying to recruit former KGO staff, among them Dr. Bill Wattenburg, who hosted KSCO’s Good Morning Monterey Bay AM Drive for a week this month.

The post Bereft KGO talk radio fans gear up for second demo appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Clear Channel may have been too focused on scarfing up stations in the early 2000s to construct anything resembling an internet strategy, but the company has been making up for lost time with its iHeartRadio service. When it went live in 2008 it was primarily a site and mobile app to provide access to the live streams of Clear Channel stations. Since then iHeartRadio has morphed into a competitor to the likes of Pandora and last.fm, especially with the addition of custom stations in September which provide Pandora-like experience of music based upon a seed song.

Back in September Clear Channel promised that the stations would be commercial free through the end of the year. This week the company announced that they will stay commercial-free through April 1, 2012.

This is obviously a move intended to lure Pandora and last.fm listeners who want to avoid the free services’ commercials, in addition to hooking users already using iHeartRadio to catch terrestrial stations. However, when a Pandora user jumps ship she also loses the stations she has created and all the curating she’s invested by giving tracks the thumbs-up or thumbs-down. That user investment is one of the things that keeps Pandora users loyal, though a new user to iHeartRadio can make the same investment in Clear Channel’s platform.

Working in Clear Channel’s favor is that if a listener tires of her custom stations she can easily navigate to a broadcast station–that will have plenty of commercials–or one of iHeartRadio’s curated or themed stations, like CBGB Radio or Eagles Radio.

I must admit to being a strong critic of Clear Channel and the destruction it wreaked on the radio industry through its consolidation strategy that hemorrhaged staff and homogenized programming across the country. So there definitely is a part of me that wants to find fault with iHeartRadio, on principle, if nothing else.

But after spending the better part of the week listening to the service I must be honest and give it due credit. It’s kind of a jack-of-all-trades for internet radio listening. It offers a lot of options, even if none of them are class leading. But, as I’ll explain, the sound quality of iHeartRadio is probably its weakest attribute.

The customized stations work like last.fm or Pandora. Feed it a song seed and iHeartRadio starts serving up similar artists and songs. One aspect I like is the “Station Control” feature which lets you decide whether you’re interested in hearing more familiar artists or “more discovery” which plays artists you are less likely to have heard before. When I first tried the custom station feature I wondered if I would be limited to artists actually played on Clear Channel stations. So I entered the 1980 Swiss experimental metal band Celtic Frost as a test. And quite dutifully iHeartRadio created a station full of extreme and harsh sounds that are rarely found on commercial radio.

However, the custom stations are more limited than Pandora’s because you can specify only the initial seed. By comparison Pandora lets you finely tune a station by adding additional artists and songs as seeds. So if you like the 70s power pop of Cheap Trick, you can further refine it by adding in the more ragged punk edge of the Replacements, for instance.

iHeartRadio’s curated channels remind me most of satellite radio, organized around a genre, such as hair metal, the music of a particular artist, or songs ostensibly chosen by an artist, like Radio Weezer. Of course the terrestrial stations on iHeartRadio are just that. I’m not sure how much the rock station in Waco, TX will differ from WZZO in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. But if it matters to you, then you have the choice.

Fidelity is what I find to be iHeartRadio’s greatest limitation. I’ve listened to the service on my iPhone, iPad and two different Mac laptops. At home I’ve used both my MacBook Pro’s built-in headphone jack and two different USB audio devices. Across all devices I found that the custom stations sound the best. While quality does vary some from song to song, overall fidelity is roughly equivalent to Pandora’s free service. In general that’s equivalent to a 128 kbps MP3 file, which is considered the minimum for decent sound.

By comparison, the custom stations all exhibited perceptibly lower quality sound that would indicate a lower bitrate is used. No matter the station I chose the high end exhibited the shimmery quality of a poorly encoded MP3. There’s an overall graininess to the sound that I find fatiguing when listening on headphones for more than 10 or 20 minutes. These deficiencies are quite audible over speakers, too, though less bothersome at low volumes.

The broadcast stations are all over the map, in terms of fidelity. While some approach the smoother quality of the custom stations, most had a compromised and grainy sound like the curated stations. However, I found most of the broadcast rock stations to be even more fatiguing than the curated stations due to the heavy compression and processing evident in these streams. Most mainstream commercial stations use compression and other sound processing to make their stations sound louder and stand out when a listener is scanning the dial. This comes at the expense of dynamics, as the volume of the sound varies very little, with much less change than you’d hear when listening to the original recording.

Listening to most broadcast stations on iHeartRadio with headphones was tiring after 10 minutes or less. In all cases my local analog and HDRadio broadcast signals sounded much better than their internet stream counterparts. In particular the treble was overly pronounced and distorted on the internet streams, while the broadcast signals sounded smoother and more natural to my ear.

I recognize that I’m probably more sensitive to sound quality than many listeners, however I’d frankly rather listen to a decent AM signal than have to hear many iHeartRadio stations over headphones for more than a half-hour. Using cheap computer speakers at low volume the fidelity limitations are less perceptible, and I’m certain that’s how many folks experience internet radio. But I think the sonic flaws of even the curated and genre stations are obvious enough for an average listener to recognize, especially if she compares it to the custom stations or a broadcast signal.

That said, I can see the appeal of having all of these options in one app. I’m not sure it’s enough to keep me from using Pandora, Spotify and other services. The field is getting pretty crowded, and while each service offers something unique, none of them is sufficient to take over the majority of my online listening time. I may be a freak that way, with tastes that run decidedly outside the mainstream. Then again, isn’t the promise of the internet supposed to be infinite choice?

I’m curious to know what Radio Survivor readers think about iHeartRadio and other internet radio services. Let us know in the comments.

The post Clear Channel ups the ante with 3 more months of commercial-free iHeartRadio custom stations appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On October 11, Clear Channel representative Lawrence Sidman met with FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus and Jessica Almond, Special Council to Commission Chair Julius Genachowski. According to the ex parte summary, Sidman maintained:

that the Commission can no longer reasonably justify retaining the AM/FM subcap provisions in light of the extremely significant technological developments and regulatory changes that have occurred in recent years, as well as the current state of the broadcast radio marketplace.  Moreover, based upon empirical data available as a result of Clear Channel’s previous station divestments, there is a high probability that repeal of the AM/FM subcap provisions will result in notably increased minority and female ownership of broadcast properties, a critically important and unfortunately all too elusive policy goal of the Commission.

Translation: thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC’s rules say that there’s no limit on the number of commercial stations a company can own nationally. That’s why Clear Channel presently holds about 800. But in “sub” markets like New York or Los Angeles (45+ stations), an entity can only own up to eight commercial licenses. Then the allowed number tapers down for lesser markets. In regions with 14 or fewer stations, an entity can own no more than five.

Clear Channel wants all those limits to go away.

The FCC is currently reviewing its media ownership rules. The comments in the proceeding, Clear Channel says, reflect “a broad cross-section of the radio industry, evidence the existence of a vibrant market for transactions that could enhance efforts to increase minority and female ownership and stimulate job growth and technological innovation in the radio industry were Commission to repeal the AM/FM subcaps.”

What does this mean? Probably that Clear Channel would like to sell some smaller radio stations and buy a bunch of bigger ones, but the FCC’s subcap rules gum up the plan. How casting them aside will “stimulate job growth” is unclear, given the layoffs that have just taken place in an already heavily deregulated market.

The post Clear Channel: laying off deejays; still pushing for deregulation appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I’m sure most Radio Survivor readers have already heard about the passing of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. Jobs will be rightly celebrated for how his company’s products, directed by his unique vision, changed the way most of us make and consume media. This includes radio.

Whether intentionally or not, the introduction of the iPod and iTunes in 2001 almost instantly created a fearsome challenge for traditional terrestrial radio. As the first elegant and user-friendly portable digital music player, the iPod helped create a perfect storm for the commercial radio industry, especially the nation’s largest radio owner, Clear Channel.

It’s easy to forget that at the turn of the century Clear Channel was riding high with mammoth profits brought on by its program of aggressive consolidation whereby the company vacuumed up stations, fired staff, and consolidated operations and programming in order to drive down costs. By 2001 the public had started to become wise to the fact that their local stations no longer sounded the same, with more repetition and fewer recognizably local personalities. As listeners started to tune out, Jobs’ Apple stepped in with a desirable alternative, the iPod.

Sure, folks had mobile CD and cassette players for years before the iPod. And many models of MP3 players had been on the market since the late 90s. But for most people the iPod offered the first user-friendly device that could supply 1,000 songs in a pocket-sized package.

Steve Jobs didn’t invent podcasting, but the integration of podcast management with iTunes in 2005 made the new medium accessible to new listeners who might never have sought out a specialized “podcatcher” application. The iTunes store almost instantly became the default directory for finding audio programming from across the web, which otherwise required many Google searches to sniff out.

While the iPod and iTunes are not exclusively responsible for the declining fortunes of commercial radio–I’d argue the industry deserves most of the blame–the impact of these technologies cannot be denied. So today I remember Steve Jobs for how he changed the landscape of radio and audio programming for the better, by making it easier and fun to find and listen to programming from around the world, helping to foster a whole new medium that sounds a lot like radio.

The post We remember Steve Jobs, who changed radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Thursday the Third Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a 2007 FCC decision that loosened rules restricting the co-ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations, known as the cross-ownership ban. At the end of that year the Kevin Martin-led FCC rushed through that last minute decision to erode the rule which generally prevented one company from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same broadcast market. The 2007 revision presumptively allowed a newspaper and either one television station or one radio station to be co-owned in the twenty largest markets in the country.

As it turns out, it was the FCC’s rush to judgement that the Court most objected to, finding,

In this context, we have little choice but to conclude that the FCC did not, through the FNPR [Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking], fulfill its “obligation to make its views known to the public in a concrete and focused form so as to make criticism or formulation of alternatives possible.”

What the FCC relied upon as its public notice was an Op-Ed written by Chairman Martin, which the Court observed did constitute sufficient notice under statute. Further weakening things was the fact that the proposal to weaken the cross-ownership rule,

was not published in the Federal Register, the views expressed were those of one person and not the Commission, and the Commission voted days after substantive responses were filed, allowing little opportunity for meaningful consideration of the responses before the final rule was adopted.

The Court also took the FCC to task for not adequately addressing how media ownership rule changes affect people of color and women .

The case was brought by a coalition of public interest groups comprised of the Prometheus Radio Project, Media Alliance, the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ and Free Press. Of the verdict Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the Media Access Project, who argued the case for Prometheus, said

We won on almost every point. This decision is a vindication of the public’s right to have a diverse media environment.

A larger group of media companies, including CBS Broadcasting, Gannet and Clear Channel, also brought suit arguing that the 2007 decision didn’t go far enough in eroding the cross-ownership ban and the FCC’s local media ownership rules. The Court sided against these parties, upholding the FCC’s existing local ownership limits on radio and TV stations.

The National Association of Broadcasters VP of Communications Dennis Wharton released a statement saying,

NAB believes that modest reform of rules to allow free and local broadcasters to compete successfully in a universe of national pay TV and radio platforms is warranted.”

Wharton, obviously, didn’t really address the ruling at all, probably because the prospects of further weakening media ownership rules is looking bleaker following the Third Circuit’s takedown of the last two go-rounds in 2003 and 2007.

Nevertheless, we’re all in for another go as the FCC digs in for another stab at reviewing ownership rules as part of the Congressionally-mandated biennial review process. This much is clear, it’s unlikely we’ll see another Kevin Martin-style freight train proceeding to try and force a broadcast-lobby-friendly rule change before anyone knows what hit them.

The post Appeals Court rejects weakened radio ownership rules appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Saving College Stations Panel at NFCB (Photo: J. Waits)

Of the many fine panels at the recent National Federation of Community Broadcasters’ conference (you can find our complete coverage here), the one that was closest to my heart was the “Saving College Stations” session (mp3) on Saturday, June 4.

As was the case at a similar panel at SXSW this year, the participants included representatives from stations in crisis as well as from an organization, Public Radio Capital, that has been helping to facilitate college radio station sales.

Especially in light of last week’s shut-down of WRVU at Vanderbilt University, the discussion during this panel provides some important tips about how college radio stations can help prevent themselves from being sold off.

Ken Freedman, General Manager of community radio station WFMU opened the session by sharing how he managed to extricate WFMU from Upsala College following the school’s bankruptcy. He explained that he helped to set up two non-profits and by 1994, one of those non-profits purchased WFMU’s license, allowing it to become independent from the college. He described the strategy he used as “sell it and keep it,” explaining that a non-profit can convince a parent organization to sell a license, while at the same time giving that parent group access to the “service they had enjoyed” by allowing the station to remain on campus.

Freedman said that the pace of college radio station sales is “only going to accelerate” and argued that “student radio stations…have to take active” approaches toward ensuring their stations’ futures. He also said that he’d like to see an “adoption model,” in which older, more established stations are taking others under their wing to help usher them through crises. He also handed out his 10 tips for “How to Save Your College Radio Station.” They are:

1. Make the College a happy licensee so that they don’t want to sell the station.

2. With the College’s permission, incorporate in your state as a not-for-profit corporation for the purpose of keeping in touch with station/college alumni, eg: “Friends of WFMU.”

3. Populate the board of your Friends group with College staff and faculty, station people, lawyers and business fundraising people.

4. Develop a mailing list for your “Friends” group, and utilize them in positive ways that will not be a threat to the college

5. If the College is OK with…your Friends group raising money for the station, contact a (free) lawyer to apply…for 501-c-3 tax exempt status.

6. Identify a person or people from the station or Friends group who can cultivate a strong personal relationship with a key station decision-maker at the College.

7. Negotiate an “option to buy” or a “right of first refusal” contract so that IF the College decides to sell the station, the Friends group will be the first in line to buy it.

8. Start fundraising, either on behalf of the College licensee, or on behalf of the Friends group…

9. IF (and only if) your College is selling the station, negotiate a “sell it but keep it” contract with the College, under which the license is sold to the Friends group, but the College continues to enjoy all benefits of having an affiliated station.

10. Develop a contingency plan for how the station would remain intact (programming-wise) if the College were to suddenly change all the locks on the station doors.

In addition to Freedman’s advice, we also heard a bit about the situation at Rice University station KTRU from Duane Bradley, the General Manager of Pacifica community radio station KPFT in Houston. After the pending sale of KTRU was announced, KPFT wrote an “open letter” of support as a showing of solidarity with the station. Ultimately, KPFT offered to lease one of its HD channels to KTRU so that they could continue broadcasting over FM. He said, “we’re trying to find…the silver lining.”

NFCB Panel. Pictured: Marc Hand, Ken Freedman, Dorothy Kidd, Duane Bradley, and Elizabeth Robinson (Photo: J. Waits)

Dorothy Kidd, a Media Studies Professor at University of San Francisco also shared a bit about the situation at KUSF. She reminded everyone of the fact that, “KUSF has not been sold” since the deal has not yet been approved by the FCC.  She praised “community and college stations,” arguing that they “have saved radio” and have shown “the continuing value of the airwaves.”

In speaking of the recent flurry of college radio station sales, Kidd said, “Now we have a crisis” in which valuable frequencies on the left hand side of the radio dial have been “seized upon.” She asked people to support the efforts of Save KUSF by writing to the FCC and she also suggested that people write to the FCC to initiate a public hearing about the “crisis of college radio.”

Then we heard from Marc Hand, Co-Managing Director of Public Radio Capital (PRC). Many in the audience were eager to hear from him, since Public Radio Capital has played a role in many college radio station sales. Public Radio Capital is 10% owner of Classical Public Radio Network, the entity which is attempting to buy KUSF. He explained that his radio career began at University of California, Santa Cruz’s college radio station KZSC and that Public Radio Capital has worked closely with college and community radio stations, including WFMU.

He pointed out that college radio station sales really didn’t happen much before the mid-1990s. Hand said that once colleges decide to sell their stations they generally want to make as much money as possible. He said that if Public Radio Capital didn’t exist, “almost all of these stations would be sold to religious broadcasters.” Hand also encouraged stations to have proactive discussions with their license holders in order to take a pre-emptive strike against any potential sale.

John Murphy, General Manager of WHUS (University of Connecticut, Storrs), also expressed his frustration over recent college radio station sales. In the most intense moment of the panel, he looked directly into the video camera taping the session and said,

“The tragedy in all of this is not even what’s happening, but how it is being done. To me as a manager at a college station, it is shameful, disrespectful and arrogant how the leaders of these institutions have treated the students that they’re supposed to be there to serve.

They make their decisions when they’re away in the summer time. They do it during winter breaks. Students don’t even participate in the arguments openly. I can say that whatever hassles we’re having with our school, they were in the open. We were able to debate and argue openly.

When a school administrator treats a student with less respect than a dog, to me they betray their institution. And if any administrator watches this video and you’re thinking about doing this to your students, I say take a second look at what you’re doing. Look in the mirror. These students that you’re serving deserve better. You should be open and own the power that you have and be held accountable for using it.”

John Murphy of WHUS speaking up for college radio (Photo: J. Waits)

Murphy encouraged college radio stations to engage with their universities, saying, “you need to have dialogues within your school now…so your school, however desperate it becomes, will always look to you as a resource to help them as well. The more you become conscious of your relationship and protect it, that’s one of the best ways to avoid a nasty situation before it even evolves.” He also suggested that college radio station managers form a committee in order to begin the work of sharing strategies about how to preserve college radio in general.

For the remainder of the panel, there was discussion amongst the panelists and questions from the audience were entertained. Kidd took the opportunity to confront Hand about the situation at KUSF. She pointed out to him, “you’re not only a broker…you’re part owner…of the new station” and asked him to help save KUSF. She added, “Sometimes people save the wrong things” and asked Hand to “help us say…there’s been some problems with this.” When pressed, Hand said that PRC “didn’t encourage” USF to sell KUSF. He said, “We were contacted by a broker they had hired to sell the station.”

As the session wrapped up, Freedman again reiterated his suggestion that college radio stations do all that they can in order to avoid a “drive-by shooting.” He encouraged stations to “set up a legal entity…that could hold the license” if needed and pointed out that it could be set up “ostensibly” to rally alumni support.

It was very clear from each panelist that college radio stations need to work hard in order to save themselves and that an open dialogue with one’s school is imperative in order to avoid what has happened at KTRU, KUSF, and now WRVU.

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Here are a few more resources for stations looking to ensure their future:

9 Tips to Ensure College Radio’s Survival

Saving College Radio Panel at SXSW 2011 (Podcast)

The Mediageek’s Advice for College Stations, Part 1-Be True to Your School

The Mediageek’s Advice for College Stations, Part 2- No More Elitism, Recruit, Recruit, Recruit

The post Saving College Radio Stations Panel at NFCB Offered Tips for Stations in Peril appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Sandwiched between the large media markets of Philadelphia and New York City, New Jersey has always had a tough time staking out a unique media identity. Of particular concern has been the ability to have good news state news coverage not dominated by the two adjacent metroplexes.

The state of New Jersey has had a state-wide public television network since 1971 when WNJT-TV first went on the air in the state capitol of Trenton. It would be another twenty years before the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority got into the radio business, putting WNJT-FM on the air at 88.1, also in Trenton. Today there are nine stations state-wide.

On Monday governor Chris Christie announced that the state would be selling off all of its public television and radio stations to public broadcasters based in New York City and Philadelphia. New York Public Radio, which operates flagship station WNYC, is taking over the four stations based in the northern half of the state for $1 million cash, and $1.8 million in non-cash compensation. These stations are WNJY FM 89.3 Netcong, WNJP FM 88.5 Sussex, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton and WNJO FM 90.3 Toms River. Philadelphia’s WHYY, home to the long running program Fresh Air, will take over five southern New Jersey stations: WNJM FM 89.9, Manahawkin; WNJN FM 89.7, Atlantic City; WNJZ FM 90.3, Cape May Court House; WNJB FM 89.3, Bridgeton; and WNJS FM 88.1, Berlin.

The New Jersey Network television operation will be taken over by Newark based WNET-TV. While the station’s transmitter is in New Jersey, its studios are in Manhattan, and so it has generally been considered more of a New York serving station. WNET promises to continue offering 20 hours per week of New Jersey focused programming on the newly acquired network.

In announcing the sale of the stations, Governor Christie said that having a state-owned and operated broadcast network,

should have ended with the Soviet Union…. It’s ending here in New Jersey a little later than the fall of the wall in Berlin. But we’re getting there.”

On the flip side, using a state-owned helicopter to attend your kid’s ball game is still just fine by him.

Of course, the real concern with the sale is maintaining a focus on New Jersey news and information on these stations. I grew up in New Jersey and definitely observed the drop in local and state coverage on the radio, in particular, during the late 80s and early 90s. As local stations dropped their news departments residents increasingly had to turn to the bigger news stations in NYC in Philly, which provide much less Jersey coverage. It’s my opinion that the lack of good broadcast news covering New Jersey represents a market failure that the state felt it had to correct.

With regard to radio New York Public Radio says it will keep its new stations New Jersey focused, with a “Garden State bureau.” While just one bureau for a state of 8.7 million people hardly seems sufficient, it is fair to acknowledge that NJN radio doesn’t appear to broadcast any New Jersey-specific programming aside from simulcasts of several NJN television news and public affairs programming. The rest of the schedule is made up entirely of syndicated NPR programming and some jazz from the independent public jazz station WBGO in Newark. So, it is possible that the new arrangement might increase radio-specific coverage of New Jersey, but it’s too soon to tell.

So far there is no word that WHYY will do anything but use the new NJ stations to extend the reach of the flagship station.

I actually volunteered at the first NJN public radio station, WNJT, in its first year on the air while I was attending college in Trenton. This was before the eight other stations had been acquired and before the mission of the station was absolutely clear. At the time the station broadcast a somewhat eclectic mix of music and talk programs out of a tiny studio located inside the WNJT television studios complex. I believe all the station staff were volunteers. My responsibility was to engineer the radio simulcast of New Jersey Network News once per week, punching in radio-specific spots on carts (yes, carts) during the station breaks.

I left at the end of the school year. I did not return in part because the direction of the station was becoming a political battle within NJN and I’d already been courted by both sides. As it was my college station had significantly more power and reach, so I decided it wasn’t worth my time and effort to get caught up in the politics at WNJT. I left New Jersey in 1993 and didn’t really think about the station again until I heard about the public radio station network coming together in the late 90s.

I have mixed feelings about the state disbursing its broadcast stations. I’m most concerned about the 120 NJN employees who likely will lose their jobs. The legislature still has to approve the deal, so there will definitely be a fight there. Sen. Frank Lautenberg has promised to bring up the issue with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on Wednesday when he already had a meeting planned to discuss concerns over Secaucus-based WOR-TV not providing insufficient Jersey-centric programming. The issue of New Jersey being underserved by the TV stations licensed in the state has been addressed by the Commission in the past.

When I lived in Jersey I always thought New Jersey Nightly News was a very good program that filled an important gap in broadcast news coverage. I had greater hope for the radio network, but I don’t think it ever distinguished itself much from the bigger public stations in NYC and Philly.

If WNYC and WNET follow through on continuing, and possibly expanding, New Jersey coverage then the transfer might indeed be a good thing. It may be to the networks’ advantage to lose such strict dependence on the political vagaries of state funding. However, the state will still provide $4 million a year to WNET to help fund television coverage. Furhtermore, WNYC and WNET themselves are subject to the political vagaries of Congress and CPB funding, which might threaten their service to the provinces of Jersey. Again, only time will tell.

The post New Jersey getting out of the “Soviet” public radio business appeared first on Radio Survivor.

My perspective is that I cannot see how any additional consolidation in the radio industry would be a good thing. I also fail to see how the $2.5 billion price–which includes $500 million of equity financing and as much of $2.35 billion of secured debt financing–won’t be a large burden on Cumulus forcing the company to radically cut costs across the board, just like Clear Channel did a decade ago. Didn’t anyone learn anything from the lessons of Clear Channel and Tribune Company about the hazards of highly leveraged mergers in old media?

The media reform group Free Press has just filed comments with the FCC opposing the merger for the obvious reasons that it would threaten radio diversity and impact what little local service is left in commercial radio.

Some Citadel shareholders are also opposing the deal, complaining that they want more than the $37 per share price that Cumulus has offered, which is about 9% than the current Citadel market price. These shareholders say that the typical offer for a radio company is more like 80% above share price. I say, good luck with that.

Though I haven’t done an analysis of market overlap between the companies, I’d guess that some station divestiture would be required if the merger were to go through. The combined company would probably exceed ownership limits in some smaller markets. Unfortunately, I fear that will be the only significant factor weighed by either the FCC or Justice Department, rather than taking into account the overall deleterious effects of consolidation.

The post Citadel and Cumulus want to merge into Son-of-Clear-Channel appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This is not a self-imposed initiative: it is a consideration the agency is mandated to make, courtesy of the Paperwork Reduction Act. It requires regulatory agencies to periodically review their rules and justify their existence to the Office of Management and Budget.

A communications law attorney filed a Petition for Rulemaking directly with the FCC to do away with the public file five years ago. The Petition attracted less than three dozen comments, most of which came from broadcasters who supported killing it off. The FCC circular-filed the idea.

According to the D.C. telecom law firm of Fletcher, Heald and Hildreth, the local station public file requirement is essentially pointless:

According to many broadcasters…such files are largely if not totally ineffective and unnecessary, since (in the reported experience of many of those broadcasters) the public seldom if ever inspects the files. From that perspective, the requirement to maintain the files is an empty make-work exercise that serves no purpose. . . other than to provide the FCC with a way to collect tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars in fines from folks who happen not to have dotted all their public file I’s and crossed all their public file T’s.

Indeed, the FCC takes the public file requirement very seriously – having recently fined several stations thousands of dollars apiece for failing to maintain them properly.

However, the argument to abolish is circular. Public files of broadcast stations are seldom inspected because the public is largely unaware that they exist, and even less aware that it has the right to inspect them. Stations certainly don’t go out of their way to inform the public of its rights in this regard, which further exacerbates the lack of utilization.

Couching advocacy for the banishment of the public file requirement as economically burdensome is also a cop-out. Given the consolidation the radio industry has experienced since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it’s no surprise that stations are letting this important license requirement slip: there’s no longer enough people employed at radio stations to properly maintain many public files.

The slashing of station personnel arguably has made public file maintenance more burdensome – but that’s a consequence of prior bad broadcast policy, and no excuse for eliminating this rule.

In fact, one could argue that the public file requirement is the last meaningful remnant of the FCC’s “commitment” to localism in broadcasting. Sure, the agency’s Localism Task Force has studied the issue – even to the point of publishing a detailed Report and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in 2008, which would have promoted more use of the public file rules – but nothing has come of it.

On its face, I’d be willing to trade the public file requirement for localism regulations with more teeth, but that’s a pipe-dream.

Public comments on this issue will be accepted through June 17. There is no formal FCC proceeding on the subject, but you can send feedback via e-mail to PRA@fcc.gov and Cathy.Williams@FCC.gov. There’s a better-than-even chance that the FCC will recommend keeping the public file rule, but the OMB has final say. Giving the FCC fodder to strengthen its justification can’t hurt.

[This story was initially published on DIYmedia.net.]

The post Public FCC Files on the Chopping Block appeared first on Radio Survivor.

USF Student at the KUSF Wake

As the battle over the future of college radio station KUSF continues, students at University of San Francisco (USF) expressed their displeasure over the proposed station sale by holding a wake on the lawn outside of a USF Board of Trustees meeting at noon today.

Mourning students dressed in black held forth in front of tomb stones emblazoned with the words KUSF and KUSF 90.3 FM scrawled in red paint.

The quiet, peaceful protest took place as an adjunct to a recently held teach-in. Students pointed out that they had not been given a meeting with USF President Stephen Privett, so it was important for them to express their sentiments about the station sale to the Board of Trustees in a “silent and dramatic” manner, according to sophomore Elizabeth Schweizer. It was hoped that board members would see the tombstones and protesters as they entered or left their meeting. Additionally, some students attempted to deliver materials related to the KUSF shut-down to the Board and were turned away by campus security.

The future of KUSF is in the hands of both the administration of USF and the FCC. Following the station shut-down on January 18, Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN) filed paperwork with the FCC in order to gain approval to purchase the station. That application to purchase KUSF has been with the FCC for about two months and was met with opposition by Friends of KUSF, who filed a Petition to Deny the transfer of ownership application on February 28th. In the meantime, USF/CPRN requested permission from the FCC to move the KUSF transmitter off-campus to a site north of San Francisco. That request was denied by the FCC and it looks like USF/CPRN will refile with different parameters. Save KUSF continues to work diligently to spread the word about the plight of the station. They’ve held numerous events, DJ nights, and co-presents and are also actively fundraising in order to pay for legal bills.

The students at the protest today have strong ties with KUSF as many of them were DJs prior to the shutdown and a few are continuing to do shows at KUSF.org or at the recently launched KUSF in Exile (link opens a live stream). Elizabeth told me that for her KUSF has been a “family tradition,” since not only was she a DJ, but her father has been on KUSF’s engineering staff for more than 33 years.

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Complete Radio Survivor coverage about the proposed sale of KUSF can be found here. I also wrote about my reaction to the KUSF shut down and to the Save KUSF Multi-Station Live Broadcast on Spinning Indie.  My article chronicling my KUSF field trip 2 years ago is housed there too. For more on the bigger picture of college radio station sell-offs, see my December 2009 piece “Cash-strapped Schools Turn Their Backs on College Radio“. And, for a quick overview of the situation at KUSF, see my article, “The Story Behind the KUSF Shutdown” on PopMatters.

The post Students Hold Wake for KUSF appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Spring Hill College's WHIL to be sold to Alabama Public Radio

In a familiar-sounding tale, University of Alabama is in talks to purchase public radio station WHIL from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama for $1.1 million.

WHIL currently airs a public radio format, mainly comprised of classical music programming and syndicated NPR shows like “Weekend Edition” and “All Things Considered.” It is expected that the programming won’t change much following the purchase, as University of Alabama will incorporate the station into its network of stations under the umbrella of Alabama Public Radio.

Spring Hill College, a small Jesuit institution, has operated the station since 1979. WHIL was originally a student radio station. After transforming WHIL into a public radio affiliate, the college created a second station, WTOH, which operated a 10 watt FM station in the 1980s and 1990s. Eventually that station was bumped off the air in the mid-1990s. A few years ago there was a push to revive student radio at Spring Hill College in the form of an Internet-only station, but it appears that currently there is no student radio station on campus. During WHIL’s recent history as a public radio station, students seemed to be minimally involved, although they were offered internships at the station.

In a statement on the college’s website dated Monday, March 21, 2011, Spring Hill College President Richard P. Salmi, S.J. writes:

“The station’s role in our community is an important one, but the College must focus its energy and limited resources, particularly in these challenging economic times, to not only sustaining but also strengthening our primary mission and providing an exceptional education for our students successfully engaging them in learning, faith, justice and service. Therefore, ultimate responsibility for the operations of a public radio station cannot be a main focus for us.

Spring Hill College has been in recent negotiations with the University of Alabama who manages the Alabama Public Radio network. The University’s Board of Trustees executive committee just this afternoon approved a motion to purchase WHIL from Spring Hill College.”

WHIL, which is in the midst of a pledge drive, is still seeking donations for the ongoing costs related to its station. As of yet, paperwork for the proposed sale has not be accepted for filing by the FCC.

The post Spring Hill College to Sell WHIL to University of Alabama appeared first on Radio Survivor.