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| Thursday, March 11, 2004 |
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Quote du jour 
| | RSS is like a drug. No more spam. All the info just sits and waits until you have time to read it. You can scan it fast. Tivo for the web my friends... |
No Power FM
| | Several years ago, the FCC opened up a bunch of channels for what was called LPFM, or Low Power FM. The idea was to allow commnity radio to grow through the cracks in the corporate bigtime radio concrete. Naturally, the big broadcasters opposed it, saying it would cause more interference. They appealed to Congress, which severely restricted deployment of LPFM until an interference study could be done. Now that study has been submitted (here's the pdf). It says, essentially, that no interference would be caused. |
| | While it may be too late to turn back the clock on the radio consolidation that has occurred, low power FM may be one means of providing the public with a locally-oriented alternative to huge national radio networks. |
| | But I'll also go on record right now saying that most of the new LPFM stations, if they ever come on the air, will be religious. More than any other group, religious broadcasters have been exceptionally good at working the FCC rules to stick signals where nobody else (including, say, NPR) thinks they can go. |
| | [Later...] Big Rick also has a problem with the NPR-ization of the noncommercial band (88-92 on FM): |
| | National Public Radio serves to muscle out Local Public Radio (LPR). It is a disgrace to have a local broadcast license and just flip the switch and run close to 24 hours of NPR. Plus the non comm station often has to spend time fundraising to get the money to buy the NPR shows. Did you think it was free? |
| | I don't agree entirely with Rick on this one. I think every community should have one national mostly-informational station running NPR and PRI programming. Maybe not 24/7, but through much of the day. I miss that here in Santa Barbara, where the nearest public stations mostly feature classical music and jazz. To me KQED, KALW, KUOW, KPPC, WNYC, WAMU and WUNC all have civilizing effects on their regions. I can get many of those stations on the Net, but not in my car. There's a bit of college radio here. KCSB at UCSB has fun programming and an okay signal from a mountaintop (though poor where I live) |
| | But Rick is right to nail NPR as a force for undermining local radio, especially low power radio. It was NPR (and CPB), in fact, that led the fight in the 1970s to kill off Class D 10-watt stations at high schools and colleges, in order to make room for larger regional "professional" noncommercial stations. Check the history here, here, here, here and here. Not pretty. |
WishTV
| | Seems EchoStar (owners of the DishTV Network) and Viacom (owners of CBS, MTV and other channels) have worked out whatever the problem was. Now all those channels we weren't watching will be back on our satellite TV system. |
| | It was never clear what the problem was. EchoStar accused Viacom of wanting "an unreasonable fee increase" of up to 40% for the rights to carry Viacom channels. Viacom said "It is hard for us to make sense of their position. They recently hiked their subscribers' bills by as much as $3 a month. Yet they are unwilling to consider paying an additional six cents a month per subscriber for the right to carry our channels." |
| | In a story in the L.A. Times yesterday, Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project said, "When it comes down to it, this is about how two companies divide up the money." Jeffrey Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy, laid blame on regulation: "The retransmission consent law is highly corrupt. It has engendered fierce combat among the handful of media giants, shutting out independent programmers that don't have the power of a broadcaster behind them." |
| | What's actually to blame is the absence of market mechanisms in the retrasmissions themselves. Outside pay-per-view, satellite and cable customers have no way of selectively paying for any channels or programs. Instead they subscribe to packages that bundle sets of channels. |
| | Why not? I think it's because nobody who makes most of their money on advertising wants to see consumers become customers. Viacom, for example, is primarily in the advertising business. The programming they sluice down channels to consumers is just bait. Most of what they sell is best-guess numbers. They can't begin to think about selling programming directly to viewers or listeners, partly because that's not their business, but mostly because they don't want advertisers to know specifics about actual viewing and listening — such as how often people tune away from advertising, or skip over it with their TiVos. Meanwhile the cable and satellite services are mostly in the business of satisfying habits. |
| | But speaking as a consumer who would rather be a customer, a la carte is what I'd like. I think that's exactly where we're headed in the long run. And that the inevitability of advertising loss is the deeper issue behind the dispute between EchoStar and Viacom. That loss is will be felt on the supply side, by Viacom. |
| | So if Viacom wants Dish's consumers to be customers, I say that's a good thing. Think of it as a wake-up call from Viacom to itself. |
discuss
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