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Sunday, November 2, 2003
Democratic democracy 
| | Dave has a problem with describing the Dean Campaign and other "open" political movements as "open source." I agree that it's confusing at best. |
| | What we're witnessing now is what happens when you add the Net to democracy. The result, literally, is networked democracy. "Open" is a significant part of that, but it doesn't go deep enough. |
| | We're just beginning to figure it out, too. |
Respecting Bob Smith
| | By today's broadcasting ownership standards, Smith Broadcasting Group is a small potato: Six TV stations, all in small cities — Santa Barbara, CA; Utica, NY; Burlington, VT; and Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, AK. The organization also publises Santa Barbara Magazine. |
| | What made Smith Broadcasting different was Bob Smith, who died last week of cancer at 59. |
| | After graduating from law school at the University of Michigan, Bob Smith served as an FCC lawyer, director of youth affairs for the Democratic National Committee, national coordinator for the Committee's voter registration program, a member of Jimmy Carter's white house staff, and assistant director of the Community Services Administration under Carter. |
| | Smith returned to Michigan after Carter was defeated, and started his broadcasting career by purchasing TV stations in small markets. |
| | He fell in love with Santa Barbara somewhere in the early 80s, and pestered Roy Disney into selling him KEYT Channel 3, the local ABC affiliate (and only VHF station in town) for $30 million in 1987. That same year he and his family moved to town. |
| | By all accounts, Bob Smith was an outstanding human being — one of those guys who wanted to do well by doing good, which he did as both a businessman and as a philantropist. As a broadcaster, he wanted his stations to be as civic-minded and responsible as possible to their home towns. And they were. |
| | Several years ago he pursued that goal by puchasing a local radio station, making it the AM sister of the TV station, and serving the community with an all-news format, which was extremely unusual in a town of Santa Barbara's size. KEYT/1250 radio was one of the reasons I loved moving here two years ago. It helped make up for the absence of a news-oriented local NPR affiliate. The station had an earnest and homey personality. And it was an excellent source of hard news (traffic, accidents, fires) when it counted. |
| | Several days after Smith died, KEYT passed to Lazer Broadcasting of Oxnard, which operates a chain of Spanish formatted stations. The deal settled a lawsuit in which Lazer claimed that Smith Broadcasting had breached a sales contract when it announced it had intended to sell KEYT radio to Mapleton Communications of Los Angeles — a group that intended to retain and improve the news format. |
| | Meanwhile, the local newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press, owned by Wendy McCaw, announced its intent to buy another local station, KZBN/1290, from Bob Newhart. That sale is likely to run into newspaper/radio cross-ownership rule problems. Under the new rules proposed by the FCC on June 3 of this year, the sale would be fine. But Congress didn't like those rules (nor did many citizens), and the sale is now in limbo. |
| | Even if it does go through, KZBN's signal is much smaller than KEYT's: 500/141 watts by day and night versus 2500/1000 watts. The differences are apparent here and here. |
| | This morning Spanish music started on 1250AM. That raises to six the number of local and regional Spanish-formatted stations. |
| | Which is fine, I suppose. |
| | But we no longer have a local news station station in Santa Barbara. Worse, we no longer have Bob Smith. |
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