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NAB Lobbying To Constrain Local Content On Satellite Radio
DJAdapt writes "The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the organization that represents the large radio and television owners, is using its lobbyists, campaign contributions and political influence to have Congress and the Federal Communications Commission limit XM's ability to provide you with 'locally oriented' content, including the new XM Instant Traffic & Weather channels .... this is seriously what our government should be worried about? We're taking a trip back to the 70s, where AM was fighting FM."
Oh wow, competition.
Bad. Evil. Unamerican.
XM is with the terrorists!
Too bad for them. They could have developed better radio (digital radio) but they didn't untill satellite started to get big. They could have offered more choices, but they decided that one centeralized list of songs for the whole country was easier. They could have given us more kinds of music, but they have decided that giving each city 3 country stations that play nearly the same stuff is choice.
Anyone who votes for this will NOT get my vote in the next election. Not shutting down the RIAA (which is basically a racketerring organisation as far as I can tell) is bad enough, but to shut down something that is actually opening the market that they worked so hard to close would be uncontionable.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Everytime I see stories about radio issues I dont even bother because I never listen to the radio. I never listen to the radio cause most of it is crap. So I just take my ipod or some CDs with me. One summer my car broke down and took like a month to get fixed and the rental car had no tape or CD player in it so I had to listen to the radio. I basically had it on NPR and the college station the entire month everything else was too plain terrible to bother. The funny thing is that the radio sucks precisely because of what is happening in this story. A bunch of asswipes think that everyone wants to listen to the same crappy music and have created all these stations that play the same tired top 20 music. They kill competition with regulation or with M&A. I hope they lose. More options are needed.
It is not which regulations I object to, it is regulation itself.
Time to realize that if you grant to "government" the power to regulate other people in ways that you like, someone else will use that power to regulate YOU.
The FCC, like the rest of the unconstitutional ways that the Fed.Gov controls your everyday life, must be abolished immediately.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
They had the same problem in the Netherlands, satelite networks/commercial networks were restricted in many ways.
The got arround that by having there HQ in a foreign country and airing about 1 hour a day in that foreign countries lang. Just to proove they are a foreign broadcaster.
So what if those satelite broadcasters would do the same? I mean set up their HQ in Mexico or something and broadcast on hour a day (in the down hours of course) in spanish. And the rest of the day they could do anything they wanted as Mexico doesn't fall under the FCC. That is if the FCC don't want to engage jammers.
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
and how will you keep big mega corperations from drowning out the little guy? or in fact just jamming the little guys single?
I admit that the public airwaves ( among many things )are WAY to regulated. But there needs to be minimal regulation to keep the big guys from stomping all over the little guys.
America is taking to complete regulate itself into poverty. Like another poster said (And who i should have replied to) XM can just move to Mexico, and still broadcast into the United States, and you know what? That is money that is going to a Mexcian company, not American. Thank the government for recession, and thank the rich CEO's (Like the NYSE making millions to do WHAT exactly?) for taking fat paychecks then outsourcing work to foreign nations just to keep the company's bottom line out of the red.
The FCC, like the rest of the unconstitutional ways that the Fed.Gov controls your everyday life, must be abolished immediately.
Not at all. After all, since the Libertarians obviously didn't get the White House or a majority in the Senate or House (do they have ANY congresscritters?) the American people asked for the FCC, and we seem to be quite happy with it.
The FCC, like the rest of the unconstitutional ways that the Fed.Gov controls your everyday life,
The FCC is unconstitutional? Since when? You may not like it, but it sure as hell isn't unconstitutional.
Dont question big brother i mean the big media groups
Linux is like living in a teepee. No Windows, no Gates, Apache in house.
I don't care if FM has better quality, and broadcasts in stereophonic audio, AM radio just has better programming. AM radio actually takes some intelligence to fully understand, while FM just broadcasts the same old boy-band/country/pop/metal/rap noise. At least AM radio actually carries topics of interest to me, by talk shows such as: Rush Limbaugh, The Sean Hannidy Show The Micheal Savage show, When Radio Was, The Jim Bohannan Show, and Coast To Coast AM. For all I care, FM radio can go to where it was prior to 1970: back to the elevator music. What qualifies these days as "music" isn't much better than elevator music, or Music On Hold anyway. I'll take KQQQ and KMAX over ZFUN, KRAO or KHTR any day of the week.
Also, have you ever been able to get an atmospheric skip with FM? I think not. I can barely pick up some Spokane channels on FM, but on AM, I can regularly pick up San Fransisco, Vancouver, Salt Lake City, Denver, and sometimes Los Angeles. I would like to see your puny FM radio do that! Long Live Free Play Radio Plus! AM will never die!
I am not trying to be funny either, I am 100% serious. I could frankly give a shit less about being politically correct anymore. Go ahead, mod me down. The world is not going to end because of it. The world will end because of peak oil, and we only have a short time left.
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Simple common law property rights cover this quite well.
Prosecution for signal overlap is just like trespassing. Prove deliberate action to the jury and demand damages and corrective action.
Easement, established right-of-way, and the simple fact that a radio station will want their customers to find them again means that staying on an established frequency will work best for everyone.
One good thing to do is look up the history of radio prior to the establishment of the FCC. Such difficulties as you mention were already worked out and business was flourishing.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Then, since the 10th amendment exists, you will show me what paragraph authorizes it?
Where is radio transmission specifically separated from "speech" in the constitution?
If you cannot find it, the power to regulate it does not exist. Doing so is therefore explicitly unconstitutional.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
When a country increasingly tries to protect the monopolies of special interests by myopic legislation
that is against the best interests of its people, that is a sign that it is on the wrong track in a way that seldom reverses itself.
This self-defeating cronyism has been happening so often in the last few years here in the US that it is creating what several of my friends have started calling the "New Feudalism".
Lets face it, it takes creativity and some serious innovation to make an honest buck these days. That's why a lot of companies like XM and its ilk, as well as whole industries, like the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, and the energy industry, prefer to use corporate welfare and legal wrangling to shift their risks to the government while they keep the profits, which ultimately eliminates their competition. This drives prices up and in the long run, weakens our economy. But as captive consumers, we often have no choice. Free trade in this country, means free trade for corporations only. Individuals cannot trade freely, we are limited in our choice by an ever increasing host of regulations that are designed to offer us up as a prize to corporate interests, often the same corparations that contribute heavily to the legislators who write the restrictive laws. Talk about conflict of interest. When will it end? The situation is completely out of control. Lobbyists and faked 'grassroots campaigns' orchestrated by million dollar PR firms have taken over Washington and the democratic process has turned into a parody of itself in which money has become substituted for free speech and public opinion.
The best thing we can do is vote any legislators out of office who support these laws.. Otherwise, we will continue to be chum for the corporate sharks to feed on until they feed us out of existence.
They take and take and take and never give anything back..
No matter how repulsive, I have to admit you are historically correct.
Rep. Dr. Ron Paul, Texas, is the only congresscritter who does for the most part fit the bill of "libertarian". You should check him out some time. Quite refreshing.
People indeed do get the government they deserve. What's a few million dead and imprisoned citizens anyway, since it is indeed the government the rest of the people are quite happy with?
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
The constitution does not separate "radio" from "speech" but it also doesn't associate them.
The FCC regulations are not limiting freedom of speech. They are limiting how many radio stations a company can own. This rule is specifically intended to make it more likely that different points of view will be expressed in the media. If anything, FCC regulations are there to help free speech.
You prove my point. Since the 10th amendment exists, in order for the Fed.Gov to "regulate" anything, it has to have that power explicitly granted to it.
Do you remember reading the reasons given by the Federalists as to why a "bill of rights" was not needed?
Just in case you missed that part, one of the reasons was that, since the constitution did explicitly not grant the Fed.Gov the power to, for instance, prohibit certain types of firearms for private use, having an amendment restricting such a power was pointless and redundant.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Indeed, even if you limit yourself to those rights explictly stated by the constitution, you can see how the feds could otherwise limit basic rights were it not for an over-riding Bill of Rights. Copyright law, for example, is a straightforward limitation of freedom of speech, and is enshrined within the Constitution. By providing the first amendment, the Supreme Court has been able to overrule the excesses that are central to copyright. Were it not for the first amendment, the ability of someone to review or parody would be severely restricted.
The Federal Government's ability to regulate interstate commerse has ultimately given them wider powers than anyone would have thought possible, thanks to the effects of mass, fast, transportation and advances in telecommunications technologies. Oh, and the FCC's existance goes right into that right to regulate.
The Federalists weren't right about everything. They severely misjudged how strong the rights were that they gave the Federal Government. It's understandable that they did so, living in the 1700s before the telephone, the radio, the railway (for the most part), the internal combustion engine, before even the factory. You don't have the same excuse.
Again you prove my point.
But maybe I see where you make your mistake. I am an anti-federalist by the definitions of the time. The Federal Constitution does indeed grant far too much power to the central government, and has vague language like the interstate commerce clause which can and has be used to define anything and everything.
So it's not so much that I believe the Bill Of Rights was needed. The Bill of Rights is just paper, and without the spirit to overturn and nullify each and every law that Congress passes and the President signs that is not explicitly authorized in the constitution itself, then the Bill of Rights isn't going to even get lip service.
The entire thing should be thrown out.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Prosecution for signal overlap is just like trespassing.
It's interesting how much of new technology is getting wrapped in terms of property rights, just as the electromagnetic spectrum has become.
I swear, 100 years from now people will assume you have to pay for things that would dumbfound us now.
Pretty much in the same way that aboriginal Americans several centuries ago were confused with European concepts of "land owndership".
"Provided by the management for your protection."