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NAB Lobbying To Constrain Local Content On Satellite Radio

Posted by timothy on from the envy-spite-protectionism dept.

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."

4 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. In English... by MBCook · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Allow me to put the submission into English for those of you who don't want to do it yourself.

    The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is scared of satellite radio because of it's uncanny ability to provide radio that terrestrial stations are unable to for various reasons. These include good music, choices in music, music stations with a few commercials (as opposed to FM stations playing commercials with some music), higher quality (audio wise) broadcasts, etc. A official of the NAB was not quoted as saying "We're worried that they are good and will put us out of business, but we don't want to change so we'll get the governement to do it for us."

    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.
  2. Funny by rigau · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  3. If you don't vote Libertarian, you ASKED FOR THIS by Bob_Robertson · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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
  4. How can we stop this kind of corruption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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..