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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.
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.
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
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..