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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."

3 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.

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    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    1. Re:In English... by SpaceLifeForm · · Score: 4, Informative

      This had a funny odor, and sure enough, Rep. Billy Tauzin of Louisiana is involved.
      See this article for more info.

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      You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
  2. Many years ago by smurf975 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    -- I don't buy it, I grow it.