My most cynical response is that the name change represents nothing new; Clear Channel hasn’t really been in the radio business for more than a decade. Rather, the company was in the broadcast real estate business, buying up stations and repackaging them into clusters in order to reduce staffing and other costs. In the short term it was a wildly successful strategy from a profit standpoint, because it’s a ruthlessly simple formula: radically cut costs while keeping revenues mostly static. However, it wasn’t a sustainable approach because it also resulted in diluting the product–the programming itself–which listeners couldn’t help but notice, as they jumped ship to new competing platforms.

At the same time, I think it is true that the company’s shift in strategy really is a turn away from traditional radio, but at radio’s expense. By comparison, National Public Radio has used its internet platforms to compliment and court new listeners to its programming, on the air and online. While programming ostensibly is the product offered up in iHeartRadio, the overwhelming sameness of it all is rather striking. Sure there are dozens of active rock stations to choose from, but the distance between their sound and playlists can be measured in millimeters.

Now it is true that Clear Channel is actually a significant radio content company with its ownership of Premiere Radio Networks, home to such highly lucrative programs as Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s. And while you can listen to these programs by tuning in live broadcast streams from affiliate stations on iHeartRadio, there’s no way to listen at another time. Furthermore, iHeartRadio doesn’t provide a schedule for these stations so you know when to tune it. Sure, you can subscribe to on demand access to Rush or Hannity on their respective websites, but I argue that’s a scattershot approach. First, it limits the audience to the more dedicated, rather than casual listeners. Second, it takes place outside of iHeartRadio, fracturing the platform’s value as a one-stop shop for Clear Channel radio content.

The even more telling aspect of Clear Channel’s move away from radio as we know it is its Total Traffic Network which delivers real-time traffic reports over its stations’ HD channels. Why is this not a radio service? Because one of its primary purposes is to feed traffic data to navigation devices like Garmins and TomToms, not radios. In effect, this is a step towards making stations more valuable for the spectrum they occupy rather than the programming that they can deliver.

This isn’t to say that I believe Clear Channel is abandoning radio. Rather, it’s clear that Clear Channel is continuing to move away from relying on profiting from individual station revenues towards seeing stations as a nationwide commodity where local programming is more of an obligation than a raison d’être. I don’t see the company reinvesting in programming at local stations so much as using them as resources to create new data services and outlets to push national programming brands as consolidated under the iHeartRadio banner. This can be seen no more clearly than in the massive layoffs of on-air talent that Clear Channel imposed last October.

The change from Clear Channel Radio to Clear Channel Media and Entertainment is consolidation 2.0. For the sake of true local service and innovative programming, we could only wish that Clear Channel were actually leaving radio.

KGO protest; San Francisco; 12/15/2011

The first was held two weeks ago (we were there; photo on right). Now the protesters say they will hold a candlelight vigil on Friday, December 30, at 5 pm, and collect food donations for the Bayview-Hunter’s Point YMCA Food Pantry. “The food donations are being made in honor of Ray Taliaferro, legendary bay area broadcaster who was fired on December 1 along with other well known radio personalities at KGO,” the Facebook press release says. “Mr. Taliaferro was born and raised in the Hunter’s Point neighborhood and had worked at KGO radio for decades.”

According to a Former Listener member, Taliaferro will be there himself. He was on KSCO  AM in Santa Cruz earlier this month, and in high dudgeon. The show started with KSCO’s Kay Zwerling offering some praise for Donald Trump’s ideas, especially his opposition to the Obama administration’s health care reforms.

Taliaferro was asked to respond.

“I think anyone who pays attention to Donald Trump is ridiculous, stupid, unknowing, absolutely ridiculous,” he began. “What the hell has Donald Trump done for poor people? What has he done to try to make sure to help the people that I grew up with, I grew up poor in Hunter’s Point?”

“Why on earth are people so stupid in the United States of America that they’ve got to come with a commentary like that?” Taliaferro demanded. The exchange got quite heated. Perhaps Taliaferro will have more to say about these larger issues at the Friday demonstration.

Radio Survivor readers are reporting that various dismissed KGO folk have found jobs elsewhere. One comment says that Len Tillem and Gene Burns have landed new DJ work at Clear Channel’s KKSF (910 AM), beginning January 3rd. Len’s show will run from 3-4 PM. Gene Burns show will follow from 4-7 PM. We contacted Clear Channel to confirm this, but have received no reply.

Noah Shanock from Stitcher Radio also posted an invitation:

We at Stitcher Radio were saddened to hear of KGO’s recent decision to remove their talk programming content. KGO’s change in formatting is lamentable, both for our community and for the outlook of terrestrial talk radio. We believe that some of the most interesting and engaging content on the radio are talk shows, and are fully committed to providing the best platform for talk shows to reach and engage their listeners online. We’d love to have these great talk shows on Stitcher and have reached out to each of the hosts who were laid off – offering up our San Francisco recording studio for free, no strings attached – where they can record live Internet radio streams and podcasts.

The commentary notes that Stitcher provided air time to the morning show duo Fernando and Greg “back in 2009 under similar circumstances.” Their program on Energy 92.7 FM in San Francisco was cancelled following the station’s sale.

And KSCO has been trying to recruit former KGO staff, among them Dr. Bill Wattenburg, who hosted KSCO’s Good Morning Monterey Bay AM Drive for a week this month.

Clear Channel may have been too focused on scarfing up stations in the early 2000s to construct anything resembling an internet strategy, but the company has been making up for lost time with its iHeartRadio service. When it went live in 2008 it was primarily a site and mobile app to provide access to the live streams of Clear Channel stations. Since then iHeartRadio has morphed into a competitor to the likes of Pandora and last.fm, especially with the addition of custom stations in September which provide Pandora-like experience of music based upon a seed song.

Back in September Clear Channel promised that the stations would be commercial free through the end of the year. This week the company announced that they will stay commercial-free through April 1, 2012.

This is obviously a move intended to lure Pandora and last.fm listeners who want to avoid the free services’ commercials, in addition to hooking users already using iHeartRadio to catch terrestrial stations. However, when a Pandora user jumps ship she also loses the stations she has created and all the curating she’s invested by giving tracks the thumbs-up or thumbs-down. That user investment is one of the things that keeps Pandora users loyal, though a new user to iHeartRadio can make the same investment in Clear Channel’s platform.

Working in Clear Channel’s favor is that if a listener tires of her custom stations she can easily navigate to a broadcast station–that will have plenty of commercials–or one of iHeartRadio’s curated or themed stations, like CBGB Radio or Eagles Radio.

I must admit to being a strong critic of Clear Channel and the destruction it wreaked on the radio industry through its consolidation strategy that hemorrhaged staff and homogenized programming across the country. So there definitely is a part of me that wants to find fault with iHeartRadio, on principle, if nothing else.

But after spending the better part of the week listening to the service I must be honest and give it due credit. It’s kind of a jack-of-all-trades for internet radio listening. It offers a lot of options, even if none of them are class leading. But, as I’ll explain, the sound quality of iHeartRadio is probably its weakest attribute.

The customized stations work like last.fm or Pandora. Feed it a song seed and iHeartRadio starts serving up similar artists and songs. One aspect I like is the “Station Control” feature which lets you decide whether you’re interested in hearing more familiar artists or “more discovery” which plays artists you are less likely to have heard before. When I first tried the custom station feature I wondered if I would be limited to artists actually played on Clear Channel stations. So I entered the 1980 Swiss experimental metal band Celtic Frost as a test. And quite dutifully iHeartRadio created a station full of extreme and harsh sounds that are rarely found on commercial radio.

However, the custom stations are more limited than Pandora’s because you can specify only the initial seed. By comparison Pandora lets you finely tune a station by adding additional artists and songs as seeds. So if you like the 70s power pop of Cheap Trick, you can further refine it by adding in the more ragged punk edge of the Replacements, for instance.

iHeartRadio’s curated channels remind me most of satellite radio, organized around a genre, such as hair metal, the music of a particular artist, or songs ostensibly chosen by an artist, like Radio Weezer. Of course the terrestrial stations on iHeartRadio are just that. I’m not sure how much the rock station in Waco, TX will differ from WZZO in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. But if it matters to you, then you have the choice.

Fidelity is what I find to be iHeartRadio’s greatest limitation. I’ve listened to the service on my iPhone, iPad and two different Mac laptops. At home I’ve used both my MacBook Pro’s built-in headphone jack and two different USB audio devices. Across all devices I found that the custom stations sound the best. While quality does vary some from song to song, overall fidelity is roughly equivalent to Pandora’s free service. In general that’s equivalent to a 128 kbps MP3 file, which is considered the minimum for decent sound.

By comparison, the custom stations all exhibited perceptibly lower quality sound that would indicate a lower bitrate is used. No matter the station I chose the high end exhibited the shimmery quality of a poorly encoded MP3. There’s an overall graininess to the sound that I find fatiguing when listening on headphones for more than 10 or 20 minutes. These deficiencies are quite audible over speakers, too, though less bothersome at low volumes.

The broadcast stations are all over the map, in terms of fidelity. While some approach the smoother quality of the custom stations, most had a compromised and grainy sound like the curated stations. However, I found most of the broadcast rock stations to be even more fatiguing than the curated stations due to the heavy compression and processing evident in these streams. Most mainstream commercial stations use compression and other sound processing to make their stations sound louder and stand out when a listener is scanning the dial. This comes at the expense of dynamics, as the volume of the sound varies very little, with much less change than you’d hear when listening to the original recording.

Listening to most broadcast stations on iHeartRadio with headphones was tiring after 10 minutes or less. In all cases my local analog and HDRadio broadcast signals sounded much better than their internet stream counterparts. In particular the treble was overly pronounced and distorted on the internet streams, while the broadcast signals sounded smoother and more natural to my ear.

I recognize that I’m probably more sensitive to sound quality than many listeners, however I’d frankly rather listen to a decent AM signal than have to hear many iHeartRadio stations over headphones for more than a half-hour. Using cheap computer speakers at low volume the fidelity limitations are less perceptible, and I’m certain that’s how many folks experience internet radio. But I think the sonic flaws of even the curated and genre stations are obvious enough for an average listener to recognize, especially if she compares it to the custom stations or a broadcast signal.

That said, I can see the appeal of having all of these options in one app. I’m not sure it’s enough to keep me from using Pandora, Spotify and other services. The field is getting pretty crowded, and while each service offers something unique, none of them is sufficient to take over the majority of my online listening time. I may be a freak that way, with tastes that run decidedly outside the mainstream. Then again, isn’t the promise of the internet supposed to be infinite choice?

I’m curious to know what Radio Survivor readers think about iHeartRadio and other internet radio services. Let us know in the comments.

On October 11, Clear Channel representative Lawrence Sidman met with FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus and Jessica Almond, Special Council to Commission Chair Julius Genachowski. According to the ex parte summary, Sidman maintained:

that the Commission can no longer reasonably justify retaining the AM/FM subcap provisions in light of the extremely significant technological developments and regulatory changes that have occurred in recent years, as well as the current state of the broadcast radio marketplace.  Moreover, based upon empirical data available as a result of Clear Channel’s previous station divestments, there is a high probability that repeal of the AM/FM subcap provisions will result in notably increased minority and female ownership of broadcast properties, a critically important and unfortunately all too elusive policy goal of the Commission.

Translation: thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC’s rules say that there’s no limit on the number of commercial stations a company can own nationally. That’s why Clear Channel presently holds about 800. But in “sub” markets like New York or Los Angeles (45+ stations), an entity can only own up to eight commercial licenses. Then the allowed number tapers down for lesser markets. In regions with 14 or fewer stations, an entity can own no more than five.

Clear Channel wants all those limits to go away.

The FCC is currently reviewing its media ownership rules. The comments in the proceeding, Clear Channel says, reflect “a broad cross-section of the radio industry, evidence the existence of a vibrant market for transactions that could enhance efforts to increase minority and female ownership and stimulate job growth and technological innovation in the radio industry were Commission to repeal the AM/FM subcaps.”

What does this mean? Probably that Clear Channel would like to sell some smaller radio stations and buy a bunch of bigger ones, but the FCC’s subcap rules gum up the plan. How casting them aside will “stimulate job growth” is unclear, given the layoffs that have just taken place in an already heavily deregulated market.

I’m sure most Radio Survivor readers have already heard about the passing of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. Jobs will be rightly celebrated for how his company’s products, directed by his unique vision, changed the way most of us make and consume media. This includes radio.

Whether intentionally or not, the introduction of the iPod and iTunes in 2001 almost instantly created a fearsome challenge for traditional terrestrial radio. As the first elegant and user-friendly portable digital music player, the iPod helped create a perfect storm for the commercial radio industry, especially the nation’s largest radio owner, Clear Channel.

It’s easy to forget that at the turn of the century Clear Channel was riding high with mammoth profits brought on by its program of aggressive consolidation whereby the company vacuumed up stations, fired staff, and consolidated operations and programming in order to drive down costs. By 2001 the public had started to become wise to the fact that their local stations no longer sounded the same, with more repetition and fewer recognizably local personalities. As listeners started to tune out, Jobs’ Apple stepped in with a desirable alternative, the iPod.

Sure, folks had mobile CD and cassette players for years before the iPod. And many models of MP3 players had been on the market since the late 90s. But for most people the iPod offered the first user-friendly device that could supply 1,000 songs in a pocket-sized package.

Steve Jobs didn’t invent podcasting, but the integration of podcast management with iTunes in 2005 made the new medium accessible to new listeners who might never have sought out a specialized “podcatcher” application. The iTunes store almost instantly became the default directory for finding audio programming from across the web, which otherwise required many Google searches to sniff out.

While the iPod and iTunes are not exclusively responsible for the declining fortunes of commercial radio–I’d argue the industry deserves most of the blame–the impact of these technologies cannot be denied. So today I remember Steve Jobs for how he changed the landscape of radio and audio programming for the better, by making it easier and fun to find and listen to programming from around the world, helping to foster a whole new medium that sounds a lot like radio.

Thursday the Third Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a 2007 FCC decision that loosened rules restricting the co-ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations, known as the cross-ownership ban. At the end of that year the Kevin Martin-led FCC rushed through that last minute decision to erode the rule which generally prevented one company from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same broadcast market. The 2007 revision presumptively allowed a newspaper and either one television station or one radio station to be co-owned in the twenty largest markets in the country.

As it turns out, it was the FCC’s rush to judgement that the Court most objected to, finding,

In this context, we have little choice but to conclude that the FCC did not, through the FNPR [Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking], fulfill its “obligation to make its views known to the public in a concrete and focused form so as to make criticism or formulation of alternatives possible.”

What the FCC relied upon as its public notice was an Op-Ed written by Chairman Martin, which the Court observed did constitute sufficient notice under statute. Further weakening things was the fact that the proposal to weaken the cross-ownership rule,

was not published in the Federal Register, the views expressed were those of one person and not the Commission, and the Commission voted days after substantive responses were filed, allowing little opportunity for meaningful consideration of the responses before the final rule was adopted.

The Court also took the FCC to task for not adequately addressing how media ownership rule changes affect people of color and women .

The case was brought by a coalition of public interest groups comprised of the Prometheus Radio Project, Media Alliance, the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ and Free Press. Of the verdict Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the Media Access Project, who argued the case for Prometheus, said

We won on almost every point. This decision is a vindication of the public’s right to have a diverse media environment.

A larger group of media companies, including CBS Broadcasting, Gannet and Clear Channel, also brought suit arguing that the 2007 decision didn’t go far enough in eroding the cross-ownership ban and the FCC’s local media ownership rules. The Court sided against these parties, upholding the FCC’s existing local ownership limits on radio and TV stations.

The National Association of Broadcasters VP of Communications Dennis Wharton released a statement saying,

NAB believes that modest reform of rules to allow free and local broadcasters to compete successfully in a universe of national pay TV and radio platforms is warranted.”

Wharton, obviously, didn’t really address the ruling at all, probably because the prospects of further weakening media ownership rules is looking bleaker following the Third Circuit’s takedown of the last two go-rounds in 2003 and 2007.

Nevertheless, we’re all in for another go as the FCC digs in for another stab at reviewing ownership rules as part of the Congressionally-mandated biennial review process. This much is clear, it’s unlikely we’ll see another Kevin Martin-style freight train proceeding to try and force a broadcast-lobby-friendly rule change before anyone knows what hit them.

Saving College Stations Panel at NFCB (Photo: J. Waits)

Of the many fine panels at the recent National Federation of Community Broadcasters’ conference (you can find our complete coverage here), the one that was closest to my heart was the “Saving College Stations” session (mp3) on Saturday, June 4.

As was the case at a similar panel at SXSW this year, the participants included representatives from stations in crisis as well as from an organization, Public Radio Capital, that has been helping to facilitate college radio station sales.

Especially in light of last week’s shut-down of WRVU at Vanderbilt University, the discussion during this panel provides some important tips about how college radio stations can help prevent themselves from being sold off.

Ken Freedman, General Manager of community radio station WFMU opened the session by sharing how he managed to extricate WFMU from Upsala College following the school’s bankruptcy. He explained that he helped to set up two non-profits and by 1994, one of those non-profits purchased WFMU’s license, allowing it to become independent from the college. He described the strategy he used as “sell it and keep it,” explaining that a non-profit can convince a parent organization to sell a license, while at the same time giving that parent group access to the “service they had enjoyed” by allowing the station to remain on campus.

Freedman said that the pace of college radio station sales is “only going to accelerate” and argued that “student radio stations…have to take active” approaches toward ensuring their stations’ futures. He also said that he’d like to see an “adoption model,” in which older, more established stations are taking others under their wing to help usher them through crises. He also handed out his 10 tips for “How to Save Your College Radio Station.” They are:

1. Make the College a happy licensee so that they don’t want to sell the station.

2. With the College’s permission, incorporate in your state as a not-for-profit corporation for the purpose of keeping in touch with station/college alumni, eg: “Friends of WFMU.”

3. Populate the board of your Friends group with College staff and faculty, station people, lawyers and business fundraising people.

4. Develop a mailing list for your “Friends” group, and utilize them in positive ways that will not be a threat to the college

5. If the College is OK with…your Friends group raising money for the station, contact a (free) lawyer to apply…for 501-c-3 tax exempt status.

6. Identify a person or people from the station or Friends group who can cultivate a strong personal relationship with a key station decision-maker at the College.

7. Negotiate an “option to buy” or a “right of first refusal” contract so that IF the College decides to sell the station, the Friends group will be the first in line to buy it.

8. Start fundraising, either on behalf of the College licensee, or on behalf of the Friends group…

9. IF (and only if) your College is selling the station, negotiate a “sell it but keep it” contract with the College, under which the license is sold to the Friends group, but the College continues to enjoy all benefits of having an affiliated station.

10. Develop a contingency plan for how the station would remain intact (programming-wise) if the College were to suddenly change all the locks on the station doors.

In addition to Freedman’s advice, we also heard a bit about the situation at Rice University station KTRU from Duane Bradley, the General Manager of Pacifica community radio station KPFT in Houston. After the pending sale of KTRU was announced, KPFT wrote an “open letter” of support as a showing of solidarity with the station. Ultimately, KPFT offered to lease one of its HD channels to KTRU so that they could continue broadcasting over FM. He said, “we’re trying to find…the silver lining.”

NFCB Panel. Pictured: Marc Hand, Ken Freedman, Dorothy Kidd, Duane Bradley, and Elizabeth Robinson (Photo: J. Waits)

Dorothy Kidd, a Media Studies Professor at University of San Francisco also shared a bit about the situation at KUSF. She reminded everyone of the fact that, “KUSF has not been sold” since the deal has not yet been approved by the FCC.  She praised “community and college stations,” arguing that they “have saved radio” and have shown “the continuing value of the airwaves.”

In speaking of the recent flurry of college radio station sales, Kidd said, “Now we have a crisis” in which valuable frequencies on the left hand side of the radio dial have been “seized upon.” She asked people to support the efforts of Save KUSF by writing to the FCC and she also suggested that people write to the FCC to initiate a public hearing about the “crisis of college radio.”

Then we heard from Marc Hand, Co-Managing Director of Public Radio Capital (PRC). Many in the audience were eager to hear from him, since Public Radio Capital has played a role in many college radio station sales. Public Radio Capital is 10% owner of Classical Public Radio Network, the entity which is attempting to buy KUSF. He explained that his radio career began at University of California, Santa Cruz’s college radio station KZSC and that Public Radio Capital has worked closely with college and community radio stations, including WFMU.

He pointed out that college radio station sales really didn’t happen much before the mid-1990s. Hand said that once colleges decide to sell their stations they generally want to make as much money as possible. He said that if Public Radio Capital didn’t exist, “almost all of these stations would be sold to religious broadcasters.” Hand also encouraged stations to have proactive discussions with their license holders in order to take a pre-emptive strike against any potential sale.

John Murphy, General Manager of WHUS (University of Connecticut, Storrs), also expressed his frustration over recent college radio station sales. In the most intense moment of the panel, he looked directly into the video camera taping the session and said,

“The tragedy in all of this is not even what’s happening, but how it is being done. To me as a manager at a college station, it is shameful, disrespectful and arrogant how the leaders of these institutions have treated the students that they’re supposed to be there to serve.

They make their decisions when they’re away in the summer time. They do it during winter breaks. Students don’t even participate in the arguments openly. I can say that whatever hassles we’re having with our school, they were in the open. We were able to debate and argue openly.

When a school administrator treats a student with less respect than a dog, to me they betray their institution. And if any administrator watches this video and you’re thinking about doing this to your students, I say take a second look at what you’re doing. Look in the mirror. These students that you’re serving deserve better. You should be open and own the power that you have and be held accountable for using it.”

John Murphy of WHUS speaking up for college radio (Photo: J. Waits)

Murphy encouraged college radio stations to engage with their universities, saying, “you need to have dialogues within your school now…so your school, however desperate it becomes, will always look to you as a resource to help them as well. The more you become conscious of your relationship and protect it, that’s one of the best ways to avoid a nasty situation before it even evolves.” He also suggested that college radio station managers form a committee in order to begin the work of sharing strategies about how to preserve college radio in general.

For the remainder of the panel, there was discussion amongst the panelists and questions from the audience were entertained. Kidd took the opportunity to confront Hand about the situation at KUSF. She pointed out to him, “you’re not only a broker…you’re part owner…of the new station” and asked him to help save KUSF. She added, “Sometimes people save the wrong things” and asked Hand to “help us say…there’s been some problems with this.” When pressed, Hand said that PRC “didn’t encourage” USF to sell KUSF. He said, “We were contacted by a broker they had hired to sell the station.”

As the session wrapped up, Freedman again reiterated his suggestion that college radio stations do all that they can in order to avoid a “drive-by shooting.” He encouraged stations to “set up a legal entity…that could hold the license” if needed and pointed out that it could be set up “ostensibly” to rally alumni support.

It was very clear from each panelist that college radio stations need to work hard in order to save themselves and that an open dialogue with one’s school is imperative in order to avoid what has happened at KTRU, KUSF, and now WRVU.

****

Here are a few more resources for stations looking to ensure their future:

9 Tips to Ensure College Radio’s Survival

Saving College Radio Panel at SXSW 2011 (Podcast)

The Mediageek’s Advice for College Stations, Part 1-Be True to Your School

The Mediageek’s Advice for College Stations, Part 2- No More Elitism, Recruit, Recruit, Recruit

The state of New Jersey has had a state-wide public television network since 1971 when WNJT-TV first went on the air in the state capitol of Trenton. It would be another twenty years before the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority got into the radio business, putting WNJT-FM on the air at 88.1, also in Trenton. Today there are nine stations state-wide.

On Monday governor Chris Christie announced that the state would be selling off all of its public television and radio stations to public broadcasters based in New York City and Philadelphia. New York Public Radio, which operates flagship station WNYC, is taking over the four stations based in the northern half of the state for $1 million cash, and $1.8 million in non-cash compensation. These stations are WNJY FM 89.3 Netcong, WNJP FM 88.5 Sussex, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton and WNJO FM 90.3 Toms River. Philadelphia’s WHYY, home to the long running program Fresh Air, will take over five southern New Jersey stations: WNJM FM 89.9, Manahawkin; WNJN FM 89.7, Atlantic City; WNJZ FM 90.3, Cape May Court House; WNJB FM 89.3, Bridgeton; and WNJS FM 88.1, Berlin.

The New Jersey Network television operation will be taken over by Newark based WNET-TV. While the station’s transmitter is in New Jersey, its studios are in Manhattan, and so it has generally been considered more of a New York serving station. WNET promises to continue offering 20 hours per week of New Jersey focused programming on the newly acquired network.

In announcing the sale of the stations, Governor Christie said that having a state-owned and operated broadcast network,

should have ended with the Soviet Union…. It’s ending here in New Jersey a little later than the fall of the wall in Berlin. But we’re getting there.”

On the flip side, using a state-owned helicopter to attend your kid’s ball game is still just fine by him.

Of course, the real concern with the sale is maintaining a focus on New Jersey news and information on these stations. I grew up in New Jersey and definitely observed the drop in local and state coverage on the radio, in particular, during the late 80s and early 90s. As local stations dropped their news departments residents increasingly had to turn to the bigger news stations in NYC in Philly, which provide much less Jersey coverage. It’s my opinion that the lack of good broadcast news covering New Jersey represents a market failure that the state felt it had to correct.

With regard to radio New York Public Radio says it will keep its new stations New Jersey focused, with a “Garden State bureau.” While just one bureau for a state of 8.7 million people hardly seems sufficient, it is fair to acknowledge that NJN radio doesn’t appear to broadcast any New Jersey-specific programming aside from simulcasts of several NJN television news and public affairs programming. The rest of the schedule is made up entirely of syndicated NPR programming and some jazz from the independent public jazz station WBGO in Newark. So, it is possible that the new arrangement might increase radio-specific coverage of New Jersey, but it’s too soon to tell.

So far there is no word that WHYY will do anything but use the new NJ stations to extend the reach of the flagship station.

I actually volunteered at the first NJN public radio station, WNJT, in its first year on the air while I was attending college in Trenton. This was before the eight other stations had been acquired and before the mission of the station was absolutely clear. At the time the station broadcast a somewhat eclectic mix of music and talk programs out of a tiny studio located inside the WNJT television studios complex. I believe all the station staff were volunteers. My responsibility was to engineer the radio simulcast of New Jersey Network News once per week, punching in radio-specific spots on carts (yes, carts) during the station breaks.

I left at the end of the school year. I did not return in part because the direction of the station was becoming a political battle within NJN and I’d already been courted by both sides. As it was my college station had significantly more power and reach, so I decided it wasn’t worth my time and effort to get caught up in the politics at WNJT. I left New Jersey in 1993 and didn’t really think about the station again until I heard about the public radio station network coming together in the late 90s.

I have mixed feelings about the state disbursing its broadcast stations. I’m most concerned about the 120 NJN employees who likely will lose their jobs. The legislature still has to approve the deal, so there will definitely be a fight there. Sen. Frank Lautenberg has promised to bring up the issue with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on Wednesday when he already had a meeting planned to discuss concerns over Secaucus-based WOR-TV not providing insufficient Jersey-centric programming. The issue of New Jersey being underserved by the TV stations licensed in the state has been addressed by the Commission in the past.

When I lived in Jersey I always thought New Jersey Nightly News was a very good program that filled an important gap in broadcast news coverage. I had greater hope for the radio network, but I don’t think it ever distinguished itself much from the bigger public stations in NYC and Philly.

If WNYC and WNET follow through on continuing, and possibly expanding, New Jersey coverage then the transfer might indeed be a good thing. It may be to the networks’ advantage to lose such strict dependence on the political vagaries of state funding. However, the state will still provide $4 million a year to WNET to help fund television coverage. Furhtermore, WNYC and WNET themselves are subject to the political vagaries of Congress and CPB funding, which might threaten their service to the provinces of Jersey. Again, only time will tell.

My perspective is that I cannot see how any additional consolidation in the radio industry would be a good thing. I also fail to see how the $2.5 billion price–which includes $500 million of equity financing and as much of $2.35 billion of secured debt financing–won’t be a large burden on Cumulus forcing the company to radically cut costs across the board, just like Clear Channel did a decade ago. Didn’t anyone learn anything from the lessons of Clear Channel and Tribune Company about the hazards of highly leveraged mergers in old media?

The media reform group Free Press has just filed comments with the FCC opposing the merger for the obvious reasons that it would threaten radio diversity and impact what little local service is left in commercial radio.

Some Citadel shareholders are also opposing the deal, complaining that they want more than the $37 per share price that Cumulus has offered, which is about 9% than the current Citadel market price. These shareholders say that the typical offer for a radio company is more like 80% above share price. I say, good luck with that.

Though I haven’t done an analysis of market overlap between the companies, I’d guess that some station divestiture would be required if the merger were to go through. The combined company would probably exceed ownership limits in some smaller markets. Unfortunately, I fear that will be the only significant factor weighed by either the FCC or Justice Department, rather than taking into account the overall deleterious effects of consolidation.

This is not a self-imposed initiative: it is a consideration the agency is mandated to make, courtesy of the Paperwork Reduction Act. It requires regulatory agencies to periodically review their rules and justify their existence to the Office of Management and Budget.

A communications law attorney filed a Petition for Rulemaking directly with the FCC to do away with the public file five years ago. The Petition attracted less than three dozen comments, most of which came from broadcasters who supported killing it off. The FCC circular-filed the idea.

According to the D.C. telecom law firm of Fletcher, Heald and Hildreth, the local station public file requirement is essentially pointless:

According to many broadcasters…such files are largely if not totally ineffective and unnecessary, since (in the reported experience of many of those broadcasters) the public seldom if ever inspects the files. From that perspective, the requirement to maintain the files is an empty make-work exercise that serves no purpose. . . other than to provide the FCC with a way to collect tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars in fines from folks who happen not to have dotted all their public file I’s and crossed all their public file T’s.

Indeed, the FCC takes the public file requirement very seriously – having recently fined several stations thousands of dollars apiece for failing to maintain them properly.

However, the argument to abolish is circular. Public files of broadcast stations are seldom inspected because the public is largely unaware that they exist, and even less aware that it has the right to inspect them. Stations certainly don’t go out of their way to inform the public of its rights in this regard, which further exacerbates the lack of utilization.

Couching advocacy for the banishment of the public file requirement as economically burdensome is also a cop-out. Given the consolidation the radio industry has experienced since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it’s no surprise that stations are letting this important license requirement slip: there’s no longer enough people employed at radio stations to properly maintain many public files.

The slashing of station personnel arguably has made public file maintenance more burdensome – but that’s a consequence of prior bad broadcast policy, and no excuse for eliminating this rule.

In fact, one could argue that the public file requirement is the last meaningful remnant of the FCC’s “commitment” to localism in broadcasting. Sure, the agency’s Localism Task Force has studied the issue – even to the point of publishing a detailed Report and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in 2008, which would have promoted more use of the public file rules – but nothing has come of it.

On its face, I’d be willing to trade the public file requirement for localism regulations with more teeth, but that’s a pipe-dream.

Public comments on this issue will be accepted through June 17. There is no formal FCC proceeding on the subject, but you can send feedback via e-mail to PRA@fcc.gov and Cathy.Williams@FCC.gov. There’s a better-than-even chance that the FCC will recommend keeping the public file rule, but the OMB has final say. Giving the FCC fodder to strengthen its justification can’t hurt.

[This story was initially published on DIYmedia.net.]