Radio Survivor

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It’s always a treat to check in with the House Office of the Clerk’s lobbying disclosure database and see what broadcast radio’s big boys are spending on Congress these days. Needless to say, the top roller is usually Clear Channel Communications, which forked over $1,370,000 in the second quarter of this year.

And what did that wascally wadio company use the money for? According to its disclosure form, Clear Channel educated our nation’s representatives on the Fairness Doctrine, “broadcast decency enforcement,” satellite stuff, various bills relating to the proposed Performance Rights Act, which would require radio stations to pay royalties to artists as well as copyright holders, the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act, and H.R. 5175/S. 3295, aka the (hold your breath) “Democracy is strengthened by casting light on spending in elections act.”

That last bill’s summary says it amends the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to prohibit foreign entities and government contractors from “making expenditures with respect to such elections.” The bill treats payments of “coordinated communications” as “contributions.” And that includes

any communication that republishes, disseminates, or distributes, in whole or in part, any broadcast or any written, graphic, or other form of campaign material prepared by a candidate, an authorized committee of a candidate, or their agents. [italics added]

That’s probably what has Clear Channel’s attention in this bill.

According to the Open Secrets database, Clear Channel isn’t tossing out quite the level of moolah that it did back in 2008, when it spent over $4.0M on Congress. But $1.37 million in one quarter isn’t turkey feed.

CC’s nearest competitors don’t even come close to this figure. The runner up as far as I can tell is CBS Corporation, which has its hands in lots of broadcast and online radio ventures (eg, Last.fm). CBS spent $800,000 on Congress in Q2, mostly talking up the same issues. It doesn’t appear that Cumulus has done any lobbying in years.

This is all on a company level, of course. On a trade association level, nobody outdoes the National Association of Broadcasters when it comes to lobbying. Last quarter the organization spent $3,020,000 making sure its positions on Capitol Hill were perfectly clear.

Every year scores of community and public radio stations apply for funding from the Department of Commerce’s Public Telecommunications Facilities Program. The venue funds a host of capital expenses that many of these stations can’t afford otherwise. The cash goes to upgrading transmission towers, funding shelters for transmitters, and buying new control room equipment, console furniture, auxiliary power gear, air conditioners to protect servers from hot weather—all that good stuff and more.

So, of course, there’s got to be a politician somewhere who thinks this good deed ought not to go unpunished. His name is Representative Charlie Wilson (D-OH), and Wilson actually thinks he’s going to reduce the deficit by killing this fund.

No kidding. Yes way. He’s for real submitted a bill to kill PTFP. Here’s Wilson’s statement on the issue.

TRIMMING THE FAT

1. Wilson is the LEAD SPONSOR of an upcoming bill to eliminate the Public Telecommunications Facilities Grant Program. In FY 2010, this program received $18M in federal funds. Once all television signals were converted to digital in June 2009, this grant program was no longer needed as it pertained to analog service facilities. President Obama zeroed out this program in his FY2011 budget proposal, but it is unlikely that Congress will pass a budget resolution this year which could result in the program continuing to be funded. Congressman Wilson is proactively making sure that a defunct program will not receive funding or become a place holder for other funding.

Eighteen million whole bucks! Woah. There you go. That’s going to cut down the national debt, like, not at all.

Ending PTFP, however, will hurt a boatload of community stations that really need this money to keep up their infrastructures. It appears from Wilson’s statement that he hasn’t even actually looked at the program and noticed that it funds radio stations, which did not go through the government’s DTV transition program.

Apparently there’s talk that the radio end of PTFP could be funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Please. The CPB hasn’t got any money for this. It’s too busy helping fund the Public Broadcasting System so that PBS can distribute a three hour worshipful TV documentary about Ronald Reagan’s former Secretary of State George Schultz, funded by his pals.

The National Federation of Community Broadcasters is fighting to keep PTFP alive. Go to NFCB’s site and help them.

NPR's Howard Berkes

National Public Radio’s ombudsman Alicia Shephard pondered an interesting conundrum this week. What do you do when you are covering elections in a state like Utah, where just about everybody can be classified as a “conservative”? How do you grade the distinctions in conservatism?

The network’s Howard Berkes decided to roll out the term “ultra-conservative” in order to describe the two candidates who vied for now deposed Republican Senator Bob Bennett’s seat. But this provoked a mildly irate listener response, quoted by Shephard.

“You called the two Republican candidates in Utah ‘ultra-conservatives,’” he wrote. “Does NPR ever call a candidate an ‘ultra-liberal’? Barbara Lee? Dennis Kucinich? Bernie Sanders? Or are only conservatives ‘ultra’ in NPR’s world?”

Not true, Shephard pushed back. In fact, NPR does apply the u-word to liberals, and  she cited various reports to back her claim.

“Given the context of this particular story, it was reasonable for Berkes to call Bennett’s opponents ‘ultra-conservatives’,” she wrote, “if only to help listeners outside Utah understand why that state’s Republicans were choosing a replacement for a veteran senator.”

But I think I’ve got a better term to use in this instance. How about we revive the word “reactionary”? The concept is defined by Wikipedia as so:

“Viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state (the status quo ante ) in a society.”

(more…)

Free Press has a provocative new report on the state of public media and how to more adequately fund it. Many of the reform group’s proposals involve siphoning income from commercial station advertising revenue or Federal Communications Commission spectrum auctions. I’ve got an overview of the document up on Ars Technica, which has generated quite a few comments. They largely focus on the question of whether the government should get more involved in media—always a subject for heated debate.

I’m not inclined to hash that out here, but do wonder about one of the report’s smaller recommendations. A section of the piece titled “Restoring Public Media’s Heat Shield” focuses on the very legitimate concern that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting fails to protect public media from external political pressure.

“The current appointment process for leadership at the CPB is overly politicized. Presidential appointments govern the entire process — into which neither the public nor the core constituency of public media producers have any input. It also often leads to appointments as rewards for political support, rather than simple calls to service for qualified people, including those who have broadcasting or media experience.”

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A gaggle of major Internet content companies say they support the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed new net neutrality rules, and the signers of their letter include Sony Electronics.

“This framework will ensure that consumers have access to an open Internet, one that would preserve a level playing field for all participants,” they write. “And it does so without regulating the Internet but only applying basic rules of the road to the transmission services that provide access to the Internet.”

Other backers include Amazon.com, eBay, and Skype, all directly or indirectly involved in online audio, streaming radio, or the retailing of radio gear. I am betraying my age when I note that when I think about Sony, it’s not the PS3 that first comes to my mind, but the transistor radio revolution of the 1960s. That’s what put Sony on the international map, of course.

The FCC’s proposed new open Internet rules come in the wake of the agency’s recent legal defeat by Comcast. A DC appeals court rules that the Commission didn’t have the authority under Title I of the Communications Act’s “ancillary” powers to sanction the ISP for P2P throttling. So FCC Chair Julius Genachowski says he’s going to go with a “third way” approach— something between trying to squeak by on other sections of Title I or just declaring ISPs to be Title II common carriers, like telephone companies, thus subject to telecommunications services anti-discrimination rules. (more…)

If you think the above title is long, here’s the one I suggested to Radio Survivor’s editors:

Dr. Michael LeNoir tries to have an intelligent discussion of Health Reform on the KPFA airwaves, and is mercilessly pummeled: A Case Study of the Left’s vilification of Obama and its dismissal of Partial Reforms

Last week, respected San Francisco Bay Area physician Dr. Michael LeNoir devoted his weekly “About Health” program to the just passed health care reform bill and the political debate around it. LeNoir is a pioneer in treating asthma in inner city children, and has a regular show on listener sponsored FM station KPFA in Berkeley. After saying that the bill is much less than he wanted, being an advocate of single payer, he said that it was important to understand what is in the bill, the good and bad of it, and to think about how we can use it as a foot in the door to widen and deepen the reform. He also said that he was disturbed that the Right seemed to dominate public debate about the bill, and he challenged his listeners to think about how we – those who want real reform – can have more of a voice in the debate.

LeNoir also expressed fear that unless we do that, the bill could be blocked, crippled and even repealed. The possibility that the Right could unseat those who had voted for the bill should be taken seriously, he warned.

This was clearly an attempt to engage in an intelligent and rational discussion of the bill and the political debate around it, but he got anything but that. Instead, a barrage of negative, polemical, incurious and dismissive attitudes were expressed by the eleven callers heard during the hour long program. Here is a summary of what LeNoir was told:

. A Single Payer plan is the only valuable option. Otherwise, all we’re doing is just making “them” richer. What we’ve got is just band aids “that will all fall down”. (more…)

The Kronos Quartet says yes to net neutrality (source: kronosquartet.org)

The Future of Music Coalition has a small boatload of classy crossover music groups sending letters to the Federal Communications Commission in support of tougher net neutrality rules. They include R.E.M., the woodwind quintet Imani Winds, and the Kronos Quartet. Here’s an excerpt from Kronos Artistic Administrator Sidney Chen’s letter to the FCC:

“From the time the group was founded, Kronos has championed important, yet unsung, voicesthat have deserve broad attention. David Harrington formed the group after hearing Black Angels, a work by the now iconic American composer George Crumb inspired by the Vietnam War. The quartet’s most recent recording project, Floodplain, features collaborations with and composers and performers from parts of the world with which most Americans do not have direct engagement, including Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Ethiopia. Kronos strongly believes that, through direct artistic engagement with musicians working in different artistic traditions, the process of finding common ground and of resolving conflicts provides rewards that extend beyond the immediate interaction. This has, in fact, become a central focus of Kronos’ work. The open internet allows for and facilitates such interaction. We strongly encourage you to preserve its openness.”

The Commission is currently proposing an expansion of its Internet Policy Statement, which commits the agency to making sure that consumers can access the legal device of their choice on the ‘Net. The FCC wants to add an enforcement provision to the statement making it clear what kind of consequences content or application blocking ISPs  face, and a transparency provision requiring them to disclose their network management practices up front. (more…)

As everybody in the radio world knows, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh is in a Honolulu hospital, recovering from chest pains. Meanwhile, something of a referendum on his fate is being conducted on Twitter.

“Please, Rush Limbaugh, DIE NOW!” tweeted Chuck69dotcom not too long ago.

“oh pleez oh pleez oh pleez let Rush Limbaugh die . In a year of many dead celebs, let’s end 2009 on a good note,” chimed in The Angry Bacon. ”

Did Rush Limbaugh die yet? Oh, not yet.LMAO,” laments NOVACHANEL. “if there’s any justice in the world… Rush Limbaugh will die before the year is out,” insists Shellistoast.

Other Rush haters are a bit more circumspect about the matter. “Rush Limbaugh has heart attack; fails to die thusfar,” notes Corp8myBaby.

These outbursts, of course, have displeased Mr. Limbaugh’s supporters, who are anxious to derive lessons from the moment. “So Rush Limbaugh can’t say that he wants Obama to fail, but liberals can say that they want Rush Limbaugh to die?” retorts SonSound. Or:  “The people calling for Rush Limbaugh to die are the same people who ask to control your healthcare,” shoots back natatomic.

More draconianly: “DO YOU GET IT NOW? People want Rush Limbaugh to die aresame people who R to control healthcare DEATH PANELS.”

But many self-described leftys insist that they wish Rush well. “As a Liberal I hope Rush Limbaugh recovers quickly,” declares DEMOCRATZxORG. “Because I strongly disagree with someone doesn’t mean I want them to die.” Ditto says zorylynx. “I don’t want Rush Limbaugh to die . I disagree vehemently with him, but that’s no excuse.” (more…)

#8 in our series on radio trends of the decade

It was the summer of 2007. Not moments after the Republican far right triumphed over President Bush’s hated immigration reform law than Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, introduced a rider to a budgetary bill in the House that would forbid funding for the Federal Communications Commission to enforce the Fairness Doctrine.

The bill overwhelmingly passed the House on Thursday, June 26. This was odd, because the FCC hadn’t enforced the policy in 20 years.

Broadcaster freedom

The Fairness Doctrine was a regulation tailored to the mid-20th century’s Internetless, cable TV-less, three network video broadcasting world. It required license owners to present opposing viewpoints on issues of public importance. In the 1980s the FCC began to pull back from the rule, issuing a “Fairness Doctrine Report” in 1985 that suggested that the policy inhibited rather than encouraged controversial dialog over the air waves.

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Josef Stalin: how "balanced" do you want your past? (source: Wikipedia Commons)

RIA Novosti reports that the grandson of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is suing a Russian radio station for broadcasting “offensive disrespect” against his infamous ancestor. Yevgeny Dzhugashvili is demanding the equivalent of $326,500USD from station Ekho Moskvy. Of late one of the frequency’s hosts, Matvei Ganapolsky, quoted a line from a book titled Staliniada:

“Stalin signed an order that children may be shot from the age of 12,” Ganapolsky read. Then he opined the following: “What kind of bastard would be brave enough to say one word in his [the dictator's] defense?”

This was no doubt intended as a rhetorical question. But there appear to be a lot of bastards in post-Soviet Russia, among them Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin recently called for a more “balanced assessment” of Stalin, according to Associated Press. Putin conceded Stalin’s “unacceptable” crimes, but:

“If you say you are positive (about Stalin’s rule), some will be discontented. If you say you are negative, others will grumble,” AP quotes him as saying. “It is impossible to make a general judgment. It is evident that, from 1924 to 1953, the country that Stalin ruled changed from an agrarian to an industrial society.”

Plus Stalin defended the Soviet Union from Hitler, Putin noted (after signing a peace treaty with Hitler that allowed the former USSR to gobble up half of Poland. Putin didn’t mention that part). (more…)