Signage at KEAR-AM in Oakland (Photo: J. Waits)

Time and time again we are reminded of the vital importance of terrestrial radio following a natural disaster. Just this week, six commercial radio stations in Joplin, Missouri have stepped up following the horrific tornado there.

As was the case after the recent tornado in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and after the hurricane in Haiti; radio has become one of the primary methods of communicating news both before and after the storm. Zimmer Radio, Inc., which owns six commercial radio stations in Joplin, began non-stop coverage of the impending tornado beginning an hour and a half before it hit town on Sunday. As residents lost electricity and Internet access, listening to terrestrial radio became the main way to keep in touch with news about the storm. According to a CNN article:

“KZRG, part of Zimmer Operations’ six radio stations — two that are news and four, music — began its wall-to-wall coverage an hour and a half before the tornado twisted through town Sunday. It hasn’t stopped. For the first 24 hours, there was no electricity. Both cell phones and land lines were out, as was Internet service. All that people in Joplin had were battery-powered transistors.

The tornado missed the station building by a few blocks. So Zimmer Programming Manager Chad Elliot’s staff cranked up the generators and turned off the music. They even canceled the commercials. All they did was provide vital information to people who had lost everything.

Elliot said it was the first time the stations had stopped all else to provide 24/7 information, though he had learned the power of radio two years ago during a jumbo ice storm. ‘We’ve had this situation before, when radio becomes the only way of communication,’ he said. Immediately after Sunday’s killer tornado, Elliot said emergency crews drove to the station to provide information for broadcast. The station began telling people where to go for medical help. Or what number to dial for information about the missing. Or where they could buy gas or where there was still a Walmart standing.”

In addition to sending information out to listeners, the stations in Joplin also served as clearinghouses for callers offering aid or requesting assistance. According to a piece in the Los Angeles Times:

“The stations, based in a one-story building in Joplin, have transformed their staffs into impromptu public health experts and unofficial public information officers, consolidating multiple broadcasts into a single feed of nonstop disaster coverage under the call letters KZRG.

Classic-rock jocks and news talk-show hosts have become on-air first responders.

‘All of a sudden, it turned into people looking for loved ones,’ said [radio host Rob] Meyer, assistant operations manager. ‘ And we just let it grow.’

On late Tuesday night and early Wednesday, questions on the show focused on logistics. Where do I get a permit to enter damaged areas? How do I make a FEMA claim? Callers also passed along the latest survivor tips or staked righteous attempts at fighting misinformation, including one woman who called to say that she and her family were not dead — as had apparently been rumored on Facebook.

Spontaneous charity was rampant. A McDonald’s employee called host Randy Brooks, 40, to take an on-air order: three Quarter Pounders for the hosts and a Happy Meal for Brooks’ daughter. Another caller offered to bring clothes.”

Again, it’s important to realize the areas in which terrestrial radio excels and the key role that it can and should play in its local community. Every time there’s an earthquake, tornado, hurricane, or similar disaster and local radio heroically responds; we should all stop and pause and think about who will help save us in our own home towns. It’s yet another reason why we should vehemently protest when local stations are targets for takeover by out-of-town conglomerates, as I’m not sure that a voice-tracked DJ or a satellite-fed signal from across the country will be able to help when a tragedy hits in my back yard.

The Federal Communications Commission is commissioning nine economic studies on the state of the media industry, and numbers five and six couldn’t come too soon as far as I’m concerned. Here they are:

• Study 5: Quantity of radio news and public affairs programming provided and audience for radio news programming as a function of local market structure. This study will examine provision of radio news and public affairs programming and will examine the impact of local market structure on presence of news formats.  The study may also examine station websites to determine how much news these stations provide.
• Study 6:  Local content on the Internet. The study will examine the availability and usage of local content on the Internet and analyze the impact of local market structure on the availability and usage of local Internet content.  The study shall analyze, at a minimum, the extent to which websites offering local Internet content are affiliated with local radio stations, television stations, newspapers, or other media entities and whether the degree of such affiliation varies across markets with different local market structures.

All the proposed studies are listed at the end of this post. This is part of the agency’s quadrennial review of its media ownership rules.

In all my years of covering the FCC and the Great Media Ownership Debate, one of the things I’ve noted is the lack of up-to-date data on questions like localism. Pro and anti-regulatory groups have been at each other’s throats for years on whether to require more local coverage from radio stations.

Example: this Youtube clip (see above)  of Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) tense confrontation with then FCC Chair Kevin Martin in 2007 over his handling of a study on local TV ownership patterns. But much of this discussion takes place without any concrete and vetted research on the degree to which radio stations and their Internet portals really serve the public, local coverage-wise.

So this is welcome stuff, to my mind. If you’re a researcher at some media institute or college and have more questions, you can contact Jonathan Levy, Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, FCC at (202) 418-2048 or by email at Jonathan.Levy@fcc.gov.

• Study 1: Media usage as a function of local market structure. This study will analyze media usage (television viewing and radio listening) as a function of local market structure, taking account of the availability of other media platforms and holding constant other relevant factors.
• Study 2: Consumer survey and consumer valuation of media as a function of local market structure. This study will examine, based on a consumer survey, the impact of local media market structure on consumer satisfaction with available broadcast radio and television service. The study will examine, to the extent feasible, overall satisfaction with the media environment, satisfaction with locally-oriented media content, including news, and satisfaction by demographic groups. The survey will gather information on how much time people spend with various media and how people get news and information. The survey may also collect information on certain measures of civic engagement or political participation.
• Study 3: Civic knowledge/engagement as a function of local market structure. This study will examine civic knowledge and/or engagement with respect to local or regional events as a function of local market structure, for the overall population and also, to the extent feasible, by demographic group.
• Study 4: Quantity of local television news and public affairs programming provided as a function of local market structure. This study will examine the effect of local market structure on the total amount of local television news and public affairs programming provided by station and also by market.
• Study 5: Quantity of radio news and public affairs programming provided and audience for radio news programming as a function of local market structure. This study will examine provision of radio news and public affairs programming and will examine the impact of local market structure on presence of news formats.  The study may also examine station websites to determine how much news these stations provide.
• Study 6:  Local content on the Internet. The study will examine the availability and usage of local content on the Internet and analyze the impact of local market structure on the availability and usage of local Internet content.  The study shall analyze, at a minimum, the extent to which websites offering local Internet content are affiliated with local radio stations, television stations, newspapers, or other media entities and whether the degree of such affiliation varies across markets with different local market structures.
• Study 7: Impact of minority ownership on minority-targeted radio programming. This study will examine the impact of minority ownership on minority-targeted radio station formats.  This study will assess whether minority ownership of one or more stations in a market influences the total amount of minority targeted programming available in that market.
• Study 8: Empirical analysis of the impact of local market structure on viewpoint diversity. This study will examine the impact of local market structure on viewpoint diversity.
• Study 9: Theoretical analysis of the impact of local market structure on the range of viewpoints supplied. This study will develop and analyze a theoretical model of the impact of local market structure on media owners’ incentives to shape the distribution of information under varying assumptions regarding owner incentives.

Mark Lloyd

The Federal Communications Commission’s Diversity Officer defended himself this morning from the veritable avalanche of attacks he has sustained since he took his job. Speaking at a Washington, D.C. conference, Mark Lloyd asked to be allowed to “clear away some mud:”

“I am not a Czar appointed by President Obama. I am not at the FCC to restore the Fairness Doctrine through the front door or the back door, or to carry out a secret plot funded by George Soros to get rid of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or any other conservative talk show host. I am not at the FCC to remove anybody, whatever their color, from power. I am not a supporter of Hugo Chavez. The right wing smear campaign has been, in a word – incredible, generating hate mail and death threats. It is the price we pay for freedom of speech. And I do support free speech.”

We’ve been following this story here for a while. The sheer level of hysteria that has followed Lloyd’s tenure has made it all but impossible to have a reasonable debate about his ideas, some of which I agree with, particularly rules encouraging more local media—although I don’t want them in order to ensure more “balance” in programming.

In any event, while Lloyd sounds somewhat scarred by the rhetoric of the last few months (including threats made against him), it isn’t often that you hear a speech as historically grounded as this one:

“We Americans have been wrestling with the problem of what policies to put in place to promote an informed citizenry since the founding of the nation. Even though Madison believed that communication between North and South might lead to a civil war, even though Madison worked to delay any debate about slavery in Congress, he believed that communication service to all was necessary to establish a more perfect union. The answer Madison and the founders settled on in 1792 was to establish a government run program, a program that dwarfed every other government operation of the time – the Post Office – and to subsidize the distribution of newspapers.

I do not suggest that we return to that model, only that we have something to learn from it. Much has changed since the late 1700s. But all the new technologies, from the telegraph to radio to television to cable and now to the Internet, have not solved the problem of promoting an informed citizenry. Despite all the early promise and fervent hope renewed with each new communications technology, we still face the challenge of how to provide a people who mean to be their own governors the information they need.”

It’s a shame that this important (and interesting) discussion has been buried in sludge for the last few months. The other problem that broadcasting/localism/diversity questions face is that they’ve been almost completely subsumed by broadband issues. The broadband project is so huge that it has eclipsed localism and other questions at the FCC,  except of course when somebody wants to rant that any attempt to encourage localism is really a secret attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.

Not sure where the light is in this particular tunnel . . .

Two years ago this December the Federal Communications Commission proposed a quartet of new regulations to nudge radio stations to provide more local news, music, and public affairs programming.

These included rules requiring a certain amount of local programming from each station, requiring licensees to staff their stations with an actual human being 24/7, mandating that license owners set up local station advisory boards, and a requirement that a signals’ main studio be situated in its signal area.

Since then these proposals have received nothing but cat calls and boos. The public interest groups that clamored for them in the first half of this decade rarely come to their defense. Instead, just about every regional or national broadcast association writes to the FCC denouncing them on a semi-regular basis. The religious groups say the local board rule will drive their stations in the hands of heathens, atheists, and Family Guy fans. The Fox TV lovers say it’s all a plot to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Even advocates for minorities question the proposals, among them Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), father of now FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn.

So no surprise Texas wants them nixed too. Here’s the what the association told the FCC this month:

“The proposed 24/7 staffing requirement would force some small 24-hour AM radio stations to sign off at night, eliminating highly valued programming and local emergency information updates to listeners because of increased costs. In such cases, stations are currently able to provide automated programming and insert live, local information or updates of significant community interest as local needs dictate.”

Ok. Help me out here. How would “increased costs” force stations to sign off at night if most of the programming they’re providing is already automated? I can see where’s there’s a price tag to 24/7, but how does that force a station that mostly depends on canned programming to shut down? And if the station is providing those “live, local information . . . updates” at night, they’re probably fulfilling the 24/7 rule already. So what’s the problem here?

Another point Texas makes:

“The proposed requirement that each station have a studio within the community of license would require a group of licensees that serve multiple communities to incur significant additional costs at the risk of diverting money from local programming or forcing some stations to go “dark.” In many instances, licensees to multiple small, contiguous communities have concentrated administrative and studio operations in one location, achieving significant fiscal efficiencies that allow members of all the communities to benefit from a robust station operation. Such efficiencies would be lost under this proposal and reduce highly valued service to some of those communities.”

This appears to me to be a long winded way of saying ‘we can’t do this because we’ve centralized our licenses to the point where, well, we just can’t do it.’ Which is, of course, the problem that the FCC is trying to address with its proposed rules.

Ok. Fine. The nation’s commercial radio stations can’t afford to structure themselves to effectively serve their local communities. So the question for the FCC is who can? And how do we get them the spectrum they need to do the job?

Any keen observer of the commercial radio landscape knows that right now the nation’s largest radio station owners are certainly not making money. But, as the Wall Street Journal’s “Heard on the Street” column points out, smaller owners focused on smaller markets ain’t doing so bad.

As the Journal’s Martin Peers reports,

Average revenue at stations in markets below the top 50 fell 6.6% last year compared with around 9% for bigger stations, BIA [Financial Network] estimates. It projects smaller stations will continue outperforming through 2013.

Peers chalks up the disparity to the suffocating debt that the likes of Clear Channel and Citadel Broadcasting took on to go on their post-1996 buying spree party; he even calls the current fall in fortunes a “hangover.” By comparison smaller market stations were less costly to vacuum up.

Peers points to Grosse Pointe Farms, MI based Saga Communications as one of these small market broadcasters, with 89 stations mostly in places like Des Moines, IA, Columbus, OH and Champaign, IL. Because I lived down in Champaign, home to the University of Illinois, for fourteen years, I’m quite familiar with Saga. In the six years or so following the 1996 Telecommunications Act the company acquired four FM stations in the market of roughly 150,000 metro. While stations in the number 220 market in the country (according to Arbitron) are cheaper than in Chicago, New York or LA, I was stunned when back in 2000 Saga paid a hefty $7 million for one of the top rated FMs in Champaign.

Five years ago Saga’s first quarter results of a 17.7% reduction in net operating revenue wouldn’t be such good news. But compared to Clear Channel, which became a penny stock before going private equity, it sounds like the party might be on again.

The Journal’s piece on small market stations was pretty slight by any measure. But that didn’t stop the Gerson Lerhman Group from posting their own analysis of the piece that’s only 33 words shorter. But Gerson Lehrman’s Alan Albarran takes the small market station cheerleading much further, writing,

The fact is small market stations are deeply involved in their communities–they focus on localism.

Travel across small markets and listen to radio stations, and you will hear local news, high school sports, farm and agriculture reports (where appropriate), discussion of community events, and other things you won’t hear among big groups in big markets who focus on boring and repetitive playlists followed by several minutes of commercial “stop sets” as the industry refers to them. They don’t have any news or much traffic and weather information aside from drive time and do little to engage the local audiences. It’s one of the main reasons why younger audiences gave up on radio years ago and switched to iPods and Internet radio.

Whoa! Stop the presses! So the market analyst is saying that radio is meant to focus on local service, and that big radio lost the iPod generation because it left localism behind? Who’re they talking to, Michael Copps and the Prometheus Radio Project?

Now, having lived in one of these small markets during the great consolidation rush of the last thirteen years I’m wondering what idyllic old-timey stations Albarran has been listening to. At least half of the stations in Champaign primarily air syndicated programming and voice-tracking most of the day. Saga, actually, fairs a little better, with live local morning shows on its two highest rated Champaign stations that do feature local news, weather and sports updates.

Yet, we cannot ignore that what Saga did in small markets like Champaign isn’t a hell of a lot different than what Clear Channel did in markets of all sizes across the country. Both companies came into markets and bought as many stations as they could, then consolidated their operations to cut costs. By any estimate Saga was not nearly as brutal as Clear Channel, but the effect is that the two stations added to Saga’s arsenal during my Champaign tenure (WCFF, formerly WKIO & WXTT, formerly WXLS) no longer have nearly the amount of local programming and service they did before. In fact Saga moved WXTT from the smaller city of Danville 40 miles east of Champaign to the suburb of Savoy which borders Champaign to the south, effectively depriving the more economically depressed city of a station that once provided local service targeted to the Danville area.

I, for one, hold out hope that the inevitable post-consolidation sell-off results in some commercial stations falling back into the hands of true local owners–not just smaller consolidators. Localism is about ownership, not just programming. Listening to the stations owned by these smaller consolidators shows that it’s not like 1996 never happened. Localism has taken a hit everywhere.

But the agency also made four important decisions this month and last that deserve a second glance, not only because they could have an impact on broadcasting, but because they illustrate the extent to which the Commission can promote measures that clearly serve the public interest—when it wants to.

Low Power FM

When the FCC created its Low Power FM (LPFM) service in the 1990s, it ruled that these new, locally based non-profit frequencies did not have to protect so-called “third adjacent” full power FM stations. The National Association of Broadcasters moved almost instantly to quash the provision, using its enormous influence to get Congress to pass the “Radio Broadcast Projection Act,” which restored the third adjacent rule.

This meant that a full power FM station at 94.1 megahertz could demand that no LPFM station be built anywhere from 93.5 to 94.7 on the dial. A half dozen big FM stations on the lower end of the dial could thus create a prohibitively large no-fly zone for any prospective non-profit broadcaster.

But the FCC’s plucky Media Bureau commissioned a study to test the NAB’s assertions, and the engineering firm found that the agency’s original ruling was solid.

“Based on the measurements and analysis reported herein, existing third-adjacent channel distance restrictions should be waived to allow LPFM operation at locations that meet all other FCC requirements,” the MITRE Corporation’s engineers concluded in 2003.

It took a while, but on November 27th, the FCC formally recommended that Congress remove the requirement that LPFM stations protect full power stations operating on third adjacent channels. The Commission’s Order also tightened up rules for LPFM that will make sure that these stations keep their broadcasting local and non-repetitious.

And only one LPFM to a non-profit customer, the FCC warned. No more. That move means that the megachurches can’t crowd out the rest of us.

Diversification of broadcast ownership

Women and minorities own a pathetically small percentage of radio and television stations in the United States. Last year Howard University’s Carolyn M. Byerly looked at FCC ownership data circa 2005 and found that of 12,844 radio and TV stations that filed documentation with the FCC in 2005, minorities owned 3.6% and women owned 3.4% of these frequencies.

On the same day that it relaxed its newspaper/TV ownership limits, the FCC passed a series of reforms that will make it easier for women and minorities to buy and retain broadcast media. The provisions smooth the way for financially distressed stations to sell their signal to a female or minority buyer. They allow minority/women owners more time for construction permits.

The provisions make it easier for big media companies to sell off pieces of “grandfathered” combinations of radio, TV stations, and newspapers to minority/women bidders. And they initiate an annual “access to capital” conference to match minority media buyers with media investors.

It’s a hodge podge of provisions that won’t change anything overnight, but a “first step,” as FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate called it.

“Unfortunately, a step that has already taken this Commission too long,” she added, “and therefore we need to move forward expeditiously—beginning today.”

Cable subscriber caps

The FCC also approved an Order on December 18th that sets at 30 percent the number of subscribers a cable company can serve.

“In so doing, we ensure that a single operator cannot unduly limit the viability of a new independent network in its formative years,” declared FCC Chair Kevin Martin in a comment that does not corroborate his public image as the subservient poodle of big media.

Indeed, Martin found his allies on this issue not with his fellow Republicans, but with his traditional adversaries: Democrats Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein.

Both Republicans dissented on this decision, and the cable industry is furious at the move. While Martin’s reform does not force any company to sell off properties, the Order limits the reach of Comcast, which now controls around 27 percent of pay television subscriber receipts. That is, if the decision survives a court challenge.

Localism

Like their decisions on media diversity, the FCC’s December 18th ruling on localism will not shake the media landscape, but it could knock it about in some potentially interesting ways.

Among other suggestions, the Order asks for public comment on its conclusion that “licensees should establish permanent advisory boards (including representatives of underserved community segments) in each station community of license with which to consult periodically on community needs and issues.” The document also says that the FCC should adopt guidelines “that will ensure that all broadcasters provide some locally-oriented programming.”

At present, the only broadcast stations that must create community advisory boards are those that receive money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). This is an appropriate requirement. But it also turns CPB stations into conduits for public anger with all of media. It’s about time that commercial stations had to take some of that heat.

Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein reacted with cynicism to this Order.

“If history is any guide, the odds are that the Commission will either neglect to finalize these proposals,” Adelstein said in his partial concurrence to the decision, “or when it comes time to finalize them, they may be so diluted as to render them meaningless.”

All the more reason why the public should tell the FCC that it takes them seriously. The FCC should not only require license holders to create advisory boards, it should require those boards to hold at least two annual public meetings that are announced by the station over-the-air, during the day.

The Commission should also make stations submit accurate summaries of those meetings, with explanations of how the broadcaster will implement the suggestions received.

If we want the Federal Communications Commission to serve the public interest, we have make visible what the agency does right, as well as what it does wrong. We have to reinforce the Commission’s promises to do good at least as much as we raise the alarm against the its efforts to reward influence and power.

We may be confronted by a very different FCC relatively soon. So let’s think positively. They say that it boosts your health.