This has been a long time coming: The FCC started the process of allocating satellite-radio licenses back in 1990 but didn't actually get around to awarding them until 1997. Even now, it has devoted such a small portion of the spectrum to the new service that it awarded licenses to only two companies. (The other is XM Satellite Radio, which will offer 50 varied channels of its own, including five for Spanish-speakers, three for Christians, and one for C-SPAN junkies.) But even with such a limited, oligopolistic scope, the new service will be a serious challenge to traditional terrestrial stations, which fought hard against allowing any direct satellite radio at all. In 1994, the NAB released a report, ominously titled The Truth About Satellite Radio, arguing that competition from the heavens would put the industry into an economic "free fall." And that, it warned, would have "devastating effects" for local radio and the "community service" it provides.
The DARS companies replied that audiences would still listen to local stations for weather reports, local news, and other regionally specific information; the satellites would be a supplement, not a replacement, for the existing industry. What they didn't mention was just how little localism remains on the out-lets they'll be "supplementing," for all the latter's caterwauling about threats to local radio. More and more stations are simply earthbound relayers for automated satellite feeds, and the "local" programming that remains relies heavily on outside consultants and specialized software to tell the DJs what records to play.
It is this trend, more than anything else, that has created a niche for micro radio. Micro stations have covered high school sports, broadcast city council meetings and church services, and given airtime to local musicians; they have trained teenagers and retirees to be broadcast engineers, sponsored concerts and parties, coordinated flood relief, and exposed local corruption and crime. Even the worst micro stations have a ragged vitality that most of their legal competitors can't touch.
The NAB has spewed a litany of "public interest" objections to micro radio, just as it did for satellite radio five years ago; one of its favorite arguments is that the new service would merely "duplicate" existing programming. The broadcasters should be careful what they say. If duplication were the real concern, a public-interest-minded FCC might just wipe out the NAB's outlets, let DARS deliver its nationwide variety packs, and give the entire AM and FM bands to the micro stations.
Little of this is inevitable. The FCC could conceivably reject the micro radio proposal, refuse to expand DARS, regulate Internet broadcasting out of existence, and step up the crackdown against unlicensed broadcasting. (Just this March, San Francisco Liberation Radio got a letter from the FCC threatening them with a $100,000 fine and/or a year in prison if they didn't go off the air within 10 days.) Even if the government adopts the Kennard plan, and even if that plan's benefits end up outweighing its drawbacks, there will still be much, much more that Washington could do--or, rather, stop doing--to allow lively radio to flourish. Ideally, it would forget the idea of a special micro "service" and instead radically reform how the FCC regulates the spectrum.
What would such a plan look like?
It would lower entry barriers. It would permit stations to broadcast at less than 100 watts and would remove the fees and paperwork that would-be broadcasters now must endure. It would also reform the FCC's expensive technical specifications, which were enacted to prevent interference with other signals. On the surface, that sounds sensible, but it's actually inefficient: It would make much more sense just to hold broadcasters liable for any interference they may cause and then, with that incentive in place, let them figure out how they're going to avoid stepping on other signals' toes. Among other things, this would fuel technical innovation, as low-budget engineers strive to build cheaper equipment that nonetheless gets the job done. The present system, by contrast, locks archaic technologies into place.
It would allow frequencies to subdivide. Suppose a station can be heard over, say, 100 square miles. That same area could be served by several stations on the same frequency, if they divided the region into smaller coverage areas with appropriate buffers between them. But under present law, while one can sell a signal, one cannot sell a piece of that signal.
That's not exactly accurate: Technically, the spectrum is government property, and you can't sell a signal you don't own. But one can, with relatively little trouble, sell a license to broadcast over a particular frequency. What one can't do is subdivide a frequency and sell off a chunk of it.
So if our hypothetical station (let's call it KBIG) decides to sell itself outright to a chain (let's call it KRAP), it can. But if it wants to reduce its wattage and let an entrepreneur or civic group take over part of its previous coverage area, it will somehow have to guarantee to the buyers that the FCC will allow them to transmit to the space it has emptied. There is, of course, no way to do this; and even if there were, the application process for the new station would still be long, stormy, and expensive. The risk for the buyers would be too high.
When a giant falls or falters, smaller outlets ought to be able to rush in and take pieces of the electromagnetic ground where he once stood. Instead, the law says he has to sell all his ethereal territory at once, meaning that only another giant can afford to buy it. So the law encourages consolidation, which in turn encourages centralized, automated, prefabricated programming.
It would allow stations to broadcast closer to one another. To avoid interference, there must be buffers between broadcasters. That is why, for example, there are no stations at 101.2 FM--the FCC won't risk interfering with the outlets at 101.1 and 101.3.
No one disputes the need for some policy of this kind. But the current rules are based on the technical standards of the 1950s; it's now possible for far more stations to fit onto the spectrum without interfering with one another. The FCC is already pragmatic enough to allow stations some leeway in bargaining with each other to set the actual boundaries of their coverage areas. It should let them actually sell interference easements, allowing both established and new broadcasters to set up shop at a close-by frequency if they pay for the privilege.
It would open up new spectrum. Anyone who keeps up with both broadcasting and point-to-point communications will soon note a strange contradiction. The broadcasters believe the airwaves are almost completely filled. The phone companies believe the available spectrum is actually expanding: As new technologies make it easier to divide the electromagnetic spectrum ever more finely, for all practical purposes we get more of it.
This conflict doesn't just reflect the fact that broadcast stations cannot compress or split up their frequencies. It reflects the fact that they are limited to two artificial reservations, the AM and FM bands. If the FCC would open more of the ether to broadcasting, manufacturers could sell downconverters--small devices that would attach to or sit near a radio and convert signals sent over other sections of the spectrum.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.15.10 @ 3:11AM|#
chyjhgjc
قبلة الوداع|8.16.11 @ 1:44AM|#
thank u