As of Sept. 1, 2010, the FCC reports about 200 silent stations and plans a crackdown
http://radiomagonline.com/fcc/fcc-plans-crack-down-silent-stations-1101/
As of Sept. 1, 2010, the FCC reports about 200 silent stations and plans a crackdown
http://radiomagonline.com/fcc/fcc-plans-crack-down-silent-stations-1101/
Is their rationale that these
Is their rationale that these licenses could be given to stations that will actually go on air and serve the community?
Rationale or Ridiculous
I know of one owner, a multi-millionaire, who takes yearly 90 day European tours, stays at the most luxurious hotels, eats at the most expensive restaurants, dines and whines on expensive refreshments, has 40k worth of “hair pins” shoved into his head, has an 8 inch thick solid steel gate in front of a 15 bedroom 9 full bath mansion in LA, owns 10 vehicles in excess of 150 grand each, a graduate of Harvard and an attorney to boot, owns 12 stations across 4 states, 3 of which are silent, only 2 legally, and claims…..
“economic hardship”.
Now….can anyone tell me this is rational reasonable reason to even be owning these stations?
Oh and by the way, 3 of the FM’s in this mess are operating at less than 30 percent of authorized power without the temporary authorization to run at reduced power for well over 4 years.
He has more than one NAL order already slapped on him, each are well over 2 yrs old. (20k and 40k)
The FCC has yet to act.
All of that does not even touch the Dept. of Labor issues or the IRS issues…yet its been years this lucky ducky continues on his “economic hardship” tours and wine and dine luxury living.
Oh and he also owns a very elite resort in SD.
Someone please tell me WTF!!! (excuse the abbreviating)
RFB
Suppose
Suppose we went to Europe and lived like hoy pahloy la dee doo types. After all, a part 15 station is as good as silent.
Living it up in turn the other cheek radio land
Well at least us Part 15 owners/operators manage to run our little setups and go to lengths to maintain them while also maintaining our daily living expenses and not make up excuses and get away with it!
What I wrote in the previous post is only a tiny part of the whole thing.
I am waiting…very patiently for the request to tell it all when summoned….IF that ever happens….as I said…its been over 4 years.
RFB
“twas caviare to the general”
Nobody would actually aspire to be among the hoi polloi. The great majority has already achieved this goal. It means “the many” in Greek–in other words, the common people.
Similarly, Hamlet’s comment about “caviar to the general” is often misunderstood. “The general” also means the common people. The idea is that caviar is something the common people would not have sufficient refinement to appreciate.
Crackdown, My A____!
In my neck of the woods is a Class B AM station licensed for 5KW daytime and 1KW night. IN 2000, they cut down the dual-tower directional antenna system and constructed a wire antenna between two wood power poles about 120 feet apart and hooked it to a 250 watt transmitter. The station operated on a STA (temp authority) until 2004. The licensee has been cited and fined once for operating without temporary authority in 2005. Since then, he continues to operate with no changes to the operation, and no STA.
Other operators take their stations off the air for 364 days each year under temporary authority and put them on the air with robot automation for 24 hours then back off again. They repeat the cycle year after year. Their excuse; it keeps the bankers happy.
FCC inspection of commercial and non-commercial licensees is abysmal. Not even during license renewal does the FCC actually take a close look at their operations unless someone files a formal written complaint. Broadcasters like these (I use the term loosely) thumb there collective noses at the FCC, daring the government to take away their licenses or fine them. All too often, they have escaped the government snare and continue to operate what can only be described as “pirate radio”.
Real definition of reality
All too often, they have escaped the government snare and continue to operate what can only be described as “pirate radio”.
EXACTLY!!!!
Imagine that…licensed pirate radio. Na…never in America….impossible.
There can only be one explanation…..$$$$ patted on the behind pockets of authority. Someone out there is making a good side cheek income.
RFB
Filing On Top
The expression “filing on top” of someone’s license comes to mind, which I think I’ve heard in the past referring, I think, to filing a competing application based on a station licensee’s failure to meet their obligations.
If my memory has any basis in fact, where are the people who should be “filing on top” of the violators?
$$$$$
If my memory has any basis in fact, where are the people who should be “filing on top” of the violators?
Being paid off to be silent…what else.
RFB
Possible outcomes
Here is what I think is going on. These big corporations are waiting in the wings to buy up the revoked license renewals so they get an even deeper grip on the already over controlled media. They want it all. In turn that shoves us aside even more, making our task that much more difficult, be it for promoting true public service radio..or getting a license.
RFB
But Why?
I’m not comprehending the ‘WHY” anyone owning a licensed radio station would not want to have it operational and active… tax write-offs or something? What?
Radio Licenses are ASSETS
Even though in the 1980’s, the FCC ruled that radio licenses could not be “collateralized”, they are still assets with value. And as such, commercial radio stations are in business to make a profit. So, if the FM station is making a bundle of cash and the AM station cost more to run than the revenue generated, then you shut it down and file for temporary authority to keep it silent. The expenses for the AM go to near zero and the positive balance sheet is preserved. The great sucking sound from the now silent station has become almost as inaudible as it’s programming. A number of radio stations are financed by banks or investment firms or groups. In some cases, the license is worth more silent than on the air. Although unusual ten years ago, about 5 percent of the licensed stations today are silent for these reasons.
When the FCC deregulated the broadcast industry in the 1980’s, radio stations became investment fodder. Case in point; several radio groups across the country (in recent history) could not pay their debts causing the firms financing their operations to foreclose and assume the corporation’s stock, assets and licenses. In most cases, the FCC has approved these license transfers. Other groups have re-organized and merged to preserve licenses, only to take some of them silent. In street language, the hay-day for radio has passed…and it’s future financially pretty much sucks. Radio, television and newspapers are not the only advertising mediums any more. Now there are hundreds of choices, most of which work, where a business can spend it’s advertising budget.
Most radio stations in this country are running on single digit profit margins and cash flowing less than 1.4 times debt service. The asset value of radio stations has, in many cases, dropped to half, or less, of what they were worth just 5 years ago. Wall street has soured on broadcasting stocks.
And finally, what these companies are doing in taking these licenses silent is perfectly legal until the FCC changes the rules. Oddly enough you can’t force people to be responsible and serve their communities of license when they have little or no financial incentive to do the right thing. And oddly enough, non-commercial licensees have begun to do the same practice.
Which is the lesser of the two evils
Oddly enough you can’t force people to be responsible and serve their communities of license when they have little or no financial incentive to do the right thing. And oddly enough, non-commercial licensees have begun to do the same practice.
This is the point where there should be new changes in the rules. In the first place, it was not the intent of Congress to put a regulating agency as the FCC to regulate the electromagnetic spectrum like as if it were real estate. That aspect morphed into the intent much much later by simple greed of big companies who even before the deregulation of the radio industry, knew that by growing the bottom line, a company had to gobble up as much as it could in any market of any status. Thus it all turned from licenses of public trust and service to licenses of assets and values.
Thing here is that the public does not give a rat’s rear about the asset value of a license. They want their local radio back! They want to be able to call up and speak to a local talent and request a song, or ask a question about an event, or..and this is the biggie….ask if there is a job opening!
The economic situation has also put further damage into this whole mess. Stations cannot turn a profit if the local market cannot spend advertising dollars. Even nationals have cut back severely, leaving the mom and pop stations to do what….shut it off or cut back so much that the station begins to deteriorate due to lack of localized strength, both in manpower and maintenance. I know..I am seeing 5 of them right now going into the toilet because of it, as well as an owner who insists on spending money on hair pins and European tours than properly maintaining the stations and staffing them to produce revenues. After several years of that practice…the bottom line is still the same…no local radio..no value..no asset.
If the FCC is going to fix this, then they need to get off the duff and set things straight. But it is not limited to just the FCC. It has a lot to do with the economy as a whole. Just like links in a chain, the weak link ruins the entire thing and it all falls apart. Jobs outsourced and investment by big banks to overseas destroys this nation’s strength..and it has done exactly that. It produces a ripple in the waves that expands outward from the center and affects everything in a 360* view.
Content won’t do a darn thing when there is no one spending the advertising revenues that are returned into the money chain and back again. You can program everything under the sun and it won’t make a hill of beans when the station cannot pay its bills because no one else can pay their bills either or buy things which makes retail not able to spend advertising revenue which returns into the economy wheel….on and on…links in the chain.
But to allow stations to sit idle with licenses hogging up the spectrum while those of us who have a plan and outlook for service to the public interest are kept at bay is not exactly going to help anything either.
The country was built on small mom and pop business creating the strong backbone of industry. Remove the backbone and all you have is a lumpy slump of goo useless to anyone. And that is what it has turned into…selling out to put profit before people…then they run out the back door with that profit and continue to shut down not just stations, but factories and industry to foreign investment.
Change. How about the correct change for once.
RFB
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Times, they are a changin’…
I read, just this morning, that Cumulus has signed an MOU with Citadel to create a company of over 570 stations across the country. Lew Dickey says this will allow Cumulus the ability to refinance it’s multi-billion dollar debt helping it to be competitive against the new digital media in developing new technology. Really? What a bunch of hog wash.
Ask yourself this question: how many of those stations will be silent and under temporary authority so that the stock holders see a positive balance sheet? You can bet your paycheck (if you have one) there will be.
Wow
One of the most informative and best threads I have read.
It really is getting bad out there.
I am waiting for this one station in Annapolis to go belly up, they play oldies music.
And there are a lot of hispanic stations around that don’t even broadcast in English!
Do they still have to do their legal id in English??
Anyway, I guess they are the segment of the population that advertisers will target and will be buying things and driving the economy forward…
Hearing the same things
Yeah … these aren’t just rants. There is also a move afoot in congress to have several corporate communication conglomerates take over the internet:
===================
Reprinted from the Stubblefield List:
If your station uses the internet for remotes, studio to transmitter links
or transfering programing between stations or networks, your net access
could be coming to an end. If your a internet only broadcaster this will
impact you also.
The US house is expected to pass a bill that cuts the FCC completely out
of any regulation of the internet. This kills net neutrality completely.
If this bill gets through the senate, It would give cable and phone
companies complete control of access, data speed and content. This could
also be the end of such services as skype youtube and netflix.
Please do not let the powers that be divide us Madison style. This will be
the end of a free and open internet if the senate goes along with this.
Please respond to this Free Press link requesting senators to reject this
complete corporate takeover of the internet. If we do not speak up now and
let senators know we are watching, we can get run over.
http://act2.freepress.net/sign/resolution_of_disapproval/?rd=1&t=5&referring_akid=2359.9271426.9RwZgI
Thanks so much, and please post this on other list-servs you may have
acces to. Tom
The Powers That Were Will Be Again
The expression “the powers that be” once applied to a very small elite, speaking of radio broadcasting. A few networks, stations, and one “common carrier” phone company.
In the early 80s the cost of a 2-mile equalized phone line jumped from $50/month to $500/month because of overnight changes in regulations aimed at keeping control of communications. Our public radio venture in the 70s wasn’t supposed to be happening.
Imagine now the millions being lost to the large common carriers because of IP. Of course they want to muzzle it and choke the easy means of wide spread communication.
Related to suppression of electronic communication are laws criminalizing the spread of printed circulars. What are circulars but tiny newspapers published under the Freedom of the Press?
The trend to criminalize unlicensed broadcasting might be more threatening than some believe.
They never went away
The PTB never went away. They simply absorbed more through mergers and sell off’s of companies, in turn becoming MUCH bigger and FAR more powerful.
There is on the shelf, just waiting for the next catastrophic catalyzing event, called “The I-Patriot Act”. Recently there has been much discussion in legislation regarding how China controls its internet systems….and they want that here! Just ask the fine fellas up in the District of Criminals….like Joe Lieberman.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/privacy/Introduction%20to%20Module%20V.htm
They sell it to you with the old worn out dead horse sales pitch…”It is to fight terrorism”. If anyone buys into that garbage…you deserve to be monitored!!!
RFB
Incoming
When paranoia equals being well informed, you may be in the year 2011 with forces being assembled to hush small voices.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20043421-281.html
Comments please.