STATEMENT OF MICHELLE BRADLEY: ELIMINATION OF THE MAIN STUDIO REQUIREMENTS
Submitted by admin on Tue, 10/24/2017 - 20:09
Today marked the beginning of the end of local radio, especially in the commercial sector. A station now only need to leave a toll free telephone number to make a mark on their community. While I agree that there are some stations that are facing financial burdens as a direct result of maintaining a "brick and mortar" main studio, I do feel that REC's proposed solution was a reasonable compromise.
Under REC's proposed "middle" solution, stations would not be required to keep a main studio that would be accessible by the general public but instead must maintain a local presence within the service contour of the station and that station has some form of local program origination requirement (even if it is in the spare bedroom of the owner's residence). Management personnel must be physically located within the main studio area of the station and must be accessible through a geographic (non toll-free) telephone number.
Pai's version of local radio has destroyed virtually all accountability that a broadcaster entrusted to use the scarce resource of broadcast spectrum is obligated to. I feel that there is (unfortunately) more to come.
Michelle Bradley brings up an important subject which should be accorded more interest by the public, who are being robbed of their radio resources.
The trend to export the ownership and operation of radio stations while they ironically remain "assigned" to a certain local area is no different than your city management being sold to some far off corporation and the town council meetings being held thousands of miles away or on some international 800 phone line.
A few huge corpoations own most stations, even the ones in smaller towns and all decisions are made at corporation headquarters not locally. In Canada small stations in towns north of Toronto get their programming(music etc) from Texas! The only thing that's local is a few ads from local businesses.
Mark
I don't think that the rule change will make much difference. As Mark states, most radio stations are already corporate, and don't care about anything but the bottom line (appealing to the lowest common denominator). They certainly don't care about innovative programming.
And those that do (there are some) will continue to do so. They're the independent ones, locally focused and really part of the community. There will always be a place for them, even if technologies change.
All the better for locally owned, locally operated radio. I work for three such stations. As are most of the stations within 100 miles of me.
We have offices, office staff, sales people, announcers, news people, sports people. You know, like REAL radio has. And we've been quite successful at it.
One of the top complaints of listeners is about stations that are just jukeboxes with no local community involvement.
If anything, just another advantage for my employer.
TIB
Good Point.
Its been said on a lot of pro boards (like broadcast.net): having the rule in place makes it *optional* to have a main studio. It does not make it a capital offense to still have one.
Personally, I dont see the advantage of not having one. If a station cant maintain or afford a place to put itself, turn in the license and get out.
What's the point of having a station in Anytown USA and having the main studio in San Antonio, TX
It is much easier to keep the station running smoothly now that we can close the studio in Maine.
Here in Dade City we have a 1KW AM station WDCF-1350. Down the road in Zephyrhills is another station WZHR-1400. Both stations are housed in a locked building in Dade City. The programming originates in Clearwater from WTAN-1380. The programming arrives via the inter-web. Keep in mind that Clearwater is about 50 radio miles from Dade City. All the advertising is from businesses in Clearwater. All the news is from Clearwater. There isn't the faintest reference to the Dade City-Zephyrhills area on any programming.
To what cities are those stations licensed?
Transmit sites for commercial AM/FM/TV broadcast stations are chosen to provide a given minimum field strength within the city of license, but that doesn't mean they have to be physically located within the boundary of that city, or that their programming must relate to the physical location of the transmitter site.
A closer look at my post will reveal the City of License.