Re: [IRCA] IBOC Hash from WSAI 1530

[Scott Fybush <scott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

David Faulkner wrote:

> Are the 50 kw clears now
> committing suicide, finishing the job the FCC started several years ago?

The FCC, believe it or not, has no dog in this hunt. It is now, just as 
it was when the clear-channel breakdown started half a century ago, a 
political agency that responds to what it thinks the industry it 
regulates wants it to do, and to what it hears from its bosses in 
Congress, who control the FCC's budget.

The breakdown of the clear channels began (as Mark Durenberger has 
documented in exquisite detail) when "have-not" broadcasters, most of 
them outside the big cities (disproportionately in the East and upper 
Midwest) that had the clear-channel allocations, went to Congress 
looking for more signal than they already had. All the FCC did was to 
rubber-stamp those requests (against strong protests, to the Commission 
and to Congress, from the established clears), just as it compliantly 
rubber-stamped IBOC, which was presented to it as a fait accompli by 
NAB...which in turn was acting in the interests of the big broadcasters 
who make up most of its membership.

In the absence of a *coordinated*, well-funded campaign by the smaller 
AM broadcasters whose ox will be gored by IBOC, it was almost 
unimaginable that the FCC would do anything other than approved what it 
perceived as the "industry's" preferred digital solution. Unfortunately, 
it will now be tasked with cleaning up the messes that will result.

s

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