Whew..What A Week..

I'm feeling a bit exhausted today.

This has been a whirlwind week. Broadcasting, bith terrestrial and internet, has been pummeled from all sides.

Terrestrial?

Well, it seems that the FCC's recalculations of presunrise and postsunset power levels for AM stations created such an outcry among station owners that, as one source put it, "All hell broke loose at the FCC offices in Washington." And to that I say: "Good!"

The new levels brough some stations drive-time powers down from, oh, 10kw to 25 watts, or even 1 watt, as is the case with a state in neighboring Georgia. Post-sunset levels were so confusing and at such odd levels (22 watts, 7 watts..ad nauseum) as to be useless.

The FCC is blaming a computer glitch and now states that stations may go back to their previous levels, and use the April times for the March 11 DST time change.

THIS is the agency regulating U.S. broadcasters??

Internet?

Just mention the RIAA or CRB or royalty rates to any internet broadcaster and watch the steam rise and their face begin to frown. The proposed rates threaten to put the majority of webcasters out of business. A station that runs in WJJD's league, would, if not under the Live365 umbrella of protection, need to sell $1,278.00 of advertising each month, just to pay the royalties. That does not include the servers, or bandwidth, or other costs. Small stations can't handle that kind of overhead.

I believe the entire issue boils down to control. The music industry wants to control what the listeners hear, in an effort to try to boost sales of CDs. They probably would be happy if the internet radio broadcasters sounded just like AM and FM stations.

Here's the rub.

Most AM and FM stations have become unlistenable to me. I tried to listen to "The Wolf"
in Tallahassee, formerly known as B-103, a country station. It had exactly the same songs as before - but with stupid "Wolf" sounds and liners between the songs; no live DJ at all; lots of
commercials..so what was the change, besides imaging? 20 minutes of listening to "The Wolf"
literally sent me RUNNING to the computer to bring up the WJJD stream for relief.

And the music industry wonders why folks go to extreme measures to find alternatives!

Seems that the music industry - and probably now webcasters - are going to need business models that actually work.