Radio News You Can't Use

Apply for a Non-Commercial Radio License
Attention community groups, educational institutions, and radio geeks: the FCC will be opening a license application window for non-commercial educational (NCE) radio stations this October. If your non-profit group has been considering applying for a radio license, then hop to it before some religious megacaster snags spectrum in your neighborhood. This an extremely rare opportunity: the FCC has not opened up a filing window like this since 2000, and probably won't do it again for a very long time. Even though the application deadline is in October, you'll need to get a jump-start in the next few months. Groups like Common Frequency and Radio For People are offering assistance to organizations interested in applying for NCE licenses, and there's even a step-by-step guide to the application process right here. Save your town from sucky radio!

UPDATE 4/4/07-- The application window was officially announced: October 12 - 19, 2007.

Payola, Vegetable, and Satellite Threats at the FCC
The FCC and A2IM (American Association of Independent Music) recently struck a deal with the country's four major commercial broadcast conglomerates over payola. The companies each agreed to pay a fine, and have committed to airing indie music (and it won't be in the middle of the night).

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin still asserts that the FCC would block a merger of XM and Sirius, even though doing so might cause both satellite companies to tank, possibly putting Mojo Nixon out of work.

Meanwhile, Commissioner Tate is seeking equal TV ad time for the systematically oppressed fruit and veggie population. She thinks that junk food ads are making kids fat. Naturally, the only way to fight ads is with more ads. Or parents could stop feeding crap to their kids. But ads are more fun.

The feds are also making some progress on their backlog of non-commercial radio filings, finally making some decisions on applications that were submitted back in the '90s. Keep on truckin', FCC!

Net Neutrality Battle Wages On
A group of independent music fans and musicians are sounding off to Congress, urging them to maintain the internet as a level playing field for us little guys. You can read up on the Future of Music Coalition's Rock the Net campaign right here, and sign their petition here.

In broadband access news, a company called M2Z has made a tempting proposal to the FCC: give us some spectrum, and we'll offer free wireless broadband access to 95% of the U.S. within 10 years. The catch? M2Z's version of the internet will contain a compulsory "family-friendly" filter, which would essentially deliver a censored version of the internet (hello, China?) to the majority of U.S. households. M2Z's definition of "indecent" or "obscene" web content is even more nebulous than the FCC's, so who's to tell whether a site like Beware of the Blog would be blocked due to the occassional vibrator-friendly post or history of 'fuck'? And how will M2Z make money? Copious ads? Offering a premium tiered internet for those who can afford it? You betcha! This is all sounding very anti-net neutrality, isn't it? If you speak nerd, then head over to Slashdot, where people who understand more about broadband spectrum allocation than I do have raised a number of technical issues with M2Z's proposal, as well.

I'm worried that this deal is going to sound too sexy for the FCC to pass on. The commission has received a ton of flack for the U.S. being light-years behind most developed nations in the area of broadband access, and thus far they have no solid plans for improvement. Plus, M2Z cleverly sucks up by quoting members of the FCC and Congress on practically every page on their site!

Copyright Drama and the Death of DRM
The Copyright Royalty Board sent webcasters into panic mode this month when they decided to drastically increase webcasting fees for all commercial and some non-commercial webcasters. The new proposed rates add up to values that well over the annual revenue of many webcasting companies that will be affected by this decision. Thankfully, opposition to the new rates has poured in from both commercial and non-commercial webcasters, persuading the CRB to renegotiate.

Apple's bad press surrounding their crappy DRM finally reached the executive level, and in an effort to save face, Steve Jobs worked his star power by convincing EMI to offer high quality, DRM-free digital music in the iTunes store. AAC format only, natch. But hey, it's a step in the right direction, and hopefully other record companies will consider ditching DRM.

Lawsuit roundup:
- XM is being sued by Music Publishers over a new receiver that stores songs (the modern version of taping off the radio).
- Don't forget about the $1B Viacom-YouTube tiff.
- EFF is suing Viacom for limiting a YouTube user's free speech rights (with some implications for Fair Use).
- Meanwhile, the RIAA is still busy suing and threatening to sue everybody. And their brother.

Other radio news from the past month on Beware of the Blog:
- More on the Copyright Royalty Board's decision to launch webcasting royalties into orbit.
- Listener Kliph wrote up a comprehensive bio of Walter Tetley, radio comic and the voice of Peabody.
- Catch your favorite WFMU DJs singing drunk karaoke tunes, backed by the ultra-slick Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia.
- Find out what happens when folks call in to whistle over 5 different radio stations all linked together, and the whole thing is sent through a phase-shifter. Yeah, it was 1977.
- The band A Brief Smile was kicked off a morning show on NYC's Free FM after their bass player dropped WFMU's call letters. Listen to how it all went down.

Comments

[george renan]

I work for a company that is competing with M2Z for that chunk of spectrum. We are going at it slightly different than M2Z. First of all we will NOT be filtering comtent. We are also using individuals to build out our network. We will only be managing the spectrum. Feel free to look us up at http://www.netfreeus.com/. We need all the support we can get, M2Z is doing all they can to squash all the compition. They are not good people.