Broadcasters Huddle On Big Regulatory Issues at NAB

Television and radio station owners are huddled in Las Vegas this week for the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters. There are a number of regulatory issues to discuss: 1) The Association for Maximum Service Television has gained ground in broadcasters' fight against the government's effort to allow unlicensed devices to share DTV spectrum. 2) After years of trying to get the FCC to loosen national and local ownership rules, the result was more whimper than bang, although the process made a lot of noise in Washington. 3) The transition to digital television. 4) Enhanced disclosure requirements for television stations. 5) The pending merger of satellite radio operators XM and Sirius. Gary Arlen points out that every president from Herbert Hoover through George H. W. Bush spoke to a convention or other large gathering of the National Association of Broadcasters, or its predecessor National Association of Radio Broadcasters. Senators, congressmen and state government officials flocked to NAB confabs (as they did to similar gatherings of newspaper publishers) to curry relationships with influential media moguls—even before that term was conceived. But neither Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush has appeared before an NAB audience, and the overall paucity of politicians has become profound. It is certainly “just a coincidence” that the political absence evolved during the same decades that broadcast TV's share of viewership plummeted to just below half of U.S. homes. But it's an interesting correlation of timing for politically astute elected officials. He concludes, "For the broadcast industry, always concerned about who is listening and watching, the apparent paucity of policy-maker attention is a serious loss."
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