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NAB postpones battle with satellite radio

The National Association of Broadcasters has dropped an attempt to head off the inclusion of local content on satellite radio services XM and Sirius. The content in question is primarily traffic and weather reports at this time.

"This is a complete vindication of our position that XM has complied and continues to comply with FCC rules," commented XM. "NAB's action validates that there are no content restrictions on XM." The satellite radio service speculated that the NAB withdrew the petition because it was about to be shot down by the FCC.

The NAB Motion to Dismiss its own petition indicates that the retreat is temporary. NAB says it wants to "...assess new information demonstrating the growing trend towards transforming what was intended to be a national radio service complementary to local broadcasting into one that will have a highly detrimental impact on local broadcasters' ability to serve the needs of their listeners."

Broadcasters have maintained that the satellite services were chartered with a national scope in mind. It has been argued that allowing them to encroach into this territory with limited local content makes them more of a direct competitor to terrestrial broadcasters. However, in times of emergency or natural disaster the satellite services will not be able to provide critical local content. Crisis reporting will necessarily have to come from local broadcasters. The local, terrestrial stations need to be kept strong for this reason.

In particular, broadcasters have been concerned about the possibility of satcasters using terrestrial repeaters for local content. However, the early forays into local content have not come from the repeaters, but rather by using the massive channel capacity they commanded. A channel devoted to New York weather and traffic, for example, even though it may be of interest only to a narrow segment of a satellite services' total audience, is available to all, so technically it's a national service.


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