Kristin Thomson, Education Director, Future of Music Coalition, wants the FCC to become data central for radio information – down to the level of knowing how much time is spent covering high school sports in the US.
The goal is to determine how much of radio programming is locally produced, compared to how much is syndicated and how much comes from a network. FMC believes that it is necessary for the FCC to have that information to inform its policy making.
FMC says it should also be made available in searchable, sortable database form for internal FCC as well as public research and analysis.
The information, if FMC’s dream comes true, will come from individual stations, a reporting requirement considered to be an obligation of the license.
FMC has done studies of radio programming, and decries the lack of public sources of information. It has used proprietary sources, but runs into the problem of licensing restrictions, and even had to throw one report away after failing to gain permission to publish findings that the owner of the data did not like.
Thompson anticipated that there would be howls of protest from the radio community that such a requirement would be onerous and burdensome. She said that problem will be solved by creating an easy-to-use computerized reporting form.
RBR-TVBR observation: There is no way to make such a report easy to produce, is there? It’s a day-in day-out minute-by-minute slog no matter how you slice it. It’s not filling out the form, it’s sitting there and figuring out the percentage of each and every day that goes to each and every program category that FMC is interested in – and it sounds like it’s interested in quite a bit.
Don’t get us wrong – we’d love to see the results of such a report. But there is no way it would be simple for broadcasters to provide the data. And since the FCC has no say in how a licensee decides to program a station, there is no pressing regulatory need for the data other than satisfying its own curiosity.
The bottom line is that the FCC traditionally keeps its nose out of programming – it’s a First Amendment thing – and this kind of data collection is utterly antithetical to that. We have to believe that broadcasters would easily get a requirement like this shot down in court, and we sincerely hope that we do not hear much more on this going forward.
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from her website:
Kristin Thomson
Kristin Thomson is a community organizer, social policy researcher, entrepreneur and musician. After graduating with a BA in Sociology from Colorado College in 1989, Kristin moved to Washington, DC where she worked for two years as a national action organizer for the National Organization for Women. She left NOW in 1992 to make a full-time commitment to Simple Machines, an independent record label she co-ran with Jenny Toomey. Over the label’s 8-year history, Simple Machines released over seventy records and CDs, published the Mechanic’s Guide to Putting Out Records, Cassettes, and CDs, and organized three high-profile music festivals in Washington, DC. While running the label, Kristin and Jenny also wrote, recorded and released four highly-acclaimed Tsunami records on Simple Machines, and toured the US, Canada, England and Europe extensively.
After Simple Machines stopped putting out new records in 1998, Kristin permanently relocated to Philadelphia, PA where she lives with her husband Bryan Dilworth, a concert promoter, their son Riley, and plays guitar in the lady-powered band, Ken. In 2001, Kristin graduated with a Masters in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware. During her graduate program she was a recipient of a School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy Fellowship, and the Urban Affairs Association Award that recognized her thesis, The Internet as an Agent of Change, as a valuable contribution to the body of usable social knowledge. As FMC’s Education Director, Kristin is responsible for project management and research, and has overseen event programming, including recent Future of Music Policy Summits. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband Bryan Dilworth, a concert promoter, and their son, where she also plays guitar in the lady-powered band, Ken.
Let's put partisan politics aside here for the betterment of all media, especially radio from the Colonials in New Hampshire, "Live Free or Die!"
Hollywood's new movie, "Pirate Radio," is touting the mediums strengths to air rock music in a censored England.
If the FCC (Federal Communist Censorship) gets their way, I guess Americans will need to await their own version of Pirate Radio just know the truth and facts about any issue, even high school sports...
What a sham. And shame on us for allowing this kind of legislature.
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