Re: [neradio] That old Dupe rule

["Martin J. Waters" <mwaters@wesleyan.edu>]

>Shel wrote:
<snip>
>That law is long gone.  But in today's environment of conglomerates, where
>the big boys take over other stations, fire everyone, and duplicate one of
>its other station's signals, should there not be a good reason for a rule
>similar to that old duping rule again?

	Agreed. Owners would either have to put some separate programming
on their AM, sell it to someone who would, or the station would go silent.
The AM band is so way overcrowded with interfering signals, that
eliminating some stations would help the band. But I define this
duplication as the traditional simulcasting of the same signal on an AM and
an FM in the same market, adding some provision about simulcasting on the
same band if the two signals have too much (define that . . . ) overlap.
	Some others may be thinking of the station groups that string
together a chain of stations in the same region and I'm not sure I'm on
board for banning that. In Connecticut, Buckley is using three other AM
stations to repeat WDRC (AM) and in this case I think it's a good thing. It
makes WDRC (AM) much more competitive in the market. There's considerable
signal overlap among some of those stations, so I would want a rule written
to allow what they're doing in the medium and larger markets, at least,
where a lot of the 5 kW AM stations don't have signals that are competitive
with the FMs.

>In those days, it was more of a matter that the AM owners had no idea to do
>with their FMs.
<snip>

	I disagree here. The AM-FM owners sure did have an idea what to do
- -- warehouse the FM station for the future day it might be worth something
while making sure that no one else could get the signal and compete. They
just simulcast the AM on it. The younger generation forgets that as late as
the late 1960s, FM radio was nothing. A few stand-alone stations ran
elevator music or classical and some of the big owners ran some separate
programming part of the day. Nobody listened to FM and nobody cared about
it.
	That's why "underground" and progressive stations like WBCN showed
up on FM -- the financial stakes were low, the stand-alones mostly didn't
make any money, and so, why not try something new. FM eventually would have
taken off and ended up where it is today, but the FCC rule against
simulcasting made it happen when it did.
	My recollection is that the rule was phased in, going from the
largest markets down the line. Does someone recall whether the rule ever
actually went beyond a ban against duplicating more than 50 percent? In
practice, once 50 percent separate programming was needed for an FM, most
stations just went to 100 percent. But I remember WDRC still simulcasting a
good piece of its day as late as around 1980, when it went from AC to the
oldies it has now on FM and then began moving toward the MOR/nostalgia it
has on the AM.

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