Re: Today's LTAR, XM Radio mini-rant

["Aaron [Bishop] Read" <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 12:28 AM 3/25/2002, A. Joseph Ross wrote:
>The discussion this morning about how some stations carry ads for XM 
>reminds me of a
>saying I once saw attributed to Lenin:  "The Capitalists will bid against 
>each other to sell us
>the rope with which we will hang them."

I've mentioned this on several listservs now so apologies if I've already 
said it here, too....

Clear Channel, the AM/FM behemoth, owns 10% of XM Radio outright and no 
doubt owns more of XM and part of Sirius via shell companies.   CC wants XM 
to succeed very badly, as XM will become the source of all CC's AM/FM 
stations' programming within another two to three years.  If not sooner.

It won't be a direct-off-the-XM-satellite feed, that's illegal.  But 
there's no reason they can't pipe content from XM's studios to CC stations 
all over the country via other means (IP, regular satellite, ISDN, 
frame-relay, etc).   And there's no reason for CC to maintain two separate 
content networks...esp. since XM won their patent to provide local 
programming on their ground-based repeaters.   Something they always 
promised they wouldn't do but we all knew they would...esp. since they said 
they were going to in their patent application over a year ago.

NAB is up in arms over this local content issue - where were they a year 
ago when the patent app was filed?  They were too busy being bastards to 
the LPFM crowd, I'd say.   You notice that CC is not among those screaming 
at the FCC to block XM from doing local content on the repeaters?


____________________________________________
Aaron "Bishop" Read     aread@speakeasy.net
FriedBagels.com Technical Consulting
Broadcast Signal Lab / Medfield, MA