Showing posts with label FCC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FCC. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Seek, and ye shall find



Ours is a tale of two governments.

One knows who you are, to whom you've been talking, has your emails stored on some gigantic NSA hard drive and regularly peruses your phone records to make sure you're not in cahoots with al-Qaida.

The other -- and we're talking about you, Federal Communications Commission -- can't find its behonka with both hands.

Thus, the story of Omaha's "Magic 1490," KOMJ, found on the right end of your AM radio dial. The FCC is proposing fining the bejeezus out of its present owner, Cochise Broadcasting, because one of the agency's inspectors could find neither the studios, the required "public file," nor a phone number for the station's owner.

Reports the Omaha World-Herald:
The FCC said in its filing that the station is owned by Cochise Broadcasting, in Jackson, Wyo. The agency said it could find no phone number for the company, no website. Neither could The World-Herald.
Other than the singers of songs such as “Forever in Blue Jeans” by Neil Diamond, or “Evergreen” by Barbra Streisand, the only voices heard are in short station promos.

“Magic 1490,” intones an announcer. “The height of relaxation.”

Maybe. In truth, what the station specializes in is old music, dubbed “easy listening” or “middle of the road” by programmers. The playlist includes a smattering of big band, swing-type numbers of the 1940s, and a few softilicious hits of the 1980s, such as “Captain of Her Heart,” by the French pop band Double.

But most are from the dawn of the rock era and up through the singer-songwriter trend of the 1970s.

Occasionally, a promo will feature someone who sounds like a listener who called in with a message of praise.

“Just keep playing those hit records!” says a woman with great enthusiasm.

What number she called is a mystery.

“On August 1, 2013, an agent from the Kansas City Office attempted to inspect station KOMJ's main studio, while the station was on the air,” the FCC enforcement report reads. “The station's web-page contains no main studio address and only lists a local phone number, which transfers to voice mail for stations located in the state of Arizona. The station's address of record is a mail box in the state of Wyoming.”

The saga took another twist when the FCC dug deeper into the studio location. The agency said it found an unnamed attorney who served as contact person for the station. The attorney, filings say, said the main studio is at 10714 Mockingbird Dr., Omaha.

The FCC investigated further, sending an inspector there.

“This location is the main studio for the Journal Broadcast Group stations in Omaha,” the report says. “The staff for the Journal Broadcast Group stations stated that station KOMJ's main studio was not located at 10714 Mockingbird Dr. and that no one associated with station KOMJ worked at the location.”
IF YOU ASK this curious radio geek, the feds and the World-Herald weren't looking hard enough -- if at all -- and someone is going to end up paying the not-inconsequential tab for that.

As part of the licensing process, the FCC already has all the information it needs to find the small radio chain's headquarters -- indeed, even its owners -- by just making a few phone calls and asking a few questions. Informing people on the other end of the line, "I'm with the federal government and we can fine you into oblivion should we so choose" should be enough to make them forthcoming.

Me, I found the owner of Cochise Broadcasting, Ted Tucker, at his Tucson, Ariz., home after searching on Google for about 20 minutes or so. We had a nice conversation. Perhaps I should apply at the National Security Agency . . . or at least at the World-Herald, which was as stymied as the obviously Internet-challenged FCC agent.

You wouldn't want to think so, but it almost appears as if no one wanted to let a little persistence get in the way of busting some broadcaster's chops or a good "ghost station" yarn.

FOR HIS PART, Tucker maintains that the station's main studio -- which basically consists of an automation computer, a good Internet connection to program syndicator Westwood One (formerly Dial Global) and a studio-transmitter link . . . not so live and not so local from (probably) a large closet -- are indeed in the Omaha complex of Journal Broadcasting, from whom he rents the space. Likewise, he says, KOMJ's public file is at Journal as well.

After the FCC's initial inquiry, Tucker says, Journal employees called the commission's Kansas City field office back to inform it they indeed had Magic 1490's public file. If Cochise is negligent here, perhaps it would be in choosing a landlord for its operation -- when dealing with the FCC, it's important that the right hand know what the left is up to.

Judging by what Tucker says, people who should have known about KOMJ's studio and its public file didn't know much of anything. That's a problem. A public file, which contains information about a station's operations, ownership and public-service programming, isn't "public" at all if those charged with housing it can't be bothered to know what they're required to know . . . like where the heck it is.

Magic 1490's owner isn't happy with the commission or with the World-Herald, which he accuses of sensationalizing and embellishing Sunday's newspaper story. I'd be even more unhappy with my landlord if I were in Tucker's shoes.

SOON ENOUGH, pending commission approval, KOMJ and know-nothing landlords no longer will be Tucker's problem. He's selling the station (presumably lock, stock and cloaking device) to Kona Coast Radio for $450,000.

No doubt, Kona Coast of Cheyenne, Wyo., and its owner, Vic Michael, will face their own adventures in absentee ownership here. Perhaps Michael will shake the "ghost station" rap by making sure the FCC and the World-Herald have his cell-phone number. I'd also recommend a corporate website optimized to land on the first page of Google's search results.

And a neon-lit studio in the middle of the intersection at 72nd and Dodge.

I have no good advice, however, for listeners in this age of "radio by wire," where "live and local" is as much as a thing of the past as the broadcasting professionals who, once upon a time, made that possible. A once-vital medium lingers on life support . . . and those who once served and entertained the public linger in the unemployment line.

Many things have improved over time. Radio isn't one of them. Ditto for newspapers.

And let's not even mention the federal government.

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

From garbled to Gaga


One o'clock. Time for Wednesday's much-hyped national test of the Emergency Alert System.

If this had been an actual national emergency, fjoeifjwf oisjfeo wp pwidp qw of eoijr qyuqw wqlkd pt wot tjwaki JK ksdt jlsa bah fleekum.

A nuclear atta . . . O doeiujf wqi djk you gottqa OSIFD dke eommd ss woww jkdp . . . all going to die, according eo al jdsa j New York Times:

At 2 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, during the first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, all television channels and radio stations in the United States were supposed to be interrupted by piercing emergency tones. Not a song by Lady Gaga.

But as tests often go, there were some failures, with viewers and listeners in many states saying they saw and heard the alerts at the scheduled time, while others did not. Some DirecTV subscribers said they heard Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” when the test was under way. Some Comcast subscribers in northern Virginia said their TV sets were switched over to QVC before the alert was shown.

The federal agencies charged with testing the alert system found that there were flaws, particularly in the system’s connections to cable and satellite distributors. In some cases, the test messages were delayed, perhaps because they were designed to trickle down from one place — the White House in this case — to thousands of stations and distributors.

In Los Angeles, some viewers said the alert, intended for 30 seconds, lasted for almost half an hour; in New York, some viewers didn’t see it at all. But many others reported that the alert arrived right on time and ended right away.

HERE IN OMAHA, otherwise known as Ground Zero with U.S. Strategic Command headquarters just south of town, the national EAS test started late and the audio was horribly garbled, like an aural Tower of Babel of static and overdubs. If this is technological progress in attack warning, perhaps it's time to resurrect Conelrad.

Conelrad, the nation's first broadcast-warning mechanism, at least passed several national tests, the first coming in 1953, shortly after its implementation. Here's a Sept. 21, 1953, Broadcasting-Telecasting account of the previous week's initial test of the warning system:


SURE, FM or TV stations couldn't stay on the air under the Conelrad system, but then again, the last sound you heard before being vaporized wouldn't be Lady Gaga, either.

That's not nothing.

Thursday, June 09, 2011

You don't say?

Leave it to the government to state the obvious. Two years after everybody else.

But the Federal Communications Commission, in a report aimed at warning Americans that the proverbial horse has left the metaphorical barn -- but only after it's halfway to the next county -- says Americans are suffering a serious lack of local in-depth reporting.

I'd alert the media . . . if any were around anymore. In a sign that what the FCC says is true, this
Associated Press article neglects to inquire why it is the feds took so long to "reveal" something so obvious, while later on regurgitating some boilerplate BS from the American Society of News Editors.

ANYWAY, here's some of the AP story, for what it's worth:
There is a shortage of in-depth local journalism needed to hold government agencies, schools and businesses accountable, the federal agency that regulates television broadcasters concludes in a new report.

The dearth of reporting comes despite an abundance of news outlets in today's multimedia landscape, the report says.

The report being released Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission is the product of an 18-month effort to explore the turmoil sweeping the traditional media business in the U.S. - particularly daily newspapers.

Newspapers have seen a sharp drop in revenue because of the weakening economy and a shift by advertisers to free or cheaper alternatives on the Internet. That has forced newspapers to cut staff and shrink their publications. The report says staffing levels at daily newspapers have fallen by more than 25 percent since 2001.

"A shortage of reporting manifests itself in invisible ways: stories not written, scandals not exposed, government waste not discovered, health dangers not identified in time, local elections involving candidates about whom we know little," the report says.

The report's recommendations include creating public affairs cable channels similar to C-SPAN at the state level, easing tax rules for non-profit news organizations and directing more federal advertising spending to local news media.


A little something from this blog in 2010

WHAT THE FCC
report fails to mention is how its deregulation of broadcasting -- and Congress' removal of virtually all corporate ownership limits -- has contributed greatly to American radio's swift decline into ruin and irrelevance.

And virtually no news,
in depth or otherwise, on the vast majority of stations.

Once again . . . heck of a job.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Simply '70s: The day the music died


Back in 1976, the music really did die in Omaha.

That's when, on Sept. 2, just after midnight, the Federal Communications Commission ordered legendary Top-40 blowtorch KOIL off the air. As in canceled its license.

According to the commission, Star Stations owner Don Burden did very, very bad things. According to Burden and his employees, political and business enemies railroaded the Omaha radio tycoon.

Nevertheless, the flagship Star Station -- KOIL -- was toast after 51 years on the air. So was its sister FM station, KEFM. So were Top-40 giants in Portland (Vancouver, Wash.) and Indianapolis.


THE FEDERAL "death penalty" made news across the country. It was all over Broadcasting magazine (here and here) and the other trades.

And the Mighty 1290 was no more . . . for a while.

KOIL came back to the Omaha airwaves in December of '76, with a new owner. But never again was it truly mighty.

And soon enough, all that was left were the call letters, parked by corporate owners on another frequency, a robostation spitting out whatever the satellite and the automation dictates.

See, some things are worse than death.