Main Studio Rule...

This is something that we all new was going to come at some point…commercial broadcasters wanting to do away with the main studio rule. They say it is to save money. I think that it is about greed. I-Hate-Media will love this, and it will only prolong their eventual demise into bankruptcy.
FCC chairman Ajit Pai wrote the following in support of overturning the rule:

The first commercial radio broadcast in the United States took place in Pittsburgh on November 2, 1920. That night, KDKA reported the results of the presidential election between Warren Harding and James Cox. The studio used for that broadcast was a tiny, makeshift wooden shack on top of the Westinghouse Company’s plant in East Pittsburgh.

Broadcast studios have changed a lot over the last 90-plus years—including KDKA’s, which I’ve had the privilege to visit. And so too have the purposes that a studio serves. That brings us to the FCC’s main studio rule.

The FCC first conceived the main studio rule almost 80 years ago. The rule requires each AM, FM, and television broadcast station to maintain a main studio located in or near its community of license. Back then, perhaps, this made sense. Local access to a station’s main studio enabled the local public to provide input, and it allowed stations to participate in community activities. But today, the rule appears outdated, unnecessary, and unduly burdensome. Community access and engagement remain important in the digital era, but technology has rendered physical studios unnecessary for those purposes. That’s because such activities are much more likely to occur via social media, email, or phone rather than through an in-person visit to a broadcast studio.

Furthermore, broadcasters have shown that the main studio rule is a continuous cost that keeps them from serving their local communities in meaningful ways, like broadcasting additional local programming. Recently, a broadcaster in Minnesota wrote to me saying that the “archaic” rule has “outlived [its] usefulness.” He added that he’d like to build out his construction permit for an AM station in a nearby town, but that the “Main Studio Rule is a killer; the cost to maintain a staff—it would make the construction of this facility a ticket of doom.” Unfortunately, despite his belief that he’d be able to air meaningful local content without a main studio, it appears that the cost of complying with the rule may make it hard for him to extend service to that nearby community.

The proceeding we begin today could grant this broadcaster and all others affected by this rule the flexibility to use their limited resources in a way that best serves their communities.

Today’s Notice is an important step towards bringing the FCC’s media rules into the digital age. And for that, we have Michelle Carey, Martha Heller, Holly Saurer, and Diana Sokolow from the Media Bureau to thank. We will continue to rely on your expertise as we move forward with modernizing many more media rules to reflect today’s marketplace.

Let the flaming begin.

The assumption here is that the big radio companies are pushing for this. I haven't seen any evidence of that. It's more of an issue with the mom & pops, who are really struggling to make ends meet. Main studios for the big corporations are simply the cost of doing business, like paying music royalties. In fact, according to this, the main proponents of this plan are religious and minority broadcasters:

http://broadbandandsocialjustice.or.../03/MMTC-Main-Studio-Rule-Comments-032116.pdf

Everyone likes to lump broadcasters in the same pot with streamers like Pandora and Spotify. Yet there are no rules or regulations for them. If broadcast is competing with the internet, why not level the playing field? Why not do away with some of the unnecessary regulations? Isn't that what the people have asked for?

including KDKA’s, which I’ve had the privilege to visit.

It's in a nondescript suburban office park, upstairs from a bunch of doctors offices.
There's absolutely nothing special or privileged about it.

There are at least several stations that maintain two separate offices because of this. I once knew a lady who worked for one such station. She was assigned to the 'city of license' office. In that office was an operational studio with the ability to go live from that location, a copy of the Public File, and her at a desk with a phone. She sat there all day sometimes without the phone ringing once, no visitors and reading bunches of books. About 25 miles away, where 99% of the listeners were and where the businesses were located was the functioning radio station. They shelled out about $6,000 a month to 'keep an office' there per FCC Rules.

Some would argue that the station should serve only their community of license but many times that is just not economically feasible and not making the best use of the spectrum. Why would a station with hundreds of thousands in their listening range be relegated to just serve their community of license of 5,000 folks? In any other business there is not the regulatory requirement. If you owned a business would you only to try to serve a small town and deny selling to the hundreds of thousands living in your primary trade area? Would it make sense to relocate to the bigger population, especially if the small town could not support the business to the point of keeping your doors open? Now, how about I say you can go to where the people/customers are but I require you to maintain both locations even though it is not economically feasible to operate the one in the small town?

We have known all along that stations assigned to small communities within reach of large population centers already serve the large population centers, so why pretend otherwise and set up barriers to lower profit potential via regulatory red tape. The way I see it, maintaining a studio/office does nothing now except cost said station more money. And those that don't bother with the added expense seem to go years and years without being caught.

Because of this main studio rule, does 103.5 WKTU have a studio in Lake Success, NY, which is their city of license, or if WKTU doesn't, how does iHeart get away from this rule?

It all has to do with primary coverage area. If WKTU has it's studio/office in the primary or city grade coverage, no matter the city of license, it is within the rules. I know several stations in Houston assigned to smaller suburban towns that have studios in the heart of Houston legally because the primary coverage area includes both the city of license and the city where the studios/office are located. It's the rimshots that lack the primary coverage in the bigger city that must frequently have dual offices/studios.

Jonathan7157 said:

Because of this main studio rule, does 103.5 WKTU have a studio in Lake Success, NY, which is their city of license, or if WKTU doesn't, how does iHeart get away from this rule?

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This goes back a long way. The licensee of 103.5 has not has a main studio in Lake Success, TTBOMK since the mid 80s, when it was WTFM. After that, the licensee made an application for a change of studio location to Manhattan, and it was approved. The antennae, as I recall, was one of the first on the World Trade Center, which is not in Lake Success either. But yes, a licensee can apply to move the main studio to a location other than the city of license. This has been in the rules as long as I can remember.

WHERE the main studio is located is not what this is about. It's about having one at all.

TheBigA said:

This goes back a long way. The licensee of 103.5 has not has a main studio in Lake Success, TTBOMK since the mid 80s, when it was WTFM. After that, the licensee made an application for a change of studio location to Manhattan, and it was approved. The antennae, as I recall, was one of the first on the World Trade Center, which is not in Lake Success either. But yes, a licensee can apply to move the main studio to a location other than the city of license. This has been in the rules as long as I can remember.

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I think, during the Clinton administration, the rule was tweaked that any location within 25 miles of the community of license was acceptable, without filing for permission. Most of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx is within 25 miles of Lake Success.

The number of broadcasters it would benefit seems quite short. The big boys are not going to drop their main studios, because they need office space anyway. Leasing 5000 square feet without studios or 6000 square feet with studios is not a substantial difference. It's the religious broadcasters (who are mostly airing network programs) and the ma & pa station owner running automated AC on an AM station in Ohio who would prefer to drop the main studio rule.

I suspect a lot of those who would benefit aren't operating within the letter of the law anyway right now. So I'm not sure it makes much difference if the main studio rule is repealed.

gr8oldies said:

I've been in 2 "old radio guy" Facebook groups today and the almost unanimous opinion is that it's the end of local radio because iHeart and others will close every single studio in the country except one.

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Typical "old guy" view. The end of local radio came when listeners discovered they could hear what they want from a cloud. It has nothing to do with towers, transmitters, or studios. The "old guys" need to get out and spend some time with millennials.

If you go into any big radio corporation, they see the local studio as important to the brand. If you go to mom & pop, they don't think about brand at all.

As I said, there is no interest in closing down main studios at iHeart, Cumulus, CBS, Entercom, or any major radio company. This is all coming from the bottom. Just read the comments at the FCC website. I posted just one in post #2. This might be a way for those old radio guys to get into ownership without major investment. Except very few old radio guys ever think about actually owning a station.

Regarding the main studio rule as it currently stands, what is stopping radio stations from co-locating with, for example, an insurance agency, as long as they can connect to the transmitter and go live, maintain access to the public file, and pay someone at the agency a nominal salary, say $300/month to keep the main studio staffed, since they're already staffing the agency? Feel free to shoot holes in this scenario.

This proposal will help the micro markets and singleton stations the most. Put me in with the "overall, not much will change" group.

I'd like to know what WMXF Waynesville NC does. It is the one station licensed to Waynesville and has its transmitter there (another station was but moved closer to Asheville and changed its city of license too) and there is only one other station in the county, but in a different town. The company now called iHeart bought the station back in around 2000 when I think it was broadcasting mostly Westwood One programming from Asheville. I don't know how much of the programming was originating from the studios on the second floor in a downtown building with a sign outside. There may have been a morning show until about ten years ago. WWNC, iHeart's Rush Limbaugh station, didn't really need a simulcast partner since it is 5000 watts 24 hours a day and on 570, which is probably like 50,000 watts on the other end of the dial. At the motel where I stay about 40 miles west of Asheville, WWNC has had problems in recent years, though WMXF, at 1400 and 1000 watts all the time, is directional at night and doesn't reach the motel either. Where I used to stay 30 miles west of Asheville, WWNC was fine but WMXF was better. Still, for about ten years nearly everything on WWNC has been on WMXF except for the high school's football games, American Legion baseball, some college sports and maybe NASCAR for a while, and a local (Asheville, actually, and on several stations) talk show that lasted several years, and yet that downtown studio continued to have a sign saying "Your Hometown Station". I can't remember whether I saw the sign outside last year. The last time I went up the stairs I don't think anything was there.

"the main proponents of this plan are religious and minority broadcasters"

This wouldn't happen to be some of the same religious broadcasters that pay millions for commercial stations and then claim "hardship waivers" would it?

Pai cites an example of an owner that has an AM permit but isn't building it because of the main studio rule. One wonders why he'd have acquired it to begin with knowing those rules if they were so onerous.

Broadcasters, of which I'm one, knew the rules when they signed up. I'm not opposed to waivers where truly needed, but to allow commercial operators to go the route of what certain very profitable "non profits" do isn't beneficial.

It also has a distortionary effect on market values, to concur with one of the filed comments. Removing that obligation makes nationalizing programming and more consolidating even more appealing, because of the reduced expenses. And while there's not a large amount of remaining CPs, some of those could be priced out of smaller operators so the largest could add one more link to their national chain.

Every time some innovation or market change has taken establishment broadcasters by surprise, they complain to the government about how over regulated they are and make promises about how much more local and more innovative and profitable they'll be if another regulation is removed. Every time. Docket 80-90. Telcom 96. And so on.

The only concrete results we've seen are more job loss, increased consolidation and decreased quality and community service. If anyone's laboring under the delusion that iHeart will turn their KissFm into our BBC Radio 1, spoiler alert, not happening. As with most things lobbied for by special interests, it only benefits those who wish to cut corners or have already failed.

Same goes for 90% of the free translators about to be given out to AM owners who didn't plan ahead or invest elsewhere. More band clutter, more listener frustration, and very few exceptional and local stations doing more than birdfed talk and sports. Maybe they'll turn their 0.5 into a 1 share. Beyond that, it's more meaningless favoritism.

If you can't figure out how to make it work and play by the rules, feel free to sell or take the stations dark.

But just exactly will happen if the rule is eliminated? Is it not already true that those stations that can put up with the extra expense already to go after the larger population? And right now, what is the 'local' service such a station does beyond lip service of the town name in the legal ID? As it is, it's simply a 'penalty' for such stations and the purpose of the rule remains unfulfilled. And the FCC knows that.

Of those small towns, how many are actually there during normal business hours versus commuting to that larger town for their jobs. I do not buy 'you knew what the rules were when you got in to the station' because radio is constantly changing. That little small farm town station 20 years ago is now, perhaps a town of suburbia without the sense of community it once had or listening patterns have changed as in AM radio. The McDonald's menu is not what it was 10, 20 years ago. Amazon is not what it was 10 or 20 years ago. My point is what might have been fine a decade ago is just not working today.

There was a country small town radio station in Plano, Texas when I was growing up. It was a farm town. Today you'd be challenged to figure out where Dallas ends and Plano begins, or for that matter, where the more northerly town of McKinney (that had a nice hometown station), begins as the suburbs grow. At my station, it was all cattle grazing where the Super Walmart, Home Depot and such sit. Now it is a few miles to the country from here, but 10 or 15 years back that was not the case. Sure a few small subdivisions had gone in but it sure wasn't Houston at that point. We used to complain about how far we had to go to grab lunch because our studio was there. Even then, it was not financially feasible to just target our city of license with our programming. We intended from day one to go after Houston or at least our segment of the metro.

Andy Travis said:

If you can't figure out how to make it work and play by the rules, feel free to sell or take the stations dark.

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Maybe you haven't noticed but there are a way lot more stations than there should be.

The FCC over licensed the spectrum. It started in the 1980s with Docket 80-90. They continue to flood it with LPFMs and translators. Too many stations splitting too little money. This is the result. So instead of cutting back on the number of stations, the FCC is making it cheaper for them to be run. Don't blame any of this on corporate radio. This is all the fault of the FCC.

"But just exactly will happen if the rule is eliminated? "

Your post seems to be concerning suburban stations that serve larger communities. I'm concerned with the smaller stations that turn into a server in a rackspace 2000 miles away to remove another expense from the budget when they could be operated as viable, local stations. I accept the fact that the suburban stations are already "metro" stations now. I'm referring to markets in more far flung communities than that.

"I do not buy 'you knew what the rules were when you got in to the station"

It doesn't matter if you "buy" it or not. The example Commissioner Pai cited in his statement is someone who either filed for or purchased an AM construction permit. Now if things "constantly changed" in that span of time that he held an unbuilt CP, he must have been delaying construction for quite a long time. Which is another thing that I've noticed speculators do. File for changes and it keeps extending the CP build date, but then oddly enough, they never build. Or they put it on the air, take it silent again often pleading technical or financial difficulty. When they simply aren't getting the price they want to sell it." This gentleman knew the rules in a reasonable period of time to construct, and in effect admitted to the Commissioner that he didn't do so because he wanted the rules changed. I don't agree with that sort of behavior.

"Don't blame any of this on corporate radio. This is all the fault of the FCC."

I most certainly blame the people blatantly lying about this. Come out and be honest. Say you want to cut it from your expenses. But don't go telling me it will result in some grand reinvestments in localism. It won't. And it never has. No one who is for the removal of this requirement can explain why it won't lead to exactly what a certain "non profit" has consistently done. Operating stations in markets like Hartford, CT from over 2,000 miles west. If you think this is a good thing for commercial radio, innovation and localism, you're wrong.

Looks like we are talking two different things. I'm not saying anything about localism. I'm saying it never existed anyway. I think we're both saying that.

The speculator in radio (ie: win a frequency and move it around and not build or just light it up to take it dark) is throughout the AM and FM dial. You have to know the FCC is fully aware of this. They allocate a frequency in a town of 300 with 2 or 3 businesses and expect the applicant to not move it? I too love their excuses. One of my favorites in 'we cannot find employees to man the station'. I saw another good one: 'our city of license has no local police department and given the crime situation, we request a move to this larger town because they have a full time police department and lower property crime statistics". They got the approval to move closer to the big city.

I saw the Big Wells, Texas FM for sale: $350,000. Big Wells is about 700 people and 3 businesses in the middle of nowhere. I think it was bought for $50,000 and was originally running at 100 watts from a short stick, something like 80 feet HAAT. They are now a full Class A and the price has gone up 7 fold but the audience reached is still not much, surely not enough to pay normal operating experiences, much less debt service, purely in my humble opinion. However, a move could make it worth that. There seem to be one that was dark more than it was on the air.