Hello. My name is Jenny Toomey. I am the executive director of The Future of Music Coalition. The Future of Music Coalition is not a lobby group. The Future of Music Coalition is a not-for-profit think tank that examines the music industry in search of policies, technologies and business models that can benefit artists and music fans. We believe that the overwhelming majority artists would be satisfied with a marketplace that allowed them to pay a mortgage, have health insurance and get music played on local radio stations. For this reason we spend most of our time addressing these three goals. We firmly believe that any serious examination of a digital future must first take into account the structures of our analog present.

I’m pleased to see such a good turnout and to have so many representatives here from artist, consumer and citizens groups to support the release of our radio study, “Radio Deregulation: Has it Served Citizens and Musicians?”

In a few minutes I will introduce you to Peter DiCola and Kristin Thomson who will walk you through some of our more significant findings from the study but first I want to address some larger themes.

I want to begin by briefly addressing the controversy that surrounding the release of this report. As some of you know the press embargo of our report was broken last week. As a result, there were some articles in the Hollywood Reporter and the LA Times and as a result of that coverage, many of the respected journalists in the room and around the country were contacted by the lobbyists and publicists from the National Association of Broadcasters with a hatchet-job assessment of our report. The “fact sheet” as they title it…begins with the allegation that our study “contains very little, if any, news.”

Clearly we’ve hit a nerve. Every journalist in the room understands there would be no reason for the NAB, arguably the largest and most powerful lobby organization in Washington, to issue a lengthy screed about our yet-to-be released study if our report as was flawed and inconsequential as they say. Their actions remind me of that critical moment in the Wizard of Oz where the swirling specter on the screen directs Dorothy to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” It’s an obvious attempt to stifle legitimate debate and it mirrors our larger concern that a diversity of voices (particularly those of musicians and citizens) must be represented in these discussions.

Looking behind the curtain is one of the things that we do best at Future of Music. In fact, we are so confident at the accuracy of our statistical analysis we take the opposite approach. We won’t tell you to turn away from the rhetoric of the NAB’s attack…in fact last Friday night we posted their “fact sheet” on our own website. Now that the report is available you can decide for yourself who is painting the more accurate picture of the state the radio. Furthermore, we are happy to debate any of these themes publicly with the NAB.

If you need a clear indication that our study hits the mark, note the ad hominem attack on the study’s authors. They refer to Peter and Kristin as a graduate student and a public relations professional. Besides being tacky, it’s ridiculous to attack the credentials of these researchers considering the clear scope of our analysis which largely involved addition, subtraction, division and percentages…mathematical principles we all learned by the time we graduated elementary school. Any one of you in the audience will be able to read through the study follow the statistical analysis and understand that it is accurate. The revelations of this report come not in the form of complicated mathematical jargon but accurate counting and historical context.

Despite protestations to the contrary there is a lot in this study that IS new.

I’ve broken it down into three areas that will be of particular interest to citizens and musicians, this study offers:

1. Access to industry data
2. A more meaningful and accurate measure of radio diversity.
3. Public Interest concerns that are distinct from Commercial Concerns

1. Access to the Data.

Some might ask, “If these calculations are easily executed how come they haven’t been done before?” The majority of the calculations detailed in our study are based on data from BIA Financial Networks, a company that specializes in collecting data for the commercial radio industry. This database is proprietary and expensive. It is an essential tool for those in the radio industry but one that is too costly to be accessed by under funded artist groups and citizens’ organizations. When the NAB says that there is “nothing new in the study” in some ways they are telling the truth. The radical consolidation of the bandwidth is not news to them. They are the primary architects of this change. It is, however, big news to citizens and artists groups who have noticed a difference in their radio but have had no way access the numbers that detail the structural transformation of the industry.

2. A more accurate and meaningful measure of radio diversity.

Previous measures of radio bandwidth diversity have focused on the number of radio formats available on the dial. This is the same measure used by several of the studies cited in the NAB “fact sheet” and the recent FCC study “Radio Industry Review 2002: Trends in Ownership, Format and Finance.” This theory assumes that more radio formats equals more diversity. Taking that measure at face value and applying it to data since 1996 we agree. There are more radio formats on the dial in 2002. We say so in the report. Problem is, this is an inadequate measure – as we also make clear in the report. Format variety is not an accurate substitute for true format diversity. Think of it this way, formats are like containers. Each format/container holds a list of songs. Previous radio studies measure numbers of containers on the shelf; and under this scenario more jars means more diversity. But what if a third of the formats are playing the same songs. What if a third of the jars contain marmalade? The standard measure does not account for this very real phenomenon.

Our study argues that it is impossible to determine true variety without looking in the jars to see what they contain. This is what our study does. It is the first analysis to do so and to make a clear distinction between format variety (number of format/containers) and format diversity (content of format/containers). We believe that this is a more accurate and meaningful measure of format diversity and one that directly addresses the needs of citizens and musicians. Peter will talk more about this distinction when he discusses our findings including the tremendous overlap of the same songs between supposedly distinct formats. It is a regular phenomenon on the radio and one that does not lead to format diversity but Faux-mat diversity and format homogeneity.

3. Guidelines for Public Interest Responsibilities.

The debate must be reframed with a clear-eyed focus on the needs of citizens. It is our spectrum after all. The federal government manages this spectrum on the behalf of citizens and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has a clear mandate to enact policies that balance the rights of citizens with the legitimate interests of broadcasters. This report makes an overwhelming case that the market consolidation that has come in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act does not serve the diverse needs of Americans citizens. The public is not satisfied and the economic efficiencies of industry consolidation are not being passed on to the public in improved local service.

We’re not surprised that the NAB has cried foul. It’s their job to defend the broadcasters and they do this by emphasizing huge expenditures on industry research and attacking the integrity of our public poll. But remember their surveys are not public policy analysis. Their surveys are market research and focused on attracting demographically attractive audiences. Is it any wonder that the results of our public poll differ from the results of the radio industries market researchers? Listen for yourself. Turn on the radio and let common sense tell you which survey more accurately represents the state of our public airwaves.

We are fortunate to release this report at this time. Over the past three years we have been contacted by thousands of musicians, librarians, students, church groups, politicians, music fans and community leaders all discontented with the state of their increasingly consolidated public airwaves. Nonetheless, In September 2002, the FCC launched a review of their ownership rules, asking if they should open up the radio industry to further deregulation.

We caution citizens and musicians as we prepare for “open media review.” Open discussion should not imply open caps for increased corporate media control. “Open season” for continued consolidation will surely speed the unfolding tragedy of our increasingly closed public airwaves.

Press Release

Report Details