[BC] HD multicast alliance

[Rich Wood]

------ At 03:05 PM 12/12/2005, Davis, Steve - SVP wrote: -------

>We stand today at a pivotal crossroads in the evolution of our industry.
>My hope is that you and the leaders at your stations and companies will
>join us in reinventing our business to maintain our vibrancy and
>relevance into the 21st century.

I'm not going to respond to every point in your message, however, I 
disagree and feel smaller operators, independent of Clear Channel and 
other large companies, should have been included. If you're going to 
violate anti-trust, at least give the little guy a chance to pay 
fines and spend some time in the slammer, too.

Without including them "join us" means blindly accepting your 
decisions. As a programmer I don't see this doing anything more than 
giving large companies further dominance over their markets, using 
satellite and iPods as an excuse.

Supposing someone outside the Dominion decides to program to his 
station's best interest? Will the Dominion stamp him out? The more I 
think about it, this just might give the little guy the freedom he 
needs to compete without the restrictions of a format forced on him 
by the Dark Side.

Is the Dominion going to force its members to treat secondaries as 
complete radio stations? Will Infinity bring back the personalities 
and run WCBS-HD2 the same way they ran the analog? Until there's 
compelling programming there's no reason to buy a radio. If not, 
we're confronted with the content issue, again. Secondary will mean 
second rate. I'm going to naively assume Lowry and Mark have given 
the Dominion free reign, that they'll accept the responsibility, for 
the good of all, to program Country and Traditional Jazz in New York 
with serious programmers and world class live talent. In my opinion, 
secondaries are dead meat if that commitment isn't made.

Of course, this is all hypothetical for the next couple of decades. 
Until the 1.5 billion receivers of all descriptions are replaced, 
it's little more than mental self-pleasuring.

My bet is that some unbroken technology will appear during that time 
to leapfrog both IBUZ and satellite.

Rich