[BC] NRSC-5

[Phil Alexander]

On 20 Jul 2005 at 12:33, Barry Mishkind wrote:

> At 11:55 AM 7/20/2005, Phil Alexander wrote
> 
> >Eddie sang his swan song at Las Vegas, but either he hasn't left the building
> >or his ghost remains ensconced in his old office. Either way, it's past time
> >to get him out of there IMHO.
> 
>          And this is exactly the problem with
>          communication between the different
>          parts of this industry.  For the most part,
>          the owners have been extremely happy
>          with Fritz.  Most of the dissent seems to
>          have been along the lines of rebelling
>          against fees and the occasional sibling
>          spat over program control.

Under Fritts, IMHO, the NAB has become a financially strong convention and
lobbying organization that has lost its engineering leadership role. With
strong leadership in engineering it might have stepped into the development
vacuum left by the FCC move toward deregulation. The problem, as I see it,
is that the NAB represents the views of many owners that engineering is a
necessary evil to be avoided whenever possible and generates unneeded 
expenses.

After Prose Walker retired, the NAB became less and less an engineering
force and more and more a political force when, to exert a leadership
role in the industry, and affect the future direction of our business, 
it needs to be both. The cost of failure can be seen in the AMS debacle
and in the transition to digital broadcast. Ultimately, the owners will
pay the price, and if listeners are lost during IBOC hybrid as many
think will happen, the cost to station ownership will be high. If Ibiquity
later controls the pure digital mode and extracts an annual fee the owners
will have no one but themselves to thank.


Phil Alexander, CSRE, AMD
Broadcast Engineering Services and Technology 
(a Div. of Advanced Parts Corporation) 
Ph. (317) 335-2065   FAX (317) 335-9037





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