Where Are You, Anyway?

The broadcasting industry got what it wanted the other day when the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making and took another step towards eliminating the Main Studio Rule, and I suppose that's fine insofar as it's one less regulation to worry about, and it's true that, as the folks pushing the rule change say, the public file is even more effective online than in some dusty filing cabinet in the community of license. Plus, everyone communicates by email now, or texting. Sure. Let's lose the rule.

But losing the rule reminds me of something else radio's losing along the way. It's interesting that the medium that makes a big, big deal of local service is so eager to ditch the rule that says you have to be in the community you're supposed to be serving. Before we go down that road, however, a few caveats:

1. Local isn't always intrinsically better. We're way past the "local always beats national" stage. Good national will beat lousy local. Being local doesn't automatically grant deity status.

2. Syndicated isn't evil. Why should someone not receive top national talent just because they live outside New York or L.A.? We don't do that for television, do we? "Sorry, you can't watch 'Modern Family' or '60 Minutes.' Here's 'Evening Dubuque with Arlo the Guy Down the Street.'" We can be nostalgic for the days of the local kiddie show host or horror host or morning chat fest, but economics have changed and that's not coming back... and while some of those local shows were great, some were pretty amateur. Nostalgia is a great flavor enhancer.

3. Real people can't often explicitly tell a show's not local or not live. You and I can, because we're in the business. If it's a music show and voice tracked from someplace else, it isn't going to be a constant problem when the jock reads the standard liner card between the same songs everyone's playing everywhere, unless they mention some local town and screw up the pronunciation. (Remember, in Pennsylvania, it's LANK-uh-stir, and in California, it's LANN-cast-er.)

4. Did I mention that for a jukebox format, it doesn't matter? Pandora localizes with promotions but it's really mostly one song after another. Spotify is one song after another. SiriusXM has jocks, but they don't even TRY to sound local. Nobody thinks this is a problem, because it isn't.

Yet...

5. One of broadcast radio's differences is that it CAN be local. Remember the controversy when broadcasters suspected that SiriusXM would be using its terrestrial repeaters to do local ad insertion? And podcast and streaming companies will wear your eardrums out talking about how their geotargeting is improving. Radio already has that. But...

6. Local doesn't mean anything if you aren't really local. You need feet on the ground to be local. You need to know where things are. Talent needs to be around town to get a feel for relating to the audience; can someone in a studio in New York really know what concerns people in the "flyover"? An election hinged on the reading, and misreading, of mindsets for people in those "other" states. Plus...

7. Live spots, local sales. Native advertising and "live reads" are big business. I know some stations that live off of those spots, and the entire podcasting business is constructed upon them. If you're taking advantage of the rule change, and you're going to have your air staff someplace else, that's going to affect how those live spots go for local clients like car dealers and restaurants. You want the talent to drop in and get face time with the clients and keep them on the hook. Can't do that if the talent's someplace else. And, no, email isn't always a suitable substitute for showing up.

8. Emergencies. Don't make me say Minot (and, yes, I know both sides of that story). If your studio's someplace else, if you don't have a physical presence in the core of your service area, it's going to be harder to cover a true emergency. If anything, you should have a GREATER presence in your community -- including emergency backup facilities -- for this reason. When the phones are down, being in an adjacent area won't help, but being in the heart of the market will help you get hold of the people who have the information you need to communicate. Ideally, your main studio can become the center of all emergency communication. Hard to do that when you're elsewhere (or, and this is for another column, when you shut down and empty the building at 5 pm Friday and something happens on Saturday).

All of this isn't to say that we need a Main Studio Rule. There are cases where a local presence isn't necessary -- Mike Novak built the EMF/K-Love/Air1 empire on that, and there are plenty of listeners to those stations who know it's national. A sports station that's all-ESPN or Fox or SB Nation or CBS with nothing local isn't going to suddenly be "local" if the satellite dish and computer... er, studio's in town. Some rimshots belong in the cluster studios even if that location's outside the station's technical city grade contour. Even if a main studio's in town, most people will email to reach management and hit up social media to make a request or engage with a jock. The rule is outdated.

But the weaker the presence of a station or a cluster in a community, the less radio has to differentiate itself from other media. The industry celebrates local service all the time; it's what the NAB tells Congress we do best, it's what the Crystal and Marconi Awards are about, it's what broadcasters have hammered home for decades as what makes us special. Get rid of the rule, sure, but don't let it diminish the value of local service. Maybe you won't HAVE to have a local presence anymore, but there are plenty of reasons that you should.

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There are a few times during the year in which nothing in particular is happening that lends itself to a joke or snarky comment or notice in this closing paragraph. The middle of May is one of those times. See you next week.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
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