Pull or Shut Off Noncompliant Radios Shipped, NAB Urges XM, Sirius
NAB, frustrated that the FCC hasn’t acted on its July request to “seek recall” of noncompliant Sirius and XM receivers shipped to retail or sold through to consumers, asked Sirius and XM Thurs. to pull or suspend service to those radios voluntarily. Sirius and XM hadn’t responded by our deadline to our requests for comment. But both seemed certain to reject the call, as they opposed NAB’s request to the Commission for a recall last month.
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Broadcasters were “heartened by your decisive actions to suspend production of noncompliant receivers with FM transmitters, pending FCC review,” NAB CEO David Rehr told Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin and XM Pres. Nate Davis in a letter released Thurs. at the NAB Radio Show in Dallas. Copies were sent to all 5 FCC commissioners and distributed to the news media.
Rehr’s letter praised the Commission’s “diligence” and Sirius’s and XM’s “responsiveness” for helping “prevent further disruptions caused by additional noncompliant satellite radios.” Now that the FCC has cleared the way for production of newly compliant radios to resume, “NAB urges XM and Sirius to take the next logical step of voluntarily withdrawing and replacing all noncompliant receivers already in circulation, to resolve existing interference to terrestrial radio service,” Rehr said. Alternatively, XM and Sirius could use the “addressable” serial numbers on all receivers or subscribers’ billing addresses and warranty information to “temporarily suspend service” to noncompliant radios until they're replaced, Rehr said.
Recent NAB and NPR studies have shown that devices exceeding FCC emission rules are plentiful and are “a pervasive, industry-wide problem,” Rehr said. NPR tests estimated that 30-50% of detected personal FM modulators didn’t meet the FCC’s “regulatory limit,” Rehr said. He warned of “a high probability” that listeners to 88.1 MHz and 87.9 MHz FM channels “will encounter objectionable interference in a matter of minutes of driving, and perhaps multiple occurrences per minute of driving on high-traffic routes.”
Like a letter Rehr sent the FCC in July, this one mentions only satellite radio. But NAB wants the recall of all noncompliant wireless devices, including those used with MP3 players and iPods, a spokesman for the organization has told us. It’s “irrefutable” that noncompliant satellite radio receivers “will continue to disrupt terrestrial radio services so long as receivers that were shipped prior to the FCC’s recent approvals of new radios remain in the market,” Rehr told Davis and Karmazin. Voluntarily pulling and replacing them “is the only means sufficient to safeguard the public interest in free over-the-air radio services, including new digital services,” he said: “NAB urges you to seriously consider undertaking this consumer-friendly step for the benefit of all radio listeners.”
The letter had a conciliatory tone and characterized Rehr’s request as urging recall. But in a more confrontational Radio Show speech, Rehr called the request a demand and “the minimum” Sirius and XM should do to deal with the interference problem. Sirius CEO Karmazin, as an ex- Infinity Bcstg. executive, “knows the importance of spectrum integrity,” Rehr said: “He certainly would demand that devices interfering with his signal be stopped immediately. Mr. Karmazin is duty-bound and personally obligated to keep Sirius satellite radio from interfering with over-the-air signals.”
Sirius has “a variety of other solutions” for resolving the modulator matter “that can be implemented more quickly and without consumer disruption” than a product recall, Karmazin told analysts in a quarterly earnings call last month. NAB “is rattling its saber” out of opposition to satellite radio, Karmazin said. “But we continue to believe that there would be nothing served if in fact there was any sort of a recall -- and we have not heard any of that out of the FCC.” Karmazin also termed NAB “very aggressive in lobbying” on the modulator issue. “We continue to see what their agenda is,” he said: “The NAB is moving from an organization that used to play offense to sort of playing defense and is looking to try and muddy waters.”
Of devices NAB tested for emissions in its June survey, “only one was an XM radio and that radio passed the NAB’s own test,” XM said last month in response to NAB’s recall request at the FCC. XM has changed its radios to meet FCC emission rules “not only through its manufacturers but through its distributors and retailers as well,” the company said then. “As a result of these measures, XM believes its radios meet applicable FCC testing requirements for in-vehicle radios and XM is prepared to work with the NAB to resolve any misplaced concerns.”