CEA Blasts NAB’s Lobbying FCC for Voluntary Radio Chips In Mobile Devices
CEA is no more enamored of NAB’s lobbying the FCC to encourage the voluntary inclusion of radio chips in mobile devices than it was with past NAB proposals urging Congress and the agency to mandate FM receivers in cellphones, CEA President Gary Shapiro told us in a statement Tuesday. He responded to NAB President Gordon Smith’s call on the commission earlier this week to begin “a serious discussion about the voluntary activation of radio chips” in mobile phones (CD July 5 p15). As ammunition in his letter Tuesday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Smith cited the important role radio stations played in distributing weather information during the recent storms that struck the East Coast and Midwest. Smith thanked Genachowski for convening a July 20 meeting of broadcast and wireless industry representatives to discuss the issue.
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Of past NAB proposals to mandate FM chips in every mobile device, Shapiro said “we have yet to find a legislator or regulator who thinks government should mandate putting yesterday’s technology on today’s products.” It’s in the wake of “the complete and embarrassing failure of the NAB mandate strategy” that broadcasters are “again lobbying government both to pay taxpayer money to ’study’ the issue and to seek government pressure through the FCC chairman and other government officials” to urge voluntary inclusion of radio chips in mobile devices, Shapiro told us. NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton declined to comment directly on Shapiro’s remarks. Reached on the eve of the Independence Day holiday, Wharton said in a written statement: “We'll enjoy our 4th of July and wish the same for Gary Shapiro and our CEA friends. We hope that power and communications services are restored as quickly as possible for everyone in the DC area."
Shapiro thinks “it would be wrong and inappropriate for government to pressure private companies on how they build or activate their products,” he told us. “It is not the government role to protect or assist declining means of communication like print media, radio or town criers. Each can and should prosper or wither on its own. Should the government require that everyone buy a newspaper when they buy a coffee? What about a magazine subscription when you buy your tablet? I wonder if it is the NAB position that every car must have a radio? The NAB has lost its footing, as it almost always turns to government for help."
Since CEA believes that “marketplace decisions,” not government, should dictate which features are included on which phones, Shapiro has “an idea for NAB,” he told us: “Cut those government apron strings. Jump out of the nest!” As a first step, Shapiro’s advice to broadcasters is to “try building demand” for over-the-air radio, he said. “Just as every other company in America has to build up demand for its products through marketing … so, too, can you try marketing.” Sell over-the-air radio as a “feature and people may start asking for it,” he said.
Next, “do what real businesses do,” Shapiro said. “Go cut a deal. Go to a telco or phone maker and negotiate inclusion of the FM chip in turn for something. You do after all have valuable spectrum, radio time and lots of cash. I am sure if you put any of those assets on the table and started negotiating, you can cut a deal."
In the meantime, broadcasters need to “stop whining,” Shapiro said. “It is a horrible strategy, unbecoming of a great industry, and slanders radio broadcasters who do not believe they need government help to prosper and survive. Please leave our government alone. In the scheme of important issues, this fraudulent attempt to invoke public safety to reverse consumer free market decisions is sad, wasteful of government focus and difficult to watch, as a once-great industry uses its lofty Washington power to grovel for enforced relevance. Man up and compete!”