"...Without the Rap!"

Part of the mystery has been solved about a new Rapid City radio station. Connoisseur Media’s new FM station at 102.7 played Christmas music for several weeks – becoming something of a curiosity, and leading some folks to wonder what music format the station would eventually adopt.

Well, the cat is out of the bag, and KXMZ/102.7 (Box Elder-Rapid City) bills itself as “Hits 102.7, Today’s Best Hits Without the Rap.” They’re streaming commercial-free music on their web site with a format that is clearly aimed at teens and young adults. We understand that Connoisseur, which is headquartered in Westport, Connecticut, picked up the 50,000-watt station in an FCC auction for just over $1 million. It’s one of 18 radio stations in the Rapid City market.

The more intriguing parts of the mystery remain: 1) When will they start generating some advertising revenue? 2) How successful will they be? And, perhaps most important to many of us: 3) just how much local service will 102.7 provide?

Here Comes Santa Claus? 102.7 FM

Radio listeners in the Black Hills who tune around the radio dial just for the fun of it discovered something a bit odd the other day. A time warp, right out of “The Twilight Zone.” What else could explain the gentle strains of Silent Night and Jingle Bells blasting from the radio in early April?

Perhaps someone at this station, 102.7 FM, forgot that Christmas is over for this season?

Maybe it’s a radio signal returning to earth after bouncing off of a distant galaxy.

It might be an April Fool’s prank.

Or….maybe it’s just a new radio station with a gimmick to get our attention. Well, it seems to be working.

102.7 FM is on the air from Connecticut, or wherever, blasting away at the Rapid City market with Christmas music. Clearly, it’s an effort that seems to be working. I first learned about it from Dan Daly's Rapid City Journal blog site. Dan reports that the station call sign will be KXZM and the city of license is Box Elder, while the transmitter is atop "M" hill in Rapid City. Who are these people and what do they want?

Well, it turns out they’re Yankees from Connecticut. The company is called Connoisseur Media, and it’s headed by Jeffrey D. Warshaw, a well-to-do businessman who says he’s a broadcaster. Mr. Warshaw sold his first Connoisseur company – a collection of 27 radio stations -- for a cool $258 million. The Connoisseur web site indicates their new operation is “characterized by well researched and targeted programming, intense training and development of its people, and dedicated local service.” They list 17 radio stations from Erie, Pennsylvania to Billings, Montana.

It’ll be fascinating to see just how many Connoisseur employees populate the Rapid City market. Even more interesting will be watching them scramble to provide a “dedicated local service.” That’s a refreshing concept that even many locally-owned broadcasters struggle to attain but seldom achieve.

My bet is that their local service is promotional hype…..that their local staff is comprised mostly of a few sales people – and perhaps a contract person to keep the satellite gear and transmitter operating.

In the end, I doubt that Mr. Warshaw is Santa Claus coming to town with a bag of local services for Rapid City and the surrounding area. I predict they’ll have a competitive music service – whatever that may be – with a strong promotion strategy, a local sales force, and a creative way of trying to “sound local.”

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The measure of their local service will be how much they really become a part of the community. How many news staff will they have? How effectively will they report the weather? Just how much will they really become a part of the social fabric of the Black Hills? I doubt that “dedicated local service” is a big part of the holiday strategy unleashed by Connoisseur Media.

I could be wrong. I hope I am. Stay tuned.

Who Needs Competition?

I am conflicted ---

The U.S. Department of Justice today approved a $5 billion buyout of XM Radio by its competitor, Sirius Radio. Approval by the Federal Communications Commission seems imminent.

As a long-time subscriber to XM satellite radio, I have come to rely upon ready access to music of the 1940s and ‘50s, the in-depth governmental coverage of C-SPAN Radio, wall-to-wall classical music, occasional forays into Bluegrass, periodic visits from talk-show host Dave Ramsey, and a fresh perspective on international news from the BBC World Service.

I couldn’t care less about most of the 100+ other channel offerings. So when Sirius and XM said that, if they’re allowed to join forces, they’ll start offering program channels a la carte, I was excited. This “unbundling” concept is one that many subscribers would love to see implemented by cable television companies, and one promoted strongly by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Imagine paying only for the channels you really want! If we believe Sirius and XM, that may soon happen with their surviving radio services. -

I fear the cost may be more than I hoped – much more.

For the past year, I’ve had a gnawing discomfort about this “merger,” but my fears subsided when I considered the possibility of paying less for fewer channels. Today, when I read about DOJ approval in the New York Times, I Googled the topic and found an archived story on the Sirius-XM deal by Marc Fisher of the Washington Post. Now I feel worse.

My hopes of keeping only the satellite channels I want – and paying less than my current $13 a month – now seem uncertain. Fisher, in his piece written last year, asked more than rhetorically, “Can you name one example of a new consumer technology that was guaranteed to a single provider and still served customers well? (Don’t everyone say 'cable TV' at once.)"

Having now read his full article, my discomfort grows, and my shot at frugality seems to have been dashed.

I am conflicted and won’t know the final outcome until I get that note in the mail many months from now, from the satellite radio entity left standing, telling me about all of the wonderful new benefits of yet another media consolidation.

Sigh.

SDPB Radio Station Planned for Spearfish

It won’t be happening anytime soon, but a full-service South Dakota Public Broadcasting FM radio station is being planned for the northern Black Hills. It would be located in Spearfish.

The Federal Communications Commission has granted a permit to SDPB for construction of a 6,000-watt radio station that would replace the low power FM translators that serve Belle Fourche (91.9 Mhz) and Spearfish (91.1 Mhz). The new station will operate at 91.9 Mhz.

This is great news for those of us who often have to resort to the Wyoming Public Radio station at Sundance for a reliable signal. It’s difficult to hear the two translators outside the city limits of Belle Fourche and Spearfish. And the terrain of the northern Black Hills doesn’t allow a good signal from either Rapid City or Faith, the two nearest SDPB full-service stations.

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The transmitter for the Spearfish station will be located at an existing tower site in north Spearfish. You may click on the map at left to see a larger image of the planned coverage area. Programming will duplicate KUSD-FM, the SDPB flagship station at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.

The construction permit was granted on January 17, 2008 and is valid for three years. It will likely be toward the end of that three-year period before the station is operational.

South Dakota Public Broadcasting operates a statewide network of radio (NPR) and television (PBS) stations.

Global Events -- Our Neighborhood, too

How regrettable that it took the death of a charismatic Pakistani leader today to get the U.S. media to pay attention to world events. Beyond coverage of our involvement in the war in Iraq and early campaigning for the U.S. presidency, there really is another world out there.

Continuing strife in Darfur, the growing military might – and pollution – that symbolizes an emerging world power in China, severe human rights violations in much of Latin America…. The list of significant world events seems beyond the reach of American media. Not because they lack the technology, but because the corporate entities that own much of the media lack the will to support coverage beyond their “sales market.” The bottom line reigns supreme.

The circumstances surrounding the suicide bombing that claimed the life of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, 54, will be explored heavily today – and maybe tomorrow – by mainstream U.S. media. Then, short of all-out revolution in Pakistan, the topic will ebb away from media consciousness like the tide rolling back out to sea.

Only with Reuters, Deutsche Welle, BBC, and a few other web sites can we expect much meaningful world news. A few print media in our country – the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal among them – help keep us peripherally informed. Alone among domestic broadcasters, NPR and PBS do a good job of covering the globe. In our neck of the woods, we're thankful for South Dakota Public Broadcasting and Wyoming Public Radio. Their stations provide not only excellent coverage of world events -- they also do the best job of broadcasting state/regional news and features.

Would that we could get others to recognize that we’re a part of global community.

Amnesia Perhaps?

Although I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me, I was taken aback that Chairman Kevin Martin of the Federal Communications Commission has such bad short-term memory. Martin apparently doesn’t remember the thrashing that then Chairman Michael Powell took just three years ago when he tried to update FCC ownership rules for broadcast stations.

“Update” in this case is a euphemism for tossing out ownership rules that are already skewed against the public interest and offer giant media conglomerates a continuing opportunity to stuff their pockets with profits. This, at the expense of many genuinely local radio and television stations that historically really have operated in the public “interest, convenience, and necessity."

Not surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal has weighed in supporting Martin’s plan. I took issue with their stance by writing this “Letter to the Editor” last week:

The Wall Street Journal’s assertion that media consolidation has “led not to monopolies but to a media landscape that is more diverse than ever” (Oct. 25, 2007) confuses variety with diversity. The growing media empire of Rupert Murdoch may offer a garden variety of pseudo-journalism and info-tainment, but it falls woefully short of truly diverse, local journalism.

Your suggestion that “free-market” consolidation might improve the media landscape ignores the declining, sorry state of local broadcasting in this country – almost as bad as network offerings. Your swipe at public broadcasting, which is often the only vibrant player in local radio and television, is unwarranted. Many of us pine for the days of locally-owned and operated stations that were a part of the fabric of the communities they served, producing content that genuinely strived to meet the needs and interests of the community – not just the corporate bottom line. There are still a few commercial properties that fulfill that role, but increasingly it is public broadcasters who have filled the void of local service.

Chairman Martin and the FCC would do well to further expand their efforts in encouraging more local broadcasting and abandon the numbskull notion that media consolidation will save the day.

Back when Michael Powell tried an end run to further "relax" ownership rules, even he might have been surprised to find media mogul Ted Turner opposed to the proposal. To his credit, Turner simply observed that further consolidation might have been good for big media – but it was bad public policy.

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"When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas," wrote Turner in the Washinton Monthly in 2004. Admitting that he earlier had tried his own "clean sweep" of vertical media ownership, Turner observed that media companies have grown ever larger and more powerful, and that their dominance has become so detrimental to small, emerging companies, that there's just one alternative -- bust up the big conglomerates.

Let’s hope that efforts to quash the plan – and there are many – are successful. Among those leading the charge against further media consolidation is U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. Killing this proposal won't bust up the big media barons -- not by a long shot -- but it'll be a step in the right direction.

Kudos to KBHB Radio

Extremely dry conditions in the southern Black Hills, coupled with hot temperatures and gusty winds, are hampering firefighters trying to subdue the “Alabaugh Fire” about five miles southwest of Hot Springs.

We’re saddened to learn that one person has been killed and two firefighters injured in incidents related to this fire. News reports say 27 homes have been destroyed by the wildfire, apparently started by lightning in Alabaugh Canyon.

We first learned of the fire Saturday night (July 7th) in Crawford, Nebraska, where we heard a public service radio dispatcher announce an appeal for assistance in fighting a wildfire in Fall River County South Dakota.

Sunday afternoon, as we drove north from Crawford, Nebraska to Spearfish, South Dakota, I listened up and down the radio dial seeking information about the fire.

I first tried the Hot Springs AM radio station at 580 on the dial. I heard nothing but country music. Switching to KOTA in Rapid City, I heard the CBS network news at both 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., leading their newscasts with information about massive wilfires in the western states, including South Dakota. They reported the death related to the fire near Hot Springs, but there was little detail. We heard no local follow-up on KOTA following the network news. Admittedly, I was hop-scotching across the dial -- hoping to hear something, and I may well have missed coverage by stations. But I doubt it. I was trying all afternoon, but with little success.

At 4:00 p.m., an ABC network news report over KBHB Sturgis told about the evacuation of homes in the Hot Springs area, along with an excerpt from a fire official with a few details. Following the network news, KBHB’s Gary Matthews provided the only substantive local information we could find about the fire. It included more depth and greater detail than contained in the ABC network report. And it was the ONLY local radio report about the fire that we could locate on our car radio.

Our hats off to KBHB in Sturgis for providing these reports (we heard subsequent updates) and for caring enough to provide news and information that affect residents of the Black Hills region.

I know the story was picked up by the Associated Press, and KOTA-TV, the KELOland stations, and others have undoubtedly carried the story, since there is evidence on their web sites that their stations have broadcast the story.

But Sunday afternoon, some 18 hours after the fire was first reported, radio listeners in western South Dakota were hard pressed to find ANY information about the incident.

Alas, lots of radio stations are largely automated, especially on weekends, playing music fed to them via satellite. They provide little, if any, local and regional news reports. We know of at least one Black Hills radio station whose newscasts rely on newspaper clippings – often from yesterday’s edition!!

It is sad that so many radio stations offer so little original news reporting.

Kudos to KBHB and Gary Matthews for recognizing that local news and public affairs reporting is a key ingredient in providing real service to their listeners – not just canned music and network programs.