FM WINDFALLS

[Don Juan]

2) - FM never had any proprietary licensing fees. Now, HD on FM requires a greedy licening fee


The fee is really minimal for most major stations. And why is it "greedy" to get a proprietary license? Isn't that what Microsoft does...and does well? I don't know a major station that could operate without licenses from MS. Same thing for licenses for ASCAP/BMI, etc. Why is it "greedy"? That's just how some businesses run.

But for the small broadcaster, especially for the high-school, college or community broadcaster who doesn't have the same "footprint" that the major stations do and does not have the budget to afford it, it's prohibitively expensive.

Well, then again, so isn't the AP fee, ASCAP BMI license, MS licenses, etc., etc.

The answer is that no station is required to buy any of these licenses. Only if they choose to.

 

[4CX1000A]

The stockholders of Charles River Broadcasting got $100 million from Greater Media for WCRB 102.5 (the P&S agreement was, and maybe still is, on the FCC Web site). They got a few million more for their Cape and RI stations, which went to other purchasers.

 

[4CX1000A]

The fee is really minimal for most major stations. And why is it "greedy" to get a proprietary license? Isn't that what Microsoft does...and does well? I don't know a major station that could operate without licenses from MS.

I could do it.

There are non-MS traffic systems, non-MS music schedulers (I wrote one), non-MS automation systems, and non-MS office suites. Even some programs written for Windows can be persuaded to run under non-MS operating systems.

 

[WLYNWAZNgm]

For our automation here, for both stations, we use a thing called
Smartcaster. (based in Iowa) It is a very simple MS-DOS, standalone system,
but it chugs it's little heart out year after year, without incident.
Simple is good! The only ongoing costs involved is a small amount
for tech support...

 

[Deleted User]

as much as I hate the Smartcaster, it has been pretty damn reliable for as long as I have been with WLYN/WAZN.

It runs on 2 ancient rack mounted PC's 24/7/365 and rarely skips a beat, to the point I can't remember when the last time it had a problem.

When I interviewed at WPLM I got to see their drag and drop automation system from Arrakis Automation, which was a breeze to use, but no other industry where reliability is crucial uses any Microsoft operating system. As nice as it was to be able to put hours together by drag and drop in seconds, and as much as I hate entering file numbers one keystroke at a time into the Smartcaster program, I know those machines are rock solid stable.


But back to the Arrakis system, I'd hate to be the guy on call when it comes to a Windows based product running on a 400 dollar Dell PC in a commercial radio environment.

I use my own laptops when I am at MRBI, but like Jeff, I use Winamp for my media player, Mozilla for my web browser, and Thunderbird for my mail. I also use OpenOffice for my word processing and spreadsheet needs.

The less I use MS products, the less problems I have.