FCC Ready to Open Floodgates on Broadcast Ownership (ep.389)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Podcasting since two thousand and five. This is the King
of Podcasts Radio Network, kingo Podcasts dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
The SEC wants to fast track on ownership. Do they
really know the consequences of their actions?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
The King of Podcasts Radio Network probably presents to the
Broadcasters Podcast. Here is the King of podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to the Broadcasters Podcast. King of Podcasts here with you.
I've done a lot of shows really quickly this week
because I had a medical procedure at colon Oscoy this
week shows you my age that kind of delayed all
my programming earlier this week, but not the Broadcasters Podcast.
Whatever reason. Everything just kind of like laid itself out.
But I had to do multi podcasts in the last

(00:50):
twenty four hours just to get everything in, literally all
three programs in the last day. But here we are.
The SEC wants to go ahead and just drop ownership
limits all together. A fast track is in place. The
National Association of Broadcasters are happy to go ahead and
see it come to fruition. But there's consequences to it.

(01:12):
And maybe I'm the only loudmouth here with a podcast
platform that's been talking about it, but I am going
to talk about it because I'm afraid of what this means.
I mean, it would be one thing if we had
ownership limits that decided to go how they wanted to go,
if it weren't so many corporations that had the money
or the private equity companies that had so much money

(01:34):
just to hold on the properties and not do anything
with them. Okay, if we could have a world where
radio stations were not bought and paid for or being
held while they were holding on the debt with the
likes of iHeartRadio, ODYSSEYE, Cumulus, Urban One, all these other

(01:55):
networks that are out there that just don't make enough
money to really make it worthwhile. They're just these big
corporations that suck the creativity out of any kind of
radio programming at all. Meanwhile, local radio stations thrive on
some creativity, and of course they're gonna try to make money,
but at least they're doing something more with they're programming.

(02:16):
At least they're trying to service their public. Maybe not
be as creative as they can be, some can be
more than others. But radio still has a purpose. And
as you know, I've talked about it as a resounding
call to the music labels when the stagnation when it
comes to music and the fact that we're in the

(02:36):
summer right now and there's not much movement on the
Billboard Hot one hundred charts. If radio was actually able
to go and come in and stop contributing to the
stagnation by having songs like Lose Control by Teddy Swims
or having songs like Benson Boone's Beautiful Things stay on
the charts for seventy to ninety weeks, respectively, or ninety

(03:00):
seventy weeks the other way around. Billboard's not changing their
recurrence rules and they don't care or they're not allowed
to do anything because the record labels and radio have
them stuck at this point and there's nothing being done
about it. But now we're the point where allowing this
here the sec allowing ownership just to be full rain

(03:23):
the floodgates open. The excuse is that radio and television
and newspapers and others they have been saying now that
the Internet is their competition. No longer themselves. They don't
consider themselves competition anymore because the big bad Internet. Ooh,
they're the reason why things are just being allowed the

(03:45):
way they are. I don't know, I don't believe it
that way. I don't look at it that way. And
when I did radio myself, I don't think about the
Internet being there. Because all these outlets can have an
Internet voice themselves, they all have websites, they all can
get social media, all of that. They can be on
the same playing field without the need for the investment

(04:10):
of a tower or broadcast system, being able to go
and play music or play whatever they want in terms
of talk radio.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Whatever they have.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
They get advertising like any other Internet outlet does. They
could do that if they want to, But because these
corporate operations don't know how to manage themselves actually have
some creativity, actually have some things that would cause more advertising,
and if not advertising for the advertisers, because they've gone

(04:42):
the YouTube, they've gone to other routes to advertise themselves.
They go on the podcasting. Then why don't you get
the music labels to get back on board and start
promoting and selling physical items like they used to because
radio used to go ahead and relish off of record
labels working in kind with radio stations. Because as streaming
has learned in the last few weeks we've talked about

(05:04):
that as well, we're seeing now a hybrid experience. We
talked about that last week, the idea that streaming services
for these big major corporations, they cannot live on streaming alone.
They must find a way to thrive with their existing
platforms that were here well before streaming came into play,

(05:26):
well before the Internet. How quickly do broadcast networks forget
that they first came from radio in the first place,
then go to television only to start abandoning it as well.
Now they don't want to do scripted programming as much.
There's less scripted programming than ever, and more unscripted programming

(05:46):
in live sports than ever. So it's all changing around.
It doesn't make any sense, but that's what we are
now with a medium that we have. It's not a
good thing. So let's go into what we have right now.
Of what has happened in the SEC that is giving
me a bit of distress about what's going to happen.

(06:11):
So this is from Newscaststudio dot com. The SEC is
reopening this review of the National Television miltiple ownership rule,
limiting the reach of broadcasts groups to no more than
thirty nine percent of US households. Now, we're not talking
so much about what this means for radio stations, but

(06:32):
we could see much more that happens. So now new
public comments are going to be asked for whether the
rules should be retained, modified, or eliminated. And in television
there's a point about existing DAHF or UAHF radio at
television stations. By the way, that's the difference between channels
two through thirteen VHF and channels thirteen to sixty nine UAHF,

(06:56):
where UHS stations count for only half of the reach
towards the national cap if that should actually apply. Well,
the Senate has confirmed a new SEC Commissioner into the
board of the SEC Olivia Trustee, and now the Republican
majority is in place for the SEC, and in their eyes,

(07:20):
they want to continue to deregulate. So Brandon Carr, upon
the announcement of this, has said that the SEC has
rules on the books since the nineteen forties lining the
number of TV stations an each single entity can own.
Those stages have only accelerated in recent years of the
advent of online offerings. So he's showing he's in agreement
with these big corporations that the Internet has been their

(07:43):
competition and has been eating into lunch. Broadcasters now compete
for eyeballs with YouTube stars, social media platforms, and streaming
services like Hulu and Netflix, not to mention traditional cable
and satellite offerings. But see, what we will all understand
is that broadcasting can still do a professional job and
surpass what all this YouTube content or these other outlets

(08:04):
are because for the most part, that's still identifies with
a younger demographic, and there's an older demographic that might
flip over towards watching something online. But they all invested
in television sets, all invested in the radio stations, radio
you know, infotami of dashboards to have radio on it. Like,

(08:26):
there are still places where people can easily access television
or radio. For the Internet, we have to go a
little bit more and make sure we have the Wi Fi,
We make sure we had the data to be the
gun access. The last time this was reviewed was twenty seventeen,
when the SEC should have noticed of proposed rulemaking, and
since then there have been industry developments, changes in market

(08:48):
conditions and evolving media consumption patterns. Yes, we've had streaming,
we've had for the music industry, physical units just being
just basically dismissed because they don't even have anything anymore
to work off of. So the comments being asked for
are do twenty five days after the notice is published
in the Federal Register comments are due. Reply with comments

(09:11):
are due forty five days later. So of course Curtis Legate,
the president of the National Association of Broadcasters, is so
happy about this, saying that this is Chairman Car's willingness
to tackle this critical issue, allowing the NAB to better
serve communities with trusted news and information, which is bullshit.
They could do this without. Let's be clear about this too,

(09:34):
when it comes to the content we see online, how
micro focus is it on local It's not. What's very
interesting right now is on my TikTok toe. My FYP
has been getting a lot more local content. I'm getting
a lot more local news stations, a lot more local

(09:56):
influencers in my feed more than ever. The algorithm has
changed to give you more of a microblog than more
just of a mack or they've been doing, and I
do dig it, actually like it quite a bit. I've
really attached myself to a lot of other local people
because then I get an actual tap into what's going

(10:18):
on in my neighborhoods, in my backyard, my neck of
the woods, as they was a Salem of Today show,
some weather man, Al Roker, will or Scott whatever the
commissions moving forward, they still have one more seat to
fill which was vacated by Nathan Simington, and Gavin Wax's
former Rechiva staff is being mentioned as a potential nominee.

(10:40):
So a super majority of Republican votes in the SEC
coming up on that. And I don't know if this
all applies to radio, but national broadcast ownership caps I
could imagine that it also applies to radio. Now in

(11:01):
the TV realm, there's a look at what is going
on about what could happen with broadcast irregulation iespot dot
com talks about linear AD impressions have been down five
and a half percent in the first three months of
twenty twenty five, and linear AD revenue has climbed four percent,
almost thanks to major sports like the NFL Playoffs, the

(11:21):
Super Bowl, March Badness, and the NBA. National ad spend
on cable linear was down seven percent according to Mafatt
Nathanson and local broadcast core revenues for the top five
owners and operators of television stations declined four percent on average,
as Scripts, Next Star, Sinclair, Gray, and Tegna that are

(11:44):
all in this space where their revenue was nearly one
point six billion dollars combined now one point five million dollars.
They're losing a little bit here, but that's the continuing
erosion of their markets. So while they're losing money, the
only thing they can think of doing is not doing

(12:05):
anything more to improve their programming, which they're programming. If
you look at the local news stations, they're all cutting costs,
they're cutting staff, they're increasing more news time. Now on
news content is getting a little bit more boring, Like
when I look at my local news, they didn't even
talk much about the stories of any crimes or any

(12:26):
kind of consumer type stories. They have Sometimes they still do,
but it's a more community related, a little more Kumbaya
kind of stuff, and I'm like, no, I'm not interested
in that. But they're not doing as much hard news
as they use to anymore. And they used to work
for certain smaller markets, Like when I used to work

(12:50):
at Channel twenty five, the ABC affiliate here in WestBam
Beach WPBF, I would look at the content was being
fed from ABC affiliates to other ABC affiliates on the satellites,
and I would see some of the content that would
come in from some of their regional hubs, say it
was Denver or San Francisco or Chicago, especially Denver. I

(13:12):
would always see some of these fees that would come
in from say like the Southwest United States, Texas or
Nevada or Colorado, and see of these some of these
smaller and stories that IT would have that were kind
of interesting and cute and just kind of they're they're
basically kicker stories for the most part. I would see

(13:34):
that on say to myself, well that's cool at all,
But you know, we're still at the point where this
content is not something I would want to see in
Miami or New York or any bigger Marcus Tampa and
any of that kind of stuff. I don't mind that
the local stations have more sports coverage. We're gonna see

(13:57):
more of that coming up, especially with the NBA next
year once again goes to NBC, because you're actually gonna
see more prime time coverage on NBC of the NBA,
andfl is gonna get more primetime coverage because you remember
you already have it on I don't know all the
Monday nights they're gonna have it on ABC, but I
know that ESPN don't have it. And then you can
watch through Prime on Thursdays. And of course all the

(14:21):
college football. You could never muster how much that might
be going to local television as well. We don't know
about there's Prime War that's gonna be coming. Because on
all these broadcast networks, they're taking more time to allot
the live sports than anything else because that's what's gonna
make money for them. No matter what the sport, the
super Bowl is still on network television, all your major

(14:45):
championship sporting events are all on network television. Still is
going to be that place at the end of the day.
So let's look at the history so far of the
deregulation in regards to ownership caps, just so you know
the history of it. So the mandate of of regulating
media ownership in the past has been driven by the
mandate that served as the public interest, convenience and necessity

(15:07):
and interpreted as promoting diversity of viewpoints, programming and ownership
of the broadcast media. But the approach to these limits
has shifted significantly towards the regulation and increased consolidation within
the media industry. If you know this program, I have
gone through the history at nauseum from what was done
with the Telecommunications Act in nineteen ninety six, what happened

(15:30):
under the SEC chairman under Jimmy Carter, and what he
allowed all these kind of things. Let's go into some
of it right now. So first of all, was the
Communications Act in nineteen thirty four established the SEC and
gave it authority to regulate radio and later television. Their
policies in to prevent monopolies of foster diverse voices, and

(15:53):
they recognized the scarcity of broadcast frequencies, and they limited
the number of stations a single entity could own, both
nationally and locally. And then in the forties we had
the common ownership of multiple local radio stations, local TV stations,
and national broadcast networks. First it was the Mayfire Doctor

(16:13):
in nineteen forty one, which then was repealed in nineteen
forty nine. It forbade on air editorializing by broadcasters, emphasizing neutrality,
so equal time for whichever political slants you might have.
Then you had cross ownership restrictions in the seventies limits

(16:36):
being imposed on radio and TV stations. Then newspapers were
included into the mix in nineteen seventy five, but they
also prohibited the ownership of a daily newspaper and a
full power broadcast station serving the same community. Then in
nineteen eighty is when we had the change. Like I said,
there was the SEC chairman under Jimmy Carr that really

(17:00):
made the bigger difference towards it. Caps started being relaxed
in nineteen eighty four with the Cable Communications Policy Act
of nineteen eighty four, deregulating cable, paving the way for
larger cable conglombers. And with TV stations, they could say
that cable was starting to cut into their bottom line,
so we need more ownership. Notice the way they kind

(17:20):
of do that. Nineteen eighty seven, the fairness doctrine required
broadcasters to present controversial issues of public importance and reflect
different viewpoints was abolished by the SEC, and this sytistically
reduced public interest obligations for broadcasters. We can go either
way on what the fare instructorne really meant and what
that did, because if the Faros doctors was in play,

(17:42):
then you'd have you wouldn't have MSNBC or CNN or
Fox News with the particular slants in their coverage as
they are. They would have to be objective. I don't
know if that would be that way, or if it
would lean one more direction or the other. But that's
been gone and now it's the public to decide on
where they want to go with their coverage and what

(18:02):
they watched for their cable news or whatever else they
listened to or watch or read. I have talked about
the Telecommunications Act in nineteen ninety six many times. I
did a full episode on it, and what I want
to do is I do want to go and pull
back some of my commentary that I made at the
time about that Act and what it meant in nineteen

(18:26):
ninety six, because that was in that time that I
was doing this show. I talked about the fact that
we had this change, and then what happened with it
was I was very much in the radio business, trying
to get into the radio business and looking at a

(18:49):
different landscape. We started seeing a little bit of change
with the ownership of radio stations, but once that the
Telecommunications Act came into play, there were companies the likes
of Lowry Mays with Clear Channel with Bud packson of
Packs of Communications, among others that decided to go roughshot

(19:10):
and start buying up stations as much as they could
without any real rhyme or reason of what they were doing.
And still there were somewhat of ownership caps because of
what you were allowed to have eight stations I think
at any one time. So that was done and made
into play. I'm like, okay, well that's what he decided

(19:31):
to go and do. And so I talked about this
on the twenty fifth anniversary of the Telecommunications Act that
nineteen eety six. So let me go back to episode
one seventy five of the Broadcasters podcast. This was May
twenty first, twenty twenty one. The damage done. Now, the

(19:53):
Act was passed in February of nineteen ninety six, but
the twenty fifth version was then. I didn't bother to
go ahead and talk about the anniversary then because it's
just too much news at the time, and I just
felt I was gonna wait because we're already here in
a twenty fifth anniversary, a milestone, and honestly, I think

(20:17):
if this Act never got passed and some of the
things of media deregulation that came as a result of
this Act. This program probably every really needed to go
ahead and exist, because a lot of things would have happened.
I don't know if podcasting would be a thing. I
don't know. I would think radio would be much more competitive,

(20:42):
and I think network and cable television and movies there
will be a lot more competition, a lot more companies
vuying large and small. But we would have a real
kaleidoscope of content out there and loads and loads of
room for creat But it's not like that now, and

(21:04):
it still hasn't changed. It's just gotten worse. And so
I was actually pretty happy with the fact that I
put that story out there, and there were quite a
few listens to that episode of what we went and
talked about. But nevertheless, that change happened. So the national
radio ownership cap was eliminated by that Act, and that

(21:27):
allowed on a consolidation of the radio industry unlike we've
never seen. But again, twenty five years plus now, we're
coming upon the thirtieth anniversary coming up in about eight months,
and at this point in time, we still have deals
that were made after this Telecommunications Act to where the

(21:50):
companies are still holding onto the debt that they accrued
because of the deals that were made in consolidation by
the previous I mean listen. Clear Channel changed its name
to I Heartmedia, but it's still holding on the debt
that they had before, and they went through bankruptcy to
downsize it from twenty billion to six billion, Odyssey from

(22:13):
two billion to one billion. This is also going in
the same round, and then you'd have other companies buying
other companies, but they would also continue to hold on
to that debt. Television ownership was raised from twenty five
to thirty five percent and now it's thirty nine percent
as of two thousand and four. It has not changed since,

(22:34):
and as we said, twenty seventeen was the last time
they even revisited the idea of ownership caps whatsoever. Also,
they ease restrictions on how many radio and TV stations
of a single entity could own within a single market.
In larger radio markets, you could own up this eight
radio stations at any given market. Then you also had

(22:58):
cross ownership loosen as well. And also the SEC could
review the media ownership rules every four years to determine
if they remain necessary in the public interests as a
result of competition. And now we're getting to the point
where the regulation is going to go wide open because

(23:18):
these big major corporations who have mismanaged all these particular stations, radio,
television or even newspapers publications that they have, they've mispanashed
them so badly. Now they have to go ahead and
cry wolf to the SEC and say, oh, well, the
big bat Internet is taking away from our bottom line.

(23:42):
It's never the company's fault, it's never these corporation's fault
because they're allowed to continue to foster in this kind
of behavior. They're allowed to do this, and there have
been judicial decisions that were pressuring the SEC to provide
stronger evidence to justify ownership restrictions rather than rely on
the theoretical arguments about diversity. Now, in twenty seventeen, Chairman

(24:07):
Ajipai pursued significant deregulation, So that was the last time
the Truman administration was in charge, and the SEC chairman
then eliminated the newspaper broadcast cross ownership rule and the
radio television cross ownership rule as well. So the growth
of digital platforms and streaming services medicated concerns about media
concentration and also ownership limits were eliminated of owning two

(24:33):
of the top four television stations in the same market.
So if you wanted to own two stations of two
different networks, you could do that. So now Brendan Carr
is here to refresh the record on the national TV
ownership cap. Basically, finish a job, say it's just time
to go ahead and finish up, and just say okay,
let's just give it all away. And so those two

(24:55):
different sides of this. Proponents arguing the existing caps hinder
traditional broadcasters' ability to compete with unregulated big tech and
streaming giants, while critics remain concerned about reduced localism, diversity
of voices, and the impact on local journalism. And let's
be honest, the creativity goes away too. Like if you
want any creativity, you want to have any kind of

(25:18):
diversity of programming, or any diversity at all of music,
of talk radio, of anything. Once you let these corporations
have run roughshot here, any chance of that goes away.
We'll get more homogenized programming, more syndicated programming, and stations
will just be a conduit to all this national programming.

(25:40):
Whatever they want to do with it. There'll be nothing
more than that, and that doesn't serve the public interest.
The public airways are taken hostage. They've have been like
that for a long time, and there's something can be
done about it.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Now.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
I remember there was a story that I was hoping
would hear something back for it, where the SEC was
defending media ownership rules in in the Eighth Circuit Court
and a federal appeals court in Minnesota, and broadcast companies
were asking the court to strike down SEC rules preventing

(26:17):
mergers among the top four broadcasters and a given market
on the grounds of competition from other industries. It's fierce
enough that local TV and radio need to consolidate and survive.
So I don't know if we ever got any farther
with this particular case, but I was hoping for something

(26:37):
to come up of all this, and nothing ever has.
And one of the biggest things that really makes a
big mess of all this is that the National Association
of Broadcasters are able to go ahead and move forward
and with no issues whatsoever. They could just move along.
It doesn't really matter for them at all. But nevertheless,

(27:00):
what we have now is what's going to happen with radio,
with television, with newspapers, and that media is continuing. It
is going to be continually deregulated now to the point
where you can have whatever media you want, whatever you
want to buy, whatever you can acquire. Are these companies
going to be allowed to go and continue to going
and move farther into debt and build a hold on

(27:23):
to these companies like hostage, like private equity companies. Will
that be something that's being allowed to Because at the
same time, if we're going to go this route and
the argument's been made, there's no more argument that can
be done. The lobbying arm of the NAB have done
their job, So these companies can now do the full

(27:44):
monty and own whatever they want. If that's the case,
then where is the policing of all these companies from
being allowed to go ahead and just operate for whatever
best suits their bottom line without being penalized for holding
onto so much debt, debt which we know clearly they

(28:06):
cannot afford. And because they could find a way to
go ahead and extend their creditors, they can extend their loans. Okay,
they can go ahead and say they're going to go
ahead and take care of their shareholders who bought it
at a certain price, only to see the stock prices
go down to nothing, to the point that these companies

(28:27):
got delisted from the Neyork Stock Exchange or NASDAK or
whatever they're now pink stocks. These shareholders are holding the bag.
Now what happens, But no one's saying a word about that.
It's just being left alone this way. Nevertheless, this is happening.

(28:49):
All I can do is continue to fight about it
and know that the digital disruption isn't able to do
anything right now to counteract this. Of course, they're taking
away market share from radio television newspapers don't like. But
there are certain things that radio and television used to

(29:09):
do back in the day that they were really good at,
and the Internet has not taken up on those traditional
forms of entertainment and done them any better. And at
the same vein the broadcast companies, they can't find a
decent master of ceremonies to do anything of their reality

(29:32):
programming or their live event programming, whether it's an award
show or a game show or what or even just
a reality show, what have you. They don't have the
wherewithal so the next open meeting on the SEC will
be June twenty six because broadcasters are looking to go
ahead and open the floodgates. So we'll keep an eye

(29:53):
on that that open meeting and see what if we
get any word from that. Next week on the program,
I'll let you know what we find out. There's a
story that came out the annual Reuters Institute Digital News Report,
and in this they are learning about podcasting and how
much more powerful are is it more than radio as

(30:14):
a weekly news source. So fifteen percent of US adults
say they listen to the news podcasts in the past week,
ahead of the thirteen percent who tuned in to news
of the radio. Morning Drive would be when radio listeners
would be listening in the most But in twenty sixteen,
when Americans were asked how they get the news in
the morning, twelve percent said by radio, But that number

(30:36):
has been cut in half in the past decade, and
more are likely to pick up their smartphones today to
catch the news. One percent of these respondents mentioned they
read the newspaper in the morning. So podcasting is the
place to go, and the internet is supposed to go
for Internet for news content, which even then it's not

(30:57):
that easy to go ahead and go through and find
the news of the day. I'm telling you, it's been
very difficult. There's a purpose for linear programmers to still
provide the news if they would do it objectively and
they would just know, okay, just make money on the
actual news is happening out there. Quick trying to put
a voice to it. Quit trying to put an opinion

(31:18):
on it, and quit trying to put your own spin
on it. Stop making propaganda. But they're not going to
do that now, so why and more people are going
to podcasting, So podcasting surpassing radio. At the same time,
another story comes out that streaming has overtaken the combined

(31:39):
share of broadcasting cable TV. This is according to Nielsen's
May twenty twenty five edition of the Gauge, which says
that streaming services accounted for a record forty four point
eight percent of total TV usage, broadcasting cable account for
forty four point two percent. So more people are are

(32:00):
now watching television on streaming services than they are broadcasting
cable networks. Meanwhile, radio, which you're saying is still seeing
relatively stable audiences as TV audiences continued. Road is poised
to fill the void. So they talked to the RIB

(32:21):
president and CEO, Mike Holvey inside Radio dot Com did
saying that radio continues to collaborate as an industry on
enhancing our measurement capabilities, and we're working together to engage
with and ensure the ad communities understanding of the medium
strength from listening perspective and more importantly from an ROI perspective. Whatever.

(32:42):
Streaming has surged seventy one percent over the past four years,
so since the pandemic broadcasting cable of declined twenty one
percent and thirty nine percent respectively. Netflix is still the
top subscription streaming service, leading the lead on all streamers
for consecutive years. That story picked up a lot of headlines,

(33:05):
by the way, just make sure to make that point.
The Reuters News service they had a poll that found
social media surpassed TV and websites as the preferred source
of news, the first time that's happened ever. Younger consumers
fifty four percent reported accessing news via social media, compared

(33:26):
to fifty percent and forty eight percent for TV and
the web, respectively. So even if we're in the Internet,
it's social media more important now. To get their news. Also,
YouTube shorts from YouTube has hit twllion two hundred billion streams,
big big deal. So when you look at the linear

(33:46):
outlets that are out there, most legacy publications have managed
to survive, with some exceptions like The New York Times,
but generally in dramatically scaled down form both in terms
of size on their staffs and scope of their ambitions.
Then you have Warner Brothers, Discovery, NBC Universals spin off
on the declining cable assets and the economies of scale

(34:09):
associated with mergers and acquisitions. It is justifying anting up
for an entity whose trend lines point in the wrong direction.
That's from the Wrap dot Computy that story out about
that among the other things that have going on as well,
and one of the other stories want to bring up
before we wrap things up from the Hollywood Reporter. They

(34:31):
talk about reality TV being very bougie now and that
industry and cultural shifts have made reality TV, which started
in the early two thousands, for the most part. I mean,
we did have cops, we did have cheaters, and we
had America's most wanted beforehand the early days of reality TV,
But now we'ret the point where it's just gotten plain dumb.

(34:53):
That's where we are now. One thing they talk about
now is about the A list stars and where they
want to go and appear on film versus television. Performers
are seeing a similar divide between scripted and unscripted series.
So when you have the likes of Alec Baldwin and
Solvester Sloane going into Kardashian like docu soups the ball

(35:16):
Woods in the Family Stallone, Slinny gum is doing a
cooking show Selena plus Chef or now Martin short penning
to go ahead and host the match game. The reincarnation
they put with Alec Baldwin out here, which is an
abomination compared to what Gene Rayberd did. And I'll even
put Ross Shaver in that mix, to be honest with you.

(35:39):
And then you have reality stars going into scripted programming,
where Kim Kardashian now working on an American horror story
and seeing American idol stars like Kelly Clarkson and Jennifer
Hudson doing daytime television daytime talk. Celebrities are getting more
savvy about launching their own production companies and now the

(36:00):
efforts are putting them in the business of unscripted or
at least behind the camera, if not also stemming in
front of it. They also up on this Hollywood Reporter
story about the rise of digital content like YouTube, TikTok
and podcasting, that reality TV looks far more stately glamorous
even compared to the wild West of digital content creation,
particularly for younger audiences, and that stardom has become so

(36:22):
broad and multi medium that many of viewers see a
Survivor castmate and a white Lotus actor as simply two
celebrities on beaches and not that far apart. Be good
all the changes we have right now, the digital disruption
and what it does, But getting back to my original point,
being cognizant and aware of what could happen to broadcasting

(36:42):
now that the SEC is going to come into play
and allow these ownership caps to be taken off. We're
a week away from finding out how close we're going
to get to that point and seeing what that's going
to do and how it's going to make a big difference.
Because the question which company is going to come in
and start taking more ownership of some of these radio stations,

(37:05):
TV stations and newspapers only to squander them. Hold on
to them for what if they're not going to be
creative about it. Anyway, you can do your own creativity
with your own content, because remember that content is king,
and control of your content is in your hands.

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