Monday, December 13, 2010

Another Argument Against FM Radio Chips...

Not only does CEA President/CEO Gary Shapiro feel that the movement to mandate Congess to include FM chips in cell phones is misguided, he also doesn't believe it will succeed. Given that the electronics industry is opposed to FM chips in smartphones, Shapiro's views aren't surprising. The president/CEO of the Consumer Electronics Assocation did raise some valid points, when he recently appeared at the Jacobs Media Summit. Shapiro says the mandate request makes the (radio) industry look old, weak and ineffective. Shapiro considers radio a "buggy whip industry." He used that term in a recent Radio World commentary, according to Leslie Stimson of RW...

Shapiro believes that Congress is not interested in voting for a mandate. He says that "It's not going to happen." He praised NAB President/CEO Gordon Smith as a "savvy senator" who brought up the FM chip card to get the performance rights issue killed in Congress. But, Shapiro continued, "It makes radio look like it needs a government handout." NAB executive VP Dennis Wharton said, "In the spirit of the holiday season, NAB declines to comment." ...

In light of the availability in most smartphones of a radio app and evidence showing that smartphone consumers can live without a radio in their mobile devices, Shapiro's comments add a punctuation mark against the FM chip mandate movement...

10 Timeline Memories:
1.1956] The shameless trade: The Brooklyn Dodgers do the unthinkable, they trade Jackie Robinson to the cross-town rival Giants for journeyman Dick Littlefield, $30,000 and a bag of scuffed up baseballs. Number 42 retires rather than play for the hated Giants...
2.1975] Hit the delay button: Saturday Night Live uses a time delay for the first time for host Richard Pryor...
3.1996] The coming and going of Kofi: Ghana's Kofi Annan becomes the 7th secretary-general of the U.N. Ten years later, almost to the day, Annan resigns in 2006 after questionable practices are disclosed...
4.1998] Record boot: The Vikings Gary Anderson kicks 6 field goals against Baltimore and sets an NFL record for 34 straight field goals...
5.2000] Dubya: George W. Bush claims the presidency 36 days after Election Day as Al Gore concedes defeat. Al, look at it this way, had you won the presidency you wouldn't have become the global warming guru and no one would've liked you...
6.2001] Bin Laden sighting: In a captured videotape of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader says the deaths and destruction achieved by the September 11 attacks exceeded his "most optimistic" expectations...
7.2002] Gotcha: Cardinal Bernard Law resigns as Boston archbishop because of the priest sex abuse scandal...
8.2003] Gotcha too: Saddam Hussein is found hiding in a hole...
9.2004] Guilty as charged: A jury in Redwood (CA) recommends the death penalty for Scott Peterson for the murders of his wife and unborn child. Peterson remains on death row at San Quentin...
10.2007] Media takeover: Shareholders of Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, approve a takeover by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation...

Music Memories:

"Happy Birthday...happy birthday":
Taylor Swift (21), Jamie Foxx (43), Steve Buscemi (53), Ben Bernanke (57), Wendie Malick (60), Ted Nugent (62), John Davidson (69), Lou Adler (77), Christopher Plummer (81), Dick Van Dyke (85) & George Shultz (90)...

Timeline Dateline: 8 days until winter, 10 days until Festivus, 12 days until Christmas, 18 nights until New Year's Eve and 26 days until the NFL Wild Card Playoffs...

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