Media Coverage
Source: Inside Radio
Media Coverage
Press Contacts: Erik Cummins, Matt Hyams, Taina Rosa, Olivia Thomas
12.03.20
After a decade of what many broadcasters perceived as indifference to radio by the FCC, Ajit Pai’s interest in helping revitalize the AM dial in 2012 made him quick friends with the industry. Sworn-in as chairman of the FCC in 2017, Pai prepares to leave the agency after a four-year term. As chairman, Pai has pushed through more than two dozen media rulebook updates that have allowed broadcasters to streamline their operations while simultaneously facing fewer regulatory hurdles from the FCC.
Pillsbury Communications partner Scott Flick said Pai lived up to his promise to be a deregulatory chairman during the past several years. “People don’t realize how many minutia regulations there are in broadcasting that even eliminating small ones helps,” said Flick.
But Flick thinks it will take some time to fully measure Pai’s long-term impact on radio. “Some of them have had more impact than people expected, and some have had less,” he said, pointing to the 2017 FCC decision to eliminate the main studio rule as a move that will likely yield more benefit in the long-term. “That’s one that over time we’ll see as people start thinking more broadly about the broadcast business model and ways things can be done more efficiently,” Flick predicted.
Flick agrees the FCC took some important steps forward on AM under Pai. But he thinks it is also clear both among broadcasters and the Commission that AM revitalization will need to be a “continuing project” and there is not a single fix. “We won’t be able to assess the true benefits of what chairman Pai accomplished until these decisions have some long-term impact,” he said.
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