At long last Sirius XM has allocated four percent of its full-time audio channels to various “qualified entity” minority oriented broadcasters. Howard University is among the winners, something I’d hoped would happen. Howard runs WHUR-FM (see YouTube clip to the right).
The four percent allocation was part of the deal that Sirius XM made with the Federal Communications Commission as a condition of its 2008 merger. Below is the FCC’s full list of the winners. More about the long, torturous process by which these recipients were decided here and here.
• Howard University (licensee of WHUR-FM and WHUT-TV)
One channel each on Sirius and XM – Music and talk programming for the African American community
One channel each on Sirius and XM – Music and talk programming for the African American community, with programs from Historically Black Colleges and Universities
• BYU Radio (licensee of KBYU-FM and KBYU-TV)
One channel each on Sirius and XM – Music and talk programming for the Mormon community
• Eventus/National Latino Broadcasting
One channel each on Sirius and XM – Spanish language talk programming
One channel each on Sirius XM – Spanish language music programming
• WorldBand Media
One channel each on Sirius and XM – Spanish language talk programming
• KTV Radio
One channel on XM – Korean language music and talk programming
The FCC seems happy about this new line up. “This marks a valuable step in increasing the diversity of programming available to satellite radio listeners while promoting access for new entrants and independent satellite radio programming,” declared Commission boss Julius Genachowski.
“promoting access for new entrants and independent satellite radio programming” – not really unless by “new entrants” they mean “highly capitalized entrants”, and by “independent” they mean “funded by large organizations”.
Luckily net radio and mobile access are giving listeners access to real new entrants and independent programmers.
Is “independent” a libtard weasel word for “Communist?”
Hey Realist, speaking of reality: I’ve got a feeling that those Mormon and South Korean stations aren’t going to tow the Marxist-Leninist line, which is why I’ve always interpreted “communist” as Tea-tard for “liberal.”