kevin redding wrote: > I have a much darker view of corporations and government. I can see > iBiquity and the many corporations that fund them pay whomever they > have to in order to get their way. > > I can see a lot of money changing hands to make it happen.
But where's that money supposed to be coming from, and what's the motivation for whoever's providing it to be spending it? Ibiquity is NOT, contrary to the apparent belief here, a very big company at all. I'm not even sure they've hit the 100-employee mark yet, and while their revenue figures aren't public, an educated guess (based on the supposed $40 cut they get from each receiver sold and the $10K or so they get from each station licensing the system) would be that they didn't bring in more than a few million dollars last year in gross revenues. That's not exactly Halliburton-level money there. And furthermore, I'm still not seeing anything to contradict my observation that the broadcast companies that make up much of Ibiquity's investor base have nothing to gain, and potentially a lot to lose, from a forced digital conversion. (Don't forget that a big chunk of the TV broadcast community opposed forced DTV conversion, too; what tipped that over the edge was the spectrum-auction revenue that doesn't exist in the digital radio conversion.) > I could be wrong, but I can also point to Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, > Jack Abrahamoff, the congressman from NOLA Jefferson and a long list > to make my point. Money does change hands every day. Usually its to > the detriment of the public. But once you dig into cases like those, there's always an economic motivation (if not always a legal one) behind it. The Abramoff/Ney/Cunningham case, at its base, was about casino operators trying to quash competition. The big boys of radio have pretty much already quashed their competition within the broadcast industry. Where's their economic motivation to force a conversion that could send much of their audience fleeing to newer competitors like WiMax or MediaFLO? I'm not seeing it. s _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
