Marlene H. Dortch, Secretary
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, S.W. Washington, DC 20554
1. That a consortium of the existing and future interested parties create a viable management and strategy in the form of a Diversity Satellite Radio Consortium (DSRC)
2. The DSRC will be able to meet several concerns addressed on the docket in comments from the parties and the public, while combating the absence of the underserved content providers and foster the need for public voices on for consumers of satellite radio.
iClick2media believes the intention of the merger agreements for the open channels will be served by our proposal since:
1. A unified consortium and effort will best promote diversity on satellite radio
2. On July 25, 2008, when the Commission voted to approve the merger between Sirius and XM and as part of the Merge Order accepted the Voluntary Commitment designed by Sirius XM for what it wanted to achieve with the four percent commercial and four percent of non-commercial channels, inadvertently compelled itself to act within the scope and duties granted to the FCC and narrowly tailored the government’s interest by defining what a Qualified Entity was further obligating itself to insure fair competition in the SDARS market for all.
3. The DSRC will allow greater access to the airwaves through its greater outreach to new content producers. As proof of the FCC’s compelling interest to level the playing field as it relates to minorities in radio, a report entitled “Off The Dial” released in 2007, found that women and minorities own just 6 and 7.7% of all broadcast radio stations in the country respectively. The year before in 2006 “Out of the Picture,” an unprecedented report on broadcast television ownership, which found that women of all races own just 5% of the 1,400 commercial broadcast television stations in America. People of color, who make up 33% of the national population (and will be more than 50% by 2050), own just 3.6%. To further the point of the dismal outlook of minority on the dial, the Third Circuit chastised the FCC in Prometheus v. FCC for ignoring the issue of female and minority ownership only proves there is a compelling interest for this governmental agency to act.
4. The DSRC will put in place a Board that will oversee the content that will be placed on these channels. Each of the board members will be able to develop its own content but the content must serve as many of the underserved market as possible.
5. The DSRC will work collectively and independently to acquire new voices for their prospective listener base by creating, developing, and implementing a grassroots marketing campaign to add new listeners to the 24 channels. iClick2Media will also make available to the proposed DSCR its technology that allows the consumer the ability to listen to the programming on new technologies that assist in getting the content to our end user.
6. Should any other small independents active on the docket wish to join our effort, DSRC will be open to accommodating their content on the 12 proposed channels to create a win-win situation and solution for all Lease Term holders.
7. DSCR proposes a standard 10-year lease term for all leaseholders.
8. If DSRC is elected to be the Qualified Entity to lease the channels and divide them as describe herein, then DSRC will propose that programming blocks terms be limited to 2 years.
1. encourage those short-block programmers to continue to produce quality content that satisfies the needs and interests of the audiences; and
2. enable others and maximize the number of content producers that have access to the channels.
Malik Shakur
CEO American Independent Radio
An iClick2Media Company
cc: Chairman Genachowski
Chairman Copps
Chairman McDowell
Commissioner Clybum
Commissioner Baker
Senator Franken