Founded in 1949, the MAB held its 65th Anniversary celebration from 25-27 August at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. While focused on business meetings and the presentation of awards, there was a substantive afternoon session that provided broad overviews of the landscape for broadcasting. Speakers included Congressman John Dingle, also a Special Honoree, and Senator Gordon Smith, President of the NAB, and David Oxenford, with Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP. US Senator Carl Levin was also a speaker and received MAB’s 2014 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award. The MAB includes public broadcasting as well as commercial, so a number of awards were targeted on public broadcasting.
This event coincided with my second week back in the US after more than a decade in Britain, so it provided a valuable up-date on some of key issues facing American broadcasters, anchored in the context of Michigan. The main theme of the event was underlining the value of ‘free over-the-air broadcasting’ as a critical public service – providing genuinely local content and public safety information that is universally accessible. This focus is tied to efforts to protect the spectrum allocations of the broadcast stations, and to protect their business model, potentially at risk on a variety of fronts, including policy shifts by regulators or national networks, and initiatives to support cable and satellite, or wireless, that might have repercussions on broadcasters. There is a clear vision of the vitality of the broadcasting industry – its business model – being tied to the quality of local and public service broadcasting, which made me feel that I had returned to the States.
Some of the big issues on the horizon were noted. These included spectrum auctions, perhaps the most often noted, up-dating of the communications act, threats to the provision of local channels on cable & satellite offerings, multi-ownership and cross-ownership rules, and issues around copyright and royalties.
Many awards were given to broadcasters across the state, but the biggest surprise of the meeting was the naming of the Great Lakes Media Center, a new building planned to house the MAB and more near the capitol in Lansing, in honor of MAB’s long serving President and CEO, Karole White, who organized this and past MAB activities over more than two decades. This surprise was a well-kept secret and well-deserved tribute by the members and Board of the MAB.
Bill Dutton
