Fritts' Attack Is On The Fritz
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 5/23/2005
Every once in a while you can catch the powers that be saying something that you always knew they believed, but only said behind closed doors. One such comment happened recently when the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) went at it concerning the cutoff date for analog television. (See story, p. 4.)
In our coverage of the story the give and take between the participants was pretty standard stuff, except for this tidbit from NAB's president Eddie Fritts, who told members of Congress: “Disenfranchising huge numbers of Americans from access to local TV should not be based on misleading data from a trade group of offshore receiver manufacturers.” (The italics are mine.)
Fritts seemed to wrap himself and NAB with the American flag. The tone of Fritts' remarks also seems to imply that CEA and its “offshore receiver manufacturers” were just plain un-American. I'm sure that American companies and CEA members such as Jasco, Harman, Intel, Microsoft and Motorola, among others, were surprised by that comment. And I'm sure that the broadcasting industry's major suppliers of analog and HDTV equipment, such as Panasonic, Sony and Thomson, were dismayed by the tone and substance of Fritts' remarks.
Now, as we all know, U.S.-owned and operated companies that manufacturer color TVs left the scene a long time ago for a variety of reasons. One major reason was that this nation's CE industry was not protected and nurtured by Washington in the way that politicians have always protected the broadcasting industry.
CEA consists of 1,750 members and doesn't need this reporter to defend it. But take a look at how the CE industry affects the U.S. economy. For calendar year 2004 CEA estimated factory sales for the industry at $113.5 billion. CEA also estimated that there are over 3,200 retailers in business, operating almost 62,000 stores, many of whom are serviced by 646 distributors in this country. And in 2002, the last year the Bureau of Census made an estimate, the CE industry employed over 1.6 million in the United States.
As for the broadcasting business, well, the NAB estimates that there are 13,000 radio stations of all types in the United States and 1,700 TV stations. The Bureau of Census put its employees at 254,000 in 2002. Sales for the entire broadcasting industry — radio and TV, local and network — is around $60 billion annually, according to the NAB.
According to the numbers, broadcasting is a nice, little business vs. CE from an economic point of view. The CE industry's positive impact on the U.S. economy dwarfs that of the broadcasting business. But the broadcasting industry does cast a giant shadow in Washington compared with its economic impact, doesn't it? One could imply that politicians don't want to offend broadcasters who give them free air time. And they certainly wouldn't want broadcasters to run public service ads saying that Congress “chose foreign CE manufacturers over U.S. broadcasters.”
I have some simple advice for Fritts, which even someone who has worked in the Beltway for years may understand: Make your case based on the forthrightness of your position, and not by disparaging others.
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