A prestream ad– on public radio? No joke. I was tuning into a local public radio station online and before I got the stream I hear a bona fide advertisement, not an “underwriting support” message, hawking a local car dealership. (I briefly flirted with joining the college radio station, and read the rules and regulations for noncommercial radio plugs, so I know the difference between what’s a call to action and what isn’t. That was a call to action.)
Coincidentally, the same station, which has run jazz and blues on middays, weeknights, and overnights, is (beginning next week) cutting back its music programming to overnights only. In its place is more NPR programming. Considering current trends in public radio, this wouldn’t be surprising– except most of the “new” programming is also airing on another station in the market. In other words, the bulk of daytime programming will be the exact same stuff that’s already airing on another station at the same time. I wonder how long their “interim” manager is going to last…
Tom Taylor and I discussed this is email probably a year or more ago – the trigger for the discussion was what LPFM stations can and can’t do on their web site. At the time, I was listening to an LPFM that said to visit their web site and the web site had overt advertisements.
There are two distinct issues here :) the one that is not relevant is whether the operator is or isn’t a 501(c) organization for tax purposes.
The FCC has no jurisdiction over what a radio station does on the internet stream…. Tom ran it by one of his Communications Lawyer type friends and they agreed it was unchartered territory, but the general thinking is as long as it doesn’t go over the “air”, they are free to do whatever they want. Whether that causes issues for their IRS non-profit status is a different set of rules.
If the FCC tried to plug that hole, then with the magic of the internet, being all intertwined, it’s just a matter of moving the ads one more link away. It’s not realistic to say a noncom station can’t have web links to any other web station that has ads. The law is about 20 years behind the reality.