It’s been 16 years since Primosphere Limited
Partners filed with the FCC to get a license to beam radio programming
from satellites to receivers in North America — and for Cliff
Burnstein it was also $140,000 ago. Now he’s hoping that a satellite
merger will open the door to Primopshere’s long-awaited license.

Burnstein,
who grew up in Chicago loving radio – and later was a stakeholder in a
group which owned 15 stations on the West Coast in Bakersfield, Santa
Maria and other cities until selling out to Clear Channel in the go-go
days – still wants to recreate a bunch of channels that draw listeners
to radio like the old days.

And, he tells R&R, his partner
Peter Mensch, feels the same way. Burnstein says they have no opinion
on whether the merger between Sirius and XM should be approved by the
FCC, but they have had five meetings with the agency to let the
government know that if the companies are merged, they want the Feds to
live up to the original rules and have at least two different license
holders. And they want to be one of them.

Primosphere, along
with Digital Satellite Broadcasting Service, CD Radio and American
Mobile Satellite Radio Service paid the government $70,000 each for two
“satellite slots,” recalls Burnstein. The government then changed to
method of the proceeding and asked for bids on the rights. CD and
American Satellite, which later became Siruis and XM, and the ultimate
winners with bids between $79 million and $84 million for the licenses,
respectively, never returned Primosphere’s original $140,000 deposit.

Burnstein
says that “the rules said there had to be two providers and our
position from a technically legalistic standpoint is that we should be
the other provider.”

Despite a handful of meetings with senior
deputy chief of the media bureau Roy Stewart and commissioner Jonathan
Adelstein, among others, Burnstein says, he still could not get a read
on where exactly the FCC was going with a ruling on the satellite
merger but it was also clear to him that FCC officials are
“uncomfortable with a single provider.”

Another group,
minority owned Georgetown Partners based in Bethesda, Md., is also
seeking a government-forced award of satellite spectrum if the merger
happens, and it too, has had several in-person meetings with ranking
FCC officials to win their favor. But Burnstein says “they don’t have
any standing in this. We have a legal standing even if it is by a
thread.” And, he adds, Primosphere does not need funding and could be
up and running with newly built studio space within six months.

The
company would, however, need the FCC to mandate that the merged entity
lease some technology to a second company that would need uplink and
downlink capability for its programming to satellite receivers.
Primosphere would be advertising-based and would offer about 30
channels of mostly music programming, forecasts Burnstein, who is a
longtime friend of former XM programmer Lee Abrams. Burnstein says
Primosphere’s “will come at this from a music and programming
perspective.” While nearly 60, he’s still “a little bit idealistic” but
his idea is not to compete with terrestrial radio but “to serve the
underserved.”

Burnstein and Mensch operate Q Prime in New
York, which has managed Def Leppard for 25 years as well as Metallica,
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Shania Twain and the now-disbanded bluegrass
group, Nickel Creek, among others.

[Via:Radioandrecords.com]

You can read up on Primosphere at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primosphere_Limited_Partnership

So how many more weeks, months, years before we hear word about this merger from the FCC? Is kevin Martin still alive?

Rate this topic:

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...