I have an AM stereo radio in my car, but no stations in this area broadcast in AM stereo so I am unable to give you a first-hand, personal appraisal of how well the1970s technology works. Perhaps some of you live near larger metropolitan areas where there is a greater likelihood of receiving AM stereo signals. Perhaps the question of whether you can receive AM stereo matters to you; it doesn't to me because I hardly ever listen to AM. However, the case study that Mark Braun illustrates in AM Stereo and The FCC does matter to me. Greatly. But before I explain why I should note that Braun has written a highly detailed and readable account of a complex, arcane FCC proceeding. Given the complexity and technical nature of this proceeding, spanning more than 20 volumes, that's saying alot.

During the 1970s, the Federal Communications Commission, charged by Congress with the responsibility of promoting the larger and more effective use of radio (PL. No. 416 - 73rd, ¤303), systematically ignored the needs of AM broadcasters in the face of mounting competition from a technically superior competitor, FM. (In the 1940s the situation was just the reverse.) I mention this because one could make a case that the FCC did not act fairly with respect to one set of service providers. Perhaps their inactivity actually precipitated the decline of AM service but that's speculative. However, it is not apparent to me why the history of the Commission illustrates a pattern of favoring one service at the expense of another, but it was a policy that the FCC pursued for many years in radio and television regulations (Sterling and Kittross, 1990). The AM stereo decision can be read as a success or failure depending on your take of regulatory agencies, but you would have a difficult time convincing Braun this proceeding was successful.

AM Stereo and The FCC is a complete case study, eminently usable as a textbook study on management, decision making in science and technology, regulatory practise, political economy, or mass communications law. Braun provides the reader with a thorough literature review, historical context, analysis of the FCC inquiry, analysis of the numerous AM stereo issues, and a series of conclusions about the proceedings and their outcomes. Development of the technology for AM stereo starts as early as the proceedings for FM stereo. In fact, tests of AM stereo are documented as early as 1958, though during this time period the Commission was really only concerned with FM stereo and perhaps for good reason. Many, both at the Commission and in the industry, felt that stereo would provide "a startling feature that would set fm apart from from am radio (p. 42)." Given the struggling nature of FM and the dominance of AM during this period, perhaps the FCC was justified to give one service a technical advantage. Later, of course, that meant the playing field would be severely tilted in favor of one service, FM. Braun is careful to lay out a timeline which details the events from the earliest days of stereo to the point at which AM broadcasters begin to see themselves as disadvantaged in the increasingly competitive race for listeners.

The timeline of the story and the sense of the various parties interested in AM stereo begins to take on importance at this point because the case study carefully draws together the significance of the relationships between the different interests involved. Thus, this historical perspective illustrates a proceeding that is much more complex than I had originally perceived. As the timeline proceeds, the reader begins to note how various industry-commission relationships begin to impede or infringe upon the process of decision making. For instance, a national AM standards committee, formed in 1975, undertakes a series of field test without testing one of the proposed systems, that belonging to Leonard Kahn. Kahn gives various reasons why his system should not undergo rigorous comparison testing with the other systems and this raises important questions about how the agency should proceed in evaluating competing technologies. Did the Commission apply the concepts of engineering economics to this proceeding? Should the Commission have mandated NAMSRC testing by all parties? Could the FCC have set a strict testing agenda, developing standard procedures for all parties to follow? I can't help but feel that greater FCC guidance during the early days of the NAMSRC testing might have mitigated the disastrous consequences that followed. But, equally intriguing is whether such mandates for testing would have survived a challenge by Kahn, or other parties. Voluntary standards committees have received mixed reviews during the 60 year history of the FCC. Whether the FCC could have encouraged greater coordination is subject to debate. Additionally, Braun's history calls to question whether the authority and independence of the office of the chief scientist was usurped by lawyers and economists applying strictly economic models to technical paradigms. Such a marriage is often mismatched and of poor technical quality!

The Commission recanted its original decision and vacillated between making a choice on an AM stereo standard or letting the marketplace decide what to do. Though it could be argued that the Commission's decision not to choose was successful since a marketplace standard emerged, Braun leads the reader through a wonderful series of interviews with the former commissioners, staffers, and players who, in retrospect, are mostly convinced otherwise. My favorite quote is from Jim Quello who asked exactly what happened to convince the Office of the Chief Scientist to change his mind.

"A funny thing happened here. All of a sudden the Office of Engineering and Technology went marketplace on us. Well, the reason you go marketplace when you're a bureau chief is when the Chairman of the FCC - who appoints you - goes marketplace, it's not a bad idea to go marketplace, even though you have one Commissioner who wonders what happened to you (p. 125)."

Regardless of how you categorize your regulatory beliefs, you will come away thinking that the decision making process at the Commission was less than crisp, if not downright flawed.

Braun's conclusion is that the FCC did not have adequate resources in place to select a standard for AM stereophonic broadcasting. If you think I've given away the ending, I haven't. Braun outlines the sources of influences both on and within the agency that drove the it toward a marketplace solution, and he makes excellent proposals for future decision making. But while his arguments are powerful and can be very convincing, I find myself disagreeing with them. I think that many of the reasons Braun enumerates for the failure of the FCC to make a timely and appropriate decision are in fact true. However, I also believe that the given reasons are really just pointers to another more serious problem that plagues the FCC and other governmental agencies. I believe the coercive powers of both the politics and the industries that the Commission was designed to create were simply too great to allow it to work independently (Lewin, 1984). And, I believe that an alternative reading of Braun's timeline and history can bear witness to this theory, in which case the actions of the FCC can be examined as the failure of the regulatory process, a process where the agency, operating in hostile environments, is captured by the very forces it was designed to regulate (Bernstein in Breyer and Stewart, 1979). Thus, when we consider how the Commission lost its sense of mission, with its concept of public interest altered by political ideology, and with an unending stream of industry viewpoints mocking the principles of the ex parte rules, it is little wonder the decision making process became dysfunctional. Read large, Braun's work is a melodrama of human failure, but regardless of whether you agree with my conclusions or Braun's, AM Stereo and The FCC is well worth considering.

Works cited:
Breyer, S. G. and Stewart, R. B. (1979). Administrative Law and Regulatory Policy. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.
Lewin, L. ed. (1984). Telecommunications: An Interdisciplinary Text. Dedham, MA: Artech House, Inc.
Sterling, C.H. and Kittross, J.M. (1990). Stay Tuned, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co.

Comments or Questions? email:messere@oswego.edu

last modified on October 12, 1996