NAB BRASS GOING OFF SITE TO PLOT STRATEGY

With its lobbying operation still unsettled and tough issues pressing down, the NAB leadership is heading off today for a major brainstorming session in Lexington, Ky.

Expected at the Griffin-Gate Marriott Resort for three days of meetings are the NAB’s current and immediate past executive committee members as well as NAB President David Rehr and the association’s nine executive vice presidents.

The extraordinary, off-site meeting is mostly the doing of NAB’s new joint board chairman Jack Sander, senior adviser to Belo Corp.

“We want to evaluate where we are as an organization and as an industry,” says the veteran TV broadcaster.

“We face so many issues,” he says. “We want to make sure we are focused on the ones that are most critical to our membership.

“Let’s be sure we’re thinking not only short term, but long term,” he says.

The retreat comes at a critical time for broadcasting in Washington, which has been forced on to the defensive.

On the TV side, the association is facing the monumental task of making sure TV stations make the switch from analog to digital-only broadcasting in February 2009 without disrupting TV service to millions of viewers.

Plus, there is continuing congressional pressure to regulate so-called indecent and violent content, reimpose the fairness doctrine, weaken retransmission consent rights, restrict advertising and impose a tax on stations to help pay for political advertising.

Many radio broadcasters see the proposed merger of their satellite radio rivals, XM and Sirius, as a major threat, and they expect NAB to block it as all costs.

At the same time, the record companies and recording artists are gaining traction in their campaign to eliminate the copyright exemption that allows radio stations to spin record without paying performance royalties.

With all this going on, the NAB’s lobbying operation is still trying to establish itself on the Hill and at the FCC—a year and a half after the arrival of David Rehr as president and lobbyist-in-chief.

With the Democrats now fully in charge on Capitol Hill (and expected by many to gain even more clout next year), the NAB and Rehr himself are still seen as “too Republican.”

A May article in Roll Call, the influential Capitol Hill newspaper, even listed Rehr as one of several trade association presidents whose Republican ties could be their downfall.

What’s more, NAB’s relations with the FCC have not been as tight as they once were during the previous NAB administration of Eddie Fritts.

Rehr has already moved to remedy the problems. Three weeks ago, the NAB announced that its chief Hill lobbyist Doug Wiley would shift into the newly created post of executive VP of administration and agencies, where he will be responsible for the executive branch agencies and, more important, the FCC.

At the same time, the NAB said that Laurie Knight would succeed Wiley on the Hill as executive VP of government relations.

The move does at least two things.

First, it sharpens NAB’s Democratic profile on Capitol Hill. Wiley is a Republican; Knight is a Democrat who once worked for former Democratic Congressman Jim Turner of Texas.

Second, it makes Wiley the NAB’s point person in dealing with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

That had been the job of Marsha MacBride, executive vice president, legal and regulatory affairs.

But, sources says, for reasons stretching back to the days when MacBride was an aide to former FCC Chairman Michael Powell and Martin was a commissioner sometimes at odds with Powell, MacBride’s relationship with Martin has been strained.

“Marsha MacBride and Jane Mago [senior vice president and general counsel] and the legal team do very well dealing with the FCC and commissioners,” Rehr says. “But we wanted to provide more outreach to Chairman Martin’s office.”

To further strengthen NAB’s Democratic hand, Rehr says he intends to add another Democratic lobbyist later this year.

The move, he says, signals to Capitol Hill that under his leadership, “NAB is bipartisan, strong and gets the fact that the Democrats are in charge.”

Rehr also points out that NAB’s political action committee (NABPAC) is spending more money on Democrats and that it is now being run by a Democrat, Anne Brady.

“We’re sending all the right signals that we want to work with everyone who cares about the future of broadcasting,” Rehr says. “We really don’t look to party, we look to people who are our friends.”

Of course, Rehr will also continue strengthening his relationships with the right people on Capitol Hill and at the FCC.

“Over the last 16 months, I’ve seen Chairman Martin several times; we occasionally e-mail and see each other out on the hustings,” he says.

“Part of my job is to ensure that the commissioners and the chairman know that I want to have a great relationship with them and hopefully they’ll have a great relationship with me on the behalf of all broadcasters.”

The NAB president says he is also spending as much time as he can on Capitol Hill.

He says he has met recently with Senate Commerce Committee members Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).

That may be so, but Washington insiders say he still hasn’t built good relations with such key lawmakers as Stevens and John Dingell and Ed Markey in the House.

But the insiders also say that picking the right new Democratic lobbyist could go a long way toward solving the Dingell-Markey problem.

Among the topics for Lexington on Rehr’s agenda is bolstering NAB’s grassroots by getting broadcasters talking to their congressional representatives—all their representatives.

To that end, the NAB hired BIAfn and TitanTV Media to pinpoint precisely for each NAB member what congressional districts their radio and TV signals reach.

Rehr also sees the executive committee retreat as an opportunity to discuss some of his other priorities.

He’s big on branding. NAB hired, Blattner and Brunner, a Pittsburgh advertising firm, to help reposition radio.

And he wants TV broadcasters to rethink how they’re using some industry-wide phrases such as “free, over-the-air TV.”

“I am not quite sure that it has the impact it once had. We need to ask, are there better words and phrases that give us a better sense of being today and tomorrow as opposed to yesterday.”

NAB watchers are keeping a close eye on how the association performs in its current effort to stop the XM-Sirius merger.

Rehr concedes that it’s a big one. It the first issue to test “all our tools—our lobbying team, our marketing team, our media team. It’s allowed us to see what’s worked well and what we have to tweak.

“Will I predict today that we’re going to win? I would like to say yes, but I don’t want to be arrogant. We are holding our own.”