Origins

Perhaps fittingly for a commercial business association, the NAB developed as the result of a financial dispute. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) threatened in mid-1922 to sue radio stations using ASCAP music (virtually all were) if they did not pay royalties. The stations argued they received no income (true at the time) with which to pay such royalties. A half a dozen of them met in a Chicago hotel room to map out a strategy of what to do, and from that came the April 1923 organizational meeting of what became the NAB. Those present agreed to hire a director and create a New York office.

The NAB’s initial goals were to overcome the ASCAP demands for royalties while at the same time seeking basic legislation that most radio station operators realized was needed to expand business. Despite early lobbying efforts, the radio broadcasters lost initial battles and agreed to a schedule of payments to ASCAP, in part because so many other issues were impinging on the stations. Facing continuing pressure for ever-higher ASCAP music royalties, the NAB finally decided to found its own music license agency and created Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) in 1939–40.

While Congress finally passed a new radio law in 1927 (the NAB had strongly urged such action), attempts to limit commercial time, to control program content, to reserve some channels for educational use, and other issues continually cropped up, requiring an industry-wide response, for which the NAB naturally took up the coordinating role. As public demand for information on the industry increased, so too did NAB publicity and publication efforts—especially in 1933, when colleges and university teams across the country debated whether the U.S. should adopt the features of the British system of public-service broadcasting, a notion the NAB opposed. The association lobbied hard and successfully to resist major policy changes when the Communications Act of 1934 was considered and passed.

Expansion and New Services

As the radio industry grew, so did the NAB. The association’s relationship with key government regulators deteriorated for many years in the 1940s and 1950s. Driven in part by strong personalities on both sides, this was unfortunate, as the FCC was developing policies for the new FM radio and television services, and a more cooperative relationship might have eased the entry of both. Initially cool to FM radio, for example, the NAB later supported the service in a variety of ways. NAB was strongly behind the expansion of commercial television from the medium’s inception, although it fought a losing battle against educational channel reservations.

From 1951 to 1957, the association took the somewhat clumsy name the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters (NARTB) to make clearer the importance of the newer medium. Over the years, the NAB has often absorbed more specialized organizations, including several that have focused on FM radio. At the same time, it has also spawned many more specific organizations, including the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB), Television Bureau of Advertising (TvB), and the Television Information Office (TIO).

The NAB’s annual convention was regularly held each spring in Chicago (Washington, D.C., in presidential inauguration years), attracting hundreds, and later several thousand, broadcasters. Keynote speakers often made news, as new FCC Chairman Newton Minow did in 1961 with his speech describing television programming as a “vast wasteland.” The ever-larger technical exhibit helped to showcase expanding technological options such as the introduction of color television technology in the mid-1950s, the arrival of videotape (the star of the 1956 convention), and satellite delivery and reception equipment in the 1970s and 1980s. By the early 1970s, the convention shifted to Dallas, Atlanta, and finally Las Vegas to obtain sufficient exhibit and hotel space.

The NAB produced its first “Code of Ethics” in 1929, in an attempt to preempt the imposition of government program or advertising guidelines. A decade later, again attempting to avoid federal regulation, the NAB issued a more focused “Radio Code” offering programming guidelines and suggested limits on commercial time. NAB added a parallel code of television good practice in 1952, and continued to modify both almost annually. Although compliance with the NAB codes was always voluntary, many NAB member stations adhered to them, largely for promotional purposes. When suit was brought against the codes (for raising the cost of radio and television advertising because of their suggested limits on the amount of time stations could sell for advertising), they were dropped in 1982, after a federal district court found the limitations unconstitutional. Today the NAB touts a “Statement of Principles” concerning only program content.

The Modern NAB

Members of the association (stations and networks) set NAB policies through a board of directors. The board is composed of radio and television broadcasters elected by fellow members. This “joint board” is subdivided into a radio and a television board. NAB employs an extensive committee structure to draw on the specialized knowledge of its members and make recommendations to the board. The association publishes a variety of industry reference books and a host of newsletters, many now on-line, representing the broad interests of its station members. These include Destination Digital TV, RadioWeek, TV Today, Radio TechCheck, TV TechCheck, and NAB World, among others.

Daily operations of the NAB are overseen by a full-time president. Since 1982, Eddie Fritts, a former station owner from Mississippi, has served in that role (longer than any prior NAB leader). With more than 100 full-time employees housed in its own building in downtown Washington, D.C., and an annual budget approaching $50 million, the NAB has in recent years gained a reputation as one of the strongest and most effective lobbies in the nation’s capital. Part of this strength comes from the clout inherent in member stations, which provide air time for political candidates and will readily call congressmen to press their views. TARPAC, the industry’s political action committee, is operated by the NAB, as is the NAB Educational Foundation, which is designed to foster research into the benefits of broadcasting.

The annual four-day NAB convention and technical exhibit was, by the early 2000s, attracting more than 115,000 attendees to Las Vegas each spring. The industry gathering, increasingly international in tone in recent years, devotes considerable exhibition space to path-breaking technologies such as digital or high-definition television in the early 1990s, and multimedia and Internet technology in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In between conventions, the NAB plays an active role in technical standard setting, such as the long process of developing digital high-definition television and digital audio broadcasting.

The NAB faces growing problems, however, in trying to maintain its role as “the broadcaster’s voice before Congress, federal agencies and the Courts,” and as an umbrella organization representing the viewpoints of all broadcasters. It has often taken no position on an issue when its members have been divided on the matter at hand. The problem became especially clear when, in 1999–2000, CBS, Fox and NBC withdrew their network and owned-and-operated stations from membership in disagreement over the NAB’s position, due to the Association’s opposition to a lessening of regulations concerning multiple ownership of television stations (which those networks supported). Of all the national broadcast networks, only ABC remained by mid-2002, which presented a setback to the NAB’s usual united-front approach to industry concerns. Increasingly, the concerns and interests of radio and television broadcasters, as well as those of smaller stations and large group owners, are diverging, making common agreement within one lobbying organization problematic. At the same time, the NAB is criticized for being short-sighted in its lobbying efforts. The association has to fight the conception of many in government that NAB is on the defensive, protecting single-channel broadcasters in a world increasingly dominated by multi-channel competitors.