Allison Mazzei, Justin Fluke, Rep. LaTurner, and Kyle Bauer.

In early June, your KAB visited Washington, D.C., for a second advocacy trip and to attend the NAB and National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations (NASBA) sponsored Radio’s Road to the Future half-day conference. In attendance were KAB President Allison Mazzei, KAB Chairman Justin Fluke (KNZA Radio Group) and former KAB Board member Kyle Bauer (Taylor Communications). Although KAB was only able to bring two members to the radio conference, we are excited to share recordings of the sessions with our members. Please visit this link to view the excellent line up of speakers including Shawn DeBravac, President, Avrio Institute; Manuel Centeno, Program Manager, FEMA IPAWS National Public Warning System (NPWS); Pete Benedetti, Executive Vice President, Quu; Juan Galdamez, Senior Director, Broadcast Strategy, Xperi; and more.

The following day, we made visits to every member of our delegation and made direct asks for each of them to co-sponsor the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act. We are excited to announce that the KAB has secured half of our members as co-sponsors! Special thanks to Representatives Mann and Davids and Senator Marshall. We encourage all broadcasters to follow up with the remaining members of our delegation and ask them to sign on to this important bill (as well as to thank those who have already signed on). We would love to have all six as co-sponsors. Contact information for all offices can be found here. The bill has broad bipartisan support with 19 co-sponsors in the Senate and 113 in the House.

We also discussed our desire for the FCC to update their definition of virtual MVPDs to include streaming providers. All our members’ offices seemed to agree this was reasonable request and indicated they would be supportive. We anticipate that, in the coming months, we will ask our members of Congress to sign onto a letter encouraging the FCC to reconsider this definition.

Your KAB continues to follow up with our Congressional offices on both of these issues and is proud of the outcomes as a result of our advocacy trip. If you have questions about either of these issues, or would like to be involved in future KAB state or federal advocacy, please contact allison@kab.net. Also, we realize many of our broadcasters personally know our members of Congress and have them on air during recess. If a Congressman visits your station this summer, we encourage you to ask them to support the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act!

KAB delegation with Senator Marshall.