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Low Power FM
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NHMC worked with a coalition of organizations headed by the Prometheus Radio Project, to ardently support this legislation to expand low power FM (LPFM) radio throughout the country. LPFM stations provide new channels for those seeking to broadcast to the public. As traditional broadcast stations have expensive barriers to entry, LPFM stations are cheaper and provide an excellent way for Latinos and other people of color to be heard over the airwaves. There are about 800 low-power stations already on the air. They broadcast from college campuses, garages, backyard shacks, and local churches, and are aimed specifically at listeners in their surrounding neighborhoods. And many air more than just independent music. Some are providing local news and information that in extreme cases have kept people alive. The Local Community Radio Act passed at the end of the 111th Congress, and President Obama signed it into law in early January, 2011. For information about how YOU can apply for a low power station, please visit www.prometheusradio.org/want_to_start_a_station. Senate Joins House in Passing the Local Community Radio Act Thousands of community groups rejoice at new opportunity for locally owned media WASHINGTON, DC – Today a bill to expand community radio nationwide – the Local Community Radio Act – passed the U.S. Senate, thanks to the bipartisan leadership of Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and John McCain (R-AZ). This follows Friday afternoon’s passage of the bill in the House of Representatives, led by Representatives Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Lee Terry (R-NE). The bill now awaits the President's signature. These Congressional champions for community radio joined with the thousands of grassroots advocates and dozens of public interest groups who have fought for ten years to secure this victory for local media. In response to overwhelming grassroots pressure, Congress has given the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a mandate to license thousands, of new community stations nationwide. This bill marks the first major legislative success for the growing movement for a more democratic media system in the U.S. “A town without a community radio station is like a town without a library,” said Pete Tridish of the Prometheus Radio Project, the group which has led the fight to expand community radio for ten years. “Many a small town dreamer – starting with a few friends and bake sale cash – has successfully launched a low power station, and built these tiny channels into vibrant town institutions that spotlight school board elections, breathe life into the local music scene, allow people to communicate in their native languages, and give youth an outlet to speak.” The Local Community Radio Act will expand the low power FM (LPFM) service created by the FCC in 2000 – a service the FCC created to address the shrinking diversity of voices on the radio dial. Over 800 LPFM stations, all locally owned and non-commercial, are already on the air. The stations are run by non-profit organizations, local governments, churches, schools, and emergency responders. The bill repeals earlier legislation which had been backed by big broadcasters, including the National Association of Broadcasters. This legislation, the Radio Broadcast Preservation Act of 2000, limited LPFM radio to primarily rural areas. The broadcast lobby groups claimed that the new 100 watt stations could somehow create interference with their own stations, a claim disproven by a Congressionally-mandated study in 2003. Congressional leaders worked for years to pass this legislation. As the clock wound down on the 111th Congress, they worked with the NAB to amend the bill to enshrine even stronger protections against interference and to ensure the prioritization of full power FM radio stations over low power stations. Though the amendments to the bill will require some further work at the FCC, low power advocates celebrated the first chance in a decade for groups in cities, towns, and other communities to take their voices to the FM dial. “After ten years of effort, a $2.2 million taxpayer-funded study, and new provisions to address this hypothetical interference, we are finally on our way to seeing new community radio stations across the U.S. This marks a beginning, not an end, to our work,” said Brandy Doyle, Policy Director for the Prometheus Radio Project. “For the first time, LPFM community radio has a chance to grow, and we’re ready to seize that opportunity.” “All of us at UCC OC Inc. and at Prometheus express our incredible gratitude to Congressmen Mike Doyle and Lee Terry and Senators Maria Cantwell and John McCain for the leadership and counsel during this process,” said Cheryl Leanza, a board member of the Prometheus Radio Project and a Policy Advisor to the United Church of Christ, Office of Communication, Inc. “Without their work and the work of their committed staff we would not have come this far. At long last the 160 million Americans who have been deprived of the opportunity to apply for a local low power radio station will get a chance to be a part of the American media.” "I am a leadership organizer from the ranks of the poor working with other low-wage workers – fighting for human rights in Maryland,” said Veronica Dorsey of the United Workers, a human rights organization in Baltimore. “Low power FM radio would allow the United Workers to expand the message of our End Poverty Radio show, which is currently only available on the internet. End Poverty Radio develops leaders and gives workers a way to tell their stories and be heard – and a low power FM station would reach a lot of people who do not have access to the internet. LPFM is a way for those in the community who are struggling to survive to hear stories that they can relate to, and to know that they are not alone in this struggle for human dignity. We can’t wait to work to build low power FM in communities like ours, so we can accomplish these goals." “Civil rights groups and community organizations have wanted low power FM radio for years, and now the chance is here,” said Betty Yu, coordinator of the Media Action Grassroots Network, a national media justice network with members in many cities and communities that lost their chance to get low power FM radio stations. “From Seattle, Oakland, and Albuquerque to Minneapolis, San Antonio, Kentucky and Philadelphia, thousands of communities know that having access to our own slice of the dial means a tool to build our movements for justice. We have won something huge in Congress, but the fight is not over. Now we need to work at the FCC to make sure as many licenses as possible can be available in rural communities, towns and suburbs, and America's cities.” LPFMs have saved lives in powerful storms when big broadcasts lose power or can’t serve local communities in the eye of the storm. WQRZ-LP in Bay St. Louis, MS received awards from President Bush and other organizations post Katrina in 2005, when one of the station operators swam across flood waters with fuel strapped to his back to keep his station on the air. The station proved so important that the Emergency Operations Center of Hancock County set up shop with the LPFM to serve the community after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Bipartisan Senators and House members have expressed support for the Local Community Radio Act as a vital way to expand emergency service media across our nation. “I’m Frank Bluestein from Germantown, Tennessee, one of the several large suburban cities located just outside of Memphis. We have been fighting for the past 10 years to persuade Congress to give communities like ours the opportunity to establish a low power FM radio station. Our city wants to provide community and civic groups, students of all ages, local artists and others the power to communicate over their own LPFM channel,” said Frank Bluestein, a media teacher and Executive Producer of Germantown Community Television. "Equally important for Germantown, we need a dedicated communication outlet that will serve the needs of our citizens in the event another tornado rips through town or if any kind of natural disaster hits,” continued Bluestein. “In this day and age, emergency management is a must for a city of our size and LPFM perfectly fits our needs. A low power FM radio station can stay on the air even if the power goes out. Low power FM saved lives during Katrina but strangely, the federal government is banning it from this part of Tennessee. That is not fair or wise. We have the right to be as safe as any other community in the US. After 10 years, now is the time! Congress has passed the Local Community Radio Act, and chances are so much greater that groups in towns like mine can apply for LPFM licenses. Germantown is ready to work here and at the FCC to make licenses for communities like ours possible.” Grassroots leaders were key in helping Senators understand that expanding low power FM was important and urgent. “Our station provides some of the only local service to Gillette when big storms come through, and it puts great content on the air. That's why so many in our town think it is such a vital resource,” said Pastor Joel Wright of the First Presbyterian Church of Gillette, WY, licensee of KCOV-LP 95.7 FM. “Senators Barrasso and Enzi had concerns about expanding low power FM, but they heard from many Wyoming folks who want these stations, and dropped those concerns. Communities of faith and so many others can celebrate that we've jumped this big hurdle to more license being available in cities, smaller towns, and rural communities nationwide. I look forward to working with many other pastors and groups to launch their own wonderful new community voices.” "The Media Mobilizing Project works with a huge diversity of leaders across Philadelphia -- from taxi drivers and immigrant communities to students and low wage workers," said Desi Burnette of Philadelphia's Media Mobilizing Project. "Our leaders have been lucky enough to produce multiple programs with WPEB-FM, 88.1 – bringing all of these communities together. But WPEB is a 1-watt station, only covering a few city blocks. Now with the passage of the Local Community Radio Act, Philadelphia has a much greater chance of getting at least one 100-watt station of its own. With low power FM in our community, poor and working people across this region would have an incredible tool to learn together, to understand their shared struggles and conditions, and to work to change them." "Our low power FM radio station has allowed Guatemalan, Haitian, and many other hard-working immigrant farmworkers to communicate in their native languages, and to build the power for dignity and respect in the fields of Southwest Florida," said the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Gerardo Reyes Chavez. "Our radio station, WCIW – Radio Consciencia – has developed womens' leadership, has allowed us to mobilize rapidly in crises, and has helped us transform not just our community but the hundreds of communities inspired by our struggle. We look forward to helping many other farmworkers learn how to build their own stations and how to expand justice on the FM dial." "In the rural areas we serve and all across the country, low power FMs are poised to celebrate and preserve unique local culture," said Nick Szuberla of Appalshop, a group that uses media to preserve Appalachian culture and tradition while working to improve quality of life. "More low power FMs mean that the vibrant, beautiful, and vital voices of America's rural areas and small towns will shine – and it will mean sustainable local resources in times of crisis. Low power FM stations can stay on the air in storms and save thousands of lives. Congress and community radio advocates should be proud of the resources they've won for American communities." “Our group of 150 volunteers here at the Chicago Independent Radio Project (CHIRP) is extremely pleased that the Local Community Radio Act has been passed by Congress, and will be signed into law by our fellow Chicagoan, President Obama,” said Shawn Campbell, a founder of CHIRP. “For three years, CHIRP volunteers and supporters have worked diligently toward the goal of being able to apply for a low power FM broadcast license, and we look forward to working with our national allies and the FCC to make sure new stations are licensed in large markets around the country, including Chicago.” "For decades, the Esperanza Center has worked in San Antonio and beyond to bring people together across cultures, and to ensure the civil rights and economic justice of everyone," said Graciela Sanchez of the Esperanza Center for Peace and Justice in San Antonio. "Whether we are fighting for the right to publicly protest or to save the water systems of our region, we need to communicate and coordinate to effectively organize. Low power FM in San Antonio can unite people across cultures and issues to work together to make this city better for everyone. We celebrate this victory for everyone and pledge to work with allies to win as many stations as possible for communities nationwide." Over 10 years, hundreds of groups of all walks of life struggled to bring community radio stations to every community possible, and they cannot all be listed here. We would like to thank the coalition who worked weekly to move this mountain including: Free Press, United Church of Christ Office of Communication, Inc, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Media Access Project, the Future of Music Coalition, the Media and Democracy Coalition, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the Benton Foundation, the Prometheus National Advisory Committee and Board of Directors. We thank those who were instrumental in this final push including: Reclaim the Media, The Media Action Grassroots Network, New America Foundation, Chicago Independent Radio Project, MoveOn.org, Color of Change, the Christian Coalition, and the National Association of Evangelicals, and Spitfire Consulting. Our partners in supporting community media including the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and the Grassroots Radio Coalition, and Media Alliance, Pacifica, REC Networks, the Alliance for Community Media. We thank those who have helped at key moments throughout these ten years including: United States Public Interest Research Group, Consumers Union, the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, the United Methodist Church Office of Communication, the Indigo Girls, OK Go, Nicole Atkins, the Microradio List, Amherst Alliance, MIcroradio Implementation Project, Pacifica Radio, Common Frequency, Christian Community Broadcasters, KYES -TV, National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications, Virginia Center for the Public Press, every FCC Commissioner since 1999 (except for Harold Furchgott Roth). We thank our radio barnraising partners who have time and again shown up to represent the best of what LPFM can be: WGXC-FM in Hudson, New York with Free103point9; WMXP-LP in Greenville, South Carolina with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; KPCN-LP in Woodburn, Oregon with Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste; WRFU-LP in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois with Radio Free Urbana; WXOJ-LP in Northampton, Massachusetts with Valley Free Radio; WRFN-LP in Pasquo, Tennessee with Radio Free Nashville; WSCA-LP in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with Portsmouth Community Radio; WCIW-LP in Immokalee, Florida with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers; KYRS-LP in Spokane, Washington with Thin Air Community Radio; KOCZ-LP in Opelousas, Louisiana with the Southern Development Foundation; KRBS-LP in Oroville, California with the Bird Street Media Project; and our very first radio barnraising with WRYR-LP in Deale, Maryland with South Arundel Citizens for Responsible Development. “We've built community radio stations from coast to coast and around the country,” said Hannah Sassaman, a longtime organizer with the Prometheus Radio Project. ‘The faith and perseverance of low power FM's legislative champions and the thousands who pushed the Local Community Radio Act has paid off in incredible ways. After ten years of struggle, it's stunning to know that in the next years, the FCC will work to and begin licensing LPFMs in city neighborhoods, in suburbs and towns, and in rural areas. It's humbling to understand that new young people will gain a love of telling stories at the working end of a microphone or at home listening to their neighbors. And it's powerful to know that these stations will launch leaders in every walk of life to change their communities, and this country. We look forward to launching the next generation of community stations with you.”
The Great Radio Blockade The Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act turns 10 next month. If Congress believed in truth in advertising, it would have called the law the Radio Broadcaster Preservation Act, since its effect was to protect existing stations from a new wave of competition. Though even that name would have been a stretch: The new competitors would all be noncommercial outlets transmitting at no more than 100 watts of power, so they weren't likely to put anyone out of business. Officially, the bill aimed to protect stations not from the threat of losing audiences but from the threat of signal interference. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had announced a plan to start licensing low-power FM stations. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) objected, arguing that there wasn't room on the dial for the new outlets. To illustrate the alleged risk, the NAB distributed a CD that purported to demonstrate the interference that could occur if the plan went forward. The sound was not, in fact, a recording of a low-power signal interfering with a larger station. It was just a homebrewed mix designed to sound as unappealing as possible. In the words of two FCC engineers, it "simply does not represent actual FM radio performance and therefore is meaningless." (A subsequent study by the MITRE Corporation has established conclusively that the low-power plan posed no risk of serious interference.) With such tactics the broadcasters' lobby shepherded the Preservation Act into law. It did not eliminate low-power radio altogether, but it kept about three quarters of the potential stations from appearing, piling on enough restraints to guarantee that the stations would be restricted to relatively rural areas and kept out of the big urban markets. A decade later, that protectionist law may finally be about to die. The Local Community Radio Act, which passed the House last December and has widespread support in the Senate, would repeal the 10-year-old measure. The act bends over backwards to address broadcasters' objections. At the prodding of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), the bill's sponsors even agreed to an amendment requiring a study of the new stations' economic impact on small business. The legislation seemed poised to pass the Senate—and then a new problem appeared. Senate rules allow any member to put a hold on a motion, preventing it from going to a vote. It also allows them to do this anonymously, so that citizens don't know who exactly is obstructing the legislation. In the summer low-power supporters, centered around the Philadelphia-based Prometheus Radio Project, learned that several secret holds were blocking the bill. They wound up calling legislators one by one to ask each senator point blank whether he was responsible for a hold. With one remaining exception, the Prometheans have persuaded each obstructionist to withdraw his objections. The exception is Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy). His communications director, Emily Lawrimore, tells me her boss has two concerns about the legislation. By a striking coincidence, NAB chief Dennis Wharton informs me that his group also has two concerns about the legislation. Barrasso's first worry, according to Lawrimore, is that the law should "Ensure that the other channels will be protected if 3rd adjacency is to be removed." Wharton, meanwhile, wants "Greater certainty that existing broadcast channels will be protected if 3rd adjacency channel protections are removed." Barrasso's second concern: "that the new policy clarifies who is the primary service vs secondary services." Wharton's second concern: "clarifying that full power FMs are the primary service on the FM dial." Let me translate that jargon into English. The removal of "third adjacency protections" amounts to allowing smaller stations to transmit closer to other outlets on the dial. "Translators"—low-power transmitters that rebroadcast other outfits' content—can already do this, and there have been no notable repercussions. The law essentially extends the same right to comparable operations that offer original programming. The difference between a "primary" and a "secondary" service is even simpler: If you're in the secondary category, any new station that comes along can bump you off the air. The curious thing here is that low-power radio, regrettably, is already a secondary service. Nothing in the bill would change that. But its language could be revised to enshrine that status in statute, preventing the commission from issuing waivers or other adjustments under appropriate circumstances—a practice the NAB has unsuccessfully sued to prevent. In a follow-up email, Lawrimore wrote that the issues she mentioned "were raised by Wyoming's broadcasters." It's unclear why Wyoming's broadcasters would be particularly concerned about a law whose chief effect will be to allow more stations in urban areas. The sparsely populated state already has several low-power stations, and unless Wyoming's radio landscape has changed dramatically since I last drove through the place, it does not suffer from an overcrowded dial. At any rate, Barrasso's office is probably the last hurdle to passing the bill. (I say probably because another senator, Pat Roberts of Kansas, has not answered Prometheus' inquiries into whether he has a hold on the legislation. His office hasn't returned my calls either.) If the bill passes the Senate, the president is expected to sign it. You might wonder: Does this matter? Radio has been losing listeners for years, and as Internet access becomes more portable those departures will become a deluge. It won't be long before the average driver can listen to Web radio as easily as an FM signal. And then these entry barriers won't matter so much anymore, right? I certainly hope so. But in the meantime, there are three reasons to care about the fate of the Local Community Radio Act, above and beyond the grisly pleasures of watching the sausage factory at work. First: It's still 2010. The great Web-radio utopia may get here someday, but in the meantime millions of people continue to rely on traditional radio stations. There's no good reason to restrict their choices. Second: It shines a new light on the debate over public radio. While I don't believe for a moment that the new Congress really plans to defund public broadcasting, the larger debate over radio subsidies isn't going to go away. So it's worth paying attention to the fact that a batch of would-be noncommercial broadcasters are itching to go on the air even though most of them won't qualify for federal assistance. If you're a public radio producer who's tired of answering to Congress, you might watch the world of low-power FM for new models. Third: It's a sign of how serious the GOP will be about cutting back big government. It's notable that every single senator who has put a hold on this bill has been a Republican. One of them—Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.)—gets a pass: He was concerned about the cost of the study that Snowe demanded, a bona fide fiscally conservative complaint. (While it isn't clear yet how his objection will be resolved, Prometheus co-founder Pete triDish thinks it might be addressed by having the study conducted by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO has a fixed budget, so that way the report won't affect the federal deficit.) But Coburn aside, the senators simply repeated an industry lobby's talking points. When the Tea Party Congress is seated next year, this is the sort of choice it will face repeatedly: Will you be pro-market, or will you be "pro-business"? Put another way: Will you push for an open and competitive marketplace, or will you dole out favors to privileged enterprises at the expense of their rivals? If you can't embrace a deregulatory measure as mild as this one, we'll have a problem.
Low Power Community Radio Empowers Latinos Diversifying Voices in the Media - The Local Community Radio Act (H.1147, S.592) would allow for thousands of new low power community radio stations across the US. Low Power FM stations (LPFM) are community-based, non-commercial radio stations that operate at 100 watts or less. Passing the Local Community Radio Act will open the door to low power stations in major urban areas for the first time, where broadcasting in a 3-7 mile radius can reach tens of thousands of people. LPFM stations allow neighborhood organizations, community churches, schools, first responders and nonprofit groups to broadcast essential local content to their communities. Click here to read more on LPFM. |