Subject: [NEXTEL-1] EMERGING ALTERNATIVES-Low Power, High Intensity Building Communities on the FM Dial

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 00:35:55 -0400

Columbia Journalism Review at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism

EMERGING ALTERNATIVES
Low Power, High Intensity
Building Communities on the FM Dial
BY LAURIE KELLIHER

They bought their equipment on e-Bay. Their
antenna is attached to a water pipe on the roof.
They have only two staff members, but more than
fifty people volunteer in the studio on their time
off from jobs as factory workers, busboys, and
grocery clerks. Few at the station speak English.
Some are illiterate. No one has any previous
experience in radio. It's WSBL-LP in South Bend,
Indiana, and it's low-power FM.

In the increasingly corporate world of radio,
low-power FM isn't about how far your signal
reaches but how near. These are neighborhood
stations with 100-watt signals that travel
single-digit miles.

They are run by civil rights organizations, by environmental activists, by church
groups and school districts. They are voices that have either been pushed out of
the radio spectrum or never invited into it, and the appetite for them speaks to a
growing need in this country for community. And with a recent technical study
providing leverage in low-power's struggle with big radio, there just might be
more of them on air.

Low-power FM licenses were introduced in January 2000 under William E. Kennard,
then former Federal Communications Commission chairman. The move was partly a
strategy to control the proliferation of unlicensed pirate channels, partly a
reparation for the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated radio and set
the stage for media consolidation. The idea was simple: low-power FM stations
would be small enough to fit between the frequencies of existing full-power
stations, and their licenses would be granted to noncommercial organizations for
educational purposes. "When hundreds of stations are owned by just one person or
company," Kennard said in March 2000, "service to local communities and coverage
of local issues lose out."

On the west side of South Bend, losing out meant a Hispanic community with no
Spanish-language radio station. When WSBL-LP began its Spanish-language broadcast
in September 2002, the community not only heard traditional and contemporary
Hispanic music but also received English-language vocabulary lessons during the
breaks. The station raises money for a local scholarship fund and helps collect
corn flour for the local food bank. WSBL-LP regularly runs public service
announcements for early-childhood vaccinations, prostate cancer testing, and HIV
screenings, and can measure the results. "The statistics at local clinics jumped
from last year to this," says Eliud Villanueva, director of WSBL-LP. "We have
really made a difference, and that surprised us more than anyone else."

For Villanueva, an electrical inspector with no previous radio experience, the
road to WSBL-LP began with a 700-mile drive to Maryland. That's where the
Prometheus Radio Project was holding a "radio barn-raising" seminar at the site of
another low-power FM station, WRYR-LP in Sherwood, Maryland.  Prometheus, a
nonprofit organization devoted to the growth of noncommercial community radio,
offers legal and technical support to communities that want to build a low-power
station — something that can realistically be done for about $10,000. The
barn-raising offers three days of classes (including "Intro to Radio Engineering,"
"Running an All-Volunteer News Operation," "How the FCC Works") and concludes with
the raising of a transmission tower and the station's first broadcast. "Once these
stations were just a glint in the eye of the village wacko," says Pete Tridish,
technical director for Prometheus. "People would say, 'You can't build a radio
channel, only Clear Channel can build a radio channel.'"

Clear Channel, based in San Antonio, Texas, now owns more than 1,200 radio
stations in 230 cities and has become Exhibit A for opponents of media
consolidation. Many of its broadcasts originate in locations other than the cities
where they are heard, saving Clear Channel considerable money. Low-power FM is
technically and philosophically the opposite, originating locally and focusing
tightly on local needs and concerns. "The purpose of low-power FM isn't profit,"
says Tridish. "The purpose is to rethink how we use media to bring communities
together."

Mike Shay was a member of a Maryland environmental group battling to prevent a
Chesapeake Bay wetland area from being developed into a supermarket when his
organization applied to the FCC for a construction permit to build WRYR-LP. "We
thought of it as a way to fight billionaire developers and corporations on a
playing field that was not level," says Shay. WRYR-LP identifies itself as the
first radio station owned and operated by an environmental group. Amid a mix of
gospel, jazz, and alternative music, the station runs programs dedicated to local
and national environmental issues. WRYR-LP also offers coverage of county council
meetings and local elections, with particular emphasis on land-use and zoning
issues. The programs on the station feature local musicians and writers, and are
hosted by local residents. "We thought if we could celebrate our community, we
would make it stronger," says Shay.

As with most low-power FM stations, WRYR-LP is funded through the donations of
local residents and businesses. Running the station is a challenge for a volunteer
staff with other full-time jobs, but the difficulties haven't deterred them. Shay,
who traveled to Richmond, Virginia, to deliver a statement at the FCC's public
hearing on broadcast ownership rules there last February, says he is disgusted
with media deregulation and the buildup of media conglomerates: "Everything is
going in such a wrong direction.  Low-power FM is the one bright spot."

The birth of the low-power FM movement is generally attributed to DeWayne Readus,
later renamed MBanna Kantako, who in 1987 began a 1-watt broadcast out of his
apartment in Springfield, Illinois.  "Kantako was the Johnny Appleseed of
micro-radio," says Peter Franck, a San Francisco lawyer who advised Kantako on
behalf of the National Lawyers Guild when the FCC fined Kantako for broadcasting
without a license. Kantako was broadcasting to the African-American community in
the John Hay Homes housing project where he lived, and his shows discussed the
issues concerning that community, particularly issues related to police brutality
in Springfield at the time. "People with alternative concerns of all kinds want to
speak to their community," says Franck. "They want media that is not mediated by
the government or by corporate advertisers."

But with limited spectrum space, radio has always necessitated some sort of
regulation. And it is the apportionment of that spectrum space that is at issue in
the low-power FM movement. When the FCC opened its first window for low-power
construction permits in May 2000, 720 applications were filed.  At the same time,
the National Association of Broadcasters, joined by National Public Radio, raised
concerns with Congress about the potential interference low-power FM channels
might cause to existing full-power channels, and asked that the prescribed minimum
dial distance between the two be increased.  More distance meant fewer low-power
channels. Though studies done by FCC engineers showed that the low-power signals
were too small to cause interference at the designated distance, Congress complied
with the NAB and NPR request for further study in December 2000. This effectively
knocked out of contention more than half the original applications and all but
excluded low-power stations from congested urban markets.

Low-power advocates were appalled. "It has never been appropriate policy in this
country for Congress to make engineering decisions," says Cheryl Leanza, deputy
director of Media Access Project, a public-interest telecommunications law firm
based in Washington, D.C. "They were persuaded by incumbent broadcasters."

The results of the independent study requested by Congress were released in July
and concluded what low-power FM advocates and FCC engineers had always maintained:
that the majority of interference issues voiced by the NAB and NPR were not
legitimate. A public comment period will now be open until September 12, when the
FCC will prepare its recommendation to Congress. "Right now is a very important
time for media policy," says Leanza. "Low-power FM is one step we can take on a
national level that says we support diversity and localism in media."

While the study is potentially good news for low-power FM, conceivably adding
hundreds of new channels to the existing 220, the movement is still mired in
bureaucracy with many applications filed more than a year ago still awaiting
approval. Chairman Michael K. Powell announced in a press conference on August 20
that the FCC would expedite the approval process but the agency is not currently
accepting new applications for licenses and has not said when it will start again.

Which makes a station like Radio Bird Street grateful it has its license. "I would
have been a pirate station if it weren't for low-power FM," says Erv Knorzer,
general manager of KRBS-LP in Oroville, California.  When KRBS-LP moved into an
abandoned laundromat, its goal was to bring community radio to Oroville.  In the
process it brought some life back to a downtown area that had been deserted years
ago for outlying strip malls. The station runs public service announcements for
the local library, community theater, and senior center. It broadcasts the
independent news program Democracy Now!, offering an alternative to the nearby
commercial stations, five of which are owned by Clear Channel. Knorzer's daughter,
Marianne, serves as the station manager and arranges a programming schedule that
includes Hmong-language news broadcasts for the Oroville Laotian community and a
labor issues show that keeps local hospital workers up to date with news of the
local Steelworkers Union. The station's youngest deejay is ten, the oldest
seventy-two. The board of directors includes members of the local
Mexican-American, Native-American, African-American, and Hmong communities. The
studio on Bird Street is often crowded with people from the sixty-five-member
staff of volunteers who make the station run. "This station gives hope to a lot of
people," says Marianne.

http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/5/radio-kelliher.asp

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