Huge News for Radio

The FCC has just made a major and overdue decision about Low-Power FMs that could affect the classical radio landscape.  The commission has cleared — basically denied —  hundreds of applications for repeaters that have been waiting for approval and instead has opened up the airwaves to hundreds of potential new community stations to broadcast on low-power signals in urban areas.

The applications for repeaters were filed by corporate and religious broadcasters who wanted to spread their biased content even further.

…what a lot of right-wing, conservative radio stations have been able to do is expand their reach out in communities by just having these translators out in the wild, which is why Rush Limbaugh gets the type of audience that he has — because the networks take one signal and repeat it over and over and over across the dial all over the country,” Steven Renderos, national organizer with the Center for Media Justice, told Raw Story on Tuesday. “They’re constantly looking for opportunities to expand that, so there were a slew of these applications pending at the FCC.”

You can read the article in Raw Story here.

This is HUGE.  It can rapidly change the entire radio landscape.

“These [new, low power] stations can only be licensed to non-profit organizations, and you can only have one per customer,” Brandy Doyle, policy director for the Prometheus Radio Project, told Raw Story. “That way we won’t have these big corporate chains and media networks that are taking over the rest of the media landscape moving in on low power FM service. These stations have to be local, and they have to be independent. This clears the way for a real transformation of the FM dial.”

[snip]

Though the FCC’s decision may not sound all that important, it really is. For the first time in decades, Americans living in major cities will soon be hearing the voices of their friends and neighbors flooding the airwaves — a far cry from the typical morning DJ fart jokes and the same “top hit” songs endlessly droning on a looping playback.

Some experts believe that more than 10,000 applications for low-power licenses will be filed in the next few years.

The FCC’s move Monday was the first step on a path laid out by the Local Community Radio Act, signed by President Barack Obama at the start of 2011, which represented the first real victory in activists’ long fight against the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) the radio industry’s biggest lobbying group. The bill freed up portions of the radio spectrum that had otherwise been kept empty by the larger broadcasters, who had long insisted upon four clicks of blank space on the FM dial to prevent interference. It also stipulated that new space on the dial must be reserved for community stations in urban areas where there might otherwise be none.

Indulge for a moment in your fondest dream, that more classical music stations will sprout up on your dial, and you’ll have choices.  Maybe your local symphony can have its own station that it will share with its smaller neighbors in the community.   Maybe cities that have lost classical stations can have a couple of low power stations.  There’s lots of free content out here [disclaimer: I produce some of it] that is filled with live music and interesting commentary.  In fact, I am already providing content to low-power stations.  The more, the merrier.  I’m super excited about this.  Maybe I’ll file an application myself.  Who wants to join me???