Copyright 1999 The Christian Science Publishing Society
The Christian Science Monitor
January 28, 1999, Thursday
SECTION: USA; MICRORADIO' AS ANTIDOTE TO MERGERS; Pg.
3
LENGTH: 997 words
HEADLINE:
A push to reconnect radio to local roots
BYLINE: Paul
Van Slambrouck, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
HIGHLIGHT:
FCC sends a signal that 'civil
disobedience' may no longer be the onlyway to run low-power stations.
BODY:
Barring a nasty temperature
inversion or a preemptive strike from the authorities, Richard Edmondson's
neighbors in the foggy flatlands of northwestern San Francisco will be hearing
from him this weekend.
Homelessness, animal rights, and music not
on the playlists of commercial radio are the likely fare for people who listen
to Mr. Edmondson's San Francisco Liberation Radio, whose tiny broadcast signal
will reach only several miles from the makeshift studios in his apartment.
Yet that small signal represents a powerful force building
nationwide. Technologic advances, community need, and political will are
creating the conditions for a back-to-the-future communication revolution
encouraging low-power radio broadcasting, often called microradio.
For advocates, microradio fills a need for neighborhood-scale information -
ranging from the live broadcast of a school board meeting to ethnic folk music -
that is harder and harder to come by as the radio industry is controlled by
fewer and larger owners.
Edmondson's promised broadcasts would be
illegal. Yet he feels the time is so ripe for microradio that he's intent on
committing what he calls "an act of civil disobedience" in hopes it will
underscore the rightness and inevitability of community-based broadcasting.
Tactics aside, Edmondson may be right that microradio's time has
come. Today, the FCC is expected to propose rules for licensing
low-power FM stations that transmit at less than 100 watts,
reversing the ban the FCC itself imposed about 20 years ago. Given the
bureaucratic process involved, licensing would still be about a year away, says
an FCC official. But the momentum seems to have begun in earnest.
"Is this a good thing for our communities? Unequivocally, yes," says Robert
McChesney, a communications professor at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, and author of several books critical of the concentration of
media ownership.
OF COURSE, not everyone agrees. The powerful
National Association of Broadcasters (radio and television) vows a stiff fight,
and some analysts give the NAB the upper hand in Congress should it seek
legislative help in thwarting FCC chairman William Kennard. "We oppose
[microradio]," says NAB spokesman John Earnhardt.
Just as
bluntly, Kennard told an NAB conference late last year: "We cannot deny
opportunities to those who want to use the airwaves to speak to their
communities simply because it might be inconvenient to those of you who already
have these opportunities."
Since the Telecommunications Act of
1996 loosened restrictions on radio-station ownership, the industry has
consolidated into fewer hands. Ownership of commercial radio shrank 12 percent
from early 1996 to late 1997, according to the FCC, even as the number of
stations grew. And the number of African-American-owned FM stations dropped 26
percent in that time frame; Hispanic-owned stations declined 9 percent.
Another unmistakable trend is advancing technology that has made
transmitting cheaper and the precision of radio reception greater, allowing for
more stations, say microradio supporters.
The NAB's principal
opposition to microradio is concern that it will degrade "spectrum integrity,"
or clutter the airwaves with too many stations, causing unclear signals. It's
doubly concerned about that problem as the industry transitions to digital
broadcasting, which in effect will lessen the buffer between existing stations
as they broadcast in both analog and digital.
While the FCC has
promised not to allow any spectrum degradation, some of the NAB's critics say
the real concern is just greater competition.
Lining up behind
the push for microradio is a range of organizations and institutions across the
country. The University of Wisconsin, for instance, wants a radio station but
has been tied up in court for several years trying to get zoning approval for a
large-scale radio tower. With a microradio station, such a tower would be
unnecessary.
In Tucson, Ariz., a community group called Access
Tucson sees lots of promise in microradio. One possibility is setting up a
station to report community news about the Navajo reservation to Navajo in the
city.
The Wisconsin and Tucson examples are cited by a new
Washington group called the Low Power Radio Coalition. Mike Bracy, a spokesman
for the coalition, says numerous churches, cities, schools, and community groups
are gearing up to back legalizing microradio stations because they offer such an
inexpensive way to serve local communities.
While some liken the
approach to cable television community-access stations, microradio's production
costs are considerably less than television's. And while the Internet has opened
a whole new world of transmitting information and news, it requires users to
have access to a computer.
For many, microradio has the greatest
potential for reconnecting low-income communities to civic life.
"We think there is a compelling need for something along these lines," says
Andrew Schwartzman, director of the Washington-based Media Access Project. Why?
"Radio has been abandoning its local roots," he says.
To that,
the NAB counters that radio broadcasters already do plenty of community-service
programming, which according to its own study was worth close to $ 7 billion in
1997.
Not all advocates of microradio endorse Edmondson's
approach. Indeed, he began broadcasting illegally in the early 1990s but ceased
last year in the face of a concerted FCC crackdown across the country on illegal
microradio.
While Edmondson is supportive of the FCC's new
initiative to legalize microradio, he and other activists remain concerned about
the details of the proposal. A key issue for them is how the FCC proposes to
allocate the FM airwaves to microradio stations between commercial and
noncommercial interests.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO:
Accessing airwaves: D.J. 'Pirate Jenny' (l.) and D.J.'Chrome' protested in New
York last spring against the closure of their station. The FCC may soon lift the
ban on such low-power stations. BY STEPHEN MOITESSIER/AP/FILE
LOAD-DATE: January 27, 1999