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April 14, 2000, Friday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section C; Page 1; Column
5; Business/Financial Desk
LENGTH: 724 words
HEADLINE: House Clears Bill to Curb Plans for FM
BYLINE: By STEPHEN LABATON
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 13
BODY:
Prodded by the nation's largest broadcasters,
the House overwhelmingly approved legislation today that would curtail ambitious
plans to open the FM airwaves to hundreds of new low-power stations for
churches, community groups and schools.
The legislation, approved by a
vote of 274 to 110, was marked by a bitter debate in which its Republican
supporters accused officials of the Federal Communications Commission of
violating a criminal law that forbids government agencies from lobbying
Congress.
Top officials at the agency who waged an unsuccessful
last-ditch effort to derail the bill, denied that they had violated any laws.
They said the legislation marked the first time in the agency's 65-year-history
that a chamber of Congress had stripped the Commission of its authority to
oversee a portion of the radio spectrum.
The bill, which is opposed by
the White House, now moves to the Senate where a similar version has gained
considerable support but where a coalition of schools, churches, musical artists
and major religious organizations hope to stop it. The lopsided nature of
today's vote gave great hope to the supporters of the measure that Congress
would be able to complete legislation this term substantially rolling back or
killing the low-power radio program.
The legislation has been supported
by the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio. It has
been opposed by labor organizations, the National League of Cities, the U.S.
Conference of Mayors, and a number of prominent religious, civil rights and
consumer groups.
The legislation approved today would reduce the number
of possible stations by 80 percent, delaying implementation of most of the rest
of the plan until at least next year, and require the agency to perform a $1
million new technical test of the broadcast spectrum without providing any new
financing for it.
"Our bill says before you run full speed ahead with
these licenses, make sure that the interference requirements are adhered to,"
said Representative Michael G. Oxley, the Ohio Republican who was its chief
sponsor.
But opponents of the measure said the broadcasting industry had
used a combination of scare-and-smear tactics that successfully convinced the
House to adopt a bill that would all but doom the F.C.C.'s plan. They said the
broadcasters were simply frightened by new competition that might draw from
their audiences.
"This is very cynical legislation," said William E.
Kennard, the chairman of the F.C.C. who first proposed the plan more than a year
ago. "As a practical matter it would kill low power FM."
Facing thousands of requests for new low-power stations and mounting
Congressional pressure to abandon the plan, the F.C.C. two weeks ago began the
licensing process by conducting a lottery to determine which states will be
eligible first for the noncommercial licenses. The licenses would enable
so-called micro-radio broadcasters to use inexpensive equipment and relatively
small antennas for 100-watt stations that could beam programs over geographic
areas as large as seven miles.
Mr. Kennard and other supporters of the
low power radio plan have said it is a powerful antidote to the rapid
consolidation of the radio industry and declining diversity of the airwaves.
They have also said that the government had already completed extensive testing
and that the F.C.C. had scaled back a more ambitious low-power radio program to
assure that signal interference would be minimal.
But the nation's
leading broadcasters and National Public Radio have asked Congress to approve
legislation curtailing the program because they say their engineering studies
demonstrate that the low-power stations will produce significant levels of
signal interference impairing the transmissions of existing stations.
The broadcasters and their supporters in Congress have accused Mr.
Kennard and the F.C.C. of abdicating their responsibility to protect the
integrity of the spectrum from being polluted by too many signals.
"The
F.C.C. has moved without any consideration of the facts," said Representative
John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan. "This is a reasonable common sense
compromise. It will protect the broadcasters, it will protect the licensees, and
above all else, it will protect listeners of the FM radio spectrum."
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LOAD-DATE: April 14, 2000 
