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December 19, 2000, Tuesday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column
1; Business/Financial Desk
LENGTH: 1141
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HEADLINE: Congress Severely Curtails Plan For
Low-Power Radio Stations
BYLINE: By STEPHEN
LABATON
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 18
BODY:
Tucked away in the budget legislation that
President Clinton will soon sign is a provision sought by the nation's largest
broadcasters that sharply curtails the ambitious plans of the Federal
Communications Commission to issue licenses for low-power FM
radio stations to 1,000 or more schools, churches and other small community
organizations.
The provision, by setting new technical standards and
repealing those already determined by the F.C.C., makes it all but impossible
for licenses to be issued in cities of even modest size. Officials say that the
tough standards will mean that at most a handful of stations in the least
populated parts of the country may be started, although even that is now
uncertain.
Taking a direct slap at the regulators, the new law shifts
the policy-making authority from the F.C.C. to Congress to set standards and
issue licenses for low-power FM radio stations. This is the
first time in recent memory that the lawmakers actually stripped the agency of
the power to manage an important part of the spectrum.
The F.C.C.'s
low-power radio plan was conceived last January to counter the huge
consolidation in the broadcasting industry that the agency's chairman, William
E. Kennard, concluded had led to a sharp decline in the diversity of voices on
the airwaves. Mr. Kennard saw the plan as a cornerstone of his agenda to promote
civil rights issues at the F.C.C.
Large broadcasters, including National
Public Radio, had complained that the creation of so many low-power stations
would have produced interference with their broadcasts. The F.C.C. countered
that the true concern of the broadcasters was new competition from small
stations.
Today Mr. Kennard said the legislation "shows the dangers of
politicizing spectrum management."
"This is a resource that everyone has
to share," Mr. Kennard said in an interview. "We can't allow people who have the
spectrum to use their political clout to shut out voices that don't have the
same clout. This highlights the power of incumbency. Companies that have
spectrum guard it jealously, and they can use Congress to prevent new voices
from having access to the airwaves."
Known as the Radio Broadcasting
Preservation Act of 2000, the law takes power away from the F.C.C. -- an
independent regulatory agency -- to issue important rules for licenses for FM
radio stations and gives it to Congress, where the biggest broadcasters have
considerably more influence.
If the agency wants to restore the
low-power program to its original size, the law instructs the regulators to
conduct more studies of the effect of the signals of low-power stations on
larger radio stations and then come back to Congress, which will now be the new
rule-making body, to decide whether to issue more low-power radio station
licenses.
The budget measure also contains a provision that effectively
releases National Public Radio from offering free air time to political
candidates. A 1996 law had given the candidates free access, although it was
only used for the first time this year when some candidates noticed it. National
Public Radio executives had feared that more candidates would demand air time,
particularly because radio stations that had denied the air time could have had
their licenses revoked.
But a provision added to the budget legislation
by Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, with the support of Representative
Billy Tauzin, Republican of Louisiana, says there is no penalty for any station
that refuses to provide such air time. As a result, National Public Radio
executives now think stations will be able to deny free air time to candidates
without any consequences.
The provisions on political access and
low-power radio demonstrate the emerging influence on Capitol Hill of National
Public Radio, once considered an attractive political target of conservative
Republicans but more recently an institution that held as much sway with the
lawmakers as some of the leading for-profit broadcasters.
In the case of
low-power radio, National Public Radio prevailed with the assistance of the
commercial broadcasters. A chief supporter of the provision to roll back the
low-power radio plan was Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader,
who has been a friend of Edward O. Fritts, the president and chief executive of
the National Association of Broadcasters, since their college days at the
University of Mississippi.
The F.C.C. has received more than 1,200
applications from organizations in 20 states for low-power radio stations.
Officials at the agency said today that, at best, a tiny fraction of those
organizations will now be able to broadcast.
The White House had
supported the F.C.C. plan and had criticized efforts to scale it back. In recent
weeks, administration officials had been critical of the proposal that was put
into the budget package.
But because the legislation is dominated by
provisions and compromises that the president wanted, aides said the low-power
radio provision was not enough to provoke a veto.
The measure will be
signed by President Clinton just as the F.C.C. would have issued its first batch
of new licenses to schools and churches. Instead, F.C.C. officials suggested
wryly today that the Congress had converted the plan into "our new rural
program."
The nation's major broadcasters, joined by National Public
Radio, had accused the F.C.C. of shoddy technical work and said the original
plan would lead to tremendous amounts of signal interference that would have
created poor reception for more established radio stations.
"Throughout
the F.C.C.'s rule-making process to create a new low-power FM
service, we have cited LPFM's potential interference to the services of
full-power stations, including vital radio reading services for the blind," said
a joint statement issued by Kevin Klose, the president of National Public Radio,
and Ben Martin, president of the International Association of Audio Information
Services. "This is the practical, rational way to achieve the laudable goal of
compatibility between existing public radio stations and the new, low-power
service."
Mr. Fritts of the National Association of Broadcasters said
his organization was "pleased that Congress has protected radio listeners
against additional interference that would have been caused by the F.C.C.
low-power FM radio initiative."
But Mr. Kennard and his
supporters at civil rights and community groups countered that the broadcasters
were making a sham complaint. They said their engineering tests determined
conclusively that any signal interference would be minimal at most, and could be
dealt with through administrative proceedings, and that the interference
argument was intended to mask the larger broadcasters' real concerns about
growing competition for listeners.
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