On January 20, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a new low-power FM service (LPFM). This service will create at least one thousand new 100-watt non-commercial FM stations around the nation, as well as untold additional stations at 10 watts or less. The FCC believes that this decision will allow the "little guy" to become a radio broadcaster. In reality, this decision will cause massive interference problems for FM listeners and was approved without proper consideration of technical and other concerns raised by this new service. Congress should support legislation to reverse the FCC decision for the following reasons:

• It reverses decades of established FCC policy that specifically argued against licensing of low-power operations of all kinds, on the basis that such licenses are an ineffective use of spectrum.

• The FCC did no field testing of any of its findings. Indeed, every single outside research study provided by both proponents and opponents of LPFM disagreed with the Commission’s own research, which amounted to little more than a 19-page "preliminary report."

• As FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth stated, the decision to approve an LPFM service was a "rush to judgment." The FCC took 7 years to prescribe a low-power TV service, and over 10 years to approve digital television. The fact that it took just a few months to approve LPFM is ludicrous.

• In approving these new LPFM licenses, the Commission admitted that they will not be protected from interference from existing full-power stations. Thus, the Commission will be licensing thousands of stations that can’t reach their intended audience with a clear signal. This likely means the small stations will illegally increase their power to reach a meaningful audience, and thus cause even greater interference to existing stations (radio listeners).

• The FCC made this decision in part to reverse the intent of Congress in passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It did so to counteract the perception that consolidation within the radio industry has led to less diversity for listeners. Yet in fact, consolidation has increased diversity by giving broadcasters the ability to serve markets with multiple signals, thus allowing for greater programming choice. In 1996 there were 70 radio programming formats nationally; today, there are 91. In the Washington D.C. market since 1996, six new Spanish language stations with diverse formats of their own and a Korean language station have been added.

• The FCC does not have the resources or manpower needed to oversee these hundreds or thousands of new stations operating at low power. The continued existence of "pirate" radio operators shows the FCC cannot control illegal usage of the airwaves, let alone oversee thousands of new LPFM stations with inexperienced operators.

• Commissioner Powell dissented in part to the order because of the potential "cost to existing stations". He stated: "There presently exist many small and independent stations across the country… This admirable group includes a fair number of stations owned by minorities and women… It would be a perverse result, indeed, if these stations were to fail or the quality of locally originated programming suffer, because new LPFM stations diluted their already tenuous base of support."

• The Commission did not fully explore the impact of licensing low-power FM stations on the emerging technology of in-band, on-channel (IBOC) digital radio. Instead, it based its determination that LPFM would not interfere with IBOC on computer runs, not on actual field tests.