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More Background
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Local communities around the country are excited by this
opportunity and are applying for LPFM licenses in droves.
The first two rounds of applications for these LPFM licenses have
already been submitted, resulting in nearly 1300 applications from
religious groups, local governments, health and social service groups,
youth and senior groups and others. The new rules allow small
non-commercial non-profit groups, libraries, churches, civic and community
organizations to apply for licenses to operate simple, inexpensive local
radio stations. Individuals cannot apply for licenses, but any group can
apply, from a local health organization to the Rotary Club. The equipment
costs of these stations can be as low as a few thousand dollars. Hopefully
hundreds of these groups will be able to build these non-commercial
micro-radio licenses across the country over the next year.
Congress should conduct full hearings on low-power radio before
they take any action.
A lot of people care about LPFM, and there is a significant debate. It
would be a slap in the face to the thousands of Americans who played by
the rules and participated in the FCC rulemaking process to see their
dreams of neighborhood radio dashed in a sneaky lobbyist maneuver.
Citizens groups have filed comments and even commissioned and completed
engineering studies to address all legitimate scientific questions.
Attaching this bill as a rider to a completely unrelated appropriations
(spending) bill is a shortcut around our democratic system of governance.
If Congress feels the need to exert oversight over engineering
decisions at the FCC, they must have full hearings, listen to the public
and to the experts on both sides, and then vote on legislation based on
its own merits. One of our societies greatest challenges is widespread
voter apathy and the political disengagement of our citizenry. The
creation of the low power radio service should be a case study in
Democracy at Work, not a glaring example of the domination of American
politics by cynical corporate forces.
The call for field testing is bogus.
The engineering issues are clear, with testing of 75 different consumer
receivers now in the public record. Though a call for field testing may
sound reasonable on its face, it is in fact a patently wasteful and
fruitless exercise. Field testing does not test interference to consumers
radio receivers. Interference to consumers' receivers is the only real
question in this proceeding which merited scientific testing and scrutiny.
Field testing only tests how radio waves travel over the surface of the
earth, which has been abundantly understood for the past 50 years. One
can only conclude that the special interest opposition to LPFM hopes to
simply outspend tenfold the LPFM advocates by continuing to demand ever
more frivolous testing regimes for questions that are already well
understood. The testing program proposed in S.B. 3020 is an example of
big, wasteful government at its worst. The real goal of this legislation
is to stall the implementation of LPFM until after the Presidential
election, when the NAB and other corporate interests hope to get a more
sympathetic hearing of their special interest demands from a new FCC
Chairperson.
The FCC has adopted expedited rules for dealing with interference.
The FCC is so confident that there will be no serious interference
issues that in their final rules they have a special, expedited
interference resolution process that will immediately address an incumbent
broadcasters concerns. The incumbent broadcasters now have more
interference protection from LPFMs than they have from their fellow
incumbent broadcasters' stations. LPFM operators must deal with
individual listener interference complaints immediately- if there are more
than a handful, they must immediately shut down until all problems are
resolved.
Reading Services to the Blind is fully, permanently protected by
the FCC rules.
The FCC has fully, permanently protected the Reading Services to the
Blind. No LPFMs can be allocated on a third adjacent channel to a station
that carries a radio reading service. The actual text of the rule is
below: Page 46 (a)(2) LP100 stations must satisfy the second adjacent
channel minimum distance separation requirements of subsection (a)(1) with
respect to any third adjacent channel that, as of September 20th, 2000,
(the adoption date of this memorandum and order) broadcasts a radio
reading service via a subcarrier frequency. This means that a Low Power FM
station will never be allocated anywhere near an existing reading service.
There were never more than a handful of LPFMs that could have been
allocated near a reading service in the first place, and it is highly
doubtful that there would have been any interference experienced even
without these new regulations. Full power stations, on the other hand,
cause interference to reading services as a matter of course. A reading
service which is interfered with by a full power station has no recourse
to complain, and this is a given aspect of our radio environment. It is
wrong that our print impaired citizens are only allowed an inferior,
second-class technology to hear reading services, but that is the fault of
the currently existing full power stations, not the new low power
stations. It is deeply ironic and shamelessly opportunistic to hear the
very stations that already impair reception for the blind pose as
defenders of those with disabilities.
A radio service identical to the proposed low-power fm service
already exists.
The FCC in its January 20th report and order was quite conservative in
extending protection out to the second adjacent channels. This means that
under the new FCC rules, if there is an existing station at 91.5, the FCC
will not allow new LPFM stations at 91.1, 91.3, 91.5, 91.7, or 91.9
anywhere within a radius of between 29 and 130 kilometers, depending on
the existing stations current power. Across the US there are currently
thousands of low power radio stations known as translators. These stations
are used to extend the coverage of full power radio stations- for some
political and economic reasons, they are not allowed to originate their
own programming. There are many of these translator stations operating on
the second and third adjacent channels next to full power radio stations.
They operate at 10 to 250 watts, and use the very same transmitters that
LPFM stations will use. The FCC based its decision low-power fm on the
actual performance of these little radio stations that already operate
interference free on our nations airwaves. The actual interference
record on these stations is far more useful than any results that millions
of dollars of extraneous testing could yield.
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