__Up against the megastations in a battle for the airwaves, do-it-yourself DJs are deploying two potent weapons - 100-watt transmitters and the global reach of the Web. __
"Fucking magic," Craven Moorehead says with a grin. The burly electronics repairman turned free-speech rebel has just switched on a homemade FM radio transmitter that's plastered with a sticker that reads: DIE FCC SCUM! Hidden amid the sprawl of tract homes and strip malls near Moorehead's bungalow on the outskirts of Tampa, Florida, the transmitter is part of an ingenious network of makeshift production studios, Internet feeds, and antennas designed to air his illicit Party Pirate broadcasts - while also keeping FCC agents from tracking the signal and shutting him down.
Moorehead, whose Web site (www.cravenmoorehead.com) hypes him as "the world's most notorious radio pirate," emerges from a dark closet packed with inch-thick transmission cables and a dusty collection of vintage radio gear. A self-described white-trash biker, the 45-year-old Floridian has waist-length blond hair that spills out from under a baseball cap emblazoned with a Confederate flag and the words TOMMY HILLBILLY. He saunters out into the daylight toward his 1985 Dodge half-ton. Plopping into the driver's seat, he cranks up the engine and tunes in 102.1 FM - the frequency he's illegally staked out since first hitting the airwaves in 1994 with a quirky programming home brew that includes biker rock, hip hop, country, and more.
"Tampa radio needs an enema," he grunts as the stereo thumps out a grating death-metal beat. "And we're gonna give it one right now."
Moorehead's real name is Doug Brewer - Craven Moorehead is a nickname he picked up at biker rallies - but he's completely serious about the passions of his adopted persona. He loves to rage against what he calls "corporate radio greedmongers" - media behemoths like Clear Channel Communications, Infinity Broadcasting, and Citadel Communications that have consolidated their hold over the FM airwaves in recent years. The current reality is a far cry from radio's early days in the '20s, when just about anyone with a transmitter could stake a claim to the dial. Indeed, the term "pirate" was coined when the airwaves were entirely unregulated, and newcomers often broadcast using frequencies already claimed by others. "It was a mom-and-pop business at the beginning," says Tom Taylor, a radio industry expert with the publication M Street Daily. "The little guys used to rule the airwaves." Even after the government licensing took effect in the '30s, federal regulations restricted national conglomerates from owning more than seven AM and seven FM stations - making it easy for smaller broadcasters to keep control of stations in local markets.
But that's all changed - especially since 1996, when telecommunications laws were revamped, giving large broadcasters the right to own an unlimited number of radio stations nationally (up to eight in a single market). Clear Channel, Infinity, and Citadel have since increased their combined holdings from about 80 stations to approximately 1,200. An accompanying merger-and-acquisition frenzy has bid up prices for existing stations and frequencies to unprecedented levels, all but locking out independent broadcasters from most major markets and reducing the number of owners by more than 20 percent. The biggest players have bought up local outlets that vie with their own, then changed the stations' formats to less competitive genres. They've racked up record profits by consolidating the operations of thousands of stations, slashing local staff, and targeting national advertisers, to whom they can now sell airtime in bulk.
The result, Moorehead says as he tunes in Clear Channel's Thunder 103.5 FM, is the kind of depersonalized "classic schlock" now blaring from his radio. "Some asshole in LA is programming this and 10 other stations at the same time," he says of the heavy-rotation rock tunes, truck commercials, and canned announcements delivered by satellite. "They've taken away all the personality. When you turn your radio on, it doesn't feel like there's anybody there with you - because there isn't anybody there."
In response, Moorehead and a loose collection of free-speech advocates, political extremists, and would-be DJs have been waging a grassroots war involving guerrilla-style piracy as well as legal petitions - both approaches aimed at persuading the FCC to license a portion of the FM band to independent "low-power" stations. Low-power broadcasters transmit at under 100 watts on inexpensive equipment, their signals employing the same high-fidelity frequency-modulation technology that first prompted radio engineers to dub FM stereo broadcasts "fucking magic" back in the '60s. These signals have a range of only about six miles, but that's far enough for the sort of offbeat, local, and community-oriented programming most low-power FM advocates favor.
As it turns out, FCC chair William Kennard wants LPFM, too. Long concerned that industry consolidation has been undermining diversity of both station ownership and programming, Kennard, a former college-radio DJ, spearheaded an FCC vote in January to create an LPFM service for 10- and 100-watt noncommercial stations. "This is an antidote to consolidation," Kennard says. "It creates a vehicle to speak to folks that no one is speaking to."
The decision has been vehemently opposed by NPR and by the National Association of Broadcasters, a powerful industry lobby. Both groups claim that LPFM broadcasts will interfere with existing signals, and the NAB is trying, through Congress and the courts, to overturn the FCC's ruling. In April, the group convinced the House of Representatives to pass a bill that would cut the number of licenses by at least two-thirds. (At press time, the bill was before a Senate committee.) Kennard accused the NAB of presenting fraudulent evidence to Congress to support the trade association's position, calling the radio establishment "an industry that doesn't want new voices, so they've resorted to misinformation." The chair has vowed to begin granting the first of 1,000 or more licenses by early summer.
In public pronouncements on LPFM, Kennard has said his decision to support the service was heavily influenced by more than 3,000 comments filed by everyone from the United Church of Christ to zydeco music fans to the Navajo Nation. But many LPFM advocates say just as much credit should go to avowed outlaws like Moorehead and Stephen Dunifer, the anarchist founder of the California station Free Radio Berkeley, and arguably the father of the LPFM movement. A self-taught electronics engineer, Dunifer designed inexpensive, build-it-yourself transmitter kits, and in 1993 proclaimed his desire to "let 1,000 transmitters bloom." He began distributing them to pirates like Moorehead, who then assembled and sold them via the Internet. Although it's impossible to know how many pirates have since taken to the airwaves, FCC agents have busted about 150 per year - many of whom simply move their shoebox-sized transmitters and go back on the air. Their campaign of civil-disobedience broadcasts has grown into a larger movement of Internet-based political organizing that finally generated the petitions that convinced the FCC to study the issue and endorse the new service.
Kennard admits the pirates "demonstrated that diverse voices weren't being heard on conventional radio." But he says their efforts had no impact on the decision to inaugurate the new service. "LPFM isn't a way of legitimizing pirates," he says, noting he's shut down more of them than any other chair in the history of the FCC.
Not everyone buys that. "The pirates were crucial," says Robert W. McChesney, a communications professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy, a book critical of media consolidation. "They showed the FCC that low-power broadcasting is here whether you like it or not. And that they're going to have to deal with it."
These are heady times for radio fans eager to take back the airwaves, not only because of the FCC's decision, but because the tools needed to alter the status quo have never been so accessible. Even as cheap, off-the-shelf components and simple transmitter designs have made it easier than ever to set up an FM station, the Internet and a host of digital technologies are helping radio do-it-yourselfers exchange advice, equipment, and programming. They're also allowing just about anyone with a few thousand dollars and a high-speed Internet connection to set up a radio station on the Web. The result is a mini-revolution in which various technologies - applied in old-fashioned local broadcasts and through streaming-audio webcasts - are helping all kinds of people make themselves heard.
"This is an area in which it looks like technology can open things up in a way that even the corporate giants can't prevent," says McChesney. "It's empowering a lot of people."
Take me and my friends, for instance. In 1997, frustrated after five of the six commercial stations in our rural Colorado listening area came under the control of a single company, we tried to start our town's first community station. But huge startup costs, including standard FCC licenses selling at auction for $100,000 or more, stopped us cold. Then, via the Internet, we heard about Craven Moorehead and a community of other helpful radioheads. After downloading how-to information from sites like the Free Radio Network (www.frn.net) and Dunifer's Free Radio Berkeley (www.freeradio.org), we decided to try Moorehead's equipment. With only a few thousand in startup costs, our station, Radio Free Minturn, began airing an eclectic mix of music and commentary.
We never intended to be outlaws, though. So when the FCC showed up about a year later and threatened us with a total of $100,000 in fines and jail time if our broadcasts persisted, we immediately shut down the station for good. After that, we gathered hundreds of signatures in order to file a petition with the FCC supporting LPFM service, and we have since enlisted enough community and financial support to submit an application for one of the new licenses.
Not everyone in the LPFM movement has that opportunity. Pirates like Moorehead who refused to shut down their stations within 24 hours of an FCC warning will never be able to get a license. And while Minturn's rural location has a handful of open FM frequencies available, the FCC's restrictions on channel interference allow no room for low-power stations in big cities like Chicago and New York, where airwaves are already crowded. Moreover, the rules for the LPFM service allow only noncommercial community, religious, or educational groups based in their broadcast area to apply, closing out those who want to run commercial operations.
Of course, LPFM is not the only way into the do-it-yourself radio game. While a handful of unrepentant pirates continue their guerrilla war, other shoestring broadcasters have found a voice on the Internet. Using audio-streaming software and services like Yahoo! Broadcast (www.broadcast.com) and Live365.com (www.live365.com), at least 9,000 stations have established an online presence that can reach listeners around the globe. And because the medium is free of the frequency interference problems that limit the number of FM stations in a given area, any number of webcasters can start their own stations - without an FCC license.
The cost of entry still isn't as cheap as starting an LPFM station, which can be set up for about $1,500. But Internet radio experts say a proliferation of new webcasting services, high-speed broadband networks, and falling computer prices are chipping away at the cost of configuring a basic Web operation.
"This is very quickly going to be within reach of just about anyone with access to a computer," says Peggy Miles, author of The Internet World Guide to Webcasting. While those who want to reach thousands of simultaneous listeners must still pay established services like Yahoo! Broadcast and RealNetworks up to $5,000 a month, new providers like Live365.com allow webcasters to reach several hundred listeners free of charge. Meanwhile, as more broadband networks come online over the next few years, the cost of the high-speed lines needed to pump out a live webcast is expected to plummet.
Broadband won't just lower the cost - its fat data pipes will transform Internet radio from a tin-eared curiosity to a robust high-fidelity medium. And with wireless Internet and a coming array of audio-enabled PDAs and cell phone hybrids, webcast fans will one day be able to tune in their favorite stations on devices that are as convenient as transistor radios.
It's unclear just how close we are to this radio frontier. Analysts at Jupiter Communications predict that the number of households with high-speed Internet access - about 1.4 million today - will grow tenfold by 2003. Meanwhile, wireless Internet devices are already appearing on the market, although their widespread use for radio isn't expected anytime soon. "If you talk to Broadcast.com cofounder Mark Cuban, it's about a three- to five-year time frame," says Ron Rodrigues, editor of the trade publication Radio & Records. "But I would say we're a good five to ten years away."
Regardless, Rodrigues sees huge potential for webcasting. "Just imagine putting a speaker on the back of your PalmPilot and pulling up your favorite station no matter where you are in the world," he says. "Then you'll have a substantive alternative to over-the-air broadcasting."
Webcasting and traditional LPFM radio are different approaches, but they're mutually supportive. Indeed, some of the most popular webcasts today are feeds from local outlets in California, like KCRW, Santa Monica's public station, and tiny KPIG in Watsonville. Limited somewhat by its rural address south of Santa Cruz, KPIG took its vibrant mix of folk, rock, and ethnic music to the Web in 1995. It has since increased its online audience to about 60,000 listeners. That's about 10,000 more than listen to its terrestrial broadcasts - enough to make it the most popular station on the Web today.
Future LPFM stations will also use webcasting to expand their reach. Although they're at opposite ends of the technology spectrum, LPFM and Internet radio "are very similar in both origin and concept," notes Peggy Miles. "Both were created out of frustration with the status quo by people who were running these stations from their basements. Webcasting is like low-power radio on steroids. You can have any format, any topic - no matter how narrow. And you can find an audience anywhere."
Ed Lozama plans to do just that. The director of the Haitian Community Radio Project in Naples, Florida, Lozama will create LPFM programming mainly for Haitians and Latinos in his area. But in addition to providing local news updates in Haitian and Creole, Lozama says, "We want to do news from Haiti and Latin America, as well as shows informing people about immigration issues. By broadcasting over the Web, we can serve and get input from Haitian people all over the world."
LPFM broadcasters argue that cyberspace is a powerful way to distribute programs. During last fall's WTO riots in Seattle, Free Radio Berkeley's Stephen Dunifer and a group of local activists set up a studio and sent feeds called Voices of Occupied Seattle over the Internet to be rebroadcast by other LPFM stations. "We see this evolving into a decentralized global news network," says Dunifer, who has been packaging Free Radio Berkeley's programming into MP3 files and distributing them on the Net since 1997. "Community stations can put programming onto the Net, then stations in other parts of the world can rebroadcast them."
Others have found different ways to leverage the new technology. Two years after Stephen Provizer's Radio Free Allston was shut down, the Boston-based media activist is sending his eclectic, multilingual broadcasts out over the Net. A dozen local supporters pick up his signal and feed it to listeners using tiny - and entirely legal - AM transmitters that broadcast at only a 10th of a watt, each reaching about a mile. "This isn't a long-term solution," says Provizer, whose plan to launch an LPFM station has thus far been thwarted by a lack of available frequencies in the Boston area. "But it's better than not being on the air at all."
Moorehead, too, began webcasting his Party Pirate shows after FCC agents raided his home-based station in 1997. Local sympathizers downloaded his Net feed and rebroadcast it on the same FM frequency his old station once used. Moorehead and his phantom supporters have since pieced together a loose, illicit network that now stretches far beyond his Tampa neighborhood. Broadcasts are first beamed from a secret studio to his house, where he redirects the signal to both a Net audio feed and a legal directional antenna on his roof. Transmitters in other locations then pick up the broadcast either from the Net or the antenna, amplify the signal, and rebroadcast it over the FM airwaves.
"It's exciting to be back on the air," Moorehead tells me as he stands outside one of his secret relay stations. "Well, sort of. It's sort of exciting - and sort of scary."
As unlikely a leader as he may seem, Moorehead's single-minded determination to take back the airwaves shows how one person can spark a rebellion. He got involved in the movement more by chance than out of a sense of conviction. A born tinkerer with a knack for fixing anything electronic, Moorehead built his first crystal-radio set at age 7 and embarked on what would become a lifelong romance with radio electronics. He was kicked out of high school for riding his chopper down a hallway and eventually opened his own repair shop, where he sold two-way radio gear and leased a network of relay stations.
These included the huge 180-foot antenna tower he built through his roof in the late '80s, and which he loaded with ham antennas and radio repeaters for his customers, as well as for the local police crime-watch system and the county emergency service. He added a star and Christmas lights each winter, attracting hordes of locals who drove by to ogle what amounted to Tampa's tallest Christmas tree.
"It was a traffic jam in front of the house, so I put a little FM transmitter up there and broadcast Christmas songs so people could have something to listen to," he recalls of his first foray into DJing. "Then a neighbor suggested I leave it up and play some rock 'n' roll. So I did."
The weak, under-a-watt broadcast was perfectly legal. That is, until another friend, who lived a few miles away, complained he couldn't hear the music. "So I got ballsy and cranked it up," Moorehead says. Careful not to step on other stations' signals, he picked a frequency two full channels away from anyone else's. Thanks to his location on a hill, a decibel-boosting antenna array affixed to a tower, and his persistent tinkering with the transmitter, Moorehead succeeded in sending a clean 100-watt signal as far as St. Petersburg Beach, about 25 miles away.
Moorehead converted his garage into a broadcast studio and began mixing some of his death-metal and biker-rock favorites, interspersing the songs with the raw, sex-charged banter and expletives of his alter ego. A local alternative weekly christened him Best Pig of the Airwaves; Moorehead gladly stole the bad-boy title away from five-time winner Bubba the Love Sponge, a professional DJ at Tampa's 98 Rock station, whose raunchy antics had garnered respectable Arbitron ratings.
Moorehead's troubles began soon after that station's chief engineer complained to FCC officials, who paid him a visit in early 1996. First they issued a written warning that he ignored; several months later, they slapped him with a $1,000 fine. But unlike most pirates, who either move their transmitters or stop broadcasting altogether, Moorehead continued to air his program and refused to pay the FCC fine. Figuring he had every right to start his own legal station, he asked the FCC for "special temporary authority" to keep the station on the air while he applied for a license to construct a 100-watt noncommercial station. Still banned at the time, the license for low-power transmission was denied.
Meanwhile, his two-way radio business was rapidly losing customers as old systems were junked and replaced by cell phones, so Moorehead began buying cheap FM transmitter kits from Dunifer's Free Radio Berkeley, assembling them into plug-and-play systems and reselling them via a Web page. His handiwork was soon being touted on pirate radio sites. "If it weren't for him, Dunifer's appleseeds would never have spread as far as they did," says John Anderson, who moderates About.com's Guide to Pirate/Free Radio, a popular site for LPFMers. "Before Moorehead got involved, pirate radio was mostly the realm of the radio geek. But he assembled Dunifer's kits - practically at cost - and got the stations on the air."
The strategy had its risks. Although it's legal to sell transmitter kits unassembled, fully built kits require an FCC certification that Moorehead didn't have. Nevertheless, about 1,000 stations were soon transmitting, thanks to his equipment and expertise. "We'd ordered one of Dunifer's first kits, but we couldn't make it work," says Joan D'ark, cofounder of Tennessee's Free Radio Memphis. "Then we found Moorehead on the Web and sent it to him to fix. Within a few days we were on the air."
Moorehead was equally generous with his station's airtime. As friends and listeners asked to DJ their own shows, he obliged, filling both his house and the airwaves with a diverse crowd of head-banging punkers, hip hop revolutionaries, evangelical Christians, and country music DJs. "We were basically public access radio," says Moorehead. "If their shows sucked, I'd tell 'em. But I'd still let them be on the air."
That's how things stood when FCC officials filed for a warrant to seize his equipment. And when a background check showed that Moorehead possessed multiple gun permits, the agency called in backup. Although he faced only civil charges for his illegal broadcasts, a heavily armed, 25-plus force raided Moorehead's home before dawn on November 17, 1997. Accompanied by a helicopter and brandishing laser-sighted automatic weapons, officers from five federal and state agencies spent 12 hours yanking out almost every piece of electronics equipment in the house. They tore down the antenna tower and left Moorehead red-faced and humiliated as satellite trucks from every TV station in Tampa broadcast the debacle on the evening news.
Moorehead appealed the seizure, arguing that the bulk of the audio and video equipment taken in the raid had nothing to do with the radio station. But a US District Court ruled against him in February. (If he's caught broadcasting again, he'll face up to $100,000 in fines and a yearlong jail term.) In March, the FCC nabbed him for the Internet sale of a fully assembled 20-watt transmitter and fined him $10,000 for selling uncertified equipment. Moorehead's appealing that bust, too.
Encouraging as it is, the final version of the FCC's ruling on LPFM left people on both sides of the issue fuming. The move was a clear victory for those LPFMers who qualify to get in on the licensing, but a lot of people are left out in the cold. Pirates like Moorehead - barred from receiving a license because of his illegal activities and because his isn't considered a community station - have tried to convince others to arm themselves with illegal transmitters and take to the airwaves in protest. Despite such pleas, most pirates have instead decided to try going legal. Radio Free Minturn, for example, recently changed its name to Minturn Public Radio (www.minturnradio.com) and has set about drafting mission statements and searching the FM band for available frequencies. "We've gone from criminal status to potential pillars of the community," says station cofounder Scott Willoughby, who recently won the backing of Minturn's town council.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups and Web sites that once aided the pirate cause are now serving as clearinghouses for those trying to start legitimate LPFM stations. "We're getting inquiries from all over," says Joan D'ark, whose Free Radio Memphis was eventually shut down and who now works with Philadelphia's Prometheus Radio Project. The not-for-profit association's Web site (www.prometheus.tao.ca) has a 22-page primer detailing every aspect of setting up a low-power station, as well as information on workshops for broadcast fledglings. "The interest is phenomenal," D'ark says.
While people like Ed Lozama are targeting Florida's Haitian community, activists in Minnesota are reaching out to tens of thousands of Hmong, Cambodian, and Vietnamese immigrants. "A big part of this is about keeping these people's languages alive," says Bryan Thao Worra, who is working with St. Paul's Southeast Asian Ministries to create a station that runs citizenship education programs, call-in shows on health and safety, and news from the immigrants' homelands.
Others are working to reach homebound seniors in rural towns like Colby, Kansas. With the population aging throughout the area, minister Larry Booth wants to air call-in shows offering health advice and roundtables discussing local politics. "I'd also like to see some entertainment," says Booth. "I grew up when the Grand Ole Opry used to air radio shows that were like jam sessions. We've got local musicians who could do the same thing."
But LPFM fans largely pleased with the arrangement see a major drawback in the new rules, which could keep many from qualifying: Low-power stations must be at least two channels away from existing ones, on what are known as third-adjacent frequencies. "This represents a serious downside," says Don Schellhardt, cofounder of the Amherst Alliance, an LPFM advocacy group. "It potentially cuts out the low-income, inner-city people who need this service the most."
Schellhardt was among the first to petition the FCC for an LPFM license, and he recently filed paperwork asking that the agency allow at least two LPFM stations to operate in urban areas as "demonstration stations." During a two-year experimental period, the frequencies would be closely monitored, but interference restrictions would be waived. If problems didn't arise during that time, the new stations would be issued standard licenses.
Schellhardt has also asked the FCC to show greater leniency toward former illegal broadcasters. "These are the people who've fought the hardest for this," he says. "It would be a shame if people like Stephen Dunifer didn't get a license. It would be like Moses not getting to the promised land."
Of course, Moses has to want to get there. And for a pious free-speech zealot like Dunifer, the notion of embracing an LPFM service he views as fundamentally flawed is distasteful at best: "It still doesn't redress the really grievous situation, which is that the corporations will still have 98 percent of the airwaves." He continues to call for more illegal broadcasts. "The only reason we've gotten this far with the FCC is because of massive civil disobedience. And as far as I'm concerned, they have to be pushed further - by any means necessary."
Dunifer has long maintained that his unlicensed broadcasts are protected by the First Amendment. Although he powered down his station two years ago after the FCC won a court injunction against him, he continues to press his case on free-speech grounds, arguing that the government has failed to create a licensing scheme that satisfies the public interest. That case, which he lost in a San Francisco district court, is now under appeal.
Dunifer says he plans to apply for an LPFM license "as a matter of principle." The move is as political as it is pragmatic. Preliminary searches for FM frequencies in Berkeley have yielded not a single FM-dial location that satisfies the FCC's spacing requirements. Adamant that the rule is biased against city-based applicants, Dunifer plans to file his application with a request for a waiver allowing the station to locate on a second-adjacent frequency. "We're going to urge others to file for the waivers, too," he says. Dunifer argues that the third-adjacent requirement is overly cautious and was included only to appease the National Association of Broadcasters. "This has nothing to do with signal interference. This is about interference with the NAB's profits."
The FCC's Kennard calls that "a fair statement" and says the NAB has a long history of trying to stop new market entrants. "We knew the firestorm of criticism we would get from broadcasters trying to protect their markets," he says. "That's why we proceeded so cautiously in the rule-making process." He says this led to the FCC's decision against earlier plans to allow narrower channel spacing and higher-wattage LPFM signals.
Nonetheless, the NAB - contending that even third-adjacent signals would cause technical interference and confuse listeners - took its fight to Congress. Its lobbyists circulated a CD they said simulated the kind of interference that would be caused by LPFM service, and in late March convinced the House Commerce Committee to submit to Congress the Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act of 2000. As drafted, the bill would drastically reduce the number of LPFM stations to be licensed by requiring them to adhere to tougher interference standards.
The NAB also sued the FCC in federal court, alleging that the commission capriciously ignored the technical-interference issues raised in its own studies, as well as in research conducted by engineers at NPR. "We're all for the First Amendment," says NAB spokesperson Dennis Wharton. "But if everyone's a broadcaster, then no one's going to hear what's being broadcast. Listen to AM radio at night. That's the type of interference that the FCC apparently plans to introduce to the FM dial." In testimony before the House Commerce Committee, NPR officials also threatened legal action.
Yet experts note that the standards now governing interference were created in 1962, decades before the advent of the now-ubiquitous digital tuners that can automatically lock on to an FM signal. "The coverage areas of LPFM stations are just too small to seriously impact the bigger stations," says Jim McDonald, an independent broadcast engineer with Wind River Broadcast Center, a radio engineering consultancy. "On the whole, it's not likely to be a problem." The FCC's own studies agree. Kennard notes that 400 radio stations now operate legally on third-adjacent channels without a single interference complaint. "The FM service isn't rocket science," he says. "It's 50-year-old technology that we've studied exhaustively. This is not about technical interference, it's about incumbents trying to hoard their piece of the broadcasting pie."
At a news conference in March, he blasted the NAB's lobbying efforts and labeled its CD of simulated interference a "fraudulent ... misrepresentation of the engineering facts. The idea of small, 100-watt community-based stations realistically causing engineering or competitive threats to large, area-wide stations is implausible." Kennard called the Preservation Act "blatantly protectionist" and criticized NPR for backing it. "I can only conclude that NPR is motivated by the same interests as the commercial groups - to protect their own incumbency," he said. "That these people see LPFM as a threat is sad. They've done much in the past to promote opportunity and a diversity of voices."
Whether the new service will proceed as planned remains uncertain, but the prospects for its survival look pretty good right now. Whatever happens to the legislation in Congress, President Clinton has gone on record in support of LPFM, and is expected to veto any bill that tries to undo the FCC decision. Meanwhile, the FCC is moving expeditiously to put the application process in place. And industry observers say the NAB's court appeals are unlikely to discourage the commission from issuing at least the first batch of LPFM licenses.
"It's important to remember that this is an election year, and Bill Kennard might not be FCC chair next year," notes M Street Daily's Tom Taylor. "He really believes in LPFM, and he wants to leave some legacies behind. Trouble is, he's running out of time."
The arrival of LPFM service comes at a moment when competition for listeners' eardrums is more intense than ever. Not only will the stations have to vie with nearby commercial operators, they'll also have to contend with new satellite radio services capable of delivering more than 100 crystal-clear stations to anyone willing to buy a digital receiver and pay $10 a month. Then, of course, there's the Net, a potentially limitless medium where 1,000 new webcasters are grabbing bandwidth annually.
With such an explosion in listening choices, it's not hard to foresee a day when tuning in to a conventional radio will feel as old-fashioned as using a set-top antenna to watch TV. Yet LPFM advocates are surprisingly confident about their future. "There's always going to be a need for local programming," says About.com's John Anderson. "Why should you use the Internet to broadcast the fact that the local church is having a bake sale or that someone's dog is lost? It just doesn't make sense."
Even Internet radio boosters acknowledge that sheer inertia, along with numerous technical and economic barriers, will ensure that there'll be plenty of potential LPFM listeners for at least another decade. About 23 million online users have listened to streaming radio, but recent studies by Arbitron and Edison Media estimate that more than 10 times that number still get their morning news, traffic reports, and DJ'd music locally, from broadcasts aired on the more than half-billion conventional radios still in use.
"I remember when videotapes came out and people said, 'That's the end of the movie house!'" notes Matt Rothman, strategic consultant to GetMedia, an Internet radio/ecommerce site. "But movie ticket sales have been up for the past five years. And there's still an enormous audience that listens to terrestrial radio and will continue to do so. The success of low-power broadcasting will depend entirely on whether it can produce anything worth listening to."
Advocates like D'ark don't think that will be a problem. "The kinds of radio stations we're starting are the antithesis of the big commercial stations," she says. "They're not going to be polished. But they'll be real and human."
"There's always going to be a need for small, community radio because it's an intimate medium," adds Beth Fratkin, a graduate student starting an LPFM station at the University of Utah. "When you hear your neighbors volunteering on the air, you feel like you know them even if you don't. I'm gung ho on the Internet, but it remains to be seen if it can foster that same feeling of intimacy."
