NAB Seeks to Outlaw Low-Power FM, Fakes Evidence

This is not totally on-topic for YRO, but interesting enough that we'll run it anyway. 1010011010 writes "Read the "Not Easy Listening" passage in the "Notebook" section of the latest New Republic; it talks about the National Association of Broadcasters' efforts to kill the FCC low-power radio initiative:" (more)

"So, as part of its efforts to kill the FCC's low-power radio initiative, the NAB recently flooded Capitol Hill offices with copies of a compact disc that purportedly demonstrated the type of interference that would occur on listeners' radios if the low-power stations were to go on the air.

[...]

"To generate the annoying cross talk, the NAB simply took two previously recorded radio programs and mixed them together in a sound studio; the result was, according to the NAB, a "simulation" of what would happen if a low-power radio station were placed close to another station on the FM dial."

"... kind of like MSFT's faked video 'evidence' during its anti-trust trial. Except that, instead of a smart cookie like Jackson, the audience is the bunch of suckers the voters of this fine country sent to D.C. The NAB has a section on "Low-Power FM" at their website, including "examples of real-world interference" ... faked? I don't know. But the 'examples' they sent to Congress were. They have provided an 8MB mp3 file -- that notoriously high-fidelity format -- as 'proof'. It's packaged into a self-extracting .exe zip archive, for some stupid reason. Maybe someone could run a little fidelity test on it; find out the sampling rate, frequency cutoffs, etc. If there's music clips in it, perhaps compare them to the original source from CD? Call your congressmen and sentators! Let them know this is a sham! Tell them we'll force Christian Slater to star in "Pump Up the Volume 2" unless they back off and stop pushing the "Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act," a.k.a. the "Government Protection for NAB Weenies Act of 1999" -- that states right at the top: A BILL To prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from establishing rules authorizing the operation of new, low power FM radio stations. "