Low-Powered Radio Stations-Could They Work?

ebh asks: "The New York Times (free registration required) has an article today that talks about the push for legalization in the US of low-power radio. Small potential broadcasters want it. Large broadcasters don't, claiming that adding hundreds of new stations will interfere with their existing signals, even though the low-power stations will only have a broadcast range of approximately 3.5 miles (5.6 km). This seems to me like a moot battle. Why fight for the right to buy expensive gear and to consume lots of electricity to broadcast over a small geographic area, when you could reach the whole world by setting up a station on the Internet?" True, a website might be easier to set up, but what if the target audience isn't the rest of the world, but the area right outside your front door? Low powered radio sounds perfect for this.

Comments

Tech gap

[TheTomcat]

Why fight for the right to buy expensive gear and to consume lots of electricity to broadcast over a small geographic area, when you could reach the whole world by setting up a station on the Internet?

Until pretty much every car has internet connectivity, this won't work. At least here, people mostly listen to the radio only when driving. Some others listen to it at work. Most sysadmins don't exactly like somewhat bandwidth hungry audio broadcasts.

Here, our radio stations are garbage, littered with Canadian Content enforced programming, playing pretty much the same content every day, and targeting a much-too-large demographic of teenagers right through to retired cottagers, but it's a little impossible to listen to a shoutcast/icecast in my car, right now, so I'll stick to my CD Changer and the Radio.

Communities benefit from access

[crushinator]

The much-talked-about digital divide would not affect would-be listeners of low-power FM stations. This is one of the most important implications of LPFM.

A less priveliged community can fairly easily pull together the dough to get an LPFM station, base it at, for example, a local public school, and then provide a tremendous number of services to the local area. Not only programming that addresses the local communtiy's needs (rather than shrinkwrapped kool-kulture brought to you by 102.5 the BUZZ), but also on-the-job training for people interested in careers in broadcast media, and hands-on experience in positive, community-oriented programming for the students at the school.

It also allows another way to inexpensively bring independant music (either local, national, or international) to the ears of people who want to hear it. This provides a real alternative to big radio's spoonfed programming, generally chosen by computers to suit a perceived demographic.

And, most importantly, the bar to accessing the media is very low - a working radio can be had for less than $10. That's a lot less than a $1500-$3000 dollar computer, or even a cheapo iOpener that requires a monthly fee. Additionally, converting a LPFM station for internet simulcast is not hard to do, should the cost on internet access drop in the future.

IMO, the more access people have to accessible media sources, the freer they will be.

R. Reed Taylor
General Manager '98-'99, WRCT Pittsburgh 88.3 FM

not expensive

[austad]

Not so long ago, me and a friend had planned on "experimenting" with our own radio station. I found a place in the UK that sold 1 watt FM transmitters with digital tuning for around $100 USD. For another $100 or so you could get the stereo module for it, and somewhere there was a 10 watt booster for fairly cheap also.

Ahh, just found it at http://www.broadcast-warehouse.com. Buy the kits, they cost much less than the pre-assembled ones. If you can get your antenna high enough, you should be able to get about 7 miles out of 1 watt. 10 times the power would double your range. A 20 watt booster is 149UK.

I'd still like to order one of these and play around with it.

Exactly.

[RGRistroph]

"The much-talked-about digital divide would not affect would-be listeners of low-power FM stations. This is one of the most important implications of LPFM."

No. LPFM *is* the digital divide. Rich people get computers and the internet, so any person can publish to everyone. Poor people get LPFM, so only one person can publish at time, and then only to few thousand people.

Think about what it is like to be poor: you get to turn on the radio and listen to commercial trash, or a stumbling, poorly produced local amateur. Rich: commercial trash, and any one of millions of stumbling, poorly produced global amateurs, one of whom might be cool if you can ever find him; once a month it is your turn to read the next weeks softball schedule over the air.

"A less priveliged community can fairly easily pull together the dough to get an LPFM station, base it at, for example, a local public school, and then provide a tremendous number of services to the local area. Not only programming that addresses the local communtiy's needs (rather than shrinkwrapped kool-kulture brought to you by 102.5 the BUZZ), but also on-the-job training for people interested in careers in broadcast media, and hands-on experience in positive, community-oriented programming for the students at the school."

A less privileged community can start a computer club and get the kids to write web pages. Or a ham radio club. Or after school sports, SAT tutorials, writing workshops. There is nothing particularly more enlightening or empowering about the microphone as opposed to the keyboard. The programming is about as likely to address the communities needs as your average community center web site -- i.e., it won't. Web site experience is more likely to get them a job than babbling about the latest softball game or rap CD in front of a thousand people.

"It also allows another way to inexpensively bring independant music (either local, national, or international) to the ears of people who want to hear it. This provides a real alternative to big radio's spoonfed programming, generally chosen by computers to suit a perceived demographic."

mp3 and Napster: I choose what I listen to.
Any radio, low power or otherwise: Someone else chooses the music, and I turn it off.

"And, most importantly, the bar to accessing the media is very low - a working radio can be had for less than $10. That's a lot less than a $1500-$3000 dollar computer, or even a cheapo iOpener that requires a monthly fee. Additionally, converting a LPFM station for internet simulcast is not hard to do, should the cost on internet access drop in the future."

The point is not that the money to set up an LPFM is low. The point is that there are not enough stations on the dial so that every person can have a LPFM, but every person can have a computer and a web site. Focusing on the internet and computing we have some hope of achieving a fairer, more equal access society. LPFM just gives a smaller local model of the same society we have now.

"IMO, the more access people have to accessible media sources, the freer they will be."

That's what I'm saying. Why do you think replacing the tyranny of corporate boards with the tyranny of the neighborhood board will change anything ? Someone else still controls what you can publish.

I'm not against LPFM; it definitely should be done, probably should have been done some time ago. But it isn't the wave of the future and it isn't going to save anyone from the ghetto who wasn't getting out already.

The wave of the future is the internet. By publishing my thoughts on this web page, I am doing in a few minutes work what would have taken hundreds of medieval village monks years of re-copying and passing on parchment, or what would have taken dozens of 1776 Committees of Correspondance weeks of re-copying, printing, and horseback delivering pamphlets. This is the new efficiency that changes everything.

LPFM is the equivalent of giving the medieval village a giant, huge, megaphone so the town retard, the town priest, and the town minstrel can take turns shouting at everyone in the whole valley. Since we used to have just a few megaphones for the whole nation, I guess you could call it an improvement.

But I wouldn't get my heart rate up about it.

Because its there

[anticypher]

Why fight for the right to buy expensive gear and to consume lots of electricity to broadcast over a small geographic area, when you could reach the whole world by setting up a station on the Internet?"

Because most people don't have internet connections with enough bandwidth to bother listening to online radio stations. Certainly not in cars. Certainly not outside while gardening or car washing. Because your local community is a lot smaller than the whole internet. Because everyone has radios, and every car has an FM receiver.

Small stations don't suck lots of electricity. A station can be set up for a few thousand dollars, not much more than the price of a good computer and the cost of a reliable broadband internet connection.

The upside of being a community broadcaster means you can sell advertising to local merchants. The small local merchants need to advertise to stay in business, and large national radio broadcasts are too expensive and cover too wide an audience.

I used to help run a small pira^H^H^H^Hcommunity station. We used to sell an hour or four to a local shop, and the owner would give us their record collection to play during that time. Then all the shops in the area would tune in just to hear that program. It meant we were all over the board, from classical to polka to jazz. We offered our own programs like punk music (never heard on the BBC), new wave music, RPG discussions, and we sold local adverts to pay the electric bills. When we added an early morning farm report, we became the most listened to station in the area. The local school is still running that station, but its way too professional for me now :-)

the AC