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Low Power Radio Setback by Congress
akb writes "Congress hobbled the FCC's innovative proposal to license thousands of low power radio stations via a rider on the session ending omnibus appropiations bill. Instead of having thousands of licenses available nation-wide 200 will be available in 9 states (for info on how to sign up go to the FCC's LPFM page). Its unusual for Congress to second guess the FCC, there was intense lobbying by the National Association of Broadcasters to keep the airwaves out of the hands of community groups. For news on the legislation see the story on Indymedia, for background on Low Power Radio see the Media Access Project's LPFM info."
I'm just plain confused if you had looked at the link it is about setting up a webcast for about 100 people (It could scale further than that but it would be hard to do based on the link that I gave) You are right this is not the perfect replacement but it could be the future of low power broadcasts if they continue to try to keep us down. I agree with you that the radio would be a better solution. I'm just pointing out something that might do part of the job or at least help.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Two voices pushed this, big government and big business. On the left was NPR, the voice of Big Brother and a favorite of Democrats. Must broadcast Federal news everywhere! Must! On the right are the thugs from the RIAA. The compromise seems to have been to alow each of these groups to continue in their little nitch.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A recent e-mail forward to me read:
"Please sign this petition so we don't lose an irreplaceable resource....NPR On NPR's Morning Edition last week, Nina Tottenberg said that if the Supreme Court supports Congress, it is in effect the end of the National Public Radio (NPR), NEA & the Public Broadcasting System(PBS). PBS, NPR and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and stream line their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as not worthwhile."
My response? NPR is not an irreplacable resource.
Twenty one years ago, National Public Radio petitioned the FCC to stop accepting applications for the low-power Educational License class. WMUC in College Park was one of the last stations to get a ten watt FM radio license under this plan, but this was a year before the UMBC campus (my school) even established a radio station.
Because of these rules that NPR brought about, UMBC cannot get a license under 1000 watts, and due to the large amount of high-power corporate radio saturation in this area, no higher-powered licenses are available.
National Public Radio has only their own interests in mind, not the interests of smaller communities and people who still want localized, non-corporate free radio.
Forget about NPR. Support your local communities and your universities by advocating for LPFM.
For more information, see the following sites:
Pirate/Free Radio on About.Com
Prometheus Radio Project
Media Democracy Now
And my own letters to the Senators, here and here.
PS: In the interests of full disclosure, this is a revised version of something I posted earlier to my my own web page.
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Rob Carlson
Unfortunately, no free out there -- radio stations within a certain distance of the Canadian border on either side of the line have to go through a special arbitration process between the FCC AND its Canadian equivalent. I know this from working at my college radio station (WRUR, Rochester, NY), which was trying to boost its signal from an ERP of ~900 watts to 3KW, and move its transmitter to a much higher location -- thereby pushing its signal well into Canada. The upgrade process took YEARS.... I think both sides have the ability to nix it.
While I agree in part with your position, NPR Member stations DO pay Dues to be part of NPR, and pay real $ to purchase NPR shows. Withholding your pledge will send a signal. Let me also say if you have qualms -- stations most likely to be directly hurt are the smaller rural ones. Larger big-city ones (WBUR Boston ahem cough cough) that actually generate NPR programming are the ones that should be sent a clue! :-)
Yes, but low-power FM radio doesn't require a $1,000 box and a $21.99/month service to receive. It requires a $5.99 receiver and nothing else.
LPFM wasn't aimed at the netheads of the world, anyway. See the thread above.
Attaching stupid riders to a bill can be used to either kill a good bill, or get an awful rider through. Either thing sucks. Congress should change their rules to stop this sort of thing from happening.
My favorite example from the Simpsons: Springfield is menaced by an approaching comet. Congress is debating the "Save Springfield" act.
Speaker of the House: "All in favor of the Save Springfield..."
Congressman: "Excuse me, I'd like to amend that bill to include 100 million dollars of funding for pornographic arts".
Speaker: "OK, all in favor of the Save Springfield and Pornography bill..."
(No hands go up).
Speaker: "The motion has failed."
or something like that
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Yes, but AM radio is different than FM, and much more likely to cause the type of interference you describe. Your condition is likely much more exacerbated by your proximity to the station, and the fact that, sorry to say, if you are getting AM radio interference it is the fault of the products you are using not the AM station. They should have been designed to include powerline filters and preamp filters, but the designers cut a corner.
Mmmm...doublespeak.
"via a rider on the session ending omnibus appropiations bill."
via a rider
A rider gets latched on to larger bills that everyone wants to sign, but the rider itself is usually either pork or in the benefit of some idiot trade group (RIAA, MPAA, NAB).
session ending
Congress wants to get out of town. Only problem is that they never got the appropriations passed (see next item). So this is the last thing they have to clear up before going home.
omnibus appropriations bill
If everyone agrees, you'll usually see one large bill that provides funding to a large number of departments. So one bill may fund Treasury and Justice, and another may fund Interior and Defense.
kindof like how they passed the censorware provision in a funding bill... its absolutely insane, and if your a congresscritter, you cant vote against it because you'lll be seen as voting against funding public libraries...
damnit, i liked the line item veto...
tagline
... hi bingo
>>>via a rider on the session ending omnibus appropiations bill
Basically, it means attaching an unrelated clause to an enormous bill that covers a huge array of topics already, all right before the holidays so no one wants to take the time to read it before going home.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
The exceptionally disgusting fact about the whole LPFM debacle is not the presence of industry trade-groups -- you could have expected that.
It's the presence of NPR. Yes, National Public Radio -- public broadcasting. In an effort to justify their existence and keep a stranglehold on what they consider "community" broadcasting, they have done a deal with the devil and allied themselves with the major radio station congolmerates which have sprung up over the past few years.
Remember that next time you consider pledging. Some of your dollars are being used to lobby congress to keep you out of the game!
Translation: The people in the appropriations committee bowed to the pressure NAB and attatched the unrelated restriction of micropower stations to the budget. Now, this happens to be the last thing that was done before congress gets out for the year. The only reason they did it is because they NAB knew that there would be a lot of justifiable pissing and moaning, so they decided to slip it in the back door
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
...might not be the the last gasp for free expression. I've been enjoying "radio" stations on the Internet, a lot of whom have no presence on the airwaves themselves. While I'm planning to flip the bird at the radio during future fund drives, I'm hopeful that Internet broadcasting will continue to grow as it's been. Maybe there will be a relatively no-brainer suite that does for Netcast programming what Apache's done for servers.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Setting aside the specifics of NPR, this is missing the point of public broadcasting.
The utility of a market is dependent on the consumer-producer interaction, right? In the commercial TV market, the network is the producer and the advertiser is the consumer. The product is not TV shows, it is advertisement delivery. I don't think most people who talk about the media really get that basic fact. Viewers are part of the equation in that they are who the advertisements are being delivered to, but they are not direct inputs into the market system.
In practice, this means that network content is tailored more toward what will please the advertiser than what will please the viewer--networks want to please viewers, of course, but only because that increases their ratings, and thus increases the money they can command for advertisements. The problem here is that there is nothing inherent in the system which supports broadcasts which are not deemed commercial. This doesn't mean "unpopular": it can simply mean controversial.
The way around that is to have the audience support the broadcast directly. Virtually all industrialized countries have some mechanism by which government money is given to a broadcasting institution, ideally with a "firewall" of some sort to prevent government interference (a critical piece that American public broadcasting lacks).
Personally, I'm neutral on the subject; if public broadcasting can get by without any money from government, that's fine. But to me--crazy liberal that I am--the function of government is to reflect the core values of the people it governs. Being informed is, I would submit, a worthy core value.
Of course, being a really crazy liberal, I'd have that government funding come from FCC license fees to commercial broadcast stations. The public owns the airwaves, and the FCC is ostensibly our property manager; I think it's high time they started charging rent. A very minimal license fee could bring enough revenue to not only keep PBS and NPR gonig, but probably enough to sweep away all need for corporate sponsorship (something that largely defeats the purpose of having public broadcasting to start with).
Well, it seems you learn something new every day... NPR apparently helped toss FUD at this bill. I wonder if they feel their government subsidies might be threatened by competing community radio.
And I've always been a huge fan of NPR and PBS subsidies...hmmmm. Mebbe it's time to put pen to paper and let them know they've turned off at least one loyal listener.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
There has to be something that oversees what's going on, the FCC might not be the best, but it's the best we got right now
And remeber, it was the FCC that wanted to grant the licenses, and congress that shot them down.
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Free Mac Mini
This seems like one more nail in the coffin of an independent, free radio in the United States. The Congress has shown its true colors in its commitment to corporate lobbying rather than a more democratic media.
Right now, any independent public radio is only available at the extreme left of the dial, with a few good college stations for those lucky enough to live near one. And I wouldn't count on those stations, because the public and private universities are shifting increasingly more to corporate-style management in which accounting, not relevance, is the crucial basis of judgement for funding. Humanities departments are feeling the pressure to justify small but relevant classes, so I expect these college radio stations to be in trouble soon.
The only alternatives to radio now are internet radio, cable radio, and music channels. Of course, not only do you have to have a broadband connection for internet radio, which effectively limits access to a very few, the internet radio stations have been recently burdened with the ruling that they would have to pay additional fees for certain types of content (that the transistor radio licenses didn't cover broadband radio, basically). This promises to limit the number of valuable internet stations to an already very limited audience. Cable radio is no real comparison (also must be paid for, more expensive equipment), and music television is a joke, providing corporate sponsorship with some affiliated music.
You know, with a new president-elect installed through a very undemocratic power grab, and a Republican congress, I'm afraid that any effective means of independent media will be curtailed at every pass. Radio is the most accessible medium for most people in the U.S., and it's a shame the Congress didn't seem fit to allow a little room for small, community-based groups in the ranks of the big boys.
You'd think they had a patent on the idea of radio broadcasting. IIRC radio and television stations are granted license to broadcast in the service of the public. If it can be demonstrated, upon FCC review, that they have failed to meet their obligations (has this ever actually happened?) that license may be revoked. IMHO the lobbying group believes that gives them exclusive access. (unless you are running something in the milliwatts, which you can do legally)
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In a technological society, the distribution of speech becomes synonomous with free speech. To be refused the opportunity to use modern communications technology is no different than being denied free speech. Or is modern communications technology only supposed to be for the rich and powerful?
It seems to me that it was an attempt to provide an outlet for community radio, so there would be less need (or at least less of an excuse) for firing off transmissions willy-nilly.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
This time of year, Public television stations and public radio stations run a lot of "pledge drives", where they try to guilt-trip their listeners into giving them money. Why not give their waiting volunteers a friendly call, and politely explain that because NPR has chosen to prevent free and fair use of the airwaves, you would like to pledge a donation of ZERO DOLLARS to public broadcasting this year. Then follow that up with a postcard, letter, or e-mail that says the same.
NPR already enjoys the benefit of tax subsidies so they can broadcast Boston Pops concerts in Minot and "Mr. Rogers" in every remote corner of the country. If they want any further support from us, (or even if they want their current support to continue), they ought to behave in a manner that encourages more good will among us.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Congress is in bed with big biz because it creates jobs, growth, employment, paychecks, wealth, taxes & keeps away ranks of unemployed marching around w/ placards demanding "down w/ the govt." Isn't that worth giving up all your little individual freedoms for????
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It is a very interesting problem this. To what extent is it good to restrict the mechanisms people have available to say what they want?
You can't let everyone on national TV, but given that you have the know-how, I feel it is an important right to be able to construct a TV camera and transmit broadcasts to your neighbour. You don't have the right to be heard, but you do have the right to say it.
Of course, there are practical issues that put restrictions on who can say what where. Such as bandwidth and airtime constraints. For radio, I guess bands are a scarce resource, and it must be managed in some way. Giving it all to media mega-corps is certainly not a Good Thing [tm], of course.
Next, read Article 19 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
(My emphasis). Through any media. What does that mean? Shouldn't it mean that any mechanisms should be available?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Go Here and you'll discover they don't want you linking to their pages, or framing them. If you want to secure "linking rights" you need to ask them for written permission. How ... free
Ironically, it seems that the CDC now has exactly the ammunition it needs to prove your point in court.
To be a little more subtle than your point, however, they would say that controlling who broadcasts is necessary, but that the current concentration of broadcasting rights thwarts free speech. And they'd be right.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
He's joking about the U.S. national security apparatus' penchant for lobbying against useful tech on the flimsy grounds that it could somehow be used in terrorism.
Witness the uphill battle for strong encryption, uncrippled GPS receivers, etc.
Don't make me come up there.
-- He's fantastic, made of plastic....
Not suprising. NPR is no different from LPFM except that LPFM is more honest. NPR is a buch of liberal trying to disquise their message as 'unbiased' while trying to hide behind a veil of 'independance' because they haven't been 'bought' by 'big business advertising'. Instead, they have 'supporters' who recieve 'recognition'.
I supported, and still support, cutting any government support for public broadcasting. If they can't find enough people willing to pay directly to support their views, then obviously no one wants to hear them. The government doesn't need to unnecessarily second guess the wishes of the population.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Despite the fact I might sound like a conspiracy theorist, I have no doubts this is another attempt by the foul,underhanded,self-serving,bastages in the highest offices of government to prevent a citizen's right to free speech. The Congress (mostly Repubdickans) has always thought with their responsibility to prevent criticism of their shady pasts by preventing the people of our "free" nation from living their lives in true liberty under the guise of "National Security". The gov has had a long history of this kind of B.S. (and I'm not talking bachelors in science). How many of those Congress"men" would have much to loose if the little guy deepens his voice and rises to the soapbox. This isn't just about the fact that the NAB is going to loose some of its wealth and that this would impact 90% of the sleazy Congress"men" who just happen to ensure that the right laws to protect Big Brother Media have their vote. This is also about the fact that the gov doesn't want people to talk out against it. What would have happened if JFK had had a term under people who were not only more educated than ever before, but were also able to tell others who were not as in the know. I'll tell you what would happen...Impeachment. Since the absolute media shiatstorm caused by the number of individuals who not only understood the American Agenda but were also active speakers in one of the greatest American injustices of all time, the Clinton Impeachment, the Congress has been aware of what the FBI has known all along. Knowledge is power. The last thing that the government wants to have is a smart public. They may tell us they care, but by nominating a man with the worst educational record in the country for president (I'm width stoopid)they say something totally different. This licensing crap is just another slap in the face for the American people. To be honest, I doubt severely that if the internet wasn't already established anyone would even know a damn thing about this bit of legislation. It came from an Independent Media website, for crying out loud. If a new TV censorship law gets passed, that's the first thing on the AOL ticker! Neither the media nor Congress wants you guys to know about this. They like stoopidity. Makes them richer. Look at The Enquirer's fan base. Little brains, big bucks. And I have no qualms with stating that I personally believe that the Congressional opinion was greased by the universal lubricant (not a sexual reference, I mean money). It blows me away that we take this crap. I cannot stand that the gov repeatedly slaps us around, trying to make us brain-dead little soldiers, in order to get less flack for giving themselves a raise in their personal spending budget and net income! This is a travesty that will not be reconciled for years, possibly decades, to come. I hope I'm not alone in thinking that there is more to this story than meets the eye. BTW, I hope that my Repubdicakns reference did not offend anyone. It was not meant in a partisan way. Hipocr..I mean..Democrats are just as vile.(The only true party for the people is the Nader's Green Party, IMHAHO). I have no doubts that they both had something to gain from this battery of the public will. I have no doubts that the reason that Clitown is ready to sign it is his own animosity toward the "evils"(his word) of free speech.
Finder of the any key.
"Almost everyone" excludes the poor, microradio has the potential to be a tool for them. Don't get me wrong, I think webcasting is great. One of its exciting applications is in forming microradio networks, whereby a microradio transmitter rebroadcasts a web stream or archived mp3 show. Traditional networks of content providers (Pacifica, CBS, etc) use proprietary communications networks to syndicate content (satellite or fiber). Its very exciting that the Internet is being used to network grassroots media outlets (witness the problems with Pacifica), see microradio.net and radio4all for more info on webcasting and microradio networks.
Everyone could speak freely on their soapbox so long as the soapbox was made of gold.....
Burn Hollywood Burn
NPR has made this easy.
As I see we should not write letters to congress concerning LPFM because if they cared at all (they only care about special interests) then this bill would never have passed in the first place.
They way we organize is to write congress concerning government support for NPR. Since they are like a big-monied special interest now, they should be treated like one.
Let's petition congress to kill all funding for NPR. It should be able to stand on it's own feet now. If it can't make it and stations go dark because of it, then there is freed up spectrum space that could be used by LPFM.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I do this, and my local pirate radio station now sounds better than almost every corporate rock station in the area- and significantly bigger and better than KVT-FM which is running such a pile of elaborate sonic processing that they sound like crap on good systems :) My local pirate station is running over 40 feet of custom handmade low-capacitance cable I made and donated to them to replace Radio Shack crap.
Audio geeks- work _with_ the low power pirate radio movement. It's great- it's so unlike trying to hype your skills commercially! People really _appreciate_ it when you can make their radio station sound better, and the whole audience notices and even mentions it. Donate gear and skills and your ear and get to work with the low power radio people- it is _so_ worth it :)
My take on the whole matter is that it is relative. Let me put it this way- KVT is a big corporate rock station in my area. I think KVT has every right to protest someone setting up a kilowatt transformer one channel away and screwing up their reception all across the state. However, KVT does not have the right to guaranteed uninterfered reception in my house. If I want to set up a 0.000001 watt transmitter, tune it to a half-channel away from KVT, and disrupt KVT's ability to broadcast in my house then that is up to me. As the range increases, it becomes a community issue- if the people on my block are agreed that they want a local micro station one channel away from KVT it is _their_ business. And so on- at the point where you are broadcasting to a town, that's where you start butting heads with corporate FM. My town's local pirate station has a lot of community support, actually- Vermont has a large progressive/radical population and is into co-operatives in general, so the radio station fits right in and there are donation boxes in some of the major stores in the area. To Vermonters, it's on the level of supporting an animal shelter- you don't have to support it but you might just want to! And arguments that it is Bad And Wrong because it might interfere with KVT (if it wasn't 27 bands away and well-run) don't impress people around here.
I think it makes perfect sense to regulate kilowatt stations. Those are _broadcasting_ with coverage way beyond a neighborhood. This low power radio setback is basically saying, "Broadcast even to your own community and you go to hell! you go to hell and you die!". To which the proper response (warning, contains word you're not allowed to broadcast even to your own neighborhood) is "fuck you". A community has to be able to set its own standards- if the community wants to border your kilowatt signal with a micro signal that's its business.
I'd love to see a /. Radio. I always liked 'Geeks In Space', plus I'm a serious musician and audio techie who is a longtime slashdotter and has plenty of unusual music to offer (besonic.com/chrisj) and just finished recording and mixing a new album just for the love of doing the art. I am getting interest from internet radio 'streamcasters' and my answer is always 'go to it my friend! with my blessing!' It's not even about being 'discovered': that makes it sound like the point is to win the fight to be noticed by the BIG media. To me, doing the art and allowing it to flow out in natural ways like individuals doing streams of the stuff they like- that IS the point, that IS the whole purpose of the exercise. When one person listens to music I did and finds something they really like, that's what I'm doing it for...
Digital Radio has been launched in various places in Europe, and while receivers are expensive at the moment, the price will fall, probably to levels close to those of conventional receivers once the market grows. This means new spectrum can be allocated to radio rather than the traditional "big-4" (SW, MW, LW, VHF) we see at the moment. It also means the bandwidth available can be better used, with compression allowing bandwidth to be sliced ever thinner or shared in the same way DSS allows. In short, it addresses all the major issues NPR and others raise. And NPR's issues with LPR are legitimate, I'm reading their submission now and it addresses most, if not all, the complaints being raised in this thread, complaints that are being raised without any attempt to explain any sane motive for them to act unreasonably.
My gut feeling is that the reason the US is not addressing LPR at the moment is that it means "big government" getting involved and encouraging the industry to adopt common standards if it is to make the technology a success and auctioning off the bandwidth an exercise useful for anything other than lowering taxes. The US government's policy on digital mobile telephony suggests an extreme ideological dislike of such approaches. Given the ideological make-up of the US at the moment, I suspect this is why we're not seeing a massive call from Americans for this kind of solution.
Instead it's a have-our-cakes-and-eat it deal. People want existing bandwidth, already stretched, to be provided for community services, while almost certainly being the first to protest when Church Radio drowns out Local School Radio, or, perish the thought, the latest Britany Spears hit on Big Commercial Hits 98.9.
Folks, this is "News for Nerds, Stuff that matters". Let's see a little less politics and little more Nerdish solutions. We can make community radio work. We can make it run better than ever before. We have the technology. And it wont cost a lot.
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
And yes, this was tacked onto the spending bill, initiated by McCain. Lovely.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Then who the hell controls it?
Seems to me that I've heard the same thing said about the Internet. Back in 1993 people were incredulous that something as complex as the Internet could self-organize out of virtual anarchy.
You'd have tons of people broadcasting over eachother, others just trying to scramble other peopel.
Would you, or wouldn't you? What would really happen if there was no powerful central authority like the FCC to dictate who was allowed to broadcast on what frequency? Would chaos rule, or would a spontaneous, distributed order arise?
IIRC, the concept of the government owning the spectrum and doling out licenses is based on the idea that it's a scarce resource and has to be rationed. What that fails to take into account is that scarcity breeds ingenuity. For example, compression was a huge deal back in the BBS days. There was serious competition among transfer protocols (ZModem, Hydra, YModem-G, etc.) and archive utilities (PKZIP, LHARC, ARJ, etc) to squeeze the absolute maximum out of the 2400-bps links of the day. Now that we have honking big fiber connections we don't worry as much with it.
So with regards to the scarcity issue, if there were no FCC the marketplace might have already evolved standards for digitizing and compressing audio broadcasts, to squeeze every possible bit of performance out of the spectrum.
Although I suspect there would be some jamming, it'd probably be on the same limited scale as the script-kiddie DOS stuff on the Internet. It simply isn't profitable or worthwhile for companies to try to jam each other (if it was, Yahoo and Excite would be sending ping floods and ICMP fragments at each other all day long.) The jammer kiddies could probably be thwarted for the most part by industrywide adoption of something like spread-spectrum in combination with public key authentication.
Perhaps packet radio (IP over ham radio - anyone else remember KA9Q?) would have taken off, and we'd have had a wireless Internet years ago.
Then again, it's also possible that the moon is made of green cheese.
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There is some excellent reporting on the whole FCC micro-radio topic here, and also here
These were written a few monthes back, and don't apply to the recent stupidity of congress. They are, however, an excellent review of issue of the FCC and their recent positions on micro-radio.
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man sig
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the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
Use the power of the net. Think about it almost everyone is able to connect to the Internet for at least some period of time now you want to do a broadcast great webcasting is cheap and easy get yourself some bandwidth(which in comaparison to radio broadcast gear is not that much) and then cruise on over to this to learn how to broadcast to everyone who wants to listen to you. Is it radio? No of course not. Is it a good way to get your message out without having to go through the government? Yup that it is.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
"For more than ten years CDC has been involved with the defense of micro broadcasters who went on the air at a time when the FCC refused to license low power stations. We argued that those rules were unconstitutional, and the risk of losing in court was one factor in the FCC changing its position and authorizing LPFM. "
"....after months of intensive lobbying, NPR and the NAB convinced Congress to quietly kill the service, and prevent schools, libraries, community groups and local government from operating low watt stations."
isn't that stopping free speech? And isn't that like an amendment or something?!? Maybe the First amendment? So unless you had a lot of money and were able to pay and get lots of advertisers and equipment you don't get radio. That's fair.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
Let me preface this with the statement that I believe in the right of free speech, but not in the right to MAKE others listen. Now, for my rant...
...[i]n practice this means that [NPR] content is tailored more toward what will please the [political supporters] than what will please the [public at large]...
In practice, this means that network content is tailored more toward what will please the advertiser than what will please the viewer--networks want to please viewers, of course, but only because that increases their ratings, and thus increases the money they can command for advertisements. The problem here is that there is nothing inherent in the system which supports broadcasts which are not deemed commercial.
So a broadcaster that chooses to broadcast what no one wishes to see/hear can not find advertisers to support its business. How is this not a controlling input, albeit indirect? I don't get out and move the front wheels of my car when I want to turn a corner, I turn the steering wheel. I've not directly moved the front tires, but I am in still in control.
This doesn't mean "unpopular": it can simply mean controversial.
And who gets to decide what is unpopular and what is controversial. The problem with NPR is that the public has less control. To turn your argument back on itself,
The way around that is to have the audience support the broadcast directly. Virtually all industrialized countries have some mechanism by which government money is given to a broadcasting institution, ideally with a "firewall" of some sort to prevent government interference (a critical piece that American public broadcasting lacks).
First of all, NPR isn't a text book case of the audience supporting the network directly. Yes, you can make a donation, but a large portion of their support comes from advertisers (oh, I'm sorry, corporate supporters who asked to be recognized during commercials, oops, I mean intermissions). Another large portion is extorted from the taxpayers using the force of the US government. NPR is a long way from being audience supported.
Second, you forget the first rule of society, and that is that someone has to rule. If you remove government interference, who gets to decide the content. Why should I trust a set of unknown administrators above someone who has been exposed to the harsh light of a political campaign? I don't know how the firewall works in other countries, but the idea of shovelling money into a broadcast system with no public control mechanism at all is a scary thought to me.
The audience controls the content in the donation and advertiser models by the degree to which they tune in/out, regardless of whether the money comes directly from the audience or from advertisers. If the content sucks, everyone tunes out, donations/advertisement dollars dry up, and the station is replaced with one that broadcast content that people prefer. The problem with NPR and systems that receive government money without direct government control, and the reason we can't [set] aside the specifics of NPR, is that they have taken the audience further out of the control loop than the other methods by inserting government into the loop. Providing NPR with government funds while removing all government input would completely remove audience control and would be blasphemous in my mind. Whoever got control of the NPR administration would have to power to broadcast whatever they pleased, the audience be damned. Furthermore, even if I completely disagreed with them and abhorred everything they stood for, there would be no way to change the content. The fact that I tuned out would have no effect on their bottom line.
So, I think we can agree on some points. True public supported broadcasting is a good thing as long as it isn't corrupted into chasing dollars by doing an end-run around the audience. NPR, however, has been corrupted and is now just another lobbying group, afraid of competition and trying to protect their own turf. But I think we disagree on government supported 'public radio'. I don't find it to be 'public controlled', only publicly funded. I put my faith more in market forces than faceless administrators...but that's just me.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
i dont get it anymore... who the hell is running this country? it isnt the people...
for christs sake, GWB got elected with about 20% of the eligible voters voting for him? does that sound like the MAJORITY of people want this guy to lead... its a minority... a very small minority is running this country, and selling the people out for the dollar...
i guess the RIAA and broadcaster associations are scared of a bunch of small radio stations that they dont own... who knows, maybe they'll play music OTHER than the crap pushed byt the big 5... my god, the horror!!! someone might listen to something else...
tagline
... hi bingo
I don't think I used the phrase "publicly controlled"--a network, regardless of funding, is going to be controlled by the people in charge of it. (I may have an anarchist streak in me, but not enough of one to suggest organizations don't need someone, or a group of someones, setting direction.)
For the most part we probably don't disagree, except perhaps on whether the government can (or should) be used as a collection and funding agency for a public broadcasting network. I don't find anything intrinsically wrong with that use--but I don't find it intrinsically better than so-called community broadcasting, where the audience does directly pay for the programming.
And, yes, NPR's sponsors are pretty much guilty of everything I accused commercial advertisers of. There's a book about that called 'Made Possible By': The Death of Public Broadcasting in America. Sure to not be a bonus gift for your contribution to your NPR station in their next fundraising drive!
So what? Unless you're into amateur radio (which has very different regs about content than broadcast, BTW)
the FCC isn't going to grant you a license anyway if/when LPFM is killed by congress.
--K
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The above post is most definitely not off topic. Good lord, moderators really need to lighten up. Just because you don't get a reference doesn't mean you have to moderate into oblivion.
For those that don't get it:
Pump Up The Volume was probably the coolest movie of our generation. It was this kid that had a pirate radio show he started running every night at 10pm and he ended up getting a huge following. It was really very, very cool. (Sorry, no spoilers on the ending).
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The Low Power Radio Coalition has made it easy for you to send letters to your Congressmen. Just click on http://congress.nw.dc.us/lpr/, fill in your zip code, and then click on a few buttons. Text for letters will be generated for you. I recommend that you cut/paste the text into a real word processor and print from there, since it will look more professional. It'll only cost you $1 in stamps to mail the letters, or you can have them emailed.
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And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
but does this make sense to anyone?
"via a rider on the session ending omnibus appropiations bill."
I jumble it's think a random just words of.
wray
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hello this is bruno brooks, umm, err, cunt.
Pirate radio stations! You must have them in the US, I used to DJ on a pirate radio station in the UK.
They're pretty easy to set up if you know a bit about transmitters. We used to have a few microwave links between us and the transmitter as well just incase the DTI found the transmitter while we were on air. This would give us time to get our records and decks out of there before they could catch us!
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Moderator's essentials
Built a tower, got a license, hacked together an automation system, transmitter, and console. Apparently paid for it out of pocket. Went live, and practically owned the listening audience in the surrounding area in just six months, in the face of fairly heavy competition.
How? Simple. He was local program, local talent, local issues, with more music and less commercials. He went out into the community and asked people what they wanted to hear. Then he gave it to them. Instant hit.
Believe me, bloated NPR and PRI affiliates who have been sucking off the "non-profit listener-supported" tit to an annoying degree, while at the same time writing all the federal, state and local grants they can get to cover equipment, do not want the word to get around that any couple of stone-broke music freaks capable of signing a license application could do a better job than they. Even if it's true.
Radio needs this. Local is where radio had its start, and where it seems to work best. Micropower licenses would have legitimised the process of backlash already present in most good-sized communities. You need a translation? Yo Ho Ho! Just tune your FM radio to the far ends of the band any time after midnight, and see what you find. "License? We don't need no stinking license" Avast ye swabs, prepare to board...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
You should know that BoycottNPR.org is free for the taking. Who wants to run this??
sulli
RTFJ.
Yes, comercial radio sucks but Big Brother's voice is not the only solution. Shame on them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
In a more general way, control of communication channels is control of speech. This should be obvious to anyone with a mind.
The problem is this. The first ammendment forbids congress to regulate speech without qualification. The supreme court case history has qualified that prohibition, to good effect mostly, by recognizing, among other things, that the motivation behind the first ammendment is the public interest in fostering "a marketplace of ideas".
The question is: does congress has the authority to regulate channels of communication in a way that promote the actual exercise rather than the abstract right of free speech?
The concept of the marketplace of ideas and the judicial history of the first ammendment could easily lend itself to such an interpretation. But at least six justices in the present court ( the five assholes + breyer) prefer the narrower one. That is of course very convenient. If actual access to communication channels cannot be regulated (qua speech), it does not mean that everyone has access. It means that access is decided by power ( money in our society) rather than by law.
The FCC regulatory powers are thus conveniently based on the power to regulate commerce, not speech. If the FCC were to prefer "community radio" over commercial radio, it would have been very likely challenged in court too (on free speech ground!). And the present court's decision is best left to the wild imagination.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
NPR was supposed to be about alternative (i.e. non-corporate) voices on the radio.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.