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FCC Move Could Shut Down High School Radio Station
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "This probably has been happening all along, maybe just not in my area. A broadcasting company bought an FM radio station in The Dalles, Oregon (a little hick town east of Portland), and wants to move it to a much choicer market in Seattle, Washington. The FCC has given the green light for the move. Problem is, the frequency in Seattle is being used by a station owned by a local high school, Mercer Island High School. The school has appealed, saying the decision ignores the FCC's own rules, and questioned the FCC's assertion that there's space available elsewhere on the Seattle-area radio dial. The school says the proposal is 'little more than an effort to migrate from a rural community to an extremely well-served urban area.' Critics of the proposal contend that the move is an attempt to tap the much larger Seattle radio advertising market."
Trying to relocate a radio station such that it better covers a major metro area rather than covering the subberbs on the fringe of the city is a regular event in the radio biz. The FCC originally wanted to hand out radio allocations so that small communities had stations all to themselves, but this policy has more or less outlived its usefulness as small town ad markets simply just don't exist. A station needs to be either allowed to play ball in its nearby major market, or it most likely is being rented out or sold to a 24/7 national interest which doesn't serve the small market very well anyway.
Is this a ClearChannel Station?
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
"...and questioned the FCC's assertion that there's space available elsewhere on the Seattle-area radio dial"
If there's space elsewhere on the radio dial, why doesn't the other station take it?
Im unclear of the FCC's rules, but I was under the impression that a certain kind of station (rock music for example) needs to provide a reason their content should be allowed in the market and is not similar to other options...
this may be a local thing tho...
Class D stations are hanging on by a grandfather clause at this point. The FCC is handing out no more new Class D allocations, and all Class D stations have been demoted in status such that if any higher-class stations (which include all commercial stations, since Class D's are by definition non-commercial) gets an allocation that interferes with them, the Class D must cease operations.
In short, Class D is in a phase-out period... stations in the Class D status need to get themselves moved into the dedicated educational slice of the FM band from 88.1 to 91.9, or convert their license to being LPFM station (possibly with lower power than they had before) in order to regain primary status so that nobody else can stomp on their turf.
This poor high school hasn't acted, and now the bulldozer of several stations re-aligining themselves on "their frequency" is coming in to knock them down. Sure, changing frequencies or converting to LPFM isn't a free thing to do, but it was part of their obligations as a broadcaster to keep up with the changes in the FM band. They did nothing, and if they can't afford to get themselves onto a safe channel then that's there problem. They clearly had a chance to do so when LPFM came out, and they passed...
Whatever decision is eventually made in this dispute, I hope it protects "my rights online" -- somehow.
It would be bad if my rights were somehow jeopardized by some high-school vs. commercial radio station dispute in distant Washington state. Bad indeed.
A college radio station was pre-empted because a major new york radio station wanted the frequency. The college refused to move and put up a fight against the FCC, which fined them for various "other" violations.
The taxpayers ended up flipping the bill because of the greedy commercial radio station and the hard nosed college administrators. The FCC is a bunch of corrupt people buyable by whoever has the most money. it just goes to show that the US government is corrupt.
You mean to tell me an agency of the United States government is putting corporate interests before the public's interests?
I never thought I'd live to see the day!
The FCC and most federal agencies work on the opinion that the largest income intake from licensing and taxation is the best way to serve the public. Sadly this only benifits the largest markets eliminates any minority services and ends with a homoginized beaurocracy controled competetive monopoly market.
WTF!? If they are moving the station then when it gets to the new location it will be a new station! Why would they need to keep the old frequency?? this is total bullshit and just prooves how fucking sold out the FCC is, not just to the self-righteous nutcases who think Janet Jackson should be sent to prision, but also to the selfish assholes who want to stop at nothing but total domination of the radio spectrum. Wouldnt be surprised if before long they want to re-assign air-traffic control and emergency services onto one frequency because britney spears is more important!
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I live in Seattle and I have heard this high school radio station. It's complete and utter crap in my opinion. They play all the heavily commercialized rap and R&B songs. We have two great radio stations in Seattle that pay little attention to commercialization of music:
103.7 The Mountain plays all sorts of music, not just the singles everyone else plays. Furthermore, they don't overplay songs and they aren't afraid to take risks (They played artists like Jack Johnson before anyone else caught on).
90.3 KEXP plays almost any kind of music that has not been commercialized by the RIAA. Sometimes they play things that are a little too weird for me, but sometimes I hear a GREAT song and look it up online (they log all their playlists since you won't recognize their music from TRL).
I doubt the radio station that is trying to displace the hich school station is as good as the two I have mentioned, but seriously, the high school station is not good at all. Also of note, Mercer Island, where the high school is, is where Washington State's most privileged families live. Mercer Island is where a 16 year old girl drover her new Audi A6 drunk and killed a child. (Not to generalize.....)
...might do some good! :P
"...KMCQ's {the nasty corporate commercial station} Web site says the station plays adult contemporary music and uses local announcers. KMIH (The 'hi skool', yo} plays hip-hop and R&B."
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
We'll take care of their site with a thorough slashdotting :-)
This high school doesn't stand a chance. Other than state lotteries and tribal casinos, frequency negotiations are about as corrupt as it gets.
The FCC hasn't been a useful tool of airwave management for a long time, evidenced by their refusal to allow cell/wifi devices on planes. Now there's wifi capability on some planes, but only through the carrier... and do you think that those carriers have figured out some way to isolate that signal that regular industry hasn't? No, it's just that there is money involved, and noone has put forward an ample attack for consumers.
Planning commissions are almost as bad, but at least there's an appearance of more public deliberation for those.
Good luck to that HS, but the chances are slim. My bet is that they'll be left scratching their heads, saying "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"
Right! Government once again using the broad law to help those who can pay for it. The little guy shouldn't have any rights? So much for government being the helpful force. Let's reduce it, reduce the FCC... we're moving to NH to start the process. The Free State Project proposes to reduce government to its constitutionally mandated limits. You can help! http://www.freestateproject.org
Kat Dillon
Have you hugged your penguin today?
it happened to WHHS Haverford HighSchool... the oldest High School radio station in the United States.....
They too are Class D and in the way of a Class A that wants to start up somewhere in South Jersey.... The FCC rules offer them nothing much since they never became Class A. They have to yield to other stations. The only chance is for them to find another frequency to move to (not a simple or cheap thing really).
Here is San Diego, we're lucky that Clear Channel can own stations in San Diego, and in Tijuana, Mexico (right across the border). We thus get double the Clear Channel, and yes, our radio sucks more than most cities.
Mods, I'd like to take this oppertunity to point out that the parent is not really offtopic. He raises a good point, that the larger corporations (ClearChannel) are coming in and pounding the little stations into the ground. In my area, pretty much ALL the stations are ClearChannel, except for the (suprisingly good) local college channel.
Furman University in Greenville, SC was without a radio station for about a year and a half because Clear Channel bought a station and boosted its power enough to knock us out. What's annoying is that an exec for Clear Channel is on the board of trustees for Furman. Talk about right hand not knowing what the left is doing... They promised us new equipment to make up for it, but that never materialized. Meanwhile, we were stuck without our beloved WPLS for a significant amount of time....
I used to listen to X104 a couple of years ago (actually, when I was in High School). It used to play really interesting music, such as independent techno and dance music.
I tuned in recently, and I all I could hear was the same generic commerical Rap/"R&B" that every other ass clown radio station in Seattle plays.
If anyone is interested, there is another HS radio station called C89fm, run by Seattle Public Schools. It plays content similar to what x104 used to play and even has a webcast so I can listen at work.
Its a great break from the average commerical crap radio in Seattle.
Rich buyers: Hey, let's buy this station and move it to a profitable market!
Critics: We're on to you! This is just an attempt to tap the much larger Seattle radio advertising market!
Rich buyers (in deadpan tone): Gee. They discovered our secret.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
It's really regrettable, in the sense that the Mariposa, CA area had NO rock radio station in the area. The closest station was in Fresno, and didn't get reception well, if at all, in the area.
The station itself had a range of approximately 3 miles in any direction, which was enough for the town of about 2000 to be entertained. The only thing that was even close on the frequency was a spanish station, whose reception was incredibly poor in the radius of 20 miles from the town. Considering up there is a mostly white demographic (like 95%), I can't imagine any objection.
The thing is, creating a radio station, thanks to the FCC and government, forces the act into a business. This was something that my friend ran out of his house. He received no donations, just overwhelming community support, especially from the 700 or so high school students that had nothing to listen to on the air.
The crap part, is since that it's such a small town, there's no amount of advertising that would make up for the FCC fees alone. Therefore, Mariposa, CA is stuck with a country music station.
This story is just another one that ends up frustrating me in the end. Thank you, FCC. You properly ended up making free speech available and accessible to the upper class.
*** END RANT ***
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
>Seriously, there's nothing else to be said after this post.
Oh please. The post does not go into why the Class D change happened, who is serves, why community radio is being killed in favor of commercial radio, etc.
Last I checked, the people owned the airwaves and the little slice they had for colleges and highschools is being systematically being pull-out in favor of more clear channel crap.
Secondly, if you read the article you'll see the FCC asked them to move to 104.something. If the FCC didn't ask them to move, they wouldn't be having this problem.
LPFM is largely a joke and its too late to get licenses now. A LPFM station covers a few blocks at best, especially if there are any tall buildings.
As far as the "keeping up with the changes" comment goes, well its important to ask why and understand such changes. What if your city aldermen or state legislature decided the land you live on is too close to the freeway and the Walmart people should have it? Would you and the grandparent be quick to defend a change of law without asking the ethical questions involved? Or is it "that's the law, shut up" all the way?
FCC is not above criticism, especially when its run by Michael Powell and the GOP.
First they want to move the station in question a full state, from Oregon north several hundred miles to Seattle. I could possibly see moving it to Portland, but this is a real streach.
Next, if the high schoolers really want to fight, all they have to do is to talk to their parents. Mercer Island, is located in the middle of Lake Washington and the residents are VERY well off. Paul Allen lives on the island as do a lot of the Microsoft millionairs. Bill Gates lives just north of the island. Quite a few Boeing executives in addition to at least one Senator for Washington (if I remember correctly). If they want, they (the school) have the connections to steam roll the station and make an example of them. Given that its the end of the shcool year with exams, now is the perfect time for this move on the station's part in the student body is out for the summer.
Housing prices start around a million for a modest home....
As is the usual case, this would all be a moot argument if the whole world would set aside what it thinks it knows and let ME make all the important decisions.
:)
My declaration to remove all the current problems with so-called "interference" (listen up HAMs, you guys complain the most about "interference", at least on Slashdot): Software defined digital radio
Seriously though, one of the issues that has been brought up with a software radio is that "interference" isn't what it's portrayed to be. Radio waves don't collide with one another, the way that "intereference" implies. Interference is actually an artifact of the low quality analog recievers we use to listen to radio. Their selectivity leaves a whole heckuva lot to be desired. A radio with greater selectivity (the ability to distinguish two radio boadcasts with similar carrier frequencies, even those coming form the same source) can eliminate this dated notion of interference.
Read This Salon article on the subject and be converted to the new way of thinking about "interference". Or not
P.S. This article was the subject of a previous Slashdot article.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
They are. As I understand it (and I am no expert) it is because when you broadcast at lower frequencies, the signals require less power to reach a greater area, and many of these stations broadcast at 1-10 watts, rather than 5000-10000.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."
just as with the Internet, it was the efforts of educational institutions that pioneered and gave birth to radio as we know it in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The communications act of 1934 was essentially a giveaway to commercial interests, but it did, however, state that the airwaves belong to the public--a commons, if you will, and it did, as part of the compromise, carve out some of the spectrum for educational broadcasting and create special educational licensing.
The commercial interests basically got their way. It is a crying shame that they can't be content with what they have and that they, and the FCC, are now pushing around little educational stations and generally acting as if the airwaves were private property.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
is their FCC skirmish. the name of the school paper is the "mercer high times."
Serenity now, insanity later.
Software defined digital radio is great. But who is going to pay to upgrade all the existing radios? Some stations are useing the same hardware they started with 50 years ago. The stations will probably continue to use that gear for another 50. An AM reciever has maybe as much as 50 cents worth of electronics in it. A FM reciever costs another 25 cents. Can a digital radio be made that cheaply?
Reed (RTFA) may be correct about the technology, but in my view he is naive about the economics.
If you were going down to the AM band, maybe, but you would need an enormous antenna to efficiently radiate the power, and it would be useless at night anyway. It would be quite difficult to make the power comparison between AM and FM, a major AM station (I know only of the UK, the numbers might differ elsewhere) might radiate 100Kw, so might a major FM station, but the FM transmitter will only be a few Kw, the apparent increase comes from the antenna gain (not a real power gain at all, it simply puts most of the energy where it matters, mostly horizontally), whereas the AM transmitter will be some enormous thing pumping thousands of volts into an inefficient antenna with an apparent loss, rather than gain.
The AM transmitter should cover a radius of 50 miles or more, maybe even 100, during the day, and will not be affected significantly by most obstacles, the FM range is effectively line of sight plus a bit, depending on antenna height it may well be 50 miles in favourable terrain, but it will be affected by obstacles although remaining useable at night.
So, you can't make a direct comparison of the effects of major frequency changes, the bit in the middle (HF) is even less amenable to simple definition of how it will behave.
But from one end of the AM band to the other there is a 3 to 1 frequency ratio, it is far easier to get an efficient antenna at the top end, smaller wavelength, so the dimensions of an efficient antenna do not make it unaffordable. But an FM dipole is only about 1.5 metres long, who cares if it is 1.4 or 1.7, at either end of the band, it is quite immaterial to the cost. Nowadays the power transistors in the transmitter don't have much difficulty performing at the top end of the band either, at one time there would have been a decrease in electrical efficiency towards the top end because the transistor (or valve/tube) gain-bandwidth product was embarassingly low, but not nowadays.
The ultimate limiting factor, "atmospheric" noise, is more or less constant across the FM band and is anyway quite low, so unavoidable receiver noise matters, at the bottom end of the AM band, atmospheric noise is bad, a low-noise receiver is an irrelevance, and the efficiency of a whip antenna is minimal, so all in all, FM is best, exact frequency unimportant, followed by the top end of the AM band as a poor second.
All in all, a very complex subject, and then there is band planning, you don't want low-power stations in among the big boys, so that they are obscured by poor receiver selectivity, but that is the function of the FCC, whose reputation abroad is no better than in the US.
I went to Haverford High School, and let me tell you that the school administration could care less about the radio station. It was primarily student run and student funded. I can tell you that any action to move from a Class D license, such as converting to Class A, would have taken far more money than the administration would be willing to even consider. I remember they recently replaced the failing tower with a brand new one, and that took years of student effort and organization, not to mention a whole lot of begging for funding. So, basically, a radio station that has been around since 1949 and primarilly run and maintained by high school students suddenly must shut down (with all the student's efforts for naught) because some corperation wants a frequency in the area that no one else has used in 55 years. Do they really think the community is going to listen to this station, after it has trounced out the highschool station that has been there as long as they can remember?
"Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose." --Douglas Adams
I live in Seattle and do listen to the hishschool station. KUBE 93.3 is the biggest hip-hop and R&B station in the Greater Seattle area. They cater to the Top 40 format so on any given day you will here the same eight songs every hour. 104.5 plays more of the underground and non-mainstream (read: GOOD) hip-hop. You barely every here commercials and hear alot of older stuff that never made in big with commercial success. It is really sad if they do bring down that station. I guess big business is where it's at.
Thats just stupid to say. Thats like saying "well black people can't vote.. and well thats the reason they werent allowed to enter the polls"
We change things in this country by recognizing the wrong doings of our past. The fact that we can vocally express dissaproval of a law, a situation, a flavor of ice tea... is the beauty of free speech.
Just because its law, doesnt mean its right.
Frankly the FCC, as someone stated... Has simply taken away free speech broadcasting from average citizens and have give them to corperations and the upper class.
How many steel welders, or under 30k a year folks get to really express their opinions on the air?
How many DJ's get to actually play music they enjoy? How many of them get to expose new music that isnt produced, spoon fead and shoved down their throats by the record industry?
HOw many of them do anything these days? Most just pop in a cd and press play. The mix of the week. Yay.
The FCC for all the bullshit it spouts about the air waves being property of the citizens... Is simply nothing more than a bargaining chip they can use AGAINST the 5 corperations who own the entire broadcasting industry. The problem is, the FCC doesnt give a crap about the people, it just wants to have something to keep them in the game when dealing with corperations. Its a money thing.. not a people thing.
As is always the case with the FCC.
the little slice they had for colleges and highschools is being systematically being pull-out in favor of more clear channel crap.
You are correct, there is a little slice set aside for colleges, high schools, religious broadcasters, and other non-commercial interests. It's 88.1 through 91.9.
Now I'd like you to point out even ONE case where Clear Channel kicked someone out of this band. Clear Channel is not able to own a station in the non-commercial band. It's been about five years since I worked in radio, but I think I'd notice if suddenly commercial entites were allowed to have non-commerical radio stations "systematically being pull-out" (whatever that means).
Moreover, can you document that Clear Channel/Viacom/CBS/Whatever Megalomedia is "systematically" pushing non-commercial stations off the air, or are you just making things up as you go along?
Furthermore, how is LPFM a joke? There are dozens of LPFM stations out there working very hard to serve thier communities, and doing a fine job of it. This high school's little Class-D signal wasn't much different than a legitimate LPFM that you consider a joke. The kids have the station to learn. They don't need 100,000 watts to learn how to bulk erase a cart.
And it's a lie to say that it's too late to get LPFM licenses now. Dozens were awarded within the last month or so. In fact, just last week WKHV-LP/Kingston and WXLJ-LP/Harwich applied for licenses to cover (if you don't know what that means, you shouldn't be posting in this Slashdot conversation). Two weeks earlier, WJSK-LP/Bartlett was granted its license to cover.
Again, anything to back up your claims, or are you spewing rectally again?
World's tallest building rises in the desert