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FCC considers low power FM licenses
V for Victory writes "Would you like to run your very own over-the-air radio station with a real, legal license to broadcast? The FCC is currently considering a plan to license low power FM band broadcasters with 10, 100, or 1000 watt power ratings. Naturally, this proposal is being opposed by Big Radio Companies and the National Association of Broadcasters. However, at the moment the FCC is accepting comments from the public. Read more about it here. The deadline for comments is September 1, 1999. "
Don't get your hopes up, folks.
If you go read up on this proposal, which has been
on the table for months, now, you'll see that they
are only going to give out a handful of licenses,
and only in major metro areas, and places like
San Francisco and Philadelphia will only get to
have 1 or 2 low power stations. Smaller cities
fare better, but still, it's not like every
block will have its own station.
This is my first post to Slashdot, so please be gentle.
I am heavily involed in a LPFM station, Free Radio Asheville, which broadcasts at a power of 20 watts in my home town. We have been on the air for over a year now and have raided once by the FCC.
Make no mistake the FCC would never have begun to make these proposals on their own had it not been for the hundreds of Micro-power stations like ours that began popping up like mushrooms over the last three years. While these proposals are a good start they don't go nearly as far as the LPFM movement would like.
Check out http://members.rotfl.com/SEAM/
for our point of view.
One thing I would like to point out to everyone here about the efficacy of these Internet streaming technologies for liberalizing the broadcast media. I would hazard to guess that a percentage approaching 100 of the population in America owns a radio of some sort. You can buy one at Wal-mart for 5 bucks. Computers and Internet though are not so widely (geographicaly and economicaly) distributed. 90% of the world's population do not have access to a phone much less a computer with an internet connection. The largest broadcasting corporations know this and have been buying up broadcast licenses in America like penny candy ever since 1996, and are begining to work where they can in the foreign markets. This is no accident!
If you want community based media you are going to have to fight for it. A good book for background on how long the FCC and the commercial broadcasters have been in bed is:
Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy : The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935
Robert W. McChesney / Paperback / Published 1995
You generally pay a flat fee that I think is indexed to your gross earnings, and you must occasionally (I think we did it once a year at the radio station I PDd) do a two- or three-day "survey" where you fill out every artist/song/label, so that ASCAP/BMI have a fairly representative view of what's being played nationwide.
They can't do this themselves by listening the radio, because they're busy hassling auto mechanics and barbers who play the radio in their shops.
Keep in mind, though, that there is a growing body of music not controlled by ASCAP/BMI, and that there are other forms of broadcast content than music programming.
I do hope they allow LPFM to proceed. It's needed now more than ever, due to the oppressive sameness imposed by the national radio companies and their consultants.
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I have no faith in the FCC wanting to make the airwaves available to the public. There is no way they would want to touch all the sticky issues of MP3 and the RIAA. Not only that, it would give people a voice. We can't have that. The FM radio band is dying anyway. Let the big companies strangle the monopoly until people no longer have receivers, but mp3 players and internet for the news.
I will not even voice my opinion to the FCC, because they would not want my opinion. I'm the type they would not even want on the air. I'd be one of those people they would want banned for life and blacklisted from even getting a permit in the first place.
Pirate radio stations can even be evasive. I won't even suggest *cough* *cough* transmitters strung from a tree powered by solar cells and getting a feed from a stealth IR beam. When the tree is raided, an alarm is tripped and the operator is the wiser. Who needs the trenchcoat FBI raiding your house because you want a little free speech? If ya wanna be heard, yall be heard, damnit, and the FCC cannot put a muzzle on your mouth or tunes. The internet let the cat out of the bag for encryption, Linux, music artists without a label, and now radio. Its too late. We're free! Damn the government.
(cue to the sound of tanks running over my house)
After you get your license to operate your computer (different licenses for commercial and personal use, but please fill in the slot that asks what you will be using it for,) you will be shortly contacted by the IRS to fill out a form for what CPU speed you have and the OS that you use. You see, the big evil software company now uses a more efficient method to collect its tax on you. Rather than upgrades, it saw Linux taking over, and well, everyone has computers, it just needed to be taxed. A few people abused computers in high profile cases, something had to be done, a few bills were introduced, and its just not encryption that needs to be licensed anymore, so there you go! Other new taxes are being proposed, like the slashdot tax, which falls under the luxury taxes, because its not the NEWS like MSNBC news.
Government control. Have to keep the population paying its dues or this great country would just fall apart and the communists would take over. Nuclear war, terrorists, child molestors, and the plague.
Where's your license buddy? I'm gonna have to turn you in. We can't have people using this stuff for free.
They are in the electronics department. Its a little black box that takes a 9V battery and includes a double ended headphone jack. They are sold as CD to FM car stereo adapters.
The easy way to increase the effective power of any transmitter is to increase the antenna length. Be sure to make the length multiples of the original size, or if you know the wavelength of the frequency, you can go 1/4, 1/2, etc to prevent standing waves from the end that bounce back into the receiver in opposing polarity. This transmitter has something like a 3 inch antenna. A 3 foot antenna really gets the signal out. I'm not sure of the legality, but you can do a search for CFR, title 47 on telecommunications. Lots of legal writing on what you should and shouln't be doing.
How to hack the inside of the box? The best way is to experiment. Get a radio and start transmitting. Its a simple circuit and the goal is to increase power to the transmitter. Hint: resistors resist current.
Walmart sells small FM stereo transmitters for the purpose of allowing your cd player to work over your car stereo. Cost? $20.00 It is a low power transmitter and I won't tell you which two resistors to replace with lower values to increase the output power, because I'd get in trouble and you can easily guess which two they are. Those things normally transmit about 20 feet, but with the illegal mod and a few feet of the antenna, they go a few blocks or more.
Have fun, get one for each mp3 player and monopolize the frequency band with music people actually want to listen.
This is the wave of the future. In 10 years or so we will all have 5 Megabit-per-second fiber-optic feeds that cost the same as cable-tv+telephone today. We will choose what we want to see in our homes, and when we want to see it.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
However, the RIAA is convinced radio stations don't pay enough. Anyone remember the rules for online 'radio' they are pushing through? Way more restrictive on what you can play, and costs more too. RIAA people are quoted as saying, effectively, 'We let radio get too sweet a deal, and we're not going to repeat that mistake'. Radio's argument was always 'We shouldn't pay that much, after all we do you a service by advertising your product'.
2. Complete FORM-ET using Notepad or another ASCII text editor. Because E-mail filings are automatically processed, they must include specific ECFS Document Index Terms, and must be computer readable...
:-)
It seems that someone there understands why open standards matter! What a refreshing feeling after all of the requests to submit Word documents...
That just made my day.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
The european Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) standard is not spread spectrum.
To gain resistance to fading caused by multipath interference a signal needs to be a few megahertz wide.
In the case of cellular phones the narrow data signal is spread my mixing it with a higher rate spreading sequence.
DAB works differently: it aggregates a large number of compressed audio signals and transmits them using one high-rate carrier.
Another reason why DAB is so efficient is that it is possible to transmit the same signal from several transmitters covering overlapping areas and the signals will not interfere with each other in the overlapping zones. A regular radio station has a small area where the signal is received with good quality and a very large zone where reception is poor but the frequency cannot be reused. DAB can cover an entire continent with continous coverage of the same signal - good, but only for big centralized broadcasters.
I'm afraid that any public access to DAB transmission will be more similar to the cable model.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
It's pretty sobering to see how tightly controlled radio really is. Check out Broadcast Architecture to learn the soulless truth.
Curiously enough, my favourite radio station is a Broadcast Architecture product, but the methodology with which it was developed scares me a little. Unfortunately, it's where I have to go for my favourite music, which is modern jazz instrumentals a la Keiko Matsui.
D
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This is true, but you need to think about some stuff here.
First, there are only a fixed number of channels available in the spectrum. If they did hand these things out you know what it would sound like? You would have everyone in the world stepping on each other and you would NOT be able to understand anything. This is not like AM where you can hear both signals at once. The strongest FM signal wins, and the rest become noise which mix in with the strong FM signal, then it clobbers it. No way, no how can two nearby FM signals share the same frequency.
Other things have to be taken into consideration as well such as output power. A 1000 watt signal is going to be able to go quite a distance, so for a certain range nobody else can use that frequency. I am not sure exactly how they are going to determine who gets what power licence, but I would think that in some areas you would do better with 10 watts than 1000. 1000 would be good for the little towns where the nearest neighbor is 2 miles away. 10 watts would be good for a station which supports a 3 or 4 block neighborhood.
Also, the reason that this proposal "has been on the table for months" is because they always do this. It gives everyone time to draft their proposals. Sometimes they will extend the comment period, sometimes they do not.
Mister programmer
I got my hammer
Gonna smash my smash my radio
After the 1996 Telecommunications Act was passed into law, the media focused mainly on cable TV and cell phones with no coverage of the potential impact on radio. According to ARD by the end of 1997 over 4000 of the nation's 11,000 radio stations had been sold and in the 50 largest markets three firms controlled over 50% of the ad revenue (in 23 of those markets 3 firms controlled over 80% of revenues.)
This buying frenzy sent the cost of radio skyrocketing. The Rev, a radio station with a weak signal and less than a 2% market share, sold for over $17 million! More than ever, when you travel around the country, you hear the same songs, the same voices, the same commercials -- no matter what station you listen to.
While MP3 streaming radio has helped to fill the gap for me, it's only a moderately reasonable alternative because of my DSL connection.
To me, this falls in line with some of the same goals of the Open Source movement. More and better access for everyone, and less of an opportunity for special interest control. Control of the airwaves by media conglomerates means less artistic freedom and more packaged and processed drivel.
-djH
As always, the devil will be in the details. If 1-10, 100, and 1000 watt stations are licensed it could be a wonderful opening of radio to all points of view. Just don't count on it.
My pessimistic inner self keeps screaming two things: First, the FCC is a bureaucracy that might easily be persuaded into burdening these new classes of station with enough regulations, fees, and hoops to jump through as to make the whole concept meaningless. Second, the big broadcasters will fight a genuinely liberal small station policy to the death.
My fear on this is that the micro station classes will be created but only one or two percent of people who would like to run one will be able to get by the red tape and costs. It will be a big P.R. victory for the FCC. Perhaps even the big broadcasters will "support" it and claim some high moral ground. Just remember, when the red drains from the faces of the radio establishment honchos and is replaced by benevolent smiles, be very, very suspicious!
Geeky modern art T-shirts
For some reason, slashdot is mangling the URL when I paste it into an anchor tag. The URL is https://gullfoss.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ecfs/ comsrch.hts?ws_mode=retrieve_list&id_pro ceeding=99-25 (with no space in the middle of "proceeding"). You can also get there by entering "99-25" into the Proceeding field of the form you get at https://gullfoss.fcc. gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ecfs/comsrch.hts.
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Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
A couple of other links: You can search the FCC's database for already filed comments in this proceeding (there are 974 of them as I write this), and file comments from your web browser.
One thing to note when commenting to the FCC: The FCC is especially unswayed by the kind of rhetoric folks around here tend to sling. Go read the Linux Advocacy HOWTO, and then be even more reserved than it recommends.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Sorry guys. Don't be so dumb as to believe this crap, this proposal is designed to *kill* micropower radio and it was drafted by the broadcast industry. And it's goal is to *stop* free DIGITAL radio for a few more years... (Ever read Brer Rabbit "Dont throw me in that bramble bush" ? Well, it applies..)
Some points.. How would these new micropower stations support themselves if ALL advertising is banned?
How come the proposal says that any micropower station can be taken off the air if it "interferes" with *any* commercial station, *anywhere*?
Why do existing broadcast outlets get first dibs on *all* the available frequencies?
....
Just a HEADS-UP.
This is just a very carefully-drafted plan to KILL micropower and ESPECIALLY, hold off what the broadcasters see as the real threat. Spread-spectrum *DIGITAL* radio like they have in Europe and the rest of the world.. Why? Because with spead-spectrum, their big arguement, that spectrum is scarce and there are only a limited amount of channels, is completely deflated.
(The big thing they always hold up to hold off the liberals, that the equipment is more expensive, is also completely full of crap.. )
You can have *many* *many* digital radio channels operating in the same slice of spectrum, and ultimately the radios can actually be *cheaper* to make in quantities than current, analog equipment..
Say no to the crumb thrown by the FCC.. say YES to UNLIMITED channels of FREE DIGITAL RADIO.
(The NAB hates the idea of micropower because "Their property" -OUR airwaves- has in the last few years, appreciated in value and is now VERY costly for all but the very rich...Basically-
four years ago, when the Republicans took over the house, Newt had a special meeting with the broadcast industry to ask what they could do for them, Result: they started selling licenses to the highest bidder, the mega-corporations, who had the money to buy up all the local stations and replace them with satellite spewed crap, and we lost out. Dont let their whining about "return on investment" win.. the airwaves are owned by EVERYBODY.. They are taking advantage of our ignorance on these issues. the FCC is not our friend.
For a ALTERNATIVE view on this issue, please read
http://www.radio4all.org/news/cdcreply. html
Just a heads-up. (Thank you Mike, for opening my eyes.)
ZXCV MBONE.