Congress Blocks Plans for Low-Power FM Radio

More 'pirate' stations likely, activists predict 

ERIC BRAZIL / SF Chronicle 19dec00

Pirate radio received an unintended boost yesterday with the death of the Federal Communications Commission's plan to license hundreds of low-power FM radio stations.

Opposition from the powerful National Association of Broadcasters, allied with National Public Radio, doomed the FCC program, community broadcasting advocates said.

The FCC has accepted more than 1,200 applications for low-power (10 to 100 watts) FM stations and had intended to begin awarding licenses early next year.

But because of a rider attached to an omnibus budget bill expected to be signed by President Clinton, far fewer applicants are expected to win licenses than want them.

Under terms of the legislation, the FCC would first have to conduct tests in nine as-yet-unspecified markets to determine whether low-power stations would interfere with established stations two channels away. Then it would have to persuade Congress to pass an implementing bill.

"They've killed it with kindness," said Philip Tymon of the National Lawyers Guild in Guerneville. "What we're going to see now is the resurrection of a lot of unlicensed stations."

The Bay Area has been a national focal point for the microbroadcasting movement and so-called pirate radio.

San Francisco Liberation Radio (97.3 FM), Berkeley Liberation Radio (104.1 FM) and Free Radio Santa Cruz (96.3 FM) — pirates all and proud of it — continue their daily programming.

"I'm sure we'll keep doing what we're doing," said Sue Supriano, an activist and programmer for Berkeley Liberation Radio. "We've never had a license or thought of applying for one."

Steven Dunifer, a pioneer in the free radio movement and founder of Free Radio Berkeley, which was silenced in 1998 by the FCC, said Congress' action was "probably as clear an object lesson in current realpolitik as one could get . . . It was basically a very up-front, in-your-face statement that you American people don't have a right to access your own airwaves."

Dunifer and other advocates of low-power radio said the demise of the FCC plan will simply mean that pirate stations will continue thumbing their noses at regulators.

"We have not complied with the FCC in any way, shape or form," said "Skidmark Bob" of Free Radio Santa Cruz. "What hacks us off (about Congress' killing the FCC program) is that we helped bring it to the table. This is just going to mean more stations going on the air without licenses."

In opposing the FCC program, the National Association of Broadcasters argued that inserting low-power FM stations between established stations would create an intolerable level of interference. FCC engineers disagreed but were overruled by Congress.

Michael Bracy, a Washington, D.C., lobbyist for the microbroadcasting movement, said that by tinkering with the FCC program, Congress "has made it just about impossible for any city or suburb to have a new low-power FM station," because three-channel separations exist principally in rural areas.

"It's up to Congress to evaluate the (FCC) tests and then legislate to allow the FCC to go forward. It's an outrageous precedent," Bracy said.

The FCC received nearly 500 low-power FM license applications from California organizations, among them the Reedley Chamber of Commerce.

"We had a location for an antenna and a site all picked out, and we've done a business plan," said chamber executive secretary Don Lane. "It's really too bad the program was killed. We were really hoping to get this going."

Supporters of the FCC plan have little hope that it will be revived soon.

"I'm not optimistic with a Republican-dominated FCC," said Matthew Bennett of the Alliance for Community Media in Washington, D.C.

Andrea Vargas of the Microradio Implementation Project in Portland, Ore., remained upbeat. The movement, she said, "has gained such incredible momentum that you can't just stop it."

E-mail Eric Brazil at ebrazil@sfchronicle.com

Measures curb new low-power FM radio service

KALPANA SRINIVASAN / AP 18dec00

WASHINGTON — The hopes of colleges, churches and community groups to have their own little radio stations were dealt a setback by lawmakers, who, urged on by commercial broadcasters, curtailed a government plan to create a new FM service.

A provision in the massive spending measure that Congress sent to President Clinton curbs the development of a new micro-radio service that regulators and public interest groups had hailed as a way to add voices to the airwaves amid increasing consolidation.

But the nation's broadcasting lobby and public radio have opposed the Federal Communications Commission effort, because it calls for relaxing some buffers that currently surround FM stations.

Critics argued that consumers would experience more interference with existing full-power FM stations and that special reading services for the blind — delivered on special channels — could be interrupted as well.

FCC Chairman William Kennard said he was disappointed by the congressional action.

"Low-power FM radio will allow new voices to serve small niche community markets not currently being served by existing radio stations," he said in a statement. "Thus I regret that so many of our nation's schools, churches and community-based organizations will not have the benefit of this opportunity."

The provision in the bill awaiting Clinton's signature bars the FCC from removing the cushions that protect FM stations, except in nine test markets. In those areas, the commission can authorize the new low-power stations, which operate at 10 watts and 100 watts, covering four to seven miles.

A study of any resulting economic impact or interference would be submitted to Congress so lawmakers could decide whether to introduce new legislation allowing the agency to authorize more micro-radio stations.

"The compromise legislation allows (low-power radio) to go forward, while minimizing interference for millions of radio listeners," said Edward O. Fritts, head of the National Association of Broadcasters, the industry's lobbying group.

The FCC also could license low-power stations in places where there is no need to relax existing buffers — primarily in areas of the country that don't have much congestion on the airwaves.

"This is the practical, rational way to achieve the laudable goal of compatibility between existing public radio stations and the new, low-power service," said Kevin Klose, president of National Public Radio. Klose and others had worried that low-power radio could disrupt reading services for the blind, which let newspapers, bus schedules and other text be narrated on special receivers.

But public interest advocates say the provision's practical effect is to cut by 80 percent the commission's low-power initiative, which would have authorized about 1,000 low-power stations. And they say the steps required to expand the program will prevent it from growing — particularly in a House and FCC dominated by Republicans.

"I think it's pretty clear that the strategy of the legislation was to stop low-power radio," said Cheryl Leanza, deputy director of the Media Access Project, a public interest firm. "I don't think the goal was to lay groundwork for future legislation."

She also decried the measure for belittling the FCC's technical expertise. The agency's engineers have done a range of tests on receivers — both traditional radio and those used for the special narration services for the visually impaired — to ensure that low-power radio would not cause harm.

The FCC continues to accept applications for the new service, even though it will be able to grant far fewer stations than it had anticipated. It is unclear when the first licenses will be awarded.

• Federal Communications Commission: http://www.fcc.gov
• National Association of Broadcasters: http://www.nab.org
• Media Access Project: http://www.mediaaccess.org