LPFM Help!

Dear people with ears who are fed up with corporate-run, monochromatic broadcast radio:

The FCC has opened up a comment window on the translator issue that is currently stifling any opportunities for independent community stations around the country. If you have ever turned on the radio just to be disappointed by your tiny spectrum of boring listening options, then please keep reading and take a few minutes to voice your support.

The FCC promised to give out radio licenses all over America in 2000 to low power community radio groups. This made the big broadcasters so mad that they got a law passed against giving out any LPFM licenses in big cities. We are working hard to get that law repealed, and then the FCC will be able to give out those urban channels. Only problem is, in the mean time, the FCC allowed some incumbents to apply for all the channels that were supposed to go to the new low power stations! These incumbents wanted to be able to repeat their signal with a "translator" station to make it go further, on a small transmitter that is identical to the ones that low power stations use. In 2003, the FCC received thousands of applications for translators, most of them far, far away from the stations that applied for them.

But the FCC can still fix this. First, they froze the translator applications, and now they have dismissed a bunch of them that were submitted by obvious speculators. Now, they need to establish a fair balance between the right of your community group to have one single channel for a local community radio station versus the right of existing stations to repeat themselves on 2nd, 3rd, 97th and 821st channels across the country. We think it should run like the school lunch line-- every one gets at least a reasonable opportunity for a first portion, before anyone gets seconds.

Remember, translators are the "repeater" signals taking up almost all of the open space on the dial in big cities like Chicago. The provide no original or local programming -- they just repeat the signal of a distant broadcast. Most of these translators are licensed to a tiny handful of religious broadcasters who have misused them to build nationwide networks. So without a change from the FCC, we get conservative sermonizing from stations in Idaho and northern California, rather than original, local programming.

It IS nice to include the line thanking the FCC for ending speculation in translator licenses. Initially, the commission had allowed companies to apply for an unlimited number of translator licenses (by contrast, LPFM owners can only have ONE license). Later, they moved it down to 50 pending licenses, and this November, they further limited pending applications to ten. This was something of a victory for LPFM, so we do want to thank them for doing that, but we need to let them know it's not enough -- that the FCC should always prioritize local broadcasting over non-local services who provide no community service.

Prometheus Radio Project is making it super easy for everyone to file comments on the translator issue with this convenient link:

http://prometheusradio.org/take_action/fcc_comments/i_wanna_station.html
Deadline is April 7th, so don't hesitate.

Please help and support local media. If you are a Chicagoan and want to join the fight: The Chicago Independent Radio Project