"Legislation Would Restore Radio’s Community Presence"

Read the full article from the Nashville Tennessian via FreePress.Net (August 23, 2007), from which I excerpt the following:

With television and the Internet dominating communication systems these days, the power of radio is often overlooked.

And we’re not talking about the wattage, but the potential to affect people’s lives.

Small, low-power radio stations can serve a variety of roles that larger media cannot, such as keeping the community informed about emergencies and neighborhood school closings. They can also reflect the diversity of their community in ways that corporate-owned radio stations do not.

Yet, low-power FM is locked in a battle for survival. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 led to consolidation of radio stations to such an extent that, in 2000, the Federal Communications Commission told Congress there was too much consolidation and community radio was endangered.

With lawmakers poised to act, corporate radio owners and National Public Radio complained that low-power stations would interfere with their signals. As a result, Congress restricted the FCC to issuing licenses for low-power stations only in rural areas.

The FCC ordered an independent study in 2002, which found that low-power stations would cause no significant signal interference, but the restrictions have been allowed to stand because of the influence of corporate radio. Only 800 licenses, all in rural areas, have been issued since 2000, though thousands of groups have expressed interest.

Now is the time to act. In June, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., introduced the Local Community Radio Act of 2007, which seeks to remove those restrictions, while keeping in place a grievance process for large radio stations that believe they are harmed by signal interference. If it passes into law, educational groups, churches, nonprofits and municipal governments around the country are hoping to launch new radio stations that serve their local area.