Low power FM radio to the rescue

By Gabriel Voiles from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting:

Lamenting the fact that "commercial radio stations everywhere have been swallowed up by a handful of giant corporations, playlists have shrunk and local and independent acts have been drowned out," Free Press activist Timothy Karr (MediaCitizen, 2/26/09) also lets us know that

the good news is that your rescue is at hand. On Tuesday, Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Lee Terry (R-Neb.) introduced a bipartisan bill (the Local Community Radio Act of 2009) that would pry open our radio airwaves for thousands of new stations, bringing independent acts...to the audiences they deserve....

The Local Community Radio Act would unleash the potential of new music for millions of listeners across the country. The bill tasks Washington with licensing thousands of Low Power FM radio stations....

There are about 800 low-power stations already on the air. They're run out of college campuses, garages, backyard shacks and local churches, and aimed specifically at listeners in their surrounding neighborhood.

Beyond saving listeners from corporate stations' "mind-numbing concoction of saccharine and aspartame," some LPFM broadcasters "are providing local news and information that in more extreme cases has kept people alive." Use the Free Press action page to demand your congressmember "help restore much needed diversity to our airwaves, bringing forth new voices and viewpoints that are often overlooked by large commercial broadcasters."

New LPFM legislation to be introduced

From Future of Music blog:

It was only a matter of time before the new Congress saw the re-introduction of a pro-Low Power FM bill. If passed, this legislation would create opportunities for hundreds more community radio stations in cities, towns and suburbs across the United States. The House of Representative's new Local Community Radio Act represents a strong step forward towards this goal.

FMC has long advocated for LPFM (and non-commercial, community radio in general) as an alternative to the homogenized playlists often heard on hyper-consolidated corporate radio. LPFM in more areas would be a tremendous boon to local and independent artists who typically find themselves shut out from area commercial stations. We figure that if more people had the chance to hear the talent in their own backyards, it might even have a positive effect on local economies.

But LPFM isn't just good for musicians — new low-power licenses would make radio station ownership possible for schools, churches, labor unions, local governments, emergency providers and other nonprofit groups, who could use the public airwaves to directly communicate with their local community.

The bipartisan Local Community Radio Act will be sponsored by Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Lee Terry (R-Neb.). The last time LPFM legislation was introduced, it won nearly 100 co-sponsors in the House. The Senate version of the bill, sponsored by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and co-sponsored by then-Senator Barack Obama, unanimously passed out of the Commerce Committee. The Senate is expected to reintroduce a new version of the bill in the near future.