Re: NOW: LPFM, WAS: Re: FCC gives ultimatum to Radio Free Brattleboro

[Aaron Read <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 12:45 PM 9/8/2003, SteveOrdinetz wrote:
>Aaron Read wrote:
>>There are always exceptions, but by and large the greatest demand for 
>>LPFM service is in cities and that's precisely where you can't fit an LPFM.
>
>Not to be controversial here (moi?), but does every college and high 
>school really need their own radio station?  Comments have been made on 
>this list numerous times about school stations being off the air for long 
>periods of time (even occasionally remembering to turn off the 
>transmitter).  I know it's easier to hand out licenses than to take them 
>away, but I wonder if anyone at many of these schools gives two beans 
>about "their" station.  Other than giving a handful of students a place to 
>go and play obscure rap or punk rock songs, many of them aren't really 
>serving any purpose.  I'm most familiar with WMBR, but it seems to me that 
>it's the community people, not the students that make that station what it 
>is.  I wonder if some of these community groups that otherwise can't get 
>on the air might work a deal of some sort with some of these underutilized 
>noncom stations.  Maybe (and we're getting in tricky waters here) there 
>could be some "use it or lose it" provision for licenses (commercial as 
>well as non-com...there are plenty of "wasted" commercial stations, too.)

In my youthful days (all of five years ago) I was a strong proponent of 
LPFM.  I still have a soft spot in my heart for the overall concept, but 
after three years at ABfreeRadio I've learned that you can crank up the 
wattage but you can't make people listen.  The sad truth is that for a lot 
of people, the way commercial radio is today IS THE WAY THEY WANT IT.  Oh 
sure, polling them may get them to say they want more diversity in radio, 
but in reality...they WANT that 20-song playlist over and over.

Every college and high school can HAVE their own radio station under Part 
15 rules, and I think the number one thing any of those stations OUGHT to 
be teaching is the bitter reality that just because you - as an individual 
- think you're the greatest DJ since Wolfman Jack and you play only the 
really good stuff and everyone should be listening to you....well, tough 
cookies kid - nobody wants to listen to you.  And there are a thousand 
other DJ's out there that are just as good (or bad) as you are that all 
think the same thing and nobody wants to listen to them either.   Ergo, it 
doesn't matter if only 50 people can hear your Part 15 signal...there could 
be 500,000 people that might hear it and they're all still going to tune 
away to some other station 99.9% of the time.

So yes, you're absolutely right in that colleges/high schools do not need 
their own LPFM station.  I do however think that some good could be made 
from a handful of extremely-niche market stations; mostly in the heavily 
urban sections of cities.  I would expect that the most viable would be 
non-English stations, and they probably would be somehow associated with a 
high school or college just to take advantage of cheaper facilities and 
utilities.

However true it is that the utopian dream of LPFM that many supporters had 
is a total fallacy....it doesn't change the fact that there is supposed 
"need" LPFM was allegedly created to fill, but it doesn't address that need 
in any way at all save for the barest lip service.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron "Bishop" Read             aread@speakeasy.net
FriedBagels Consulting          AOL-IM: readaaron
http://www.friedbagels.com      Boston, MA