Urban Unrest

31 October 2007 | Business, Pacifica | Ernesto Aguilar

This note, from Pacifica Affiliates Coordinator Ursula Ruedenberg, underscores some of the efforts Pacifica is making in regard to the Federal Communications Commission’s recent noncommercial full-power license filing window. Check out more on the campaign at radioforpeople.org.

From October 12 to October 22, 2007, over 200 local community groups across the country submitted applications to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for building new community radio stations. They applied when, after much anticipation, the FCC lifted a freeze since 2000; on filings for Noncommercial Educational (NCE) radio Licenses.

The NCE frequencies, residing on the left side of the FM dial between 88.1 MHz and 91.9 MHz, are granted by the federal government to nonprofit organizations free of charge. “This is the last free spectrum,” said FCC attorney John Crigler, who helped community radio applicants. “This is the last opportunity to have a fight about values and how public spectrum ought to be used. There will be social consequences.”

Media democracy groups, who believe that this filing window was one of the last chances to obtain noncommercial frequencies for community radio, organized nationally in a coalition called Radio For People, to promote and help applications for community radio. Their motto was “Be the media!” They focused on helping community activists, grassroots organizations, Indigenous Tribes, schools, colleges, and progressive religious groups.

Coalition members include the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, Native Public Media, Common Frequency, Prometheus Radio Project, Public Radio Capital, Pacifica Radio, Free Press, Future of Music coalition, Democracy Now, as well as FCC attorneys John Crigler, Michael Couzens, and Alan Korn, consulting radio engineer Michael Brown, and other radio professionals.

Pacifica Radio participated in the Radio For People Campaign by helping to fund an initial study of available frequencies and by doing extensive national outreach and providing support for applicants. Pacifica hosted a weekly drop-in support meeting via conference call, where applicants were able to talk with experts and also give each other encouragement and information. Special efforts were made for outreach to the Midwest and the Deep South.

Pacifica received a grant from Public Radio Capital to help develop applications in communities throughout the South. Two field workers, David Beaton and Christopher Maxwell, traveled from Virginia to Mississippi, working with community groups. Fourteen applications were filed as a result of the Pacifica project called Radio South. Applicant groups were located in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Arkansas. Atlanta affiliate WRFG (Radio Free Georgia) partnered with Pacifica in this effort.

“As an early founder of community radio in America, Pacifica is obliged and privileged to help this new generation of community radio,” said Ursula Ruedenberg, Pacifica’s Outreach and Affiliates Coordinator. “These applicants are modern-day heroes in a very competitive media environment.”

The FCC opened the recent filing window since establishing new and fairer regulations for resolving competition between applicants. Radio for People Coalition and other media activists had called upon the FCC to establish regulations that give local community groups fairer opportunities for competing with national broadcasters who dominated NCE applications in the past.

According to Michael Brown, of Brown Broadcasting Inc., “In the last 15 years probably 80% of the applications for noncommercial stations have been by conservative religious national broadcast groups. Our emphasis was with the community groups whose main goals were secular progressive programming.”

“Community radio is extremely important,” FCC attorney Couzens said. “It’s a means for getting people the information they need to make judgments about news and public affairs and have entertainment options that aren’t provided by giant chains of non-local broadcasters.”

On the eve of the filing window, community radio advocates gained a victory when the FCC set a limit of 10 applications per group. The Commission explained that “our examination of the record confirms our concern that failure to establish a limit on the number of NCE FM applications that a party may file in the window would lead to a large number of speculative filings, creating the potential for extraordinary procedural delays.”

The applications from the recent filing window have not yet been published on the FCC web site (fcc.gov), but are expected within days. It is anticipated that thousands of applications were made for the NCE licenses and an unprecedented volume of information appears to have been submitted to FCC during the recent filing window.

Community radio applicants plan to build radio stations for addressing local cultural and social needs in their areas. “We plan to use the radio to benefit ordinary citizens,” said applicant Diane Brown in Fort St. Joe, Florida. “Now we have a chance to talk about what kind of future we want.”

Some plan to feature local music and theater, and oral histories, as well as indigenous languages at tribal stations. Other stated goals include emergency warning systems and relief aid, environmental protection, cooperation between rural communities for farmers’ rights, activities for disenfranchised youth, education for civic participation in local politics and policies, and on-air public discourse over policies and laws.

“We will hear the pulse beat of the people themselves,” said Charles Sherrod, applicant and civil rights organizer in Albany Georgia. “The officials say they hear people saying one thing and we say we hear them saying something else. But with a radio station, people can say it for themselves.”

Brett Gordon, in Iowa City, Iowa summed up why building community radio continues to be important. “Now is the time to imagine a citizen media that monitors and deconstructs,” he said, “that opens the phone lines to listeners and lets us in the Hinterlands chew, swallow and digest our own information and listen to our own pundits. We are participating in democracy itself and doing what our founding fathers said must be done if democracy is to flourish.”

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!