09 November 2007 | Business, Pacifica | Ernesto Aguilar

From October 12 to October 22, 2007, more than 350 local community groups across the country applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for licenses to build new community radio stations. They applied when, after much anticipation, the FCC lifted a freeze in effect 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. “and this filing window will have social consequences. It is a last opportunity to have a fight about values and how public spectrum ought to be used.”

Recognizing the impact the window is likely to have on the radio landscape radio, media democracy groups organized nationally in a coalition called Radio for People, to promote and help applications for community radio. Their motto was “Be the media!”

Groups the coalition helped included community activists, grassroots organizations, indigenous tribes, schools, colleges, progressive religious groups, and already existing community radio stations.

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.

Key financial and engineering support from Public Radio Capital was made possible by grants provided by Annenberg, Ford and Surdna Foundations and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Otto Haas Charitable Trust, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

The FCC opened the recent filing window after establishing new regulations for resolving competition between applicants. The 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 Michael Couzens said. “It’s a means for getting people the information they need to make judgments about news and public affairs and having 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 website (fcc.gov), but are expected within days. It is being estimated that 4,000 to 5,000 applications were made for the NCE licenses and an unprecedented volume of information appears to have been submitted to the FCC.

Community radio applicants plan to build radio stations for addressing local cultural and social needs. “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,” said applicant and civil rights organizer Charles Sherrod 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 of Iowa City summed up community radio’s relevance: “Now is the time to imagine a citizen media that monitors and deconstructs, 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!