What is low-power radio?

By Jamie York

Sadly, we have become a nation where all the news, information and music we get is controlled by a handful of giant monopoly media corporations. The owners want to give us advertising, crime shows, sports, sitcoms and game shows on television, not substantive news. Not U.S. news that shows the reality of how our homeless, our unemployed, our low-paid laborers, our service workers, and our migrant farm workers are really living. Not in-depth international news that helps us understand how the citizens of other cultures and nations are really living. No, the first we hear of conflicts is when there has been an infrequent terrorist attack or someone, somewhere infringes upon U.S. business interests.

From corporate FM and AM radio, we often get formatted cookie-cutter music and news headlines, but nothing more unless it is conservative-dominated talk-radio shows or sports. Very little news from our local communities and neighborhoods is on the radio anymore. There might be a local weather forecast, a national and local news story update, sports scores, and maybe a headline about an accident or death.

And satellite radio equally sucks, but it doesn’t have to. It sucks right now because it is totally market-driven for private profit, not community-driven and not need-driven. Satellite radio has the same compartmentalized format music designed to capture the interest of specific audiences and does not venture beyond this. There is no local content and our neighborhoods and communities are not part of satellite radio, so the news is nothing more than the usual suspects — Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and a host of talk-radio entertainers. I am all for new technologies and open internet, but these technologies must address the needs of all citizens and diverse socio-economic groups in a very real way. Remember, more than half of U.S. citizens do not even vote and the reason for this is that they are systematically disenfranchised by the media.

We all get plenty of sensationalized news – like OJ, Princess Di, Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears, and octo-mom Nadya Suleman — that actually dominate all other national and international news for weeks and months. We all receive a constant barrage of content repetition and sameness from the media, which makes it very easy to manipulate public opinion. For example, when the the media leave out anti-war views and marginalize protesters as unpatriotic “wackos,” “fringe groups” and “anarchists,” it is easy for the media to to fall in line with the views of military contractors, oil companies and government officials without fairly representing other views. It is easy for them to launch a PR campaign to discredit the Dixie Chicks for speaking out; it is easy for Clear Channel to get a few country music fans all riled up over an issue of free expression and have the TV cameras there to show the record-burning. Many people, including the so-called “NASCAR dads” that they think they have so much control over, were against Bush’s Iraq war at the beginning, but when you are told over and over that you are supposed to think a certain way, then that is the way you will begin thinking. But the airwaves belong to the public and we have every right to take them back and use them in ways that improve our lives. Beware though, because they want to begin carving up and controlling the internet, which is probably all we have left of the dream of democracy.

Low-power FM stations, which are regulated by the FCC, can help democratize radio and return us to the days of radio diversity. With low-power FM, community groups, churches and others would be able to provide content to listeners in a limited area — from about one to five miles. There would be more local stations to choose from for local news, community information, local music, event coverage, call-ins, and so on — content that the corporate cookie-cutters do not provide.

One bill now before Congress is the Free Radio Act, HR1147, which would permit more licensing of low-power FM radio stations. It would bring thousands of new stations into communities all over the country, thereby helping to stimulate the economy. Sign a letter to your congressperson at Free Press.