This topic has been gaining momentum and became more visible when George Beasley started complaining about a new Low Power FM station in Tampa that sounds too much like a Commercial radio station, other than the lack of “formal” commercials.
The area below 92 Mhz [different issues than LPFM] are set aside for Religious and “educational” non-commercial radio stations.
Here are the wildly ignored rules:
§73.503 Licensing requirements and service.
The operation of, and the service furnished by noncommercial educational FM broadcast stations shall be governed by the following:
(a) A noncommercial educational FM broadcast station will be licensed only to a nonprofit educational organization and upon showing that the station will be used for the advancement of an educational program.
(1) In determining the eligibility of publicly supported educational organizations, the accreditation of their respective state departments of education shall be taken into consideration.
(2) In determining the eligibility of privately controlled educational organizations, the accreditation of state departments of education and/or recognized regional and national educational accrediting organizations shall be taken into consideration.
(b) Each station may transmit programs directed to specific schools in a system or systems for use in connection with the regular courses as well as routine and administrative material pertaining thereto and may transmit educational, cultural, and entertainment programs to the public.
(c) A noncommercial educational FM broadcast station may broadcast programs produced by, or at the expense of, or furnished by persons other than the licensee, if no other consideration than the furnishing of the program and the costs incidental to its production and broadcast are received by the licensee. The payment of line charges by another station network, or someone other than the licensee of a non- commercial educational FM broadcast station, or general contributions to the operating costs of a station, shall not
be considered as being prohibited by this paragraph.
(d) Each station shall furnish a non-profit and noncommercial broadcast service. Noncommercial educational FM broadcast stations are subject to the provisions of §73.1212 to the extent they are applicable to the broadcast of programs produced by, or at the expense of, or furnished by others. No promotional announcement on behalf of for profit entities shall be broadcast at any time in exchange for the receipt, in whole or in part, of consideration to the licensee, its principals, or employees. However, acknowledgements of contributions can be made. The scheduling of any announcements and ac- knowledgements may not interrupt reg- ular programming.
These rules were written back when educational institutions were brick and mortar buildings with professors, not crazy old mem who believed God told them the day the world would end.
Entities that own a license but do not wish to operate have the option to lease out the station to a third party, which may be a commercial entity – as long as no “commercials” are aired. Directing people to your own web site full of ads is not literally a “commercial”, and the hosts can certainly talk about the underwriters without a formal commercial. “hey, I went to Joe’s bar last night and that band was great!”
So look at this example and see if you can discern the educational purpose of the programming