Low Power FM stations

The NAB hates the entire idea of Low Power FM.  The idea that mere ordinary people could have a real radio station license in “their” radio band without having to pay millions of dollars for it, participate in the Radio Tower monopoly and not pay into NAB club!    America has the best government money can buy, and the current licensing system was settled in 1934 with the passage of the law creating the FCC.

Low Power FM stations operate locally – at most, they can be heard for 3.5 miles (unless they’re on the Internet!).    They were largely created by the “community organizer” type groups like ACORN and La Raza, and some religious groups.    Not many people know about them.

As Nancy Pelosi and company were leaving out the door in 2010, they rushed through passage of a bill to relax the rules about how far away an LPFM had to be from a full licensed FM station on the same frequency.   This means that potentially 1000s of new LPFM licenses will be issued.

So to you TEA party types – this issuance of new LFPM licenses is going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity to grab a license so you can have a radio station for your town that you can use for communication and educating your citizens.    Because so few people know about this, the leftists are assuming they’ll get all the licenses.

Here are resources about what LPFM is and how you start one:
FCC  (mostly beltway lawyer talk)
Prometheus Project – advocacy group (web site is boken today 🙁 )
NY Times story
LPFM Store – info on equipment and the process

There are currently 859 of these things, and 135 of them stream.  The current breakdown of who runs them:
  316 – Religious groups (mostly 7th day Adventists)
  151 – Community Groups  (ACORN, La Raza, etc…)
  71 – Schools  (colleges, high schools, etc…)
  41 – government agencies – traffic reports, small town city governments