More Community-Based Radio Stations Can Only Lead to Good (Reps. Lee Terry and Mike Doyle)

In communities across the country, thousands of local groups based at schools, churches, and other local organizations want to set up and operate radio stations to provide locally-oriented programming ranging from regional music to religious services to information about community news and upcoming events. Unfortunately, under current law these groups are unable to secure the licenses they need to broadcast to their communities on the radio.

In 2000, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued rules that would have allowed the establishment of thousands of low-power FM (LPFM) radio stations across the country.

The FCC’s efforts to promote diverse local voices on the radio dial were short-circuited later that year, however, when Congress enacted “the Radio Broadcast Preservation Act. This legislation compelled the FCC to issue LPFM licenses only to low-power radio stations that were at least 4 intervals on the radio dial away from existing full-power stations – ostensibly out of concern that the new stations would cause interference with the existing stations’ signals, but effectively banning low-power FM stations from the 50 largest media markets in the country. This legislation also required an independent study of how much separation was required to ensure that existing full-power signals weren’t, in fact, compromised.

The study required by the Radio Broadcast Preservation Act concluded that reducing the separation between radio transmission frequencies to three spaces on the radio dial wouldn’t cause interference with existing broadcast signals.

Consequently, last week we introduced legislation that would repeal the Radio Broadcast Preservation Act’s requirement that radio stations in a given market be 4 intervals apart (the Local Community Radio Act – H.R. 2802). We believe that reducing the required space between radio stations will allow thousands of new community-based LPFM stations across the country to begin broadcasting, dramatically increasing the diversity and community-orientation of radio programming across the country – and exponentially increasing the ability of local governments to communicate important safety information to their communities in the event of terrorist attacks or natural disasters. Identical legislation (S. 1675) has been introduced in the Senate by Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).

We hope that our colleagues in the House and Senate will join us in making the public airwaves more accessible to their constituents by cosponsoring and supporting the Local Community Radio Act.