Radio Waves

The FCC may change the way it licenses stations. But even if it does nothing, radio will never be the same.

Jesse Walker from the June 1999 issue

(Page 2 of 4)

Above all, the stations would interfere with existing broadcasters' signals. "It simply cannot be done in the AM and FM bands," he declared, "without causing grave interference to existing stations. With 12,000 radio stations licensed in this country, broadcasters don't need to be told how congested the spectrum is."

There are, in fact, many ways to squeeze more stations onto the dial without causing more interference. We'll look at a few of those later. For now, let's pause a moment to flash back to 1922, to the first national radio conference organized by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. There, L.R. Krumm of Westinghouse complained that it was "perfectly possible to establish a so-called broadcasting station for about $500 or $1,000 initial investment." What's more, such outlets' programs consisted of "nothing but phonograph records, and that sort of station can interfere very disastrously with such a station as we are trying to operate." Krumm added, "I believe 12 good stations, certainly a maximum of 15, would supply most of the needs of the country."

Despite the NAB's objections, on January 28, 1999, the FCC went ahead and issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on micro radio. In plain English, that means it drafted a proposal for a micro radio service and asked for public comments on it. All three Democratic commissioners voted for the notice, with one Republican joining them and another casting the lone dissenting vote.

Two years ago, this would have been unthinkable. But three things had happened in the meantime:

• The FCC's crackdown on unlicensed stations, which intensified in late 1997, brought more media attention to the micro movement, almost all of it positive. Meanwhile, the pirates defiantly declared that they'd put 10 more stations on the air for every one the government shut down. Not all the promised stations managed to materialize, but it was still clear that the feds were unable to snuff out piracy. (The FCC will periodically announce that there are only 80 unlicensed operations left in the country, or some similar number, but those figures are unreliable to the point of uselessness.)
• The FCC's new chairman, William Kennard, decided he liked the idea of micro radio. He still opposed unlicensed broadcasting, naturally--indeed, the current crackdown began on his watch--but, he reasoned, a new microbroadcasting service would counteract the recent trend toward consolidation. It might also reverse the decline in the number of black-owned stations, a concern important to Kennard, the FCC's first African-American chairman.
• The task of crafting the new service fell not to the Mass Media Bureau but to the Office of Engineering and Technology. The former is dominated by broadcast interests. The latter is run by engineers, and if it sometimes tends to be overly enamored with centralized management of the spectrum, it's also less beholden to companies seeking protection against competition.

Of course, there are other institutions in Washington of which that cannot be said. Already, one of the industry's best friends in Congress, House Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.), has asked Kennard to dump the proposal. "The policy, political, economic and budgetary ramifications of this undertaking are potentially staggering," he wrote the commissioner, adding that Kennard should not "proceed" without first "consulting with Congress." A day later, Tauzin reiterated his position in a speech before the NAB, arguing that the FCC has no power to create a micro radio service without congressional authorization--which isn't true--and, amusingly for a conservative Republican, that the new stations might eat into the audience for public radio.

The funny thing is, the proposal that inspired all this apoplexy isn't all that radical. Yes, it would allow as many as 4,000 new stations onto the air. Yes, it would spare them much of the red tape that larger broadcasters face. And yes--contrary to the NAB's refrain--it contains strong protections against interference with existing stations, with one significant exception that we'll examine in a moment.

But it poses some problems as well. Kennard's plan would create three new classes of stations, one operating at a maximum power of 1,000 watts, one at no more than 100 watts, and one--perhaps--at one to 10 watts. (The last category is more a tentative suggestion than a concrete proposal.) But only the first would be a "primary" service. The others, as "secondary" services, could be bumped by any new station that comes along.

This is especially problematic for the remnants of the FCC's last low-watt service, the Class D stations. These were noncommercial outlets run by schools and nonprofit groups; the FCC stopped issuing new Class D licenses in 1978 and in 1980 reduced the remaining stations to secondary status. A handful of them have survived to 1999. Now they could conceivably be pushed off the air by a wave of 1,000-watt interlopers, even though the old Class Ds have a much stronger claim to the title "micro radio."

Consider WBRS, Brandeis University's eclectic 25-watt station. Under the current rules, says former music director Ofer Inbar, "you can't get a license...that would significantly interfere with us that would not also significantly interfere with nearby commercial stations that do have protection. And with our transmitter altitude, we can cover a bunch of nearby towns. But it sounds like the new rule could kill us off, and we don't have the resources to do anything about it." Inbar likes the idea of a micro radio service but wants his station and other surviving Class Ds to be converted to the new licenses--and given primary status.

All this raises the question of whether the new service is not just too strict but, in some ways, too lax. There is nothing wrong with 1,000-watt stations in themselves, nor with owning more than one broadcast outlet. But it seems odd to refer to a chain of five stations, each transmitting 1,000 watts of power, as a microbroadcaster. If the FCC is going to relegalize low-power FM by creating a special micro radio service, that service should only license micro radio stations. Right?

Some in the micro radio community have already rejected the FCC's proposal. Stephen Dunifer--founder of Free Radio Berkeley, one of the country's most prominent unlicensed operations--calls the commission's plan a "bogus" scheme "designed to invoke the splitting of the movement to reclaim the airwaves." Others fear that commercial stations will squeeze out the listener-sponsored outlets that currently dominate the unlicensed micro radio community. The leftist National Lawyers Guild, which has defended several stations against the FCC, has already filed comments with the commission urging that the new service be entirely noncommercial; in this, they've been joined by two more pro-micro groups, the Prometheus Radio Project and the Micro Empowerment Coalition. (Privately, some of these activists admit that they'd just as soon have a certain percentage of micro radio licenses reserved for noncommercial broadcasters. But they worry that if they don't ask for everything, they'll end up with nothing.)

Another concern, shared more widely within the movement, involves the "character qualifications" for the new licensees. The FCC has suggested that a past in pirate broadcasting might disqualify one from becoming a licensed microbroadcaster, though it also seeks "comment on whether there are circumstances under which such a party could be considered rehabilitated," noting that the "reliability as licensees of parties who may have illegally operated for a time but have ceased operation after being advised of an enforcement action...is not necessarily as suspect." It's easy to read that as a not-so-subtle suggestion that the commission will give licenses only to pirates who leave the air now and risk losing their audience before the FCC finally creates the service. It's also possible, however, that the language was included as a sop to the NAB and won't really be enforced.

All this would be merely a nuisance for the NAB were it not for the simultaneous challenge of the Direct Audio Radio Service, or DARS. Starting next year, a company called CD Radio will broadcast 100 channels of music, news, sports, and talk from three Loral satellites. Its programming will range from familiar formats (soft rock, hip hop, "smooth jazz," "modern country") to more specialized fare. There will be one channel for cumbia, one for merengue, one for boleros ("the great, timeless Latin standards of song from the '30s-'60s"). Jazz--real jazz, not that "smooth" impostor--will inhabit a channel or two; so will opera, club music, and Tex-Mex. Alternative rock will occupy two channels, one more alternative than the other; blues, reggae, and classic country will have territories too. There will be a children's channel, a gospel channel, a "world beat" channel. Plus 10 channels of news, 10 of sports, 10 in Spanish, and many more. You'll be able to pick up these signals--all of them--anywhere in the country. Without static.

And without commercials. For a $200 startup fee, customers will acquire a small satellite dish and a card allowing their car radios to receive the signals, and then they'll pay a subscription fee of $9.95 a month. CD Radio will thus accrue its profits by selling programming directly to its audiences, rather than by selling audiences to advertisers.