Category: Announcements, Shameless Horn-Tooting || By Press Release

Tube City Online has added its voice to those of activists around the country calling on the federal government to preserve spaces on the FM radio band for low-power stations.

In a filing Monday with the Federal Communications Commission, Tube City Community Media Inc. said that even in an "Internet age," community radio stations are necessary, especially in lower-income, urban communities such as McKeesport.

Tube City's filing cites a 2009 study that shows that only 50 percent of households with incomes less than $30,000 per year have any Internet access at all, while about 30 percent of households with incomes less than $70,000 per year have no broadband.

. . .

Since streaming audio and video requires broadband access, Tube City's filing says, Internet radio and services such as YouTube are a poor substitute for over-the-air broadcasts.

"In contrast to Internet technology, AM and FM analog radios are cheap," says the filing. "They are so cheap that inexpensive radios are often given away as prizes or premiums ... practically speaking, every American citizen of every income level has access to a radio."

Tube City Community Media was asked to comment on the FCC proceeding by Prometheus Radio Project, a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization that has fought a decade-long legal and political battle to open the FM radio band to small, independent, non-commercial radio stations.

. . .

The low-power FM radio service was created in January 2000 to combat the increased consolidation of radio stations under a handful of large corporations. Under FCC rules, low-power FM, or LPFM, stations are not allowed to accept advertising and must be owned and operated by local residents. They are limited to 10- or 100-watts of output power.

The three members of Tube City's board of directors were co-founders of Lightning Community Broadcasting Inc., which applied for a low-power FM radio station to serve the McKeesport area.

That effort --- and hundreds of others around the United States --- was blocked by the U.S. Congress, which overruled the FCC and put strict limits on where LPFM stations could be located.

Congress' restrictions --- created in response to heavy lobbying against the then-new LPFM service by large media corporations, the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio --- were enacted over the objections of the FCC and the Clinton Administration.

. . .

A subsequent independent study found that the evidence cited by Congress in creating the law was fabricated, and that arguments that LPFM stations would interfere with larger stations were meaningless.

The 2000 restrictions were overturned in December 2010 when Congress passed the Local Community Radio Act, championed and co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, Democrat of Forest Hills.

The FCC is currently considering a proposal that would set aside a minimum number of LPFM allocations in each of the top 150 largest metropolitan areas. It would block further expansion of FM radio "translators" --- FM radio stations of up to 250 watts that rebroadcast signals from other radio stations --- often radio stations from out-of-town.

According to one estimate, there are currently 16 pending applications for FM translators in the Pittsburgh area.

. . .

"It is Tube City's belief that allowing out-of-town AM and FM stations to rebroadcast their signals into McKeesport via FM translators --- which by design are not permitted to originate local content --- contravenes the Local Community Radio Act," Tube City's filing says.

Doyle's own letter to the FCC was co-signed with U.S. Rep. Lee Terry, a Nebraska Republican, and U.S. Senators Maria Cantwell and John McCain.

"We support the Commission's proposal because it takes into account the needs of translator applicants and the needs of the many community groups, schools and churches who have waited for over 10 years to start low-power radio stations," the letter says. "We urge the Commission to continue using all of its regulatory and technical resources to authorize as many licenses for LPFM stations as possible."

. . .

Others from Western Pennsylvania filing similar comments with the FCC included Pittsburgh labor activist Charles Showalter, host of "The Union Edge"; Seth Bearden, a producer with "Rustbelt Radio," heard over Pittsburgh's WRCT-FM (88.3); and Pittsburgh Community Television, which operates that city's public-access cable TV channel.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has promised that the agency will respond by Sept. 12 to the comments it has received.

Tube City's filing, along with the others, can be downloaded from the FCC website.

You are previewing your comment. Be sure to click on 'Post Comment' to store it.