By Brett Arends
Friday, November 12, 2004

Brewster, on Cape Cod, would seem an unlikely scene for a media bidding war.
The 200-year-old seaside town - whose Web site boasts of its 23 nearby
ponds - has a year-round population of under 10,000, though that rises to
20,000 in the summer months.

A FM radio frequency based there was put up for auction by the Federal
Communications Commission last month with a starting price of $90,000.

Current bidding: $3.93 million, by public broadcaster WGBH, which also
operates Boston's Channel 2 TV station. Otherbidders include College Creek
Broadcasting and CRB Media.

The frequency doesn't even come with a station or a transmitter. The winner
of the auction will, quite literally, receive just air.

They will have three years to jump through further regulatory hurdles,
raise the masts, set up equipment and begin broadcasting. They will be
restricted to a modest 6,000-watt transmitter.

What's going on? Analysts note that available radio frequencies are
becoming increasingly rare, so when they come up for auction the bidding
becomes intense.

And whoever wins the right to put a tower in Brewster - within sight of two
golf courses and plenty of marshland - has the chance to reach much of the
Cape.

The estimated revenue of the Cape Cod radio industry last year was $13.5
million, according to the specialist research group BIA Financial Network.

WGBH wouldn't comment yesterday. But it looks like the nonprofit
broadcaster wants to add to its Cape and Islands news-focused radio network,
which reaches Nantucket and parts of the Cape.

``It will help them extend the current service to an additional population,
and because they have already paid for all the staff and programming, they
can provide the service at a lower incremental cost,'' expert Marc Hand
explained yesterday.

Hand is managing director of Public Radio Capital, a nonprofit organization
that advises public radio and TV broadcasters.

He says similar stories are going on around the country. In all, the FCC is
auctioning 288 individual bits of the airwaves.

The auctions were delayed for five years because of a lawsuit from public
broadcasters.

Starting bids, set by the FCC, totaled just under $11 million. Today, the
bids have topped $117 million and they haven't finished yet.

http://business.bostonherald.com/bus...rticleid=53749