Patty Winter wrote:
The U.S. Congress recently passed the Local Community Radio Act of
2010, which will expand the number of low-power FM stations by reducing
the required minimum spacing between them and full-power stations.
As it worked its way through Congress, the technical requirements
for the separation were tweaked and the bill eventually gained the
support of the NAB, which had originally opposed it.

I keep thinking about this and looking at it, and more and more I think
this is a bad thing.

As consumer radio receivers get worse and worse, the response is to try
and shoehorn more stations into the band.

I think LPFM stations are a great idea when there is space for them, but
I think dropping the third-adjacent rule and the like is not going to make
actual space for them, it's just going to result in poorer reception for
existing stations, and LPFM stations whose actual range is far more limited
than it should be.

I was frustrated that all of the articles talked about technical
requirements for the new stations, but not whether they would have
to actually have local content rather than syndicated feeds (note
the support of several national religious organizations), so I went
looking for the bill itself. Here it is:

http://www.thomas.gov/home/gpoxmlc111/h6533_enr.xml

None of that will change, and to be honest I think those are the problems,
NOT the third-adjacent rule. Force the class A as well as the LPFM station
to have a certain amount of local content, force them to actually make some
attempt at serving the public. Shut down the stations that are not doing this
or let them shut down on their own and THEN you will have less band congestion.

Right now if I tune across the FM band here in Hampton, VA, I can find
three stations playing exactly the same song. They are all playing off
automation systems. This is not serving the public.

Anyway, the bottom line seems to be that as long as a group can
establish a local entity to hold the license, they can put whatever
content they want on the air. I don't see anything that prohibits
syndicated programming and requires the station to actually serve
the local community. I guess we'll just have to hope that some of
them do.

Yes, this is true of LPFM stations as well as conventional AM and FM stations.
If you look at the license database you will find that the vast majority of
LPFM licenses are assigned to Christian broadcasting combines that use them
effectively as unattended operations broadcasting network material directly
off a satellite feed.

I think this is a terrible thing and a total misuse of the LPFM license,
but no more so than the local 50KW "classic rock" station that does exactly the
same thing on a larger scale.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."