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Re: Saturday, October 4, 2003
Forgive me, but... so what about the radio business? I'm not talking here about changing the radio business as it stands, or what threatens its remains. I'm talking about building a new ad hoc radio system using existing, available, unlicensed, low-cost materials and transmission methods. Or just having a good time with what's possible. The guy I was talking to last night wasn't looking to get his school in the radio business either. He was comparing the project costs of setting up an old fashioned school radio station operating on the licensed FM band with doing something much cheaper on the Net. Actually, when he brought the subject up we quickly visited the problem for stations like his school is contemplating: licensed Low Power FM has been gradually squashed by large forces, including NPR, over the last 30 years. Meaning that, unless his school is out in Northwest Nowhere, there isn't an available channel. Many years ago, you could start a 10-watt school or community station. Many of those have grown to become big-time noncommercial stations since then. Alas, thanks to successful lobbying by NPR and others, now you can't. New LPFM regs adopted in 2000 were scaled waaay back. And there has always been this silly notion, still embodied in communications law, that noncommercial broadcasting has an "educational" charter. Back in the days when low power licenses were still available, applicants needed to bullshit about their "educational" intentions. Not that it mattered. Witness all the evangelical christian stations that fill the FM dial south of 92MHz. I'm not knocking them, but I am saying that "education" is just as far from their agenda as anything happening among nonreligious stations on the same corner of the dial. Anyway, I'm far more excited about what's possible on the open range of the Net than on the closed cages of licensed (even satellite) radio. There are responses to this message:
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