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Friday, March 26, 2004
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 Friday, March 26, 2004
started 3/26/2004; 1:21:25 PM - last post 1/23/2006; 9:41:49 PM
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Doc Searls - Friday, March 26, 2004 
3/26/2004; 5:21:25 PM (reads: 4119, responses: 2)
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Feels good 
Creeping Jesus
| | Want some fascinating reading? Get the FCC's daily digest. (Thank you, Tim Pozar, for suggesting I subscribe to it.) Unlike those on the FCC Web site, links point to text (.txt) your browser will open, rather than ust .doc and .pdf files). The digest also demonstrates Patrick Gregston's maxim about the differences between business and government: Business is interested in outcome, and government is interested in output. |
| | - Grant of one construction permit for Cornerstone Community Radio, which operates six other translators, apparently all for religious stations, in three states
- Grants of sixteen construction permits for translators across ten states to the Educational Media Foudation (for K-Love, enlarging their already long list of stations and tranlators)
- Grants of two construction permits for translators by Educational Communications of Colorado Springs (for KTLF, Light Praise Radio)
- Minor changes to licensed construction permits for Communidad Cristiana of Pittsburg Texas (KLXI/100.5), and Halifax Christian Community Church Inc. of Flagler Beach Florida (WFBO/93.3), both for LPFM (Low Power FM) facilities
- Dismissal of applications for translator construction permits in Bayou La Batre and Muscle Shoals, AL; both for Edgewater Broadcasting (another religious broadcaster), plus one in Nashville for R&L Non-Comm
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| | Notice a pattern here? Nearly all (or perhaps all) of the applicants are religious broadcasters. And all the facilities are either LPFM or translator facilities. What we're seeing is religious broadcasters filling every opening left on every dial, everywhere in the country, like foam packing material filling a shipping box. |
| | LPFMs stations are a relatively new class of station, created by the FCC to allow local nonprofits to serve their own communities with noncommercial programming. They can operate anywhere on the band where an opening can be found (unlike full-power noncommercial stations, which operate only between 88 and 92 on the dial, with the exception of a few grandfathered stations), with a maximum power of 100 watts at a height of 30 meters (above that they have to reduce the power). Translators are repeater stations. They operate at low powers (1 to 250 watts, with no restriction on height)radio on channels other than the originating station (when they're on the same channel, inside the local coverage area, they're called boosters). Commercial stations can't operate translators outside their home coverage areas. Noncommercial stations can put translators anywhere they convince the FCC that they won't cause interference to local stations. A few get turned down, but most don't. Translators are squatters, essentially. If a full-power LPFM station applies for a translator's channel, the translator gets bumped off once the application is approved. |
| | Public and religious radio (mostly Christain radio, which means the same thing in this context) are your two main breeds of noncommercial stations. The FCC from the beginning, however, regards both as "educational," which has always required applicants to BS about their "educational" purposes. Anyway, as you see from the digest, the Christian outfits are doing all kinds of stuff while the public stations mostly do nothing. Recent news about the replacement of a religious signal with an NPR affiliate in Baltimore, is the exception. On the whole, public radio has been, and continues to be, way behind religious broadcasters in expanding their networks of translators and full-power satellite stations. |
| | Religious broadcasters are an extremely resourceful and dedicated bunch (witness these Formal Comments from Educational Media Foundation), and they have heavy air cover from friendly Republican legislators who hate NPR in general for being "too liberal." (Though liberal it tends to be... I noticed that Nina Totenberg gave Eben Moglen the last word this morning in a segment about Justice Scalia's refusal to recuse himself from a case involving his friend Dick Cheney.) |
| | In general, however, there is a lot less listening to Christian than to public radio. Take the case of Frederick, MD (above), where WJTM rolled over from religious to NPR programming early this year. |
| | First, this was not the case of a displaced translator, but rather the sale of the station itself. It went from Joy Public Broadcasting Corp., a Christian broadcasting organization in Wisconsin, to Public Radio Capital of Denver, for $1.2 million. The latter organization helped create WYPR, a Baltimore public station, in a $5 million deal two years ago, according to the story. (Here's WJTM's coverage area.) Second, before WJTM was sold to WYPR, Frederick was served by three religious broadcasters and no NPR stations (according to MIT's radio-locator, which is an excellent service). |
| | Second, of the 12 FM and 4 AM stations putting reliably listenable signals into Frederick (according to MIT's excellent source on these matters) before WJTM was sold, four of the FMs and one of the AMs had religious formats. That's 1/3 of the FMs and 1/4 of the AMs. The switch of WJTM from religoius to public radio programming provided Frederick with its first and only public station. It also relieved Frederick of its only full-power local FM religious station. The fact that three other signals remain, however, seems to me (and probably also to the sellers) an acceptable trade-off. As for the Liberal/Conservative balance, here are the four stations listed on the AM band: WGOP (the site leads with the Pledge of Alegiance), WXTR (fills the hole in coverage by WTOP, Washington's big news station), WFMD (the local news station) and WTRI (the religious station, which has no Web site) — in other words, nothing Liberal at all. |
| | Third, checking the ratings for noncommercial stations, we find WBGC and WYPR leading in Baltimore with 1.8 and 1.9% Average Quarter Hour (AQH) shares. WAMU and WETA from Washington also get 0.8 and 0.5 shares in Baltimore. No religious stations make the cut, which starts at approximately zero. In Washington, WAMU has a 3.6 share and WETA has a 2.5. Three religious stations make the cut: WCRH with 0.0, WGTS with 1.1 and WPER with 0.2. On the commercial side, there are no public stations (of course), but several religious stations audible in both markets. In Baltimore WCAO, a gospel station owned by Clear Channel, gets a 3.2 share while WRBS, an "Inspirational" station owned by Peter & John gets a 1.6. One other gospel station, WBGR, gets an 0.6. In Washington, WAVA, a Christian talk station, gets a 1.3 while WPGC, a gospel station, gets an 0.9 and WYCB, another gospel station, gets an 0.5. Note that there are ethnic divisions of sorts here as well. Some of these gospel stations may have more in common with "urban contemporary" stations than with the kind of Christian stations that are grabbing up tranlators and low power FM licenses all over the country. |
| | In any case, there is clearly a lot more listening to public radio, especially on FM, than to Christian radio, for what that's worth. |
| | Disclaimer: I'm a Christian too, though I don't advertise it. For what it's worth, our family attends Mass every Sunday. And I think Christian broadcsters have every right to do their thing. With this post I'm pointing out that their prevalence, especially on FM, is way out of proportion to their actual appeal, and that they're continuing to pack the dials with signals while secular noncommercial broadcsters with far more listener appeal continue to lose ground in a range war in which only one side shows up. And I don't see anybody else writing about it. |
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Matt Pedersen - Re: Friday, March 26, 2004
1/23/2006; 3:15:13 AM (reads: 939, responses: 1)
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I personally am sick and tired off all the secular religious radio in the DC area.
I guess what brought this on, directly, is the fact that two radio stations I listened to frequently, 99.1 WHFS and 104.1 WWZZ, both had format flips that left my radio dial with two less stations. WAVA, at one time, had the #3 ratings in the DC market, and then was flipped to religious talk. While I won't say that this was a useless switch, it took a very good CHR station and ran off anyone that listened to it. It took another four years for another CHR station to come into thE DC market, with the 104.1 / WWZZ station. However, sponsorship was poor and it lost market share when it went after nitches. It would be very nice to see people go forward and take up some of these frequencies and put on other formats that a majority of people could stand to listen to.
Just my 2¢
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Doc Searls - Re: Friday, March 26, 2004
1/24/2006; 1:41:49 AM (reads: 944, responses: 0)
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We're watching both bands go to hell. I listen some in the car; but since I started using a satellite radio there, all I bother with now is sports on AM and NPR on FM.
I don't think there's much hope. Religious broadcasters have just found a way to make the market -- such as it is -- work.
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