Lobbying Against Low-power Radio   

VIRTUALLY EVERYBODY LOVES the idea of low-power radio stations blossoming across the nation, bringing small-scale news, views and entertainment to urban neighborhoods and small towns. It's the reality people disagree on.
Even as the Federal Communications Commission charges ahead with its fast-track licensing drive, powerful forces in Washington, D.C., are pushing hard to halt this train before it leaves the station. The National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio have led the lobbying in favor of separate attempts in the House and Senate to limit low-power stations.
The NAB, which represents commercial stations, says it's neutral on the concept of low-power stations, but is dead set against any innovation whose signals could interfere with existing stations. NPR President Kevin Klose, who stresses that "most of our people have their roots in tiny stations," says he very much likes the idea of low-power broadcasting--but only if existing signals are protected.
An arcane but unusually vicious war over engineering tests and signal protection has been waged for months, with the broadcasters accusing the FCC of willfully ignoring evidence that low-power stations would make it harder for listeners to pick up their favorite FM signals. The FCC--led by Chairman William Kennard, who is determined to leave office at the end of the Clinton administration with low-power FM as his chief broadcast legacy--has hit back hard, accusing the broadcasters of "predictable self-serving protectionist arguments."
It's a "he says, she says" battle. But at press time, the FCC was informally reaching out in search of a compromise. The NAB and NPR say LPFM signals would interfere with other stations and with radio reading services for the blind that some noncommercial stations offer as a subcarrier for listeners with special equipment. The FCC says the low-power stations would do no such thing.
"It's exactly what you'd expect from an obdurate, uncaring bureaucracy," says Klose, who pronounces himself enraged by the FCC's characterization of NPR as part of the broadcast establishment that is clinging to its monopoly on the airwaves. "Repeatedly, they attempt to politicize the thing as though we were not community-based, as though we were not a public service."
A bill that would dramatically limit LPFM, ironically named the Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act of 2000, passed the House in April by a 274-110 vote. At press time, the Senate had not yet acted on competing bills: A proposal with 36 cosponsors that would eliminate low-power stations entirely, and a measure sponsored by Arizona Republican John McCain that would let the licensing of stations proceed, but give existing stations the right to sue low-power stations if their signal caused interference.
Opponents of LPFM were not sanguine about stopping the process before Congress recessed for the final weeks of campaigning. "Bill Kennard is going to ram this thing through, interference or not," says Dennis Wharton, senior vice president of the NAB. And if the broadcasters fail to win relief in Congress, Klose says NPR has not ruled out the possibility of legal action. NPR wants the FCC to conduct tests on interference and go ahead with low-power licensing only if existing stations' signals are not marred by the new stations.
Despite his deep concern about interference, Klose is optimistic that low-power can add new voices to a radio dial on which "there's been huge consolidation [of ownership] and a total loss of local voices." He says NPR looks forward to using low-power stations to build a new and much-needed feeder system for budding radio journalists.
Commercial broadcasters are far less enthusiastic about the need for LPFM. "Low-power would benefit a very small number of Americans," Wharton says. "We dispute the claim that radio has somehow lost its localism. I turn on the radio every morning and get local news and weather and traffic reports. If there's less local newsgathering than there once was, there are a huge number of alternatives, including local TV stations, newspapers, cable and Internet."