Prometheus Background

Prometheus Fact Sheet

Some Facts About Low Power FM:

Having trouble convincing the powers that be that micropower fm is the best thing to happen to democracy since the butterfly ballot? The staff of the Prometheus Radio Project have happily assembled this arsenal of facts for the lpfm debate. Enjoy

Local communities around the country
are excited by this opportunity and are applying for LPFM licenses in droves.

The first two rounds of applications for these LPFM licenses have already been submitted, resulting in nearly 1300 applications from religious groups, local governments, health and social service groups, youth and senior groups and others. The new rules allow small non-commercial non-profit groups, libraries, churches, civic and community organizations to apply for licenses to operate simple, inexpensive local radio stations. Individuals cannot apply for licenses, but any group can apply, from a local health organization to the Rotary Club. The equipment costs of these stations can be as low as a few thousand dollars. Hopefully hundreds of these groups will be able to build these non-commercial micro-radio licenses across the country over the next year.

Congress should conduct full hearings
on low-power radio before they take any action.

A lot of people care about LPFM, and there is a significant debate. It would be a slap in the face to the thousands of Americans who played by the rules and participated in the FCC rulemaking process to see their dreams of neighborhood radio dashed in a sneaky lobbyist maneuver. Citizens groups have filed comments and even commissioned and completed engineering studies to address all legitimate scientific questions. Attaching this bill as a rider to a completely unrelated appropriations (spending) bill is a shortcut around our democratic system of governance. If Congress feels the need to exert oversight over engineering decisions at the FCC, they must have full hearings, listen to the public and to the experts on both sides, and then vote on legislation based on its own merits. One of our societies greatest challenges is widespread voter apathy and the political disengagement of our citizenry. The creation of the low power radio service should be a case study in Democracy at Work, not a glaring example of the domination of American politics by cynical corporate forces.

The call for field testing is bogus.

The engineering issues are clear, with testing of 75 different consumer receivers now in the public record. Though a call for field testing may sound reasonable on its face, it is in fact a patently wasteful and fruitless exercise. Field testing does not test interference to consumers radio receivers. Interference to consumers' receivers is the only real question in this proceeding which merited scientific testing and scrutiny. Field testing only tests how radio waves travel over the surface of the earth, which has been abundantly understood for the past 50 years. One can only conclude that the special interest opposition to LPFM hopes to simply outspend tenfold the LPFM advocates by continuing to demand ever more frivolous testing regimes for questions that are already well understood. The testing program proposed in S.B. 3020 is an example of big, wasteful government at its worst. The real goal of this legislation is to stall the implementation of LPFM until after the Presidential election, when the NAB and other corporate interests hope to get a more sympathetic hearing of their special interest demands from a new FCC Chairperson.

The FCC has adopted expedited
rules for dealing with interference.

The FCC is so confident that there will be no serious interference issues that in their final rules they have a special, expedited interference resolution process that will immediately address an incumbent broadcasters concerns. The incumbent broadcasters now have more interference protection from LPFMs than they have from their fellow incumbent broadcasters' stations. LPFM operators must deal with individual listener interference complaints immediately- if there are more than a handful, they must immediately shut down until all problems are resolved.

Reading Services to the Blind is fully,
permanently protected by the FCC rules.

The FCC has fully, permanently protected the Reading Services to the Blind. No LPFMs can be allocated on a third adjacent channel to a station that carries a radio reading service. The actual text of the rule is below: Page 46 (a)(2) LP100 stations must satisfy the second adjacent channel minimum distance separation requirements of subsection (a)(1) with respect to any third adjacent channel that, as of September 20th, 2000, (the adoption date of this memorandum and order) broadcasts a radio reading service via a subcarrier frequency. This means that a Low Power FM station will never be allocated anywhere near an existing reading service. There were never more than a handful of LPFMs that could have been allocated near a reading service in the first place, and it is highly doubtful that there would have been any interference experienced even without these new regulations. Full power stations, on the other hand, cause interference to reading services as a matter of course. A reading service which is interfered with by a full power station has no recourse to complain, and this is a given aspect of our radio environment. It is wrong that our print impaired citizens are only allowed an inferior, second-class technology to hear reading services, but that is the fault of the currently existing full power stations, not the new low power stations. It is deeply ironic and shamelessly opportunistic to hear the very stations that already impair reception for the blind pose as defenders of those with disabilities.

A radio service identical to the
proposed low-power fm service already exists.

The FCC in its January 20th report and order was quite conservative in extending protection out to the second adjacent channels. This means that under the new FCC rules, if there is an existing station at 91.5, the FCC will not allow new LPFM stations at 91.1, 91.3, 91.5, 91.7, or 91.9 anywhere within a radius of between 29 and 130 kilometers, depending on the existing stations current power. Across the US there are currently thousands of low power radio stations known as translators. These stations are used to extend the coverage of full power radio stations- for some political and economic reasons, they are not allowed to originate their own programming. There are many of these translator stations operating on the second and third adjacent channels next to full power radio stations. They operate at 10 to 250 watts, and use the very same transmitters that LPFM stations will use. The FCC based its decision low-power fm on the actual performance of these little radio stations that already operate interference free on our nations airwaves. The actual interference record on these stations is far more useful than any results that millions of dollars of extraneous testing could yield.