Prometheus Projects

Prometheus Outreach

We're Looking for a few Good Progressives

We are contacting every cool group we can find. Please pass this letter along to the type of progressive, social justice, and community-based organizations that should be applying for low-power fm stations. Checkout our outreach page for more details.

Dear Activist Friends:

Does your town need better radio? Prometheus Radio Project is an activist group devoted to creating opportunities in radio and democratizing the media.

Community radio can be the lifeblood of a neighborhood - an electronic town square that can help communities govern themselves, give forum to innovative ideas, create learning opportunities for youth, and nurture local cultural expressions. Radio, once called the "the theater of the mind, " is a medium that is low cost, imaginative and uniquely well suited for community use.

For the past twenty years, the FCC has mistakenly regulated against such local outlets. On January, 20th, activists promoting community radio won a surprising victory over one of the most powerful lobbying interests in the United States- the National Association of Broadcasters. Over the course of the next year, a series of five day windows will open up that will allow for the distribution of many hundreds of new 100 watt radio licenses across the country. These licenses will only go to non-commercial, non-profit groups, just as we fought for!

A new community radio station can go on the air in those five days for a few thousand dollars, compared to the millions of dollars that are routinely paid for broadcast operations in todays' market.

Our victory was not complete- there are not as many licenses to go around as we had hoped. Competition may be fierce in some areas of the country, but we want to help prepare communities across the country to take advantage of this rare opportunity. As lifetime activists in the movements for social justice, we have a special interest in seeing community organizers and neighborhood organizations apply for these stations.

Public access centers, libraries, community technology centers are good examples of publicly-minded institutions which could create meaningful democratic citizen institutions on the nations' airwaves. Other good groups might be land trusts, political organizations, civil rights groups, ethnic associations and activists of all stripes.

If our groups do not take initiative, it is a sure thing that fundamentalist satellite networks will attempt to scoop up all the new stations, undermining the community purposes for which these licenses were designed.

The licenses are not hard to apply for, and the application is free. But there is only one opportunity to apply, and it is coming very soon. The United States has been divided into 5 groups of ten states each. Every three months, another window opens for ten states, then closes again after five days. No one can apply before or after that window.

Prometheus Radio Project is going on tour to help raise awareness about the new service. We'd like to come to your town to do a workshop with your group or other community organizations to help set the wheels in motion to start a radio station While we're in town, we can help fill out your application for an LPFM. If this finds its way to you and you don't live in those states, contact us to find out when we are coming near your town-over the coming months, we will travel throughout the U.S.

If you want more info on starting a station, or want the Prometheus Radio Project to come to your town, contact us:

info@prometheusradio.org
(215) 727-9620

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Contact us at:
Prometheus Radio Project
P.O. Box 42158
Philadelphia PA 19101
info@prometheusradio.org
(215)727-9620