Prometheus Release

Study Finds Clear Signals for Community Radio

Prometheus Press Releases

Prometheus Lawsuit Stays Implementation of New Ownership Rules
September 4, 2003

Study Shows Interference Claims Are Red Herring
July 13, 2003

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Prometheus in the News

Low Power, High Intensity
Columbia Journalism Review

Prometheus has played a significant role in the struggle by community groups to establish low-power radio stations - a struggle that has involved the FCC, the National Association of Broadcasters, and National Public Radio.

Read the Q&A with Petri

Opposition to Big Media
could invigorate low-power FM radio.
Salon.com

"Low-power radio stations
give voice to diversity of 'underserved' towns"
The Denver Post

"No Power to the People"
Scientific American takes a look at the low-power FM debate

Scientific American studies claims that Low-power FM radio will cause unacceptable interference and concludes that "congress may have been reacting more to political pressure than technical data, which suggest that whatever interference LPFM stations generate will be too low to matter."

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Prometheus Articles

Special Interest Noise
The NAB/NPR attempt to dupe Congress on interference

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August 1999

Cambridge, MA-According to a technology study released today by a consortium of LPFM advocates, implementation of a Low Power FM ("LPFM") radio service will not lead to a significant increase in interference with current, full-power stations.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is currently considering the creation of a new, low power radio service. As part of its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC requested studies of commercially available radio receivers to examine whether more stations could be supported on the dial without increased interference. The possibility that new, low power radio stations could interfere with full power stations currently in operation has been the most significant argument impeding adoption of the new service by the FCC.

In response to the FCCs request for additional research, a receiver engineering study was conducted by Broadcast Signal Lab, LLP. The study was commissioned by a coalition of LPFM advocates including the National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications, the Media Access Project, the Microradio Empowerment Coalition, the Prometheus Radio Project, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, and others.

Highlights of the study include:

• 10 commonly available radio receivers were exposed to incrementally greater levels of potentially conflicting signals, simulating the conditions that would result from the presence of LPFM stations on the dial. The results suggested that there was room to relax current FCC interference rules.

• Full power radio stations are currently permitted to create "blanket" interference within a specified geographic radius near the transmission site, known as the blanketing area. LPFM signals were shown to create only minimal interference within several hundred feet of the transmitters, with many receivers showing no interference even within that small radius.

• Any interference within this small blanketing area is easily remedied by low cost filters, which all radio stations (including the potential LPFM stations) are already required to provide to listeners encountering interference problems in that zone.

• A typical 50,000 watt full-power station is permitted a blanketing area of 9150 feet around its transmitter. A 100 watt community station, by contrast, would be allowed a blanketing area of 401 feet.

"The National Association of Broadcasters has consistently used buzzwords like interference to scare the American public and hide their opposition to increasing the number of voices available over the airwaves" said Alan Korn, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild Committee for Democratic Communications. "Our study shows that opening the airwaves to the public with LPFM will cause far less interference than that caused by existing full power stations. These results confirm that the only interference the NAB is really concerned with is interference with their monopoly over the radio dial."

"It is good to be able to lay this interference issue to rest" says Jeremy Lansman, owner of KYES TV in Anchorage. "It is now more clear than ever that LPFM will create far less interference than many already licensed radio stations do. The listening public will only benefit from the many innovative new stations that will emerge in this wave of licensing. What the NAB fears is economic competition from low power signals, not the noise."

You can receive the study by sending an e-mail to: Alan Korn. Copies of the executive summary may also be obtained by fax by leaving a message with the National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications at (415) 522-9814.

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