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News of the Moment

11/9/12 - Crowdfunding Community Radio? [link to this story]

This crowdsourced funding call to build a new community radio station crossed my tweet-stream Tuesday. The Media Institute for Social Change, a non-profit media literacy/empowerment group in Portland, Oregon, has apparently secured a "rare opportunity" to build a new radio station in town. The goal of its campaign is to raise $3,500 by November 16. As of today, $2,220 has been pledged.

"We have accomplished perhaps the hardest part - we have acquired an FCC license, an incredibly rare commodity," writes the Media Institute for Social Change's executive director Phil Busse. "Your donation, quite literally, will be the nucleus around which the radio station is built....

By no means does this amount reflect the real costs of starting a station, but we have (as they say) friends in the business who are providing equipment and services at greatly reduced rates; no, not free, but at a fraction market-value."

It costs more than $3,500 to build out a low-power FM radio station - but the FCC hasn't given out new licenses for those in years (this is likely to change in 2013). Building out a full-power station is even more expensive.

I couldn't find an FM station construction permit for the Media Institute for Social Change in the FCC's database (though my mining-skills are admittedly rusty), but I did find records about the organization's plan to purchase a 28-watt FM translator in Nehalem, Oregon - some 80 miles from Portland - for $10,000, filed in August.

The seller was the Educational Media Foundation, a significant participant in the 2003 Great Translator Invasion - an event best known its rash of speculative filings for translators.

Spectrum scarcity makes for strange bedfellows.

11/1/12 - Future of AM: Decided in Secret? [link to this story]

There've been more developments regarding the radio industry's potential plans for "modernizing" the AM band. Radio World reported last month that the NAB's Radio Technology Committee and CBS have selected an unnamed AM station "in an area that could be characterized as a medium-sized market" to be a guinea pig for all-digital AM-HD Radio test broadcasts.

This is the first of "three or four" AM stations that may be tapped to test the all-digital protocol. The experiments are likely to be done by an "outside engineering contractor" and primarily financed by HD's developer, iBiquity Digital Corporation. They could begin before the end of the year.

This is but one option for the future of AM broadcasting detailed in a confidential report produced by the NAB - a report that is unlikely to ever see the light of day. The trade group justifies the secrecy by characterizing the report as "extremely technical and would need to be explained and/or possibly watered down for consumption by non-engineers." Furthermore, meetings on this issue will remain closed to the public, for if they were open, "no one would feel free to participate and no work would be accomplished," according to a Radio World source.

Meanwhile, Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai delivered a keynote address at the annual NAB Radio Show, held in Dallas in September, in which he mentioned the dilemma of AM broadcasting in the U.S. He's met with broadcasters more than two dozen times since he took office in May. Most notably, Pai called for the creation of an "AM Revitalization Committee" at the FCC. In addition to a comprehensive review of AM broadcast rules, Pai suggested a year-long timetable for deciding the future of AM, calling for a plan of action by "early 2014."

Pai is a neoliberal fundamentalist who believes regulation in and of itself is a scourge that inhibits the functioning of the "free market." Thus it's not surprising that he believes the FCC's role is to assist broadcasters in whatever plans they have for the future of AM, as opposed to facilitating the thinking about and implementation of solutions.

This is a dangerous paradigm, but unfortunately it reflects the modus operandi of contemporary broadcast policymaking at the FCC. One need look no further than the development and deployment of HD Radio itself. The technology was developed mostly in secret by broadcast-investors, who refused to take into consideration the larger concerns of their industry as a whole. By the time development and testing had been completed, and the FCC was petitioned to adopt the standard, most broadcasters (in the individual, flesh-and-blood sense) had no idea how functional HD Radio really might be, and many who did have some foreknowledge were skeptical.

As the record shows, this lack of transparency during HD's development poisoned the policymaking environment and trade press. There was massive consternation among independent (i.e., non-iBiquity investor) broadcasters and the public about HD's fundamental viability, not to mention its profound effects on the future potentiality of digital radio broadcasting itself. However, by that point the FCC had already effectively made up its mind on HD by opting out of any active role in the technology's development and plans for rollout.

The FCC's calculus for making this constitutive decision was simple: a small group of companies that controlled the vast majority of the radio industry's revenue supported the technology, as did NPR. If the largest political and economic players in the world of radio broadcasting, both commercial and noncommercial, thought it was good, it must be good for everyone.

As we have seen over the last ten years, this assumption was incorrect. Broadcaster and listener indifference/resistance to HD Radio would seem to suggest that responsibly formative media policy cannot be made in a neoliberal vacuum. Yet more of the same will likely decide the fate of the mediumwave band.

It will be another fait accompli: the NAB and the nation's largest corporate AM broadcasters will do "careful and thorough research" on the future of AM. NPR will sign on because it's desperate to not be marginalized. Their "carefully vetted" conclusions which are "too complicated" for anyone but them to validate will be duly accepted by the FCC. Any public deliberation of the issue - inside the regulatory sphere or otherwise - will be garnish to provide the patina of due process to decisions that are being made now, to which all broadcasters and listeners should have a part.

Commissioner Pai's call for an "AM Radio Revitalization Initiative" suggests the skids are already well-greased. The FCC's role in crafting the future of AM is to get out of the way. Pai suggested the Initiative be guided by "one basic question: are there regulatory barriers we can remove to help this sector rebound?" Calls for the widespread dismantling of regulation is neoliberal code for "let the marketplace decide." If Pai and the FCC continue to mistake their conception of "the marketplace" as representative of everyone affected by the future of AM, the outcome of this important decision-cycle will be suboptimal to say the least.

The key to avoiding this outcome is transparency. The NAB should release its report and Pai should make sure future deliberations take into proper account of the perspectives of all constituencies, regardless of their political and economic weight in the discussion. Making good policy on the future of AM radio calls for no less.

10/25/12 - FCC Goes Gangbusters on Jammers [link to this story]

On the heels of admonishing a half-dozen people for hawking cell-phone and GPS jammers on Craigslist earlier this month, the FCC unveiled a new web portal and toll-free hotline for reporting the use of such devices. In doing so it cited another six people for their online sales shenanigans.

Within these documents (sample), the FCC details its planned strategy for enforcement in this domain:

While we previously have issued warnings to operators in the first instance -primarily because non-monetary penalties historically have proven effective in deterring unlawful operation by individuals - we are not required to do so. We are mindful of the serious risks posed by jamming devices and the apparent need to provide greater incentives...to cease the operation, importation, and sale of jamming devices altogether. Therefore, we caution you and other potential violators that going forward, and as circumstances warrant, we intend to impose substantial monetary penalties, rather than (or in addition to) warnings, on individuals who operate a jammer.

Translation: fines for such activity are forthcoming. They will begin at $16,000 "for each such violation or, in the case of a continuing violation...up to $16,000 for each day of such continuing violation up to a maximum forfeiture of $112,500 for any single act or failure to act."

I can understand the FCC's predicament. Cell-phone and GPS jamming devices are intentional interferers with a legitimate public safety implication. But I'm kind of surprised that the base fine for selling one is but $6,000 more than what the FCC dings unlicensed AM and FM broadcasters for, considering that they (by and large) interfere with nobody and pose a relatively infinitesimal safety risk to the public.

It'll be interesting to see how the agency's chronically understaffed field enforcement adapts to chasing down the people behind Craigslist postings and other online venues for selling jammer devices. The latest Citation and Orders ask the violators to either visit their nearest FCC field office (which could be hundreds of miles away) for an interview OR respond in writing to the C&O within two weeks. No physical jammer-hunting on the menu yet, though the opening of a public tip-line to report their use is likely to lead to that.

The prohibition against jamming devices will only work if the threat of likely penalty makes the sale of them unprofitable. Constrained by the relatively passive nature of administrative tactics, one can't help but wonder how this campaign might affect the time and resources allocated to other enforcement activities.

10/18/12 - A Weekend at the Wave Farm [link to this story]

Last weekend I had the distinct honor and pleasure of attending the first-ever Transmission Arts Colloquium, hosted by free103point9 - a non-profit organization whose mission is devoted to advancing transmission arts (loosely defined as the creative manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum) and access to the airwaves more broadly.

free103point9 has an interesting history. One of its principals founded 87X, a pirate radio station in Tampa, Florida at the height of the pre-LPFM microradio movement. After moving to the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, free103point9 was born in 1997. This microradio station provided an outlet for lots of programming, but became quite well-known for its sonic experimentation. Following the passage of LPFM, free103point9 evolved from rogue broadcaster to thriving arts organization.

In addition to being the licensee of community radio station WGXC in Hudson, New York, free103point9 also runs the Wave Farm, located on a 30-acre plot of bucolic woodland outside of town where transmission artists reside to work on projects. The Wave Farm not only has a beautiful two-story building with a library, studio-space, and lodging, but there's trails through the property on which artists have built interesting (and functional) installations that creatively blend technology and nature.

The Colloquium brought together about a dozen invited artists and scholars from around the world to explore three broad and intense questions:

1. If we define transmissions arts broadly as encompassing broadcast, installation, communication networks, composition and performance - in public spaces or on airwaves - what is your understanding of the potential of this mode of work for the future? What is your definition of "the contemporary" in transmission arts? Where is it pointing for the future?

2. Transmission art engages with...complex socio-technical conditions and circumstances of transmission, often as direct critique of state and/or corporate communication infrastructure and systems. How [does such art] rethink transmission media in order to engage with the issues of power, ownership, and access to the electromagnetic spectrum? How do transmission artists approach the deep and unavoidable philosophical tension between utopian dreams of union and the status of interference and noise?

3. If we think of artworks as part of an elaborate ecosystem - a community, incorporating artists and the public in cultural, economic, and political interconnectedness - how can we work toward sustainability? What tools do the different species of transmission arts have to develop creatively in this wider network of understanding? How can they evolve in the context of contemporary social and economic systems and the intermingling of art forms?

We spent the better part of a day and a half exploring these questions. Each question was addressed initially by a panel of four who had prepared statements and thoughts, which the rest of the group interrogated and built upon.

I spoke on question #3, and did so from the perspective of building on the collaborations that led to the Colloquium, with an eye toward establishing "transmission arts" as a publicly identifiable field of expression and inquiry, so as to increase the network of participants and evangelize for the use of radio and other "transmission technologies" in broader social, political, and economic contexts.

During the weekend, all of us participated in an afternoon program on WGXC (streamed live from the Wave Farm) in which we got to introduce ourselves and begin the process of processing what we were learning at the Colloquium. All of the event's discussions were taped for later transcription and possible publication.

Being primarily a teacher, journalist, and policy wonk, I often felt way over my head when issues of aesthetics and theory raised their heads (as they did often). I tried to employ policy-knowledge to help us suss out just where points for the fruitful transgression of communications law and regulation exist. Overall, engaging with these aspects of the larger world of transmission was a mind-expanding experience like none I've ever had.

I'd been dying to visit and collaborate with the Wave Farm for years and feel extremely lucky that I got the chance. There's a perception among communications researchers that radio studies is a dead field because nothing interesting happens in the medium anymore; this Colloquium positively exploded that myth. Here's hoping that such gatherings become a regular thing and grow in both participation and expressivity.

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