Weak, Important Voices
Though its decisions influence what Americans hear and often what they think, the Federal Communications Commission is as invisible to most Americans as the airwaves it is supposed to ensure are operated in the public interest.
That may explain why a study released last week, showing that low-power FM stations don’t interfere with the signals of high-powered ones, didn’t make headlines. Congress, though, should take note of this study and move quickly to allow small, community-based stations on the airwaves, despite opposition from media giants.
It has been four years since then-FCC Chairman William Kennard decided to authorize hundreds of ultra-low-power FM stations (each with a broadcast radius of about 3.5 miles) to provide genuinely local alternatives to the centralized programming that has dominated the airwaves since Congress deregulated the industry in 1996.
Applications poured in from such groups as the Second Samon Congregational Church in Newport Beach, the Center for Peace in Santa Rosa and a Boys and Girls Club in Madison, Wis.
Kennard’s plan was scuttled after intense lobbying from the National Assn. of Broadcasters. In a back-room congressional hearing one year after Kennard’s announcement, legislators barred the FCC from allowing most of the stations until a congressionally appointed panel could evaluate the industry group’s unsubstantiated claim that the low-powered stations would interfere with the signals of their high-powered competitors.
Last week, that study concluded that there were no interference problems and no reason to delay the smaller stations. The influential broadcasters association now claims the study’s methodology was “deeply flawed” -- even though the group helped design it.
The FCC’s current commissioner, Michael Powell, supports the roll-out but is powerless without explicit authority from Congress and President Bush. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to introduce legislation to give Powell that authority. Congress should swiftly pass the bill, recognizing what the new study makes clear: The threat to high-powered stations comes from legitimate community competition, not from signal interference.
As Cheryl Leanza, a lobbyist for the nonprofit Media Access Project and a longtime advocate of decentralized media, puts it: “The fact that we have to fight for something so small, innocuous and obviously good is unfortunately indicative of the policy debate we’re facing today in Washington.”
Low-power FM may be merely a fig leaf to cover up the media consolidation that the FCC and Congress have permitted. But its power as a democratic beacon cannot be denied -- no matter how low its wattage.