For Gordon, “radio, unlike webcasting or satellite delivery, lives in a community, and the community is…its cultural ecosystem. Radio presents a wonderful place to encourage, to relate to musicians to the cultural scene. To be more than just music between commercials as it has become.”
The terrestrial nature of radio actually does root it in a geographic area -– a station has to exist in one location in order to broadcast. However, it’s still an easy thing to just play what every other station is playing, to have edicts from central command about what’s on Billboard this week. One proposed solution is to bring in edicts from the FCC to require a certain percentage of localized content for every station.
Though we could hope for some kind of Clear Channel-less revolution, stations are unlikely to change their format in any short period of time, and even when they do, the commercial needs of a large station will still likely skew programming towards appealing to the widest audience their massive transmitters can reach, which brings the debate to the hyper-local option -– Low Power FM.
LPFM signals only reach between three and seven miles, so really not more than a single neighborhood. Congress approved the granting of LPFM licenses back in 2000, but the National Association of Broadcasters had protested, saying that these small stations would interfere with their current signals. Years of testing and changes to FCC rules later, it seems that more LPFM stations will be able to come on the air.
Proponents hope that these stations will be able to fill some of the gaps left behind by commercial radio and even public radio -– of local music, news, and service to niche markets.
It is an interesting strategy, returning to an older technology to circumvent some of the wave of gloablized offerings and syndicated programming. Since it is still terrestrial radio, presumably these stations would get the same free pass to performance rights that the big guys do, allowing them to compete more easily than the differently-structured satellite and Internet stations can.
As new technologies do emerge — podcasting becomes more widespread, and Wi-Fi radio even peeks over the horizon — the discussion changes. Concerns about localized content and reaching the community are even more important when making sure that everyone has access to the information in the first place –- access to the Internet at a real and functional speed. That began the discussion of the panel on Broadband Technology and the Creative Class.
Article comments
1 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Great Article...
...with each new technology, there are new opportunities for people to get involved with big media.
Yea, but Radio & Television combined didn't have the cost-to-access ratio in it's favor like the internet does. With both Radio & TV, the consumer would've had to spend big bucks to get involved on the program level. Nowadays, an inexpensive PC & a decent internet connection allows just about anybody to showcase their ideas & passions.
[I have to read some more...I'll be back with some more thoughts/comments]