Thanks to curious loopholes in the FCC’s FM licensing rules, several religious broadcast companies have created national networks on the cheap using low-power, mostly-automated FM transmitters. Using their intimate familiarity with FCC bureaucracy, these companies also engage in spectrum hoarding and speculation.
The practice of spectrum speculation is nothing new, it’s a kind of side-industry in the broadcast business. Although they very seldom actually build a radio station, speculators apply for and acquire radio station construction permits and then sell them to the highest bidder. Channel spaces on the FM dial are a finite commodity – where supply is low and demand high a savvy speculator can make quite a bit of money if they have permits to build radio stations in growing markets. Continue reading “God Squads Fall From Grace”
Category: FM Translator
Moneychangers In the Temple
REC Networks makes some remarkable math: the entity doing business as translator-mongers Edgewater Broadcasting and Radio Assist Ministries is cleaning up on the FM dial. Combined, Edgewater/RAM currently hold 1,026 construction permits for translator stations. This is of more than 4,200 license applications filed (~2,300 applications still pending).
Of these, REC then lists (in an e-mail) 83 sales or transfers of Edgewater/RAM construction permits – the recipients of whom just happen to be other translator-mongers, like the American Family Association and Calvary Chapel Church, Inc.
Three multi-translator transactions involved Edgewater/RAM handing over 26 construction permits in Florida to “Reach Communications (Calvary Chapel Church, Inc.)” for $326,500. The total revenue generated by the 83 transactions is just over $800,000. Continue reading “Moneychangers In the Temple”
LPFM Notes; Media Reform Conference Redux
Last week REC Networks released a comprehensive report on all LPFM stations which face interference, displacement, and the varying degrees of signal encroachment in between from full-power FM stations. The report runs 110 pages. REC’s also been keeping a close eye on the DTV transition, and reports that of all of the stations currently broadcasting on Channel 6, only five have requested to stay on their analog channel past the transition cutoff date (to be determined).
Got some reliable information on the political situation in D.C. It seems that the National Association of Broadcasters is busy fighting bigger problems, like losing its request that all DTV channels be carried on cable, and the indecency hot potato, and others. At the LPFM Day not so long ago a new LPFM rulemaking was hinted at. Perhaps this can accomplish at the agency level what the Local Community Radio Act of 2005 is trying to do. There’s definitely a better chance of expanding LPFM at the FCC level, especially while the NAB’s playing defense on the legislative front. I think the folks at NPR are mature enough to see that it’s time to cede the issue. Continue reading “LPFM Notes; Media Reform Conference Redux”
Religious Broadcast Executive: Good Work If You Can Get It
Someone who calls themselves “a former employee” of the Educational Media Foundation (corporate parent of the K-LOVE and AIR-1 radio networks) sent along some interesting information about the salaries of the heads of various religious broadcasting institutions.
The original message lamented the fact that EMF Broadcasting’s president, Dick Jenkins, pulls down somewhere between $250-280,000 per year, apparently the highest in his peer group. Other chief executive numbers offered for comparison (can’t vouch for their accuracy, they were reportedly pulled from charitynavigator.org): Continue reading “Religious Broadcast Executive: Good Work If You Can Get It”
Translator Networks Mobilize Listeners
While rooting around in the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System today to examine recent submissions to a proceeding in the agency’s Localism Task Force effort, I made a typo. Instead of searching for filings under the FCC docket number 04-433 (the magic number to file/find comments filed on broadcast localism), I mistyped and got the results for FCC# 04-223, which deals with a pending change to the FCC’s regulation of junk faxes.
Many listeners to the Educational Media Foundation‘s two christian music radio networks, K-LOVE and AIR1, are butterfingers like me. In 04-223 there are ~30 new filings from this week alone. They’re all from K-LOVE/AIR-1 listeners moved to support the networks – networks who are apparently afraid of an expansion of true local LPFM and can’t get enough of translators.
They’re all only a paragraph or two and full of interesting talking points: Continue reading “Translator Networks Mobilize Listeners”
March of the Low-Band God Squad
This article was initially written for/published in the Wisconsinite, a now-defunct alt-biweekly newspaper in Madison, WI.
Under the guise of evangelism several religious broadcasting entities are mounting a full-scale invasion of the FM dial. This invasion exploits a couple of little-known provisions in FCC regulations that provide these broadcasters the opportunity to flood open frequencies with low-power transmitters. In very real terms these “godcasters” are crowding out the potential growth of new community radio stations.
Key to this ploy is a type of FM radio station known as a translator. Translator stations range in power levels from 1 to 250 watts and cannot air locally-produced programming. The FCC created the translator class of FM radio station initially to serve as a booster for full-power FM stations that operate in areas where terrain (like mountains) may block their signals.
Over the years many individual radio stations have applied for and received licenses to operate translators to extend or fill in gaps in their primary coverage area. In Madison, for example, Wisconsin Public Radio maintains a 10-watt FM translator station on 90.9 since WHAD-FM, The Ideas Network’s primary FM outlet (based in Milwaukee), does not provide adequate coverage to the Madison area and the next-closest nearest Ideas Network FM outpost, in Highland, cannot be reliably heard in Madison at all. Similar translators help boost or extend the reach of other WPR stations around the state. Continue reading “March of the Low-Band God Squad”
Translator Invasion's Impact on LPFM Quantified
The following are results of a preliminary study conducted by REC Networks analyzing the impact a flood of more than 13,000 FM translator applications filed last year are having on the potential growth of bona-fide local LPFM stations. REC is undoubtedly refining this information; visit their web site for more.
Bracketed text are additions to the original.
We surveyed 10,000 census designated communities, which if the translator applications that were filed during the March 2003 (Great Translator Invasion) window did not exist would be able to have some form of LPFM: Continue reading “Translator Invasion's Impact on LPFM Quantified”
Freak Radio vs. K-LOVE: V-Man Wins by Forfeit
On Monday, KUSP’s “Talk of the Bay” was to host a 20-minute verbal spar between Vinny Lombardo (V-Man) of Freak Radio Santa Cruz and Dick Jenkins, president of Christian translator networks Air-1 and K-LOVE. K-LOVE just put up a translator that broadcasts into Santa Cruz on Freak Radio’s frequency.
As the segment began, the V-Man was in-studio and he and host John Sandidge chatted while the show’s producer tried to raise Dick Jenkins via phone. Four minutes in, the message was passed: due to “back trouble,” Jenkins could not appear on the program. An act of God, perhaps? Continue reading “Freak Radio vs. K-LOVE: V-Man Wins by Forfeit”
Stimulus/Response Goes Coast to Coast: FCC Visits Vermont
Stung twice in California by the cities of San Francisco and Santa Cruz, who like their microradio stations unlicensed, thank you very much, the FCC shifts focus and moves on two stations in Vermont.
Radio Free Brattleboro, who just returned to the air two weeks ago after a visit from field agents, got an FCC follow-up yesterday. None of the station DJs actually spoke face-to-face with them; two strained yet cordial conversations were conducted through a locked door.
The first time the agents asked to enter and inspect the station they were prompted to show a warrant. The FCC duo responded by asking to see RFB’s authority to broadcast. Someone inside shot back: “the people of Brattleboro had authorized us to do so.” Continue reading “Stimulus/Response Goes Coast to Coast: FCC Visits Vermont”
Translator Crusades Update
The final total on the number of FM translator station applications filed in March is 13,345. Of those, nearly one-third were tendered by just two groups – Radio Assist Ministry and Edgewater Broadcasting, Inc. – who filed more than 4,200 translator applications between them.
Other known abusers of the translator service are also in on this, like the Educational Media Foundation (875) and the Calvary Chapel syndicate, who applied for 385 stations under at least two names (Calvary Chapel of Twin Falls and CSN International). Continue reading “Translator Crusades Update”