Turn Up The Radio: Fostering Community Media Collaboration

“Community radio is 10% radio and 90% community,” Jeff Shaw says. Speaking at a workshop about bringing together the worlds of low-power FM (LPFM) radio and public access television, Shaw drew this key lesson from his long career as a community media provider. The quote, he added, was inspired by community radio advocate Zane Ibrahim, founder of Bush Radio in Cape Town, South Africa. “It’s not necessarily the tools that are used--it’s about engaging with the community,” Shaw said.

The importance of community engagement was also a major theme for others at the workshop, which was presented at last week’s Alliance for Community Media Conferencein Tucson, Ariz. Titled “Turn Up the Radio: Exploring Collaborative Opportunities for PEG and LPFM,”  it featured a variety of lessons for how LPFM advocates and Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) Access TV providers could benefit from working together more closely.

Workshop leader Erik Möllberg, assistant manager at Access Fort Wayne, for example, provided a short history of collaboration between the PEG TV and LPFM movements. In 2000, when Congress introduced the Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act, which limited the development of LPFM stations, he and Prometheus’s Pete Tridish worked with the Alliance for Community Media in support of LPFM radio. As Möllberg explained,

“It was a fantastic opportunity.  Licenses were coming out, and then, somehow, Congress came out with the Radio Preservation Act of 2000, which knocked a lot of the frequencies that were available [for LPFM] around the country out. But a lot of LPFMs still did start at that time.”

For PEG providers, community radio offers an opportunity to extend their mission by reaching people who otherwise do not have a voice, Möllberg added. LPFM has been “a nice way of pulling in other sectors of society that were not using access television and that might work much better for them,” he said. And today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is poised--not quite ready, but poised--to open frequencies up to the public again. This is a great opportunity to once again bring together community radio and public access TV, he said.

The Fight for More LPFM

For the past 12 years, Prometheus has focused on expanding full- and low-power community radio stations and crafting policy to protect them. In addition, it provides information, resources, and training for existing radio stations and supports groups that may be interested in LPFM.

Prometheus, however, is perhaps best known for its barnraising activities, which are inspired by the Amish tradition of building a barn very quickly. But instead of barns, Prometheus raises radio stations; it’s helped 12 launch in the past nine years. Most recently, for example, Prometheus helped build WGXC in Hudson, NY, where Vanessa Graber of Prometheus Radio Project met Antoine Haywood from PhillyCAM, Philadelphia’s public access television station (see pictures).

Prometheus also recently launched a major outreach campaign for the Local Community Radio Act, which passed in December 2010. As their website explains, “the legislation removes the restrictions on spacing between Low Power FM radio stations and full-service radio stations on third-adjacent channels. That's what LPFM advocates have been hoping for for years, and it makes space for lots of new LPFMs!” (The Open Technology Initiative’s Hannah Sassaman outlines the history of the bill in a recent blog post.)

With a new public licensing period opening as early as June 2012, a small window exists for the FCC to make more than 1,300 channels available to the public. Prometheus and other LPFM advocates, however, are concerned that commercial broadcasters will snatch up the LPFM frequencies and use them for translators--which simply repeat the radio signal from distant channels rather than providing locally-produced content.

More than 6,000 translator applications were frozen in 2003 as a result of Prometheus’s advocacy efforts, but the translator issue has arisen again, with the FCC now looking for public comments. Prometheus is therefore asking people nationwide to ask the FCC to make more room for low-power radio channel allotments. Prometheus has many resources available on Local Community Radio Act and ways to get involved.

The FCC decision will have profound implications for channel allotment for LPFM in urban areas, which host many PEG access TV stations, Graber said. A low-power radio station that broadcasts even three miles into a city could potentially reach hundreds of thousands of people. “Imagine the possibilities if we could open the top 25 largest markets for LPFM stations,” Graber said. “Even if we were to just get one channel in each city, how much that would change and diversify the current media landscape.”

Why Did Davis Community TV Apply for an LPFM License?

As part of its efforts to serve Davis, Calif., the local community media center incorporated Davis Community TV in 1988 and added educational access television a decade later. But the center also launched KDRT, a community radio station, in 2004, when the FCC had its first licensing window. KDRT thus represents one of the first LPFM stations to originate from a public access TV station.

One reason the center pushed for a community radio station was because it fit with its mission to build infrastructure independent of the cable systems and corporate gatekeepers, in order to free communities from media systems that are solely dependent on profit-making, said Shaw, who works with KDRT and other Davis community media efforts.

After he moved to Davis, Shaw didn’t have cable television for many years, leaving him without access to city council meetings. But he felt he should be able to engage in civic participation without having to pay the cable company. “With radio, there are no barriers to that. Civic participation was an important part of that, and that was our key motivation,” he said.

Later, the Davis media group changed its name to Davis Media Access as it began to incorporate both traditional and new media tools.

How LPFM Benefits the PEG Access Community

Upon launching KDRT, overall participation at Davis Media Access doubled, Shaw said. There was a lot more energy at the center, and board and committee participation went up, as did training programs and mediamaking for the center’s cable channels. Networking and affiliations increased, including with the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, which became a strong ally in the community media movement.

In addition, county officials used the radio station and engaged more with station staff and managers. Davis Media Access was able to apply for grants they previously had been out of reach, an increased audience helped boost its donor base, and the initial radio launch party grew into an annual fundraiser.

As an alternative to commercial media, KDRT brought coverage of local elections and issues to a new set of homes and cars. Between January 5 and April 7 of 2011 alone, Shaw explained, 693 locally-produced public affairs shows aired on KDRT. The local music scene is also now more involved. More than 150 volunteers gained new experience in radio production, including a mother who started a weekly radio program with her daughter about home schooling called “Road Scholars.”

“Davisville,” produced by a former journalist, is another interesting program, Shaw said, and is available on the Internet and for download. The program focuses on local issues such as redistricting, local water rate hikes, and other civic issues. One of Davisville’s stories was picked up by the Davis local newspaper, which, like many newspapers across the U.S., has experienced cuts to newsroom staff. In response, Davis Media Access is beginning a more formal partnership with the local paper to provide online content, which helps drive traffic from the newspaper to Davis Access Media’s website. Bill Densmore and I have previously discussedthis strategy.

The Benefits of LPFM for Tribal Communities

Hector Youtsey and Gabriel Otero of Tucson’s Pascua Yaqui Tribe shared their experiences operating the tribal community radio station KPYT-LP 100.3 FM and discussed its benefits for the community.

Youtsey worked with Prometheus to launch 100.3 FM, a member of Native Public Media, back in 2005. Many tribal departments have shows on the station. The station also airs a diabetes prevention program on Wednesdays, and a show for language preservation broadcast entirely in the Yaqui language runs on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Other programming includes a weekly Tuesday education program and a show on public safety every other Tuesday. Youtsey and his staff also work with local youth. As Youtsey explained, the radio station is “all about the tribe.”

Otero, programming coordinator for KPYT, recommended that when launching a community radio station, it’s essential to “build your programming by finding out what your community needs.” The benefits can be substantial. Many elders, for example, tune in to listen to programming in their native languages. Others listen because of the station’s focus on uplifting information. The youth radio program that Otero runs, which teaches children how to program public service announcements, has helped participants become more social and more confident.

Soliciting feedback from the community is essential, Otero added. Participants in many other conference sessions concurred; many noted that the key to successful community engagement in PEG access TV is to go out into the community and ask “What do you need?” This is particularly true as many PEG access TV stations are working to become community media centers.

PEG access stations interested in finding out more about their local community radio landscape can visit the Community Media Database, a pilot project led by Rob McCausland being completed in partnership the New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative and Prometheus with funding from the Benton Foundation.