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Making WavesLPFM Then and Now
Commentary by Gary Stigall, CSTE
The first FM station heard in our house came through the eight-inch speaker of my parents' retired Packard Bell console television. Yes, TV. This was in Prineville, Oregon, and the nearest FM station in 1969 was over one hundred miles away. What I heard was a channel 72 UHF translator atop Mt. Grizzly designed to pick up KOIN-TV Portland, channel six, but doing a fine job of passing nearby KBOO, at 90.7 MHz. The station transmitted an aura of illicitness, the medium fully entangled in the message. I thought I had bagged a pirate at first. My skin crawled. The volunteer announcers there left the door to Hawthorne street open. In the background, you could hear rain water pass behind car tires. The evening deejay might choose to play the sultry jazz classics of Billie Holliday and Paul Horn, while the daytime deejay might play Flatt and Scruggs or the Rankins. Sometimes they talked aimlessly. The sound was dynamic, with softs and louds. I later learned they transmitted all of 100 watts. Listenership was miniscule and far left politically, but their listeners didn't care. The station was alive. This is now...The low power originality and verve lives in San Diego. KSDS at 88.3 MHz, while decidedly more polished and apolitical, puts forth a fresh, non-commercial sound. KCR, a carrier-current station (or is it Travellers Information Service now?) moved to 1620 plus various cable channels and web streaming. They still dedicate themselves to everything commercial radio isn't. Across town at UCSD, KSDT is cable-only. They were both early players, and plenty of folks want to join in the broadcasting game. I received a call one day from San Diego School District, wanting to know how to set up a station at its Normal Street headquarters. Evangelical churches nationwide see the radio medium as a vital part of their duty. Their LPFM's pop up everywhere, often adjacent or co-channel to current services, licensed to towns with obscure names of railroad sidings in order to avoid their applications being seen by potential counter applicants. Every engineer I know has been given one of those projects at work. You know the kind. "Oh, I want you to think about how we're going to get fast internet and stereo service to the roller coaster because we're going to stuff a bunch of people in a van for two weeks. Can you do four channel of wireless mics for that? Mount cameras in the corners, but don't hurt the body÷we're giving the van to the one who survives the ordeal. A week from Monday, why?" You don't have to have a technical bone in your body to come up with a scheme like that. The LPFM services offered by the FCC this year have that feeling÷well intentioned but impossible, and an inefficient use of resources. The third-adjacent channels leave one or zero openings in the nation's largest metro areas. On San Diego's 105.9 MHz LP-100, over 20 eligible applicants were announced in early June. Most were churches. Some colleges applied. A couple of internet radio outlets made the first round. In the second round, points will be given for sharing a channel. I can see it now÷The First Church of Holy Blessings from 4 AM till noon, followed by the World Jamaican Beat Foundation. (Some of you may remember the early satellite TV days when the Eternal Word Network shared a transponder with the Exxxtacy Channel.) You have to appreciate some of the rules, however. The FCC really wanted this to be community-based and nonprofit. You can't network the ownership of these stations. No satellite translators need apply. Technical standards will have to be adhered to÷you won't be able to just put a power amp on a coil-tuned exciter kit. The $10,000 or so required to put one of these stations on the air was really the first elimination round. Volunteers will man the microphones and hard disk drives. In fact, you know that some applicants, if they win, will eventually get volunteer burnout and give the licenses to someone else. Just watch the rise and fall of some of the Internet services to see that phenomenon. What's next?The possibilities astound. Direct radio services from satellite seem to be taking off finally. Someday radios might make use of the digital bitstreams of DTV stations. In fact, if you've got some radios, I know where you can get 12 megabits per second÷enough to synthesize all the radio stations in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego and Baja California Norte. (Okay, so you'd have to make it COFDM first.) There's talk of new cellular broadband services on the horizon, too, with enough bandwidth for audio services. The system could use subscriber rooftops for mini cell sites. The possibilities make you shiver, don't they? One thing is for certain--these brave, new services will not be injurious to the health of the the professions of savvy broadcast engineers. |
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