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Radio revival?

Erik Möllberg leads the effort to bring Low Power FM to Fort Wayne

By Jim Mount

Fort Wayne Reader

2011-06-20

Even in the age of the internet, when practically anyone can have a blog, or a podcast, or some sort of web-based broadcasting set-up, there’s still a mystique attached to good old-fashioned radio.

Not necessarily radio as it is now, mind you — when people rhapsodize about radio’s heyday, they’re often talking about a time when stations seemed a little more localized, when they would address and reflect the interests of the communities they served, when playlists were a little less stringent and individual stations had a little more character.

And maybe that’s an idealized view of radio as it was. But Erik Möllberg, a self-described radio buff and the Assistant Manager at Public Access Fort Wayne, is spearheading an effort to bring something called “Low Power FM Radio” (LPFM) to the area. To hear Mollberg tell it, LPFM — also referred to as “community radio” — has the potential to bring a little bit of the character and flavor of radio’s golden era into the modern age.

While it’s true that the internet has made a range of options available for people to communicate, Mollberg points out that it is still point-to-point communication as opposed to broadcast or cable, which is one-to-many. “To have access to a ‘broadcast’ medium locally still carries weight and impact,” he says. “The possibility of an audience locally that ‘knows’ the participant as opposed to the audience member who might happen to find your particular blog, podcast, etc. You can be ‘found’ locally, identified, reveled, deified and so on because of the content you may broadcast. I have found people putting their programs on YouTube and asked them about playing them on the access channel, and their overwhelming response is ‘you mean I could be on TV?’”

He continues: “Again, conceptually, there is the thought that the internet is easy, simple and innocuous where as the broadcast or cable medium is still something special. Perhaps this will change in a few years, but most stations are now finding their programming and funding coming from their web streaming.”

Möllberg has been talking about the possibility of Community Radio in Allen County for years. “I was always told ‘oh, this community would never support a non-profit station like that’.”

What has changed and made it more of a possibility is that, after repeated attempts, Congress finally passed the Low Power FM Radio Act on January 7 of this year. Essentially, the act means the FCC can make low frequency FM bands available to communities. Möllberg says the road to this point was a rocky one. LPFM service was first introduced in the mid 90's, and was largely limited in the scope of their frequency allowed. The limitations came about with the support of commercial broadcasters, who claimed LPFM would unfairly interfere with their signals, claims that Möllberg says were unfounded and later debunked by an FCC investigation.

“When the Radio Preservation Act went through, it killed off 2000 frequencies around the United States,” says Möllberg, who has also served on the national board of the Alliance for Community Media, the national organization for Access Television. “Four years later, the FCC actually did a report and discovered that none of these frequencies were going to step on the other frequencies.”

Möllberg began working with Prometheus Radio, a non-profit advocacy and community organizing group based in Philadelphia. According to the group’s mission statement, their primary objective is to “help expand the community of LPFM stations and listeners.” In 2003, they were one of several organizations to sue the FCC when it tried to further loosen media ownership laws under the directorship of Michael Powell.

“It took a long time, but Prometheus Radio — God love ‘em — really worked hard and got some senators and representatives behind this and passed into law,” Möllberg says.

As to what a community radio/LPFM station might sound like, Möllberg believes the possibilities are wide open. “The whole premise was that it was going to be non-commercial, non-profit, and that we were going to be doing a lot of local programming,” Mollber explains. “It wasn't going to be just a repeater satellite service. The main idea being that it was going to put the power of the radio back in the hands of the people.”

“For example, we could offer the Hispanic community eight or ten hours a week all in Spanish, or the Burmese community if they wanted to do eight to ten hours a week all in Burmese. It could be news, could be music, could be...whatever. We would obviously have musical programs, because technology has changed so much now, people could edit their own radio show at home, drop off a CD or upload a file to us, whatever they want to do.”

Students could get involved as well. IPFW still has a radio tower from when the school had a radio station years ago, and Möllberg talks about getting Communication students involved with radio; “We've worked out a really nice co-operative where we would house the facility here at the library, but the signal would be broadcast from IPFW. IPFW would let us use their tower, we could send the signal straight from the library to IPFW via fiber. As part of that, the Communications students could do their own radio shows and get their experience doing radio.”

Despite these positives, and despite the potential, things are still murky. What's holding it up, according to Möllberg, is that it seems the FCC is in uncharted waters in regards to what rules to apply to LPFM. Getting the FCC to move on this the first time around proved to be time consuming. Möllberg originally filed in the late 90s, when the frequencies first became available, before the National Association of Broadcasters complained about interference with their own frequencies.

“I wrote the filing and the FCC chair at that point was very interested,” Möllberg recounts. “It wasn't long when they opened up the frequencies and started opening up filing windows. What was most interesting is that the FCC took their rules directly from our filing, which was just amazing and also tells you just about how lazy they are in some ways just because they're really not sure what to do. They say when looking at your filing that ‘well this sounds good and this sounds good’ and they just accept what you've filed for their own rules. I was pretty shocked to find that out but to know that you were a part of that, that you wrote these rules was pretty cool.”

He continues: “So they opened up the frequencies and people just started applying for them, but as soon as that happened (this was in 1999) the National Association of Broadcasters came out against it because they said that it was going to step all over their frequencies, which is where the Radio Preservation Act of 2000 comes from.”

But now, even though the laws permitting LPFM have passed and the FCC needs to open up these frequencies, Möllberg believes it could still take a while before Fort Wayne sees such a station in its area. The problem? “When it comes to decisions and dramatic moves the FCC tends to run at the same timing as the gestation period of an elephant,” he says.

Möllberg explains that now, the FCC has to write a few new technological rules in terms of broadcasting on the digital spectrum. Once they write those then they're going to open up the filing windows. “If they do it, I would assume that they would do it the same way that they did before, open 10 states at a time,” he says. “There will be a five day window where you have to submit your filing, and they'll do that over a year’s time period. But really, you're not filing for a license right away, initially you're filing for a construction permit. You have to get the construction permit before you can get the license.”

He estimates that the window will open up probably July/August of 2012. “Now, it will still take a year after you apply for that construction permit before you get your permission for the license,” Möllberg says. “In theory, if you're lucky, your station may be operational by 2013 or 2014. Maybe you’ll be on the air a little sooner…”

It's often said that good things take time and have to overcome a lot of obstacles before they take place — getting LPFM situated here locally seems to be just that. The benefits of having LPFM here could be enormous for bringing a diverse community closer together, and who knows, maybe someone out there has their own version of The Shadow Radio Theater they'd like to share. Time will tell, and if Möllberg has his wish, that won't be all that long in the making.

For more info, contact Erik Mollberg at emollberg@acpl.lib