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Cracking the airwaves

Community Radio WELT 95.7 FM looks to make a mark on Fort Wayne

By Jim Mount

Fort Wayne Reader

2014-12-04

It's taken a few years but the dream of LPFM — Low Power FM radio — in Fort Wayne just got a little closer to reality. With the issuance of a construction permit, the Allen County Public Library has established WELT on the FM dial. In 2011, Erik Mollberg, Assistant Manager at Public Access Fort Wayne began laying the groundwork for the station with the filing of all the necessary paperwork (we covered Mollberg’s efforts in FWR #176). The result is now one great step closer to opening up the airwaves to a broad and diverse potential.

To refresh, LPFM is Low Power FM Radio, described as a radio service set up by the FCC in 2000 for non-commercial radio educational radio broadcasting. It’s often called community radio. There are many community radio stations in the US, but we’ve never had one in Allen County. It’s member driven, locally operated by a non-profit and generally has a diverse programming grid. It’s not “full power” — no “50,000 watts of power”; more like but 100 — which means it’ll be able to broadcast at least 5 miles, most likely much farther, with any luck the entire county.

Mollberg explains that there are some major differences between community radio and Access TV. “The operational rules government Access TV via the FCC are much more..loosey goosey, if I might say that,” he says. “Access TV can be seen only on cable television (specifically Comcast or Frontier in Allen County) and the rules are much more flexible in terms of the content that can be shown. WELT is broadcasting on the public airways and the FCC is very, very rigid about operations, which is everything from taking transmitter readings, announcements at the top and bottom of the hour and most certainly about what be said (or not said) on either broadcast radio or TV.”

As we said, the wattage is low and the competition for construction permits is fierce, so scoring a permit is a victory itself and provides a crack at radio broadcasting to those who wouldn't otherwise have it. “We just got our construction permit on October 18th of this year,” says Mollberg, “We’ve been waiting for the approval and have been in competition with two other applicants for the same frequency, so after we were able to negotiate with them to move to another frequency, we got our final approval.”

Although not yet broadcasting, the pieces are pretty much in place to set up the station and get it running, including raising the necessary funds for equipment. Mollberg says the next stage of the development is falling in place. “We are now entering the fundraising phase as there really is no money set aside for the purchasing of the transmitter, much less the studio production equipment. Once we have that and everything meets with the FCC guidelines, they will then give us permission to begin broadcasting on the public airways. Our fundraising committee will begin the work of seeking out donations, the Technology Committee is finalizing the equipment needed, and the Programming Committee is working on rules for operation, how people can get a show and the training program for volunteers.”

“It’s a slow process, but it will help us establish a really good foundation to build upon for the sustainable future of the station,” Mollberg adds.

Despite the slow process, Mollberg is optimistic about actually getting WELT broadcasting earlier than expected. A lot of this depends on donations, the necessary documentation, and the training that will be needed to fully and professionally staff the station. “As per FCC dictate, we have 18 months from the date the construction permit was granted to be ‘on the air,’ which would be by April 23 of 2016,” explains Mollberg. “Now, that being said, I am fully confident that we can get on the air much sooner than that. A good portion of when we will actually make that happen depends on the amount of fundraising that we can accomplish and how soon we can get all of our documentation lined up. That includes rules on content, training and operational practices. So while there is a great deal of work to be done, I honestly believe that collectively we can complete this task well ahead of schedule. Personally, I would hope that we would be on the air within a year or less. Let’s see how well I am reading the magic crystal ball.”

With that in mind the prospects of finally having WELT up and running is exciting to Mollberg, opening up the airwaves to a broad and diverse segment of the population already with a number of groups signing on to WELT. “We have everything from the Burmese community ready to do not only informational programming but Burmese music…all in Burmese.” Mollberg says, “There are programs ‘todo en Española,’ the growing Arabic community wants to produce programming, the GLBT community want a programming hour, both city and county government want hours, the Central Indiana Labor Council… I could go on. And remember, there are an awful lot of music programs out there that people want to share. So while 8 hours a day will be locally created, the remaining hours will get filled with satellite feeds.”

With the groundbreaking already under way, Mollberg anticipates a bright future for Community radio in the future. “There is talk that in the future the FCC will possibly allow LPFM stations to raise their power,” he says. “I have heard 250 Watts and a former local DJ told me that he saw in Radio World people pushing for 500 to 1,000 Watts. I think 1,000 Watts is a way off and that is full power…we would need to work up to that. But in any case, this is going to be a great time for everyone. You have to remember that old expression from the 60’s — ‘if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.’ So you can either sit around and complain about things or roll up your shirtsleeves and dig in. And guess which one pays off in the end? Go ahead, guess…”

The frequency is 95.7 on the radio dial, and the tower is being hosted at IPFW, a partner in the endeavor. “They graciously are letting us house the antenna and transmitter at no charge,” says Mollberg.

As far as programming, Mollberg says the “application process” will be somewhat similar to Access TV. Those interested will need to submit detailed proposals about what their show is about, how it will serve the community, and an audio sample to show proficiency in production. They’ll also have to go through training. “The sooner people learn the system and get the process down, the better they will sound and the easier it will be for them to get a time slot,” Mollberg says.

Once again, the station is not up and running yet, but Mollberg encourages anyone with questions, or anyone interested, to email him at emollberg@acpl.info