MEDIA Proponents resume push on micro-broadcasting BY IAN DONNIS

From September 10 to 12, rebels in the fight against media consolidation will gather in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with local proponents of micro-broadcasting, staging a "barn-raising" to launch a new community-based radio station. More than 30 workshops on broadcasting skills will be offered, and the incipient low-powered FM (LPFM) station has received more than 40 program proposals, covering topics from politics and gardening to yoga. The event will coincide with a musical festival, and not coincidentally, it offers a tart retort to US Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, one of the earliest foes of LPFM.

With a fair share of luck, something similar might one day happen in Rhode Island.

LPFM represents a nonprofit, community-oriented approach, in which stations have maximum power between 10 and 100 watts and a broadcasting radius of just a few miles. When the concept was last discussed locally about four years ago, a dozen or so groups expressed interest about getting their share of the public airwaves. After big broadcasters, including National Public Radio, lobbied against the grassroots notion, an application from Providence-area interests, however, has basically remained in limbo. "[The original applicants] have grown tired and disgusted and completely bewildered by what they thought would be a simple thing," says Pete Tridish, technical director of the Philadelphia-based Prometheus Radio (www.prometheusradio.org/), a leader in the fight for LPFM.

Micro-broadcasting proponents scored a victory in late July, though, when the US Senate Commerce Committee made it possible for Congress to greatly expand the number of community media outlets in the US. Tridish, who spoke Sunday, August 8, at AS220 in Providence, is working to build pressure for the full Senate to pass the same legislation.

It doesn’t seem like it should be such a pitched battle. Suggesting that 100-watt stations could pose interference for conventional 50,000-watt operations, as Tridish notes, is somewhat ridiculous. But in response to concerns raised by broadcasters, Congress spent a bundle of money to examine the question and decided, basically, it was a non-issue.

About 20 people, including a number from Brown Student Radio, a nonprofit AM station, turned out for Tridish’s discussion at AS220. Given the record, any forward motion toward more LPFM stations seems like nothing other than a pending uphill fight. But given what Prometheus has been able to accomplish with three paid staffers working from a church basement, more bands of radio rebels just might help to drive the cause forward.