Free Radio New Orleans

So, the FCC engineer says he can’t find an available frequency to apply for the FCC non-commercial license in October.

What next? Are there other options to get a radio station that is truly a community station, serving the community, and run by the community, to help us rebuild New Orleans?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer depends upon how hard we’re willing to work to find a space on the radio dial for our own voices, our own news, our own concerns, our own agenda, shared in a spirit civility and thoughtfulness.

If you aren’t happy with radio stations that play repetitive music, that dish up the latest Britney faux pas as though it’s a public service, and that boast as news the histrionics of local and syndicated talk-show hosts shouting down their guests and listeners, then you need to be involved in changing what you can pick up on your radio.

Here are just a few of the options that may remain:

1) Lobbying the FCC through congressional representation to accomodate New Orleans with special consideration in a results-oriented approach which might require a bit more pro-active work from the FCC to make sure that the spectrum really does get used to “serve” the community. Could the FCC work harder to find a frequency, require stations to provide time for the community or move their transmitters, or even give up their licenses? Mary Landrieu, John McCain, Russ Feingold, and Harry Reid are a few Senators who recognize that communities aren’t being served well by the FCC.

2) LPFM? Perhaps the FCC could also furnish an expedited application process so we don’t have to wait for the NCE license competition to be resolved in a couple of years. A network of affiliated neighborhood LPFM stations might provide a space for us to share our ideas and concerns.

3) Pirate? It’s still an option if the FCC doesn’t cooperate. Low-power transmitters aren’t difficult to find.

4) Webcasting. We’d be missing an important audience of people in New Orleans who aren’t internet savvy, but it’s better than nothing. This might be considered as part of an endeavor to put some legs on an organization which eventually gets a proper radio station.

Next steps.

Thursday, 9/13, 6:00 - 7:00 p.m.
618 City Park Avenue (map), downstairs
(across the street from Delgado)

Is radio just a poor man’s iPod? That’s the way Radio-Info.com spun an article appearing in the Baltimore Sun.

I believe in the potential of radio to serve its listeners better, because I remember a time (aging myself) when it did — when AM DJ’s were king and played what they wanted to, and FM was a fledgling upstart that turned to the album format. I also recognize that there are some stations which continue to provide the magic — the only ones that do it in New Orleans are WWOZ and WTUL, because they allow their DJ’s to program their own shows.

We need that magic to come back to talk radio. We need community-based talk radio in post-Katrina New Orleans — a bubbling up of all of those interesting (and necessary) conversations about the recovery, and of the particular experiences of different neighborhoods and citizens.

Perhaps in drying up the revenue stream of the big radio megaliths, iPods and satellite radio will reduce the value of commercial purposes for radio, loosening up the spectrum for more local, non-commercial possibilities.

baltimoresun.com
Radio may survive this, too
Broadcasters hope MP3s and satellite radio won’t kill terrestrial market

August 26, 2007

With all these new gadgets for listening to music — from MP3s to state-of-the-art cell phones and laptops, not to mention satellite radio — it’s a wonder anyone is listening to good old-fashioned terrestrial radio.

One theory says that so many listeners are spending money on newfangled technology that the ones left tuning in to terrestrial radio are doing so only because they can’t afford the new toys.

“Because of satellite radio, more affluent people are going to use that service, so we have a smaller piece of the pie to slice up with the people remaining, who are not so affluent,” said Bob Pettit, general manager of WCBM, the Baltimore talk-radio station at 680 AM. “The younger people are going to the new technologies. Radio used to be a very effective way to reach people aged 18 to 34. Now, not so much.”

As a result, Pettit said, national advertisers are not turning to the old medium the way they once did, leaving the field to cheaper, and often local, ad buyers. In turn, the stations are obliged to charge less money because their demographic is poorer, he said, leaving the stations with less revenue.

But other people in the business consider that view heresy, and point to many ways in which the traditional broadcasters are holding their own. While they admit that radio audiences are declining, and that the amount of time people spend listening has fallen, they say that 230 million people, or about 93 percent of the U.S. population, still listen to some radio during any given week — down from 96 percent a decade ago.

In contrast, upstarts XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio have attracted a combined 14 million subscribers since their launches in September 2001 and July 2002, respectively. The two companies, which earlier this year announced their intention to merge, charge about $13 a month for access to hundreds of commercial-free channels, which can be accessed through special receivers and personal computers.

While those audience numbers are still comparatively small, millions more people have bought MP3 players and other music-playing gadgets, and sales remain hot in the young demographic that advertisers covet.

This month, Orbitcast.com reported the results of a Bridge Ratings study that said satellite radio leads other radio formats by 30 percent in attracting so-called “influentials,” described as listeners who are enthusiasts, who influence others to act on or consume products or services. “They’re the hubs of word-of-mouth marketing,” the Orbitcast report said.

The Bridge study found that satellite radio listeners are 10 times more passionate about their experience than their terrestrial radio counterparts. “They are passionate enough to pay for radio while others simply turn on the radio,” the report said.

Trying new things
But Fred Jacobs, a radio industry consultant who is credited with creating the “classic rock” format in 1983, was skeptical of the findings. “It’s not about affluence; it’s about choice,” he said, adding that stations and radio networks have hardly faced the new technological landscape lying down.

“Radio is fighting back in a number of ways — beefing up and improving Web sites, moving to podcasts to better leverage the strength of their personality shows and, of course, the fledgling HD radio,” Jacobs said, referring to the high-definition broadcasts and receivers now available.

“Many advertisers are looking beyond ‘old media’ — radio, TV and newspapers — for results and return on investment,” Jacobs said. “They have a greater willingness to experiment with digital platforms — Web sites, podcasts, etc. — and even word of mouth. The greater the choice for advertisers, the better their ability to negotiate better rates.”

Some music stations — particularly those with the so-called “Jack” programming, named after a fictitious hard-living radio cowboy — have reacted to the new gadgets by establishing a “shuffle” format, similar to the feature on MP3 players that allows a continuous flow of music, chosen randomly, to play.

“The Jack format is the radio equivalent of an iPod shuffle,” said Thom Mocarsky, a spokesman for Arbitron, the audience research company. “Radio programmers are putting together songs that they never would have put together before. Now, they’re willing to be eclectic. That’s part of the response.”

Mocarsky said that while the number of people who tune in to terrestrial radio has been mostly “rock solid” for the past 20 years, the time that individuals spend listening has declined. Ten years ago, he said, listeners generally spent 23 or 24 hours a week listening to radio. Now, the average is about 19 hours. But he said that 70 percent of the people who subscribe to satellite radio also listen to terrestrial radio.

Magic word: ‘local’
Several industry experts conceded that programmers and station owners have added to their own woes in recent years by stripping many stations of their individual voices, loading up airtime with commercials and insisting on playlists that make all stations sound the same.

Holland Cooke, a news and talk-radio specialist at McVay Media, a radio management and consulting firm based in Cleveland, said in a recent interview posted on MarketWatch.com that terrestrial radio companies had hurt their cause by “deregulating, consolidating, automating, and in the view of many, dumbing down their programming.”

“It’s an indictment of AM-FM radio that people will pay 13 dollars a month not to listen to it,” he said.

Cooke elaborated in an e-mail message by saying that satellite radio’s advantage is that it simply has more channels than AM or FM stations.

“It’s cool to hear a reggae channel, but no FM owner seems to dare to commit to one,” he wrote. “Notwithstanding that AM/FM provides fewer channels — heck, because AM/FM provides fewer channels — AM/FM radio should be doing what only it can do, that which non-local media cannot: local content, the silver bullet against iPod and satellite.”

Edward C. Kiernan, general manager of Baltimore’s top-rated talk-radio station WBAL, 1090 AM, and its FM counterpart, WIYY, known as 98 Rock, is one of those who advocate concentrating on local programming.

“Our feeling is that satellite radio can never be as local as WBAL radio can be,” said Kiernan, who described the hand-wringing over the state of radio as overblown.

“I’ve been in the radio biz for over 35 years — radio was supposed to be dead by now,” he said, ascribing its supposed demise to the advent of television, to the fact that cigarette advertising was removed from the airwaves, to record players, cassette tape recorders, eight-track tapes and, more recently, compact discs. If none of these things killed radio, he suggested, then iPods and satellite radio won’t either.

nick.madigan@baltsun.com

Given the irresponsible behavior of New Orleans radio stations, I came up with a novel idea. What if communities were granted the right every few years to deny one radio station its license to broadcast every few years, and reassign the license to a new owner. Then, New Orleans could have the community radio station it deserves.

Entercom’s WWL talk-show host Spud McConnell got himself so worked up this morning that he blurted, “I’m choking on my own saliva.” Could we just ask that, minimally, radio hosts present a more mature, rational voice, in these difficult times. There may be rare occasions when emotions run hot, but for uninformed Spud McConnell, frothing at the mouth while spewing ignorant views is the M.O.

Meanwhile, over at Clear Channel/Fox News station, The New 99.5FM.com, talk-show host (and convicted insurance commissioner) Jim Brown was listing all of the Republican candidates for president, asking a listener who he was going to vote for — as though we live in a one-party political system. Ironically, his listener responded with that worn-out, tired old tirade, lambasting the control that the Democratic party has over the media.

Two weeks ago, Citadel’s 102.9 “Bad Boy of Radio,” Michael Baisden, was taking calls from women about G-strings. A girl called in who said she was 14 years old. Baisden asked her if she was wearing a G-string. If you were that girl’s mother or father, would you think that’s funny, or would you want to land your fist in Baisden’s face?

Tune in during any afternoon drivetime to Clear Channel’s 104.1 DJ, “Doubledown,” to hear him talk about getting ass, his girlfriend pissing in the ocean, getting blowjobs, and other obscenities and indecencies. If that weren’t enough, if you can get through the porn collection on the 104.1 Web site to find his online profile, this is what you’ll find (emphasis added):

Doubledown was the last white person to be born in Miami, FL. His parents never beat him because he was white, they beat him because he wouldn’t shut up. This, combined with the fact that Doubledown got in trouble in school for grabbing girl’s hindquarters because he thought they felt good…leads to his current profession.
Big Mouth + Ass Grabbing Dude = Afternoon Drive in New Orleans …

Interests-
Women’s Hindquarters… I just love a great looking slice of feminine arce. It’s like art, it really is.
Alcohol…multiple cold and domestic brews work for me. …

The Doubledown Radio Show is very much like MAXIM Magazine for your speakers. Beer, sex, gadgets, cars, hot chicks… mixed with a blend of the best rock songs over the last 20 years.

I guess Doubledown thinks racism and ass-grabbing are humorous. Is this the America we want for ourselves and for our children? Is this what our government allows broadcasters to do to whom they grant the privilege of using one of our community’s radio licenses? Mind you, these remarks aren’t just DJ mistakes, they’re flagrant violations of FCC law — and as such are violations of the public trust. This is a pattern of patently offensive behavior which merits FCC scrutiny — and I would argue — reassignment of the FCC license to a more reponsible community group.

Except for the Spud comment, I tried calling the radio stations in each of the examples I listed above. In each instance, I tried calling at least three times, at different times. There was no answer.

I would venture to say that local radio station owners would be a little more responsive to their audiences, and would be more mindful of what their DJ’s say on air, if the community they’re supposed to serve could actually confiscate a station’s license to broadcast.

With more than 1100 radio stations under its ownership — six of them in the New Orleans market — San Antonio-based Clear Channel is by far the largest radio station owner in the country. Although the Mays family sold Clear Channel to a new partnership in 2006, Clear Channel will continue to dominate the world of radio. Even if it completes the sale of roughly half of its radio stations (only those in the smallest markets), Clear Channel will remain a bloated pig of the radio business.

Citadel Communications is based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Walt Disney shareholders own 52 percent of the company’s stock. With 243 stations under its ownership, Citadel is the third largest radio station owner in the country.

Pennsylvania-based Entercom owns over a hundred radio stations across the United States, with seven of them in the New Orleans market.

It’s time to reclaim the airwaves for our communities.

Another show-biz report from The Times-Picayune’s Dave Walker, lacking in any critical analysis of the local media market whatsoever:

Radio station WGSO switches to north shore talk

WGSO AM-990 has changed owners and formats. Out is William Metcalf Jr.’s MC Media. In is Northshore Radio LLC, a consortium of investors who primarily reside and do business on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

The new owners have installed a news-talk format targeted at north shore listeners who’ve largely been overlooked by New Orleans broadcast media, said Michael Starr, a local broadcasting veteran who is the new station’s general manager.

The station’s studios are in Slidell. Its tower and transmitter are atop an office building on Canal Street in New Orleans. Though targeting St. Tammany, its programming may appeal to Jefferson and Orleans listeners as well.

“Some of the topics we’re talking about are topics without borders,” Starr said. “We might be having a problem in St. Tammany Parish that’s universal. The Road Home is a common problem for everybody. In addition to that, (north shore) residents work in other parts of the metro area.

“Whether people are driving to work or play or whatever, they can keep in touch with what’s going on (at home).”

In the station’s new talk-host lineup is Hugh Dillard, who many local listeners will remember as rock-radio’s Captain Humble.

Dillard, a marquee jock at album-rock WRNO FM-99.5 in its air-guitar-windmilling prime, has recently been running a po-boy shop in Slidell, and intends to do his noon-2 p.m. show from there most days.

Other hosts include Jeff Crouere, Ed Clancy, Bernie Cyrus, Ken Trahan and John Marie.

“You know how you kind of say your prayers and at the end of them say something you know is pretty spectacular? ‘I want to win the Powerball’ or something?” Dillard said. “I always used to say, ‘I’d sure like to be back on the radio.’”

The north shore has different issues which are given shortshrift by dominance of media aimed at New Orleans. They certainly deserve their own outlet, and frankly, New Orleans needs its own outlet for original conversations which engage our own citizens in conversation, instead of the ignorant ideologues who live out in Jefferson Parish and the north shore. It’s a mutually advantageous outcome for the north shore to get its own talk radio station … except …

Except that the cause of localism for New Orleans still isn’t be served. The station will have its studio on the north shore, but the transmitter on the South Shore, where it might interfere with any other potential broadcasters.

Moreover, I might be mistaken, but with hosts like Jeff Crouere (his he a north shore boy, or just a media whore?), the metropolitan area is getting yet another pro-Republican formatted radio station. I don’t think a radio station should have a partisan tendency one way or another. If hosts are partisan, at least the lineup of hosts should be balanced. But we now have right-wing radio on 670 AM, 870 AM, 990 AM, 1350 AM, Clear Channel’s unfair and unbalanced Fox affiliate 99.5 FM, and 105.3 FM. Of course, almost identical content is being broadcast on 870, 1350, and 105.3 — which ought to be cause to have two of those licenses reclaimed by the FCC for other uses — a true community talk radio format, for example — which is my other problem with the new 990 AM north shore format.

Where in any of this are the unfiltered voices of the community, of plain folks who can certainly speak more eloquently then idjuts like Spud McConnell, and who are so much better informed about what’s happening in the rebuilding of New Orleans? Where can citizens turn for real localism around the clock? Consider what I heard tonight, simulcast on 870 AM and 105.3 FM — the local Entercom DJ was posing the following topics for discussion: 1) Was Paris Hilton being given special consideration by being released from jail?, and 2) How many remote controls do you have, who’s in charge of them, and where was the last place you lost one?

FCC, anyone? Is this not the worst natural disaster in American history? Can we simply ask that the FCC give us one of those wasted channels now being used by Entercom and Clear Channel for more substantive conversations led by citizens who actually know something?

Then you also have … this powerful ideological partisan press — talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, the bloggers by this time, whose mission is to advance the political aims of the Republican party. This press is part of a political movement, so that anyone who reports what is contrary to their view of the world, who reports information, news, that seems to contradict their principal political leaders — the president and the administration — they come down hard on them. So you had the willingness of the mainstream press to go along with the administration because they see themselves as the extension of authority and power, and they’re in the game, and you have this relentless beating up of any dissident mainstream journalists who deviate from the official view of reality by a political press whose main interest is in advancing the administration’s arguments and case. …

Splitting the difference between two opinions does not get you to the truth. It gets you to another opinion. I believe that we journalists are obligated to get people as close as possible to the verifiable truth. …

People have asked me, why is it important, then — it happened four years ago. Well, this war is still going on .. four years after the collusion between the mainstream media and the administration. If your fire department in your neighborhood is in collusion with the arsonist, you want to know about it to avoid the fire next time. If the dog doesn’t bark, you want to know if the dog is licking the boots of the burglar.

Bill Moyers, Fresh Air, 4/23/07

Don’t miss a single episode of Bill Moyer’s Journal on PBS. Next, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Unfortunately, here in New Orleans, the local PBS affiliate, WYES Channel 12 — as it did before with Now with Bill Moyers — is once again showing it’s partisan stripes by relegating this important program to late night and Sunday afternoons, rather than prime time.

And please join the Free Radio New Orleans movement, where the objective is to air the views and experiences of as many voices as is physically possible.

Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps if there is still a “there there” when he hosts a public comment hearing on April 30th to ask St. Petersburg residents what they think of their local broadcast media. FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin seems to think that Copps’ concern over media ownership concentration is a joke.

Copps wrote an opinion printed in the St. Petersburg Times:

Three years ago, a majority at the FCC voted — over the strong objections of my colleague Jonathan Adelstein and me — to scrap many of the ownership limits. They did so without seeking the input of the American people. Those flawed rules would have allowed a single corporation to own in some markets up to three television stations, eight radio stations, the local newspaper (a monopoly in most towns), as well as the cable system and Internet service provider. Thankfully, that indefensible decision stirred up a hornet’s nest of public outrage.

Three-million citizens contacted the FCC to express their opposition. They wrote out of a strong belief that we desperately need rules to prevent one-size-fits-all news from becoming the acceptable standard in our communities and to replace those awful homogenized national playlists from completely displacing local musicians and other creative artists. Congress went on record with its concerns, too. And then a federal court found the rules both substantively and procedurally flawed and sent them back to us to rework. It was good news that citizen action actually checked those outrageous rules. But the threat persists.

Last summer, the FCC launched a review that might severely scale back the few remaining media consolidation protections. These rules, among other things, limit a single corporation from dominating local TV and radio markets or from merging a community’s TV stations, radio stations and newspapers.

So a new dialogue is underway. But this time, it needs to be much more than an inside-the-Beltway discussion.

Let’s remember that American citizens, not TV and radio executives, own the airwaves. We give broadcasters the right to use these airwaves for free. They earn profits (usually very healthy profits) using this public resource in exchange for agreeing to broadcast in the public interest.

We need to know whether the good folks of the town where I once lived feel they are being well-served by the media. Are they getting the diversity of viewpoint they want? Do news programs provide real insight into what’s going on in minority communities, or do they present a misleading caricature of Latinos and African-Americans? Is news and entertainment on TV and radio designed to appeal to viewers of all ages, or are broadcasters gearing their programming exclusively to the supposed interests of the prized 18-to-34-year-old demographic?

Even if the future of our media is not your No. 1 issue, it needs to be your No. 2 issue. That’s because Americans get their input and develop their views about all the other critical issues of the day — the economy, jobs, peace and war, health care, education — from the media. They learn about them on TV news, hear about them on the radio and read about them in the newspaper. I can’t think of any of these issues that wouldn’t fare much better in an open, diverse, community-responsive and competitive media environment.

Seventy years ago, Gertrude Stein returned to her hometown (Oakland, Calif.) to find that she could not locate her childhood home. She famously stated, “There is no there there.” When our children look one day at the media system we have left them, and take up the reins of self-government, I hope they don’t share Stein’s chilling conclusion.

So I urge you to attend the FCC hearing. We need your input and the input of as many of our fellow citizens as we can elicit. I believe we have the best chance in our generation to settle this issue of who will control our media and for what purposes, and to resolve it in favor of airwaves of, by, and for the people of this great country. But it will take a lot of us, working together, to make it happen.

As the FCC starts moving to allow even more media ownership concentration, remember that nearly a third of all New Orleans’ radio stations are owned by just two out-of-state corporations.

San Antonio-based Clear Channel owns seven stations in the New Orleans market:
104.1 rock
101.1 country
1280 sport
Q93 hip hop R&B
99.5 talk
98.5 urban adult contemporary
940 gospel

Entercom owns six stations in the New Orleans market:
WWL 870 AM/105.3 FM/1350 AM talk
B97
Magic 101.9
Bayou 95.7

If the majority of Americans take pride in their tolerance, why is corporate media so filled with rage? A Lexington article in the Economist, “The rebirth of outrage” (4/1/2006) suggests that the anger foisted upon us by cable and broadcast outlets represents a narrow sliver of the population, but that differences of viewpoint are actually a part of America’s identity as a melting pot of diverse cultural origins.

THE most striking thing about Americans to many outsiders is how nice they are. They have none of the aloofness of the British or the froideur of the French. On the contrary, they go out of their way to be warm and welcoming. This is the land of the smiley face and the “have a nice day” greeting. Put simply, Americans like to be liked.

Yet turn on cable television and you are confronted with a series of people who are in a perpetual state of outrage. …

The current king of outrage is Bill O’Reilly, the host of a Fox television show who only has to look at the camera to convey a sense that some monstrosity has been committed. But there are plenty of others. Sean Hannity (also at Fox) and Joe Scarborough (at MSNBC) are furious about whatever the Democrats have done that day. Over at CNN, Lou Dobbs, under the guise of presenting a news programme, bashes the government for failing to fix America’s borders, and big companies for exporting jobs abroad. The oddest of the lot is Don Imus (also at MSNBC) who sits there with a cowboy hat on his head and a scowl on his face, fulminating about whatever irritates him at that moment. …

Why is outrage becoming such a defining feature of American life, and particularly political life? It does not apply to the whole country. Four in five Americans tell pollsters that they are either very happy (34%) or pretty happy (50%). Tabloid journalists the world over are in the outrage business. But America’s tabloid titans appeal only to narrow slivers of the country (”The O’Reilly Factor” reaches 2.5m people in a country of 300m). Most Americans pride themselves on their tolerance. …

Angry people are usually among the most politically active everywhere, but in America a combination of low voter turnout and gerrymandering has allowed radicals to capture both the main parties. Then there are the culture wars: ever since the 1960s American politics has been pulled apart by battles over fundamental values. Other countries have been able to fudge tricky issues, such as abortion, through parliamentary votes; in America, abortion is decided by the Supreme Court–and a debate about the fundamental rights of the individual.

Ironically, both sides of the divide feel marginalised. Leftists feel excluded because the Republicans control every branch of government. Rightists feel left out because the left dominates so much of the cultural world–especially the movie business and the universities (only about 15% of academics admit to being conservative). The natural response to being marginalised is to rage at the fiends doing the marginalising–whether they be the “corrupt cronies” of the Bush political machine or the “dangerous leftists” at Warner Brothers and Harvard. …

In his book, “Albion’s Seed” (1989), David Hackett Fischer argued that the earliest settlers were heavily influenced by the regional cultures of different parts of Britain. The Puritans of Boston had a very different world view from the Cavaliers of the South, and both had different outlooks from the Scots-Irish. These different values ensured that Americans were perpetually engaged in arguments over everything from slavery to religion to, above all, the nature of the United States. This means that America is not just the land of that smiling “waitperson” who just told you to have a nice day. It is also the land of such maestros of outrage as Messrs O’Reilly and Imus.

The notion of America’s origins as a culturally diverse nation predisposed to disagree may have merit, but historically, if those differences were to be resolved so that people could live in harmony and avoid resorting to violence, disagreements had to be settled through civil dialog.

That problems should be resolved by way of civil discourse is the great virtue of democracy. Civility may be difficult to achieve when issues are highly emotionally charged, but condemning a person with an opposing viewpoint is harder to do face-to-face. Broadcast media, however, allows speakers to voice their anger and vilify others while speaking to an anonymous audience. In fact, the entire purpose of talk show formats isn’t to resolve issues, but to amplify the differences between opposing extremes of an issue to incite audiences and boost ratings. When that audience spans the nation, there is a very real danger that personal vilification of people who are different might rally viewers and listeners into an irrational mass seeking answers from demagogues. And when programming decisions are made by corporations which seek profit by selling controversy peddled by extreme ideologues, then greed has a corrosive effect on the virtues of our democracy.

We need to reclaim our right of ownership over broadcast media, to ensure that we leave a more peaceful nation for our children, and to help us resolve the difficult issues that divide our communities. Whether by challenging the right of corporations to control the public airwaves, or by lobbying sponsors of hate-mongering talk-show hosts, we have a say in what we are subjected to, and we should demand not just that corporate boardrooms pay attention to us, but whenever possible, we should claim physical ownership of the means to broadcast.

In all of the chatter about Don Imus, no one is talking about how an idiot like that gets paid millions of dollars to offend people across the country. It doesn’t matter that Imus lost his job. The problem is that we won’t have much say in who the next annointed idiot is to replace Imus.

Why have our media outlets across the spectrum become vast toxic dumps for intolerant cranks like Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, and more? Who makes the decisions to subject audiences across the country to bias, ignorance, and hatred? Local communities? When was the last time a local cable provider, TV or radio station, invited the public to a forum to talk about what kind of content they’d like to have? Of course, it’s never happened. That’s because media corporations don’t give a damn about what you think. They only care about how big their sponsor contracts are on nationally syndicated programs which are locked in a race to the sewer.

When all of the media outlets in your hometown are owned by out-of-state corporations which own dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other stations, there’s absolutely no interest in obtaining local comments. And the hate-mongering shock jock hosts who we’re told are professionals — well, they may be controversial, but they certainly don’t represent the America of tolerance which was the vision of the founding fathers. If they who sacrificed their lives for freedom of expression and tolerance compared the civility of British media with the crass hatred spewed forth by American media, they might wish the Revolution never happened.

Where does all of this self-righteous hatred come from?

We simply think America—and all the developed countries—are growing old, reaching the stage where one complains about things instead of doing something about them. It gets easy to be cantankerous and churlish. The flock of chiders, complainers, carpers, cavilers, and castigators makes it harder and harder to get an optimistic note in edgewise.

What we don’t know is how much better we could be served if more moderate voices, or more locals were allowed entry into the business of talk programming. The whole rationale for syndication is cutting costs while dominating markets across the country. If we’re going to be subjected to that kind of economic model for media, then we deserve more say in the standards used in programming what we have to be subjected to.

One wonders how a few advocates trying to establish a true community radio station, in a city still reeling from the floods which destroyed more than three-quarters of the city hosting the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, could possibly be a bother to other participants. Indeed, is there any community in the United States which needs a community talk radio station more than New Orleans?

Since the NFCB conference was being held in New Orleans anyway, we hoped, mistakenly, that the NFCB might accomodate our need to quickly get up to speed so we can get a recovery radio station started.

The NFCB Board snubbed our request that they waive the $100/day registration so we could get a couple of passes a day to attend the conference sessions.

The NFCB Board reviewed your letter today at its meeting. We are very impressed with the work you are doing and hope that you will be successful in getting a station providing community news to New Orleans. I know that it will be a challenge to find a frequency in the New Orleans area.

Each year we receive many requests for reductions or waivers of the registration fees. These fees cover actual costs to us whether someone is paying or not so we are not able to waive them—even for our workshop leaders and Board members. We wish that we had enough funding to provide that kind of support but NFCB is basically supported by our members.

We wish you all the luck with your project. We would be very happy to help in any way that we can.

Carol

Carol Pierson
President and CEO
National Federation of Community Broadcasters
1970 Broadway, Suite 1000
Oakland , CA 94612
510-451-8200
carol@nfcb.org