Low-power blues ! Sacramento News & Review
Paul Kekai Manansala
New community radio stations finally power up around Sacramento
By Cosmo Garvin
Photo By Larry Dalton
Bill Boyer worked for four years to bring a low-power FM radio station
to Sacramento.
Bill Boyer looked as though he might levitate when he shouted along
with the CD track he'd just cued up.
"Bid 'em in. Bid 'em in!" It was a recreation of an actual
slave-auctioneer's call, recorded by black poet and singer Oscar Brown
Jr. in 1960:
She's full up front and ample behind.
Take a look at her teeth if you've got a mind.
Bid 'em in. Get 'em in.
As Boyer yelled the line, he scrunched up his face in an expression
that was part fierce anger and part enjoyment at the look of surprise
and consternation on the face of his guest, the reporter.
"That's what I'm going to use to start the show," Boyer explained,
cueing up another track, one of his favorite versions of what he calls
the "black national anthem," "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
These two tracks are just a small sampling of what Boyer hopes to hear
soon on a new low-power community radio station that he has worked for
four years to create.
"It's going to be real black radio," he said. "None of this R. Kelly
stuff. But James Brown and gospel music and real community news and
politics."
The station is KDEE-LP, at 97.7 FM. When it goes on the air--if it
goes on the air--in October, it will be the first in Sacramento of a
new class of 100-watt community radio stations authorized by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) more than four years ago.
Another low-power station, KDRT, 101.5 FM, is scheduled to go on the
air in Davis in September. Both are scrambling to get their stations
constructed and on the air before their respective deadlines this
fall.
Both are the result of four years of work by local media activists,
often frustrated by the changing rules of low-power radio, and the
politics of media ownership.
As each station attempts to power up, those politics are making
headlines again. On July 21, the FCC held a day-long hearing on
"localism" and media ownership in Monterey.
At the same time, the U.S. Senate is taking up legislation that could
help create more low-power stations like KDRT and KDEE.
"I think there's about to be an earthquake shift in media ownership
and distribution," Boyer said. And if he has his way, he'll be one of
its epicenters, shouting "Bid 'em in" into his microphone.
In January 2000, the FCC established new rules allowing licenses for
local community radio stations broadcasting at up to 100 watts of
power. The Low Power FM (LPFM) Service, as it is called today, was
advocated by then-FCC Chairman William Kennard, a Clinton appointee
and Michael Powell's predecessor. Kennard pushed the new rules partly
in response to the explosive growth of media conglomerates like Clear
Channel, which, thanks to the loosening media consolidation under the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, were buying up hundreds of local radio
stations. Low-power stations were intended to replace some small part
of the localism and community service that was being lost in the era
of corporate media consolidation.
At the same time, the FCC had its hands full trying to shut down
so-called pirate radio stations run by media activists who practiced
civil disobedience of the airwaves.
More than 3,000 organizations applied for new LPFM licenses when they
were made available in 2000. During that time, nine different groups
applied for a single frequency that had opened up in Sacramento. These
included church groups; Sutter Middle School; Boyer; and Access
Sacramento, the community-access cable station.
But before the applications could even be processed, the rules
suddenly changed. In December 2000, Congress--under pressure from the
broadcast industry group the National Association of Broadcasters
(NAB) and the giant public-radio network National Public Radio
(NPR)--passed the Radio Broadcast Preservation Act of 2000.
"They should have called it the Broadcast Industry Preservation Act,"
remarked Shane Carpenter, who coordinates radio programs for Access
Sacramento, one of the original applicants for an LPFM license in
Sacramento. (Access Sacramento currently provides radio programming,
including Berkeley station KPFA, on the second audio channels of its
two cable channels.)
The NAB and NPR both complained that the low-power rules would allow
new low-power stations to interfere with existing normal power
stations. To address their concerns, Congress passed a new rule that
required any prospective low-power station to have three empty
channels on either side of the frequency on which it wanted to
broadcast. If you wanted to broadcast at 97.7, then 97.5, 97.3 and
97.1 on one side, and 97.9, 98.1 and 98.3, all would have to be empty.
The old rules only required two empty channels on either side of the
frequency.
The upshot was that hundreds of potential community broadcasters,
including those vying for a low-power station in Sacramento, suddenly
found that the frequencies they had applied for were now unavailable.
Of the original group that applied, only Boyer persevered. "Everybody
else walked away," explained Boyer, a retired horse trainer who lives
in Colonial Heights. He, on the other hand, spent $6,000 of his own
money hiring broadcast-engineering consultants to find a frequency
that worked within the new rules. It wasn't easy to find one.
"The spectrum is sliced up so thin. If it was bologna, you could see
through it," he said.
But Boyer finally did find a slice, at 97.7 FM. If all goes well, the
new signal would cover the Greenback area, taking in Del Paso Heights,
North Highlands, Midtown and parts of Rancho Cordova and Oak Park.
The Davis group was luckier. The frequency that Jeff Shaw applied for,
on behalf of Davis Community Television, was not affected by the more
restrictive rules that affected Sacramento. Still, after years of
waiting ("Things slowed down quite a bit when Powell was appointed,"
Shaw explained), KDRT volunteers now have to scramble to raise money,
buy equipment, learn how to use it and actually build the studio
inside the DCTV building in Davis.
"Yeah, we are sweating it a bit," Shaw said.
Shaw said he believes the station will cover the entire city of Davis,
along with Woodland, Dixon and part of West Sacramento. The station
could play music, but he hopes it will focus on local public-affairs
programming.
"We need to reclaim at least a bit of the airwaves. There's a real
dearth of local programming on the radio these days," Shaw said.
On August 4, at 6 p.m., KDRT will hold a community meeting aimed at
getting input from volunteers and to help raise money to build the
station. The meeting will be at the Hattie Webber Museum in Davis'
Central Park.
Shaw said more than 50 people have volunteered already to produce
programs, and though he expects none of them will be as slick as the
commercial stations', he hopes KDRT will help restore the role local
radio used to play in communities across the country.
"I don't usually go past about 92 on the dial," said Shaw. "I'd just
rather hear real people on the radio. And I think once people start
hearing their friends and themselves on the radio, they will
rediscover its value."
Though KDRT and KDEE are the first stations in the Sacramento area
created under the low-power radio rules, Shaw hopes they won't be the
only ones.
U.S Senators John McCain and Patrick Leahy have introduced a bill,
Senate Bill 2505, that would, in McCain's words, "right a serious
wrong" done by NAB and NPR. McCain called the claims of interference
"grossly exaggerated" as he introduced the bill. The new rule would
remove the restrictions placed on the radio spectrum by the Radio
Broadcast Preservation Act of 2000. That could open up thousands of
new frequencies across the country. But its impact on Sacramento is
harder to gauge.
It is clear that most of the new stations would go to rural areas,
where the radio spectrum is less crowded, and not to urban areas,
where the demand actually may be greater.
"If you live in Arbuckle or Nicholas or some other place where much of
the population is bovine, it will help a lot," said Boyer of the
McCain legislation.
"But you can hunt downtown Sacramento until the cows come home, and
you will not find one bit of frequency that has not already been
divided up."
Photo By Larry Dalton
Bill Boyer in the home studio he built in Colonial Heights. He's not
sure if he'll even be on the air when KDEE, 97.7 FM, powers up this
fall.
Chip Morgan, with Broadcast Systems--one of the consultants that
helped Boyer find 97.7--said the new rules might create one or two or
possibly three new frequencies in the Sacramento area, but the trick
is in finding them.
"Joe Blow with a slide rule and some maps can go out there and try to
figure it out. But it's really very complicated," he said.
Ron Cooper, director of Access Sacramento, said he supports the McCain
legislation and hopes that his organization will get an LPFM license
someday. But he said the low-power rules just scratch the surface of
the media-ownership problem.
"This whole issue of localism is really about having a diversity of
voices in the media. And the model of corporate media ownership has
really reduced that diversity," Cooper said.
Many of these issues were heard by the FCC commissioners during the
hearing on "localism" in Monterey earlier this week.
That hearing, and others like it around the nation, grew out of public
anger at an attempt by Powell, the FCC chairman, to loosen
media-ownership rules even further.
Low-power stations, said Cooper, provide some political cover to
Powell and others who want to show that localism and diversity are
being addressed while they avoid more-fundamental media reforms.
"It's kind of a shell game, isn't it?" mused Cooper. Still, he'll take
what he can get. "If there comes a time when there are two, six, even
10 low-power community stations in Sacramento, I'll have less to
complain about," he said.
Boyer, too, will take what he can get. But having secured the license
and even built his own studio in his garage, the truth is that KDEE is
now mostly out of Boyer's hands. Under the current low-power rules,
individuals aren't allowed to hold these licenses. Boyer handed the
license over to the California Black Chamber of Commerce, which is now
responsible for KDEE.
When he spoke with SN&R, Boyer said he had seen little activity by the
chamber to get KDEE built. The chamber's director, Aubry Stone, said
much work remained to get the station up and running. "Of course, I
worry. It's my job to worry," Stone explained, but he added he was
confident the station would be on the air by October. As for Boyer,
it's not clear at all what his role in the new station will be. He
wonders if his outspoken and radical politics will clash with what he
perceives as the more genteel sensibility of the chamber.
"You know," Boyer reflected, "I don't know if they are actually going
to let a radical nigger like me on the radio."
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Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala