Background Info

In 2000, when Low Power Radio was just starting, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) faced a lot of opposition from the broadcast industry. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) were mad when (for once) the FCC sided with regular people who wanted media access instead of caving in to the agenda of the lobbyists.

The Secondary Status Trojan Horse: In order to appease the NAB, the FCC put a trojan horse into the Low Power radio rules. The FCC told the broadcasters that they were going to give out low power radio stations, but if a full power broadcaster ever felt that they wanted the channel of a LPFM, the big station could just take it. They did this on the assumption that because a big broadcaster reaches a larger audience, it ostensibly does greater public service. When a full power station moves and threatens an LPFM's signal, this is called encroachment; another way to describe it is that full power stations are primary and low power stations are secondary. It is kind of like being a second class citizen on the airwaves.

For a few years, encroachment did not happen because changing locations was complicated for full power stations. Last year, though, the FCC made the process much simpler. Suddenly, over 160 LPFM stations were threatened with losing their channels or losing parts of their coverage area. Most LPFM stations now face some level of encroachment.

Changes Are Coming: The FCC recently took some promising actions on this issue. They didn't change the primary versus secondary status, which is really what they should have done. But they made it easier for Low Power stations to find new channels to move to if they were ordered out of the way by a full power broadcaster. They also said that if there is no place for the LPFM to go to, they reject the broadcaster's attempt to move over the channel. Right now, this new policy is just a processing guideline. The FCC is now taking comments on whether to make this processing guideline into a permanent set of rules.