Reclaiming the dial Two local groups are close to making low-power FM stations a reality for 24-hour local programming BY KEVIN Y. KIM

Although she’s been out of the radio business for 10 years, Susan Potter will never forget a promotion she helped spearhead in the summer of 1988.

One Friday night in August, Potter and the promotions staff at Augusta’s 92 Moose led qualifying Mainers to a local car dealership for a "hands-on car promotion." Required to stand before each car and touch it only with their palms, 200 radio listeners gritted their teeth, determined to be the last one standing — all for a free Pontiac LeMans courtesy of 92 Moose. The sleepless standoff lasted four and a half days.

"It was a local town event!" Potter exclaims. "It was amazing — by the second day, a handful of people were left. At 3 in the morning, passersby would stop to socialize and watch. And every hour the station broadcast what was happening live across the airwaves."

So much for the late 1980s. Today’s 21st-century radio, by and large, has traded in spontaneity, aggressive promotions, and localized, diverse programming for programming consistency, professional polish, and rock-solid economies of scale.

Much of the change stems from increasing consolidation among companies that own America’s 13,700 stations. As one of the nation’s leaders in radio stations per capita, Portland has been hit as hard by consolidation as any urban market out there. Since 1996, when Congress passed the telecommunications bill lifting decades-old radio ownership caps, 22 of Portland’s 24 radio outlets have been acquired by four companies. "Radio not long ago used to be a little more entrepreneurial than it is now," admits Tim Gatz, general manager of NewsRadio WMTW. "Things are much more corporate, and people are still figuring out how to react."

Recognizing that the size of a station’s coverage area affects its local programming, then-Federal Communications Commission chairman William Kennard launched a community-oriented radio service called low-power FM in January, 2000. While most stations operate at thousands of watts, covering up to hundreds of miles, LPFM stations emit 100-watt signals that reach, under optimal conditions, up to 15 miles away. As a small but vital antidote to rampant consolidation, LPFM comprises the perfect local alternative to a radio band dominated by commercial interests. It gives non-commercial entities like churches, unions, civil-rights organizations, and community groups the chance to run their own stations instead of relying on the spotty coverage commercial stations offer in their newscasts and PSAs mandated by FCC public-interest requirements.

Technically speaking, LPFM isn’t a new phenomenon for Southern Maine’s airwaves. WMPG-FM, one of Maine’s few non-commercial community stations, began as a 10-watt "pirate" broadcaster illegally transmitting from a University of Maine dorm room in Gorham. Other microradio "pirates" have briefly sneaked onto Portland’s airwaves in the past several decades.

It’s no surprise, then, that until just recently four different groups were vying for 105.1, the only LPFM frequency available on Portland’s crowded dial. What’s surprising is that they applied over three years ago and are still waiting for a license.

"It’s been such an emotional roller-coaster that we almost gave up," confides W. David Patterson, a board member of Standish Citizens Educational Organization, a Standish-based nonprofit he co-founded after the FCC proposed LPFM in 1998. Since applying in May of 2000, Patterson, along with Portland’s other applicants, has not received so much as a letter, phone call, or any other direct communication from the FCC concerning the status or tentative timeline for his pending application.

In August, the FCC finally began accepting settlement proposals from the 700 nationwide applicants, including Portland’s, inhabiting the same bureaucratic limbo since they unknowingly applied for the same spectrum spaces in 2000. The FCC’s latest method of communicating with these groups? An Internet posting. "I kept checking the FCC site at least every month for the past three years," says Dennis Ross, founder of All Inclusive, Inc., another Portland applicant who hopes to broadcast from a converted garage atop Munjoy Hill. "If I weren’t vigilant, this opportunity would have slipped right by, especially since it’s been on the back-burner so long."

Along with Ross and Patterson, two Westbrook-based applicants, Calvary Chapel Portland and Voice of Freedom, had until October 31 to hammer out an agreement resolving their conflicting applications. In theory, each party can move its station transmitter up to 1.2 miles away from its original 2000 location and switch to another available frequency. But there aren’t any. In theory, if all else failed, Portland’s LPFM aspirants could have put their heads, hearts, and resources together and either share 105.1 in one commonly owned and operated station, or split into four separate stations broadcasting at different times of the day.

But in practice, FCC rules left the four with little room in which to maneuver.

In December, 2000, Congress, pressured by radio industry lobbyists, enacted legislation that significantly reduced the potential number of LPFM frequencies nationwide. The 1.2-mile limit, while reasonable according to some engineering experts and subject to waiver in special cases, has made it extremely difficult for applicants in dense markets like Portland to find alternate locations and frequencies.

The nub of the LPFM issue is the engineering debate over how much interference these tiny 100-watt stations inflict on other stations’ signals. Interference issues, exaggerated by the National Association of Broadcasters and, yes, National Public Radio, spurred Congress into action three years ago. "The problem is, and always has been, receiver standards," says local critic Suzanne Goucher, president of the Maine Association of Broadcasters. "Most receivers sold in America are low-end. When you start dropping [LPFM] signals one or two clicks away from an existing signal, these receivers can’t hone in on the one you want without getting some interference."

Eugene Terwilliger, an engineering consultant for Patterson’s group who’s worked for most of Southern Maine’s commercial stations over the past 40 years, dismisses Goucher’s argument as "ridiculous smoke," as well as the broader arguments made by LPFM’s opponents. He calls them excessively "protective" of their own stations.

"If the government allowed 1000 LPFMs in a given geographic area, yes, you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot with interference," Terwilliger says. "But we’re not putting on 1000 here. We’re putting on one or two."

Driving another stake into LPFM’s already failing heart, the FCC in March initiated a new application process for FM translators — industryspeak for outposts incumbent stations set up in weakly covered areas to boost their signals over hills and other obstacles. But a loophole is allowing out-of-town satellite broadcasters, particularly Christian radio groups, to apply for an unlimited number of translators across the country. Over half of these 13,000 applications are from 15 companies. Three of the five pending in Portland come from Radio Assist Ministry, an Idaho-based entity trying to install about 2500 nationwide.

The result: Countless preemptive strikes across the country against would-be LPFM stations in the future, and against stations scouting for new locations like Portland’s unlucky four. Patterson alone lost two frequencies for which he initially qualified to two brand-new translators. "It’s almost as if [the FCC] wants us to fail," he glumly conjectures.

Patterson’s frustrations notwithstanding, there’s no FCC-led conspiracy to quash LPFM. "There’s some wisdom to the 1.2-mile limit, but it’s also arbitrary and forgoes a case-by-case examination of the interference environment out there," says Pete Tridish, technical director of the Prometheus Radio Project, a Philadelphia-based community radio organization helping Ross and other applicants get their licenses. "It strikes me as a system designed to put out licenses with a minimum of staff effort," Tridish adds, "instead of maximizing spectrum use for the public interest."

Nor do Patterson, Ross, and the others have much incentive to combine operations. Not only do applicants have differing agendas, but the FCC, probably unintentionally, has hindered any potential agreement by announcing that, barring a breakthrough settlement, it would choose a winner, or a smaller group of tied winners, based on local programming and "community presence" criteria. And almost every group — inspired, as they are, by their own stirring visions of community radio — believes it will emerge either the lone victor or part of a smaller qualifying group (meaning less hours to divvy up) once the FCC steps in and brokers some kind of peace.

If all this talk about bureaucracy has your head spinning, imagine dealing with it every day for three years. The only thing that’s kept these four organizations going has been their intense passion for radio and public-affairs programming — as well as the promising example of the only Maine LPFM to make it through the FCC’s mind-addling administrative hoops: WRFR-LP, 93.3 FM in Rockland, Maine.