Reclaiming the dial (continued) BY KEVIN Y. KIM

Eighty miles northeast of Portland, former Rockland city councilman Joe Steinberger’s WRFR-LP is approaching its 22nd month of operation. It’s just one of about 220 LPFM stations to hit the air since the FCC introduced LPFM three years ago. Since debuting on Valentine’s Day last year, WRFR has earned the regular listenership of about half the city’s citizens. Larry Beckwith, WRFR’s veteran deejay with 59 years of broadcasting experience, was recently named deejay of the year by Maine’s Down East Country Music Association.

The station’s other 34 local deejays include a 14-year-old high schooler with a penchant for Christian rock, a 26-year-old singer-songwriter from Liverpool, England, and a sales clerk who interweaves military theme music with interviews of local veterans on a show truculently titled "Echoes of War." Under Steinberger’s liberal supervision, over a dozen other college-age rockers and local personalities play whatever they want, whenever and however long their inner radio muses feel like it.

Will Matson, a former music director at WSJB-FM, St. Joseph’s College’s campus station, has since moved north and now hosts two WRFR shows. A fount of modern rock knowledge, he’s turned his outrage at Southern Maine commercial stations serving the same top 40 schlock into a gutsy, guitar-riff-driven determination to diversify Rockland’s airwaves. He’ll play 15-minute tracks, intros cut from commercial radio edits, and just about any talented unsigned artist or major label group not getting, in Matson’s opinion, enough airtime elsewhere.

And ironically enough, corporate record labels like Capitol, Island, and Interscope, as well as underplayed bands from all over the world, have been responding with equal enthusiasm.

"I get up to 30 CDs a month from labels and bands," Matson says. "Most people have never heard of bands I play, like Stretch Princess — they’re on Creed’s label, Wind-up Records, but get no exposure because Wind-up blew its load promoting Creed."

Matson estimates the amount of time he spends informing listeners about each band to roughly equate with a Pizza Hut commercial. "My mic segments would probably give most radio executives nightmares," he chuckles. "But I’m not just trying to entertain listeners — I want them to check out bands they like." So far, Matson’s picks have been pretty prescient. Last year, he started playing the All-American Rejects’s "Swing, Swing" long before it debuted on MTV’s TRL this February.

Matson sums up LPFM’s alternative music philosophy this way: "The huge lack in radio play for new songs in any given artist’s catalog is just wrong — if you get new songs on the air, and they’re good, you can bet people will want to hear them. Get them on and let the people decide, instead of some program director who assumes, ‘No one cares about Skid Row’s or David Lee Roth’s new albums anyway.’ "

Almost every WRFR deejay showcases local musicians whenever possible. Live music sets are heard on 93.3 FM twice a week or more. Local ministers, regardless of their denomination, preach live sermons on Sundays. On WRFR’s morning call-in show, local officials and every state-level Rockland representative stop by regularly to discuss complicated city and state issues with the show’s host and listeners. And every weekday morning, WRFR listeners wake up to the sounds of waves gently lapping against Rockland Harbor’s piers during the daily reports of Ron Huber, a local environmentalist who covers regional conservation issues and Southern Maine’s fishing communities.

"Maine’s fishing folks have extraordinary stories to tell and also important points of view on issues affecting them — whether it’s pollution, coastal development, or state fishing policy," Huber says. Fed up with the mainstream media’s coverage of local fishing and conservation issues, Huber decided to join WRFR last year, even though he and Steinberger had political differences in the past, to give at least some of Southern Maine’s mariners an outlet where they can be heard.

WRFR’s energetic mix of music and information and its inclusive attitude toward the community are exactly what Ross hopes to replicate in Portland. While offering a special emphasis on Portland’s 6900-strong minority population, Ross plans to institute an "open-door policy" welcoming all Portlanders, minorities and non-minorities alike, to the station.

"We’re looking for issues the major media isn’t covering that are relevant to each individual community," Ross says. "That’s why we want people actually from these particular communities to host our shows, whether they’re black, white, Asian, whatever — everybody needs to participate." Ross has already compiled a list of about 60 people interested in working for the station, and doesn’t lack for possible programming ideas and funding sources — all of them firmly rooted in the Portland community.

One of the former is Ross’s brainchild, "Students on Saturday." All day Saturday, students from local high schools like Deering, Cheverus, and Portland High would file original community news reports and host music shows that give WRFR’s Will Matson a run for his money. Sundays would revolve around gospel music, Ross says, and weekdays would feature an eclectic mix of talk shows, brief newscasts, and PSAs from local nonprofits like Maine Medical Center.

But everything’s in flux, Ross insists, and depends entirely on the input and interests of his volunteers and listeners.

Out in Standish, Patterson has already built a studio — complete with $2300 worth of station jingles — on a hill just south of the village center. His plans are just as all-encompassing and ambitious as Ross’s, but focus on Standish and the surrounding communities. "Portland outlets don’t reflect the interests of this area," Patterson points out. "Unless there’s a murder or an auto accident, we hardly get covered — so we want programming that covers the many positive things happening here that people more directly relate to."

Where Ross’s watchword is "inclusive," the mantra guiding Patterson’s programming is "education": educational programs by local civic organizations and public agencies; wellness educational programs on local health issues; music education programs by local musicians; and educational programs addressing environmental, diversity, safety, and women’s issues. As program director, Patterson also plans to broadcast town council, school district, and planning board meetings to thoroughly apprise Standish citizens of the local developments affecting their everyday lives.

The only things Ross and Patterson need to get their stations off the ground are FCC licenses, and, hopefully, those will be coming soon. As impossible as that task has proved the past several years, Portland is finally closer than ever to receiving not just one, but two stations, if the FCC accepts the settlement proposal Portland’s applicants just submitted.

After searching frantically for the past three weeks, Patterson, with the help of Peter Russell, a Bowdoin College technician and part-time radio engineer, has found an alternate frequency at 97.1 about a mile from his studio. Calvary Chapel Portland, due to financial difficulties, a lack of alternate locations, and the possibility of a cable TV show in the future, has withdrawn its application. Hoping to launch an LPFM station 90 miles north in Searsmont when another LPFM application window opens, Saywee Holland, Voice of Freedom’s chairman and a local media entrepreneur, has also withdrawn his application in order to focus on his new culture and entertainment magazine, Saywee’s Blues News. Patterson’s Standish station and Ross’s in downtown Portland are finally far enough from each other — in both miles and megahertz — to coexist.

A happy Patterson said, "We’ve been able to formulate an agreement, and we’ve sent the portfolio of information down to the FCC, and there’s no reason to think that both stations won’t go forward." Pending the FCC’s formal approval, he and Ross will more than likely receive the green light to start building their stations by the end of the year.

But the struggle for LPFM doesn’t end there. The FCC has just finished receiving public comments on an independent study Congress commissioned back in 2000 to help it reexamine interference issues. Overseen by one of the nation’s top engineering firms, the in-depth report found little interference justifying the onerous LPFM rules Congress instituted in 2000. Depending on what the FCC proposes to Congress, the latter might have a chance to redeem itself by allowing more LPFM stations into Southern Maine.

The current mood on Capitol Hill is ripe for a LPFM victory. The FCC’s decision in June to further deregulate America’s media, before Tim Gatz and others in the radio industry have had time to adjust to the 1996 changes bringing us over 1200 Clear Channel stations, has provoked an enormous public outcry, compelling both houses to pass measures aimed at rolling back the 2003 ownership rules. Prominent Democrats and Republicans have formed a tough bipartisan front against further consolidation. And for good reason: Powell’s new caps allow TV networks to own even larger shares of the national market, and for one company to own a major TV station and newspaper in the same market — potentially leaving most of Portland’s local news, as the Portland Press Herald reported on June 3, in the hands of one or two separately owned sources.

But while the debate in Congress rages over Powell’s controversial rules, few have been paying as much attention to the pathbreaking LPFM initiative his Clinton-appointed predecessor, William Kennard, pioneered three years ago.

If you agree with Cary Pahigian, president of the Saga Communications-owned Portland Radio Group, who claims consolidation has only made Portland radio’s local coverage stronger and its programming more diverse, then LPFM might miff your monthly NYSE forecasts. But if you agree with Ross, who concedes commercial stations occasionally offer strong local coverage but aren’t "24-7 localized" like his station aspires to be, then now’s the time to act by contacting Congressman Tom Allen and both Maine Senators — all of whom have stood up to Powell’s media ownership rules and recognize the need to democratize a small part of our airwaves.

"It is important that we preserve public and independent access to broadcast media," Senator Susan Collins wrote the Phoenix. "The trend toward media consolidation threatens to silence the diversity of voices that underpin the marketplace of ideas upon which our democracy ultimately depends."

Nice words, but if the past three years of bureaucratic inertia are any indication, the feds have lots of trouble putting theory into practice. Let’s hope this time around they put their own heads, hearts and resources together and do the right thing.

Kevin Y. Kim is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared in The Nation, Far Eastern Economic Review, L.A. Weekly, and elsewhere.