Radio Survivor

The Prometheus Radio Project will run its 12th community radio barn raising by launching a new station: WBXC in Hudson, New York on September 24-26.

This is the first such event, however, that will involve setting up a full power station—3,300 watts as opposed to the usual 100 watts of low power FM.

“This new station will be uniquely decentralized with three main studios spread out across the listening range, allowing broader participation from residents of New York’s Greene and Columbia counties,” says Prometheus. “Partnerships are already forming with schools, music venues, and town halls to create live feeds from various locations, furthering the scope of the station. WGXC: Hands-On Radio will be much more than just a radio station, with regular exhibitions and events, ongoing media trainings, a news blog, and community meetings.”

The station already streams at www.wgxc.org. We tuned in and, no big surprise, got a Gamelan tune from the composer Pauline Oliveros and the Berkeley Gamelan Ensemble.

If you want to help out and live in Greene, Columbia, Dutchess, Ulster, Albany, Rensselaer, or Delaware counties in New York or Berkshire counties in Massachusetts, click here to register. Otherwise click here.

A small band of reform groups have asked the Federal Communications Commission to rethink how it allocates radio licenses in rural areas. They argue that the current system allows big broadcasters to grab suburban/rural signals on the edge of large metropolitan regions, in some instances knocking out smaller stations. The license seeker, they say, doesn’t really want to serve the rural area in question, just broadcast to the big metro market next door.

“Low power stations and local communities are especially at risk when full-power stations decide to move their community of license from one community into another community, which is closer to a larger, urban area,” complained the Prometheus Radio Project and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters in a filing sent to the FCC this week. “In some cases, the full-power station moves into a community already being serviced by a low power station, which faces the threat of being taken off the air by the full-power station.”

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