The Death of "Local Radio." - companies are buying radio stations

Washington Monthly, April, 1999 by Lydia Polgreen

When broadcasting began in the 1920s, it was mainly colleges and universities, labor unions, churches, and community organizations who ruled the airwaves. It wasn't until the late 1920s that the Federal Radio Commission, predecessor to the FCC, was established to oversee the radio spectrum, impose broadcasting standards, and issue broadcasting licenses. At that time it was decided that broadcasting of a more general character was in the public's interest, and the longstanding policy of the Commission has been to favor large, full-service stations. Until the early 1980s, the FCC imposed strict limits on the amount of advertising a broadcaster could air, and required that broadcasters commit a certain percentage of their on-air time to news, public affairs, and informational programming. Reagan-era deregulation removed those restrictions, leaving the marketplace to decide what broadcasters should and shouldn't provide to their listeners. Now with the Telecom Act, the barriers to consolidation have tumbled as well. Radio is just one of many sectors of our economy in which the space for small entrepreneurs is shrinking.

This is a shame. Radio is best when it is local, and media conglomerates, no matter how earnest they are in serving a local community, will always choose the cost and revenue benefits of consolidation over the particular desires of listeners. There should be room on that most public of open spaces, the radio spectrum, for as many different voices as humanity and the laws of physics allow. Now that LPFM offers a practical way to recapture some of radio's lost diversity, there's no exuse for not making it the law.