Media

Allston-Brighton community radio returns

by Dan Kennedy

Two and a half years after being shut down by the Federal Communications Commission for broadcasting without a license, Allston-Brighton's community radio station is back. Allston-Brighton Free Radio -- formerly known as Radio Free Allston -- is scheduled to re-enter the mediasphere at noon this Saturday, March 11, at AM 1580. The occasion will be marked with a brief ceremony in front of the studio, at the Allston Mall, to be followed by a parade that will wind up in Brighton Center.

Station founder Steve Provizer had hoped to obtain a license to operate a low-power FM station under the terms of new community-radio guidelines issued by the FCC in January. But the FCC, reacting to the concerns of the broadcasting industry, set stringent limits aimed at preventing the new stations from interfering with the signals of existing commercial stations. Those limits, Provizer says, are likely to prevent any Boston-based community station from winning FCC approval. Instead, Allston-Brighton Free Radio will take advantage of an FCC regulation to broadcast a very low-power signal at the upper end of the AM dial.

Allston-Brighton Free Radio returns to the airwaves just as Radio Free Cambridge is shutting down -- ironic, given that Radio Free Cambridge began broadcasting shortly after Radio Free Allston was shut down. According to Alan Nidle, one of the Cambridge station's founders, the end came at about noon on February 16, when two FCC agents arrived at the studio, located at the Zeitgeist Gallery. For now, Nidle says, Radio Free Cambridge is "chilling out," waiting to see whether Provizer's experiment will succeed before deciding on the next step.

Nationwide, the burgeoning microbroadcasting movement remains in flux, despite the FCC's attempt to expand the number of voices heard on the dial. Low-power radio was banned in the 1970s; FCC commissioner William Kennard has taken the lead in restoring it, in limited form, as a way of countering the corporate monopolies that have taken over most commercial stations since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The rules laid down in January erect a higher hurdle than activists such as Provizer had hoped for. Yet the powerful National Association of Broadcasters, or NAB, is waging a tough lobbying war to return microbroadcasters to outlaw status, and it has found allies in Congress: Representative Michael Oxley (R-Ohio) and Senator Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) are sponsoring bills that would overturn the FCC's new guidelines.

Provizer -- who also heads the Citizens' Media Corps, recipients of a Phoenix "Local Heroes" award last year (see "Local Heroes," News and Features, November 5, 1999) -- says Allston-Brighton Free Radio will feature an eclectic mix of community-service programming from the likes of mental-health and elderly-affairs agencies, Franciscan Children's Hospital, and something called the Anti-Imperialist League, as well as music and shows in Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. As for the obstacles that lie ahead, he says, "If we're successful, then any independent effort will be scrutinized closely by the NAB. There is much skullduggery afoot."