E-Mail This Article to a Friend Left off the dial Micro-radio could be coming to a frequency near you BY CAMILLE DODERO

THE STRANGE AND acronym-laden world of low-power radio, which occupies a tenuous spot on the public airwaves, is riddled with dumb rules. The little-known media outlet is a nexus of invisible community centers where audio hobbyists hobnob with music snobs, where people who love the sounds of their own voices start out and end up, where former New York nightclub owners, retired state senators, and preteen girls commingle in the hilly curvature of a nearly imperceptible wavelength. Like the audio equivalent of public-access television, the program schedules of low-power, or "micro," radio stations are more like sketches than made-to-scale blueprints, providing a wide berth for disparate subjects, subcultures, and subgenres, all squeezed into one transmitter and extending only a short radius — further, though, when streamed over the Web. Micro-radio is one of those rare spaces where you’ll find people with aliases like DJ Guns and Ammo, Dr. Feet, and the Raspberry Hippie; where the Dead Boys’ heretical "(I Don’t Wanna Be No) Catholic Boy" is played as often as the Original Five Blind Boys of Alabama’s gospel homage, "Oh Lord, Stand by Me"; where Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians all have something to share — a radio frequency that transmits their mutual loathing.

Micro-radio is still not legal in Boston — even though it’s been operating lawfully in smaller markets for five years — so those who want to broadcast locally must become pirates. That, however, may be about to change. In 1978, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stopped licensing low-power stations (100 watts or fewer) anywhere in America, due to a Corporation for Public Broadcasting petition arguing that smaller stations were impeding the development of high-power stations. Still, radio-minded folks who thought this moratorium was not only unjust but ridiculous continued operating low-signal, do-it-yourself stations without FCC sanction; it’s relatively cheap to secure equipment for a low-power signal, and today you can even buy old transmitters on eBay. Not surprisingly, the FCC came in and shut down thousands of offenders, even when they weren’t interfering with the full-power stations surrounding them on the dial.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 stung even worse by removing broadcast-ownership caps and thereby paving the way for media consolidation. Clear Channel, for example, could then balloon from 40 stations to more than 1200 without penalty, while those operating noncommercial community stations could be cuffed and fined up to $10,000. In defiant response, angry pirate-radio DJs took back the airwaves in rising numbers across the country. "We understood ourselves as committing an act of civil disobedience against the Telecommunications Act of 1996," recalls former pirate Pete Tridish, who worked at the Philadelphia station Radio Mutiny. "Not that we knew so much about it, but we just sort of knew that the corporations owned the airwaves and that if we started stations, we could go to jail, and so we thought if ever there was a stupid law, that would be it."

Then the FCC did something radio activists like Tridish didn’t expect: it actually heard them cry foul. In 2000, under the leadership of Chairman William Kennard, a Clinton appointee, the FCC reserved thousands of unoccupied frequencies for low-power FM (LPFM) stations. Naturally, this development raised suspicion among skeptics who had watched the commission rule in favor of corporations time and time again. But they were still pleased.

The FCC’s move to democratize the airwaves didn’t please everyone, however, especially the bigger broadcasting boys. At the urging of lobbyists for National Public Radio and the National Association of Broadcasters — which claimed that these itty-bitty low-power stations would interfere with their much stronger signals — Congress passed a bill that required every LPFM to be three channels equidistant on the dial from major stations — not two, as the FCC had initially recommended. (The FM radio spectrum ranges from 87.8 to 108 megahertz, and each channel is .2 megahertz wide, with stations transmitting at odd-numbered frequencies. So, for example, an LPFM can be built at 90.1-FM only if the closest full-power stations existed at 89.3-FM or 90.9-FM — which meant that LPFM licenses would be granted only for dial positions where there were actually seven vacant frequencies in a row.)

Since the number of radio channels is finite, this industry-driven provision slashed the pool of possible LPFMs from thousands to mere hundreds. Micro-radio advocates in big cities like Boston suffered the most, since Congress’s decision simply wiped LPFMs from the crowded radio dials in the top 50 metropolitan radio markets, where seven open frequencies are an anomaly. Out of the approximately 590 LPFMs now on the air, the largest city to have one is Spokane, Washington; there are no LPFMs available in Boston, Providence, or even Worcester.

So as things now stand, if you live in a big city and want to broadcast, you have to be a radio pirate. "I don’t really know many pirates [there are] in places where you could get a low-power FM station," says Tridish, now the technical director for Prometheus Radio, a collective of micro-radio activists based in Philadelphia, where no LPFM slots are available. "I think the vast majority of people who are pirating are pirating because they can’t get a low-power FM station." Plus, the FCC accepted LPFM applications only during state-by-state five-day periods in 2000. Tridish points out that anyone who has since wanted to legitimize his or her station, or commence a new one, hasn’t had the opportunity. "They would have to wait until who knows when. And unless they live out in a cow posture somewhere, they’re basically not going to be able to get a license."

This could soon change. After NPR and NAB whined about possible interference from newly established LPFMs, an independent study conducted by the MITRE Corporation found in 2003 that LPFMs could be positioned closer on the dial to full-power stations without causing any interference. In February, based on these findings, Republican senator and long-time LPFM tub-thumper John McCain sponsored the Local Community Radio Act of 2005, a bill that proposes to lift Congress’s third-adjacent-channel restrictions. If passed, room on the dial would open up for thousands of LPFMs.

Even if it doesn’t, though, low-power stations have existed in New England throughout the decades-long struggle for licensing. Here are some of their stories.