 Activists, artists, and citizens from nearly all walks of life and perspectives have struggled to reach beyond the limits of mainstream media. Whether it's Fox News or The New York Times, Rush Limbaugh, or Bryan Williams, many people say they are tired of being talked to or overlooked. They seek to exercise their own rights to free speech, to fulfill a need to hear from independent voices. They exercise their rights and fulfill their needs by creating new avenues for speech, by inventing new forms of communication, and by seizing the microphone to speak to their community. This movement did not begin and does not end with the Internet or social media. It is a movement as old as the dawn of mass media itself. This series will highlight the contributions of alternative media and a political environment that seems to reward those with the most money, a political environment that does not necessarily reward those with the best ideas, or those who serve the critical information needs of their communities. We're looking beyond mainstream media. My name is Mark Lloyd. I'm the director of the Media Policy Initiative here at the New America Foundation. And as part of our series on Beyond Mainstream Media, we will be talking about low power FM. After a struggle of almost a decade, a little over a decade, Congress and the FCC have finally cleared the way for the largest expansion of low power FM that the country has ever seen. And I believe the application process starts in October of 2013. We're going to talk with a few experts here about what this means, why it's important, why it took so long, and what this really means for the larger communications needs of communities across the country. And so I am joined here today with Liz Humes. Liz is the founder of W-R-I-R-L-P-F-M in Richmond, Virginia. One of the founders, and you've been, how long were you? With the station? Yeah. The station since before the launch. So about nine full, nine and a half years now, I raised all the money to launch the station and then was instrumental in developing all the programs and programming. Great. Great. And sitting next to, sitting next to Liz, is Julia Wierski, am I pronouncing that correctly? Okay. And Julius is with the Prometheus Radio Project and also has been for at least a few years a radio producer. Certainly on the East Coast, if I understand it correctly. And could you tell us just a tiny bit about you and Prometheus? Sure. Well, I've been working in community radio for about 11 years and came to Prometheus, grew up in the Philadelphia area and so I've been following Prometheus for a very long time as they're based in Philadelphia as well. And we advocate on behalf of community radio stations both at the FCC and then also out in the field and helping with the, we've helped with the eventual build out of those stations as well, which we call barn raisings, where we bring the community together to actually bring the station and get it on the air. Great. Great. And sitting next to Julia is my old friend, well my good friend, we've known each other for a while. I shouldn't call you an old friend. Old as they are. Catherine Grinswich, U.S. Catholic Conference, or U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. I almost always get that wrong. Well, this has been such a long struggle, the name changed. Is that right? So, and if I understand it correctly, you are an Associate General Counsel? I'm an Assistant General Counsel. That changed too. Wow. It's been so long. Now, so why are the Catholic bishops interested in radio and what's your connection with that? That's an interesting question and that's what Bill Kennard asked in 1999 when we convened a meeting of church organizations, community organizations at United Church of Christ downtown here in D.C. and met with Bill Kennard to explore this idea of low power FM tiny radio stations. And the first question is, well, what did the Catholics care about that? And the Catholics care, as many churches do, because communications is what you do. You want to convey your religious message. You want to convey your cultural message. You want to convey social justice messages, and these are not messages that are well received on commercial radio or television stations. These are, they're not commercial by their nature. And so we were very interested in allowing parishes, schools, other Catholic, small Catholic institutions to at least get programming on new stations or establish new stations. So that was our hope and a time when we found everything else was coming to an end. Our access to commercial TV and radio was being squeezed out. So we're going to talk a little bit about the struggle to get low power FM often running and what it is to run a low power FM station and how folks can actually get their own low power FM stations. So we have a short clip that sort of helps explain a little bit about community radio that I believe Prometheus has put together and is allowing us to run. So why don't we just sort of show that short clip about community radio? And we don't have the media, or the media is controlled by another group that doesn't have our side of the story, our perspective, our community interest. And other people hear from them and we have nothing to combat that. We don't have our own radio station, our newspaper, to put our truth out there, our version out perspective out there, then in a way they control the battle. We have to fight for those spaces, like we as social justice movement builders need to really own spaces and be able to control narratives because we believe that like the people know how to tell their own stories and they know the solutions to their own problems. To get accurate information to our folks, you know, how do we have authentic conversations across borders and boundaries that divide us. I think community radio is one of the tools that can really start bringing folks together to get into practice of working with each other and to get in the habit of leading dialogue and sharing information about issues that's important to where we are. They actually have to look at themselves and tell and hear their own stories. Then you start to see people kind of open up and they become proud of who they are. And so if we had our own radio station where the people could call in and talk about what they're going through, how they're being mistreated, how then justice that's going on, it would be an outlet that would be an in source and an out source at the same time that could release and get out to the world some of the things that are going on in that area. This really is about telling the stories and using the stories to push policy so that folks can really build a world that includes their visions. And that's one of the promises of Low Power FM is that you can set the criteria that you won't play before on earth. You won't play music that advocates violence. Because that's not the only music that's out there, but that's what's been put in mainstream radio and that's another reason why the radio station is so important. So you can hear different voices, you can hear positive messages. It's just about like channeling all that creative energy, like there's so much energy and talent out there that it just needs to be like streamlined. To organize, galvanize and educate community stakeholders and policy members, that helps our community to grow. And preserve the cultural identity of our neighborhoods. It would be better if there were more community radio stations at the level of the country and I think it would help all organizations in different parts. To have a single voice and have a lot of community stations for each campaign in different clutches and that way it's easier to communicate with everyone. I support, I support, I support, I support. I support, I support, I support, I support, I support. I support the community radio. Communi-Radio. We need community radio. Community radio. Community radio. Community radio. 100%. Low-powered, people-powered community radio. We need community radio. Don't you think so? Great opportunities that are coming. Well, that's so, so why, why do you get excited? Why is this a big deal? You know. You get emotional about it. I do, I do. I've seen it firsthand. I've seen it in just the relationships that I've been able to build through the station that I've worked at. And I've seen what it, I've seen what impact it can have in the community. And I imagine that, you know, and that's just at a station that predominantly operates as a music-driven station. And so when I think of other stations that have other varied kinds of missions to their work and what can be accomplished there and what, you know, Prometheus scene that has been accomplished and other communities across the U.S., it's, it's overwhelming. I feel like a couple standout examples always get mentioned. But to me, what I think is most exciting is what we don't know what's going to happen next in this next wave. The last application windows have been predominantly in rural areas. And the next wave is going to open up spots in urban areas, which are going to reach a whole, you know, many more people and other kinds of communities. And so it's, to me, we don't even, it's all, you know, it's not just projection. We know that these great groups are going to get these licenses and I can't wait to see it happen. So Liz, what is the real difference between low-power FM and full-power FM? And what is the difference between these stations? For us, okay, my programming eight to five Monday through Friday is news and talk, news and public affairs. Primarily, it's like social justice programming at night and on weekends. It's music. For us, the primary difference I think is everything is done from the bottom up. All decisions are made by committee, by vote. And then the board of directors manages decisions that involve multiple committees. So if a decision by news crosses over into the rights of the music department or to the marketing department or something else, then the board of directors gets involved. But it's not based on one person's taste or understanding of what the radio station is or should be. It's based on the community's understanding of what we can do and what it should be in programming and voices that need to be heard or genres that need to be heard. And I think more than anything else, we are absolutely not economically driven. We drive to support ourselves and to maintain ourselves. But if we want to add programming that's potentially, I don't want to say unpopular, but controversial, we'll do it because it's necessary. If it addresses an issue that's necessary or a genre that's necessary, then we'll do it. And it's not because it makes money for us. A lot of important issues aren't popular, and that's what we need to talk about. Now, do the same rules that apply to commercial radio apply to low power FM? Be more specific. The way that you raise money, the commercials that you run, what you can say on the air. So, to be a non-profit public radio station, the biggest, there are two big no-no's that you can say and can't say regarding raising funds. One of which is we cannot endorse a candidate or a person running for public office or an issue of public concern that is coming up for a vote. So, Tim Kaine, I can't go on the airwaves during an election season and tell people to vote for Tim Kaine. And then also we cannot tell people how to spend their money. So we can't say go here and check out this new album. We can't say go to Coffee Shop X, Y, and buy this coffee, we say. More information is available here. Our intention is tied up, we are there to educate, not to solicit or aid anyone in solicitation. And that is the drive of our content, is education. And so therefore that's what distinguishes us as a non-profit public station, is we are there to educate, not serve solicitors. Does that make sense? Yeah, I guess it. I guess it makes sense. But now, will I see an ad for detergent or shampoo or hear an ad for detergent or shampoo on the radio station? Yeah, sure. It falls under underwriting. It falls under underwriting, exactly. There's different ways that the ad copy is written for that. Or not ad copy, but the copy that would be read over the airwaves. So that's a little different. But it certainly doesn't sound like a commercial, it doesn't have that kind of interruptive quality that is so prevalent on commercial radio. And I might also hear NPR on a low-power FM station. Right. WRER was the first LP FM station to carry NPR, American Public Media, and Public Radio International. And we were, for many, many years, the first, the only station that carried these three major public radio syndicates. And then, actually, we just dumped them all. Just this last, so our fiscal year started in July, and we just got rid of all of our subscriber syndicated programming. We feel like the world of independent media producers is so vast and so diverse and is so underrepresented that we're established. And now it's time to represent new voices and a different echo, I guess. So, Catherine, let me ask you, in addition to radio that features NPR, there are also religious broadcasters who, I think, have actually taken fairly good advantage of low-power FM as a service, particularly in rural America. Is there any difference between the sort of religious programming that you would hear on a low-power station as opposed to maybe a commercial AIM station? This would be, from a Catholic perspective, there's a couple of places that programming would come from. There are larger corporations like Eternal Word Television Network, and they supply some radio programming. So, for fledgling stations, for example, that are run by independent Catholic organizations, they would take some chunks of that, as you would, from NPR and fill the day with that. But then part of that, their radio day would be populated by local messages and local churches and local parishes and local Catholic schools. So it can be an interesting mix. But you don't see that kind of, even the well-funded EWTN is increasingly zeroed out of commercial cable because, as you know, the cable operators would tend to prefer programming. They own or control, and they don't own or control EWTN or programming like that. So that may be now the kind of programming you'll hear on low-power FM. But I think it's interesting that the whole part of this equation is, for me, the question is, how does one raise enough money in order to pay for the fees associated with music? And I think that's an interesting area, that one would have to take that into account in budgeting for a low-power FM. So how do you do that? The music fees, BMI and ASCAP, those are negligible. Even the digital millennial copyright and streaming, it's negligible, really, compared to, I don't know, it's not as much as random. A few thousand dollars a year. And also, there's been really great strides by other organizations to meet that need. For example, WFMU in Jersey City was a major partner behind the Free Music Archive, which is a free archive that people can access where artists have let their curators curate this collection of music that is available for free, that stations can rebroadcast or can be used for, you know, in Creative Commons license. You know, they have a couple of different, very easy to navigate under contracts under which songs can be used and music can be accessed there to meet that need, because that was a big concern. So there's even music that's ready to go for these stations, you know, even if they haven't amassed a music library yet of their own, that there is a library available to them on the Internet. So I know Catherine is interested in that question, because a lot of work that she does relates to copyright and licensing issues and things. But Catherine, let me ask you, why was it such a battle to get what seems to be such a simple service up and running? And why was there such a fight against it on the part of other broadcasters, even the public broadcasters? Why was there such a fight? That's a great question too, and that's one that I kept having to answer before my Committee of Bishops year after year after year after year of saying why is the small service that seems to serve such an important need, why would anybody care? Why would this become a problem among higher paid lobbyists in Washington? And we didn't think it was going to be a problem when we were inventing it in 1999 and 2000. The FCC opened the proposed rulemaking, everyone had a chance to comment, the engineering rules were hammered out, the rules on ownership were hammered out, we all had a chance. No sooner had those rules gone into effect, it took a matter of weeks before the lobbying organization for broadcasters, the National Association for Broadcasters, swept onto the Hill and informed them that these three mile radius stations would interfere with full power AM and FM broadcasting stations. We disagreed, but they had such an enormous amount of lobbyists and they had such enormous reach that before we could even get in the door of congressmen that summer, the NAB had effectively convinced them that these small radio stations could possibly interfere and therefore the number of channels available should be shrunk so that there would be greater physical separation between a small, literally a campus radio station and a full power station. It would take signal interference. Right. And obviously the engineering was incorrect. So the most we could do at that point was to get congress to at least establish a path where we could prove our case again so that the FCC was required to conduct a study to indicate again that the engineering that had been previously put out to the public was accurate and there was no interference and that took until 2003. But having reestablished the rules by an act of congress by a statute, now in 2003 we had to enact a bill to change the statute to bring back the channels and that was the hard part because it's a variety of things. The NAB may have felt simply that they needed to establish to its members that they had the power to kill even a friendly little service like this and I think that was their reasoning. And so they continued to press congress to not pass any bills allowing more channels for low power FM in 2003, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 until 2010. And part of working on the Hill is that you get different staffers who have to be reeducated again and again and their default argument was the one originally promoted by the NAB. That's the one they remembered. And that's where Prometheus was absolutely essential. They were absolutely dogged. I was ready to say, I give up? Uncle, it's not going to happen. It simply isn't going to happen and they would not give up. They were there for every meeting dragging in people from around the country to show what great service this was. Engineers at Prometheus could simply lay out in a simple to understand manner why this does not interfere. And if it wasn't, Prometheus would not have happened. It simply wouldn't have happened. So how was Prometheus able to continue this fight? I'm assuming that members, that church members donate money to the Catholic church that somehow that money allows the Catholic church to continue to battle some of these things. But how does Prometheus continue? Where does the money come from for you to be able to promote and continue the battle around these things, against the NAB, against National Public Radio? I would have to say that. How do you do it? Doggid, doggid determination. I mean, we're from Philadelphia. We're a pretty scrappy bunch. We do a lot with a little. And thankfully, the community of community media activists that are based in Philadelphia were able to draw support from across the country to just keep the pressure on and not give up. At one point, when I first started at Prometheus and we were in the basement of a church with eight people to two rooms. Everybody cramped in, hammering away at this work. And I wasn't even there necessarily during that policy fight. But there was just this determination to see it through the harder and more absurd the restrictions and things that people were coming back and saying about the interference and all of this. It almost made it even stronger. Like, okay, we can take this on. We can take this on. We can prove them wrong. We can build support around this. And also, I think the larger field of community radio, it really solidified that, kind of as you said, that these staffers that need to be kind of continuously reeducated about what changes are being made to this bill. In the same way, the field of community radio continued to grow. And their supporters were able to kind of work with their community to show like, this is what we need and this is why we need it. And these people are working to get it done. We need to join them and pull our forces together. So, Prometheus definitely could not have done it without the broad coalition of groups that we worked with. I mean, it really needed to be a bipartisan approach to taking it on. And so, it's a testament to community organizing and grassroots outreach to people to just educate them on the issue and make sure it felt relevant to their lives and worth their time and effort and money to pull it off. Well, getting it this far is clearly a success. I mean, you've moved things quite a bit for such a small thing, but I know it takes a good deal of effort. And Liz, you actually sort of built a place that has now been embraced by the city and by the federal government. You've got a real success story. I do. And actually, my success story, I want to follow what she is saying in that we, in 2006, 2007, my radio station is WRER in Richmond, Virginia, we went into a partnership with the city of Richmond. The city of Richmond had received a grant from Homeland Security to partner, to form a radio station for the dissemination of emergency information. And then they came to us and said, will you do this? After a series of meetings, they said, you know, will you be our broadcast partner? We took that, I took that to Prometheus and what Pete Tredesh did. Now, they were battling at this time and selling LPFM to Capitol Hill. Pete Tredesh said to me, who was with Prometheus, said that our partnership with the city of Richmond and this emergency services contract took the conversation from LPFMs being a bunch of hippies to actually, and this is a quote from Pete. He said, we were perceived as a bunch of hippies and it made it, it verified the project and what LPFM is able to do community by community in that it's actually a lifesaving device and something that the municipalities and the government can use and it changed the perception. And we professionalized LPFM in a lot of ways because of this contract and it just was the right place at the right time. You know, we were there, they received the money, we were founding, we knew the right people and it just all came together and we were willing to do it. We said, of course. But it proved that LPFM was just more than a bunch of kids who wanted to play music on the radio that we, as citizens, are passionate and we want to talk about our passions, you know, passions for our community. So why Low Power FM in Richmond? Why not another FM station in Richmond? Why isn't radio just sort of old and passé? Isn't everything moving on the Internet? Why do we even, why do we need this service now? Like what's the... What is it about radio? Yeah, why do we care? I don't want to... Go, please, please, please. I mean speaking to, I mean there's a lot of, you can think about it in terms of like what the lifesaving aspects of what stations can do. I mean, I think about it, there's two things. When I was thinking about this question that really resonated with me, particularly in this moment, about why a Low Power radio station and locally owned community radio station is so crucial in these times. And I don't know if anybody remembers in 2002 the Minotrain derailment disaster in North Dakota where there was a derailment of this train. Toxic ammonia was released and people were trying to reach the local radio stations to have them put out this emergency information to let people know to stay inside, that this had happened, that there was all these risks and danger. And they couldn't get in touch with anybody at the radio stations because they were owned by Clear Channel and were running on automation and no one was actually there to interrupt the broadcast and say, this is happening. And just earlier this month we've seen another train accident, it happened in Canada and 53 people died. And these things happen and there needs to be ways for people to get the life-saving information that's crucial for their communities. Wouldn't Twitter, wouldn't social media sort of handle these problems now? I mean, why would you need a radio station? I'd say there was an article just today that was reported that only one in three homes in West Virginia have a computer. The reality is not everyone has broadband, the reality is not everyone has computer access. Your computer access could be limited to that small period of time that your public library, if you're lucky to have one, is open for that. In my neighborhood we have only so many computer terminals on Capitol Hill, on Capitol Hill for our local library and they're used constantly. That's not the way you get breaking news, that's not the way you listen to programming, because that's a limited sliver of time, that radio still reaches everyone, everyone can afford a radio. I mean, if you're old, if you're elderly, if you're low income, a radio is something you can afford and everybody can be reached by radio. I would also say that like, I don't know if anyone here has read the comment section on a web page recently or in a chat room. It's not exactly the place where I would want to have a civil conversation. Just this past weekend in Philadelphia after the Zimmerman verdict was announced, there was one station in Philadelphia that interrupted regular programming, a commercial station, that interrupted their programming for maybe about an hour and was taking calls. At the end of the hour they were, clearly the phone lines were lit up, people wanted to have a conversation, people wanted to talk to one another, they wanted to voice their opinions, their frustrations, they wanted to talk to each other, and at the end of the hour the broadcasters had to say, we have to go back to our regular programming because we have advertisers and this is all the time we have. And it was heartbreaking to see that be the way that that conversation closed. And so I see community radio as being an opportunity to speak to one another and have another kind of moderated conversation that is really with the people that are in your community and sometimes that happens on the internet, that's true if your community is lucky enough to have broadband or lucky enough to have people that can access it and want to communicate that way. But for other segments of the population that don't have that, that's not the case and it's crucial for them to be able to have that outlet. And Liz, you devoted a good part of your young life to running a low power. But why radio? Is your radio station on the internet? Yeah, we stream too. So you're on the internet as well, not just broadcasting. Right. But I had this hard division between broadcasting and... Well, you have to be both now. You do. People pick us up on their smartphones and plug their smartphones when they're out of signal area into their radio in the car. Why radio? As opposed to Twitter. I think what you were saying about the rarity or the exclusivity of being able to afford having a computer in your home and that everybody has radio, I think is exactly right. I think every car that is made today still has a radio in it for some reason. When the power goes out, you're not going to be able to use your computer. Granted, smartphones are skewing my answer very much and smartphones have been the last two years in this Twitter thing. But two years ago, people didn't use their smartphones to listen to the radio or to communicate. If there was an emergency, you can go out and turn on your car. You can't plug in your computer and find out what's happening or you turn on your radio in your kitchen. But more than that, radio allows for a longer, more personalized, in-depth conversation on an issue. You hear a human being talking. You hear an inflection. You hear sadness. You hear a tremble. And it's so much more than reading. It's a personal connection when you're alone in your house, when you're alone in your car. It's a human being. And then for me, it's always doing something with my mind while I'm doing something with my hands. And so when I'm cooking dinner or filling out paperwork, the radio is on. It's a human connection and it's thoughts and ideas and it's not being alone in the world. So I'm watching this and I'm convinced radio is important that I can actually run a radio station and actually have radio station on the internet and actually on the smartphone and other things. Julia, how do I apply for this opportunity? Now, what do I do? So I hope you're all excited. If you're ready to go, we'll get you signed up. First thing you should know is that these non-commercial licenses are awarded by the FCC to non-profit groups. And so that can be a school, local government entity, a native tribal entity, but they're not granted to individuals. So this opportunity is really a chance for people to look within their community and say, what groups here could really support the operation and mission of taking on a radio station project? So that's the first thing that one would have to know for your community. To find out if there are frequencies available in your community, Prometheus developed a free tool. It's our zip code finder. And you can find that on any page of our website, which is prometheusradio.org. You can simply type in your zip code and it'll tell you how many frequencies are available. It can't get any simpler than that. We have more advanced engineering software that is also available for free as well. But the main details is that it's October 15th through the 29th of this year. It's a two-week period where you would have to submit your application online to the FCC. And that's it. Once that window closes, there are many markets in the United States that will not have any other available space left on the dial. So we've been saying this is really the last opportunity because there's been a lot of competition, especially now that these licenses are available in urban markets in the top 150 radio markets. And so some of these markets haven't had a locally-owned station go on the air in decades. And so this is really it. So we encourage people to come to our website, get free resources from us. We'll answer your questions and try to help move you along the process and get your community prepared to apply, which is, again, this October. And prometheus is doing regular webinars on this also? Yes. We have a series of webinars. They're starting to get increasingly more technical as we start to move through the application. But don't worry, that's what we're here for. We'll help you figure it out. So we have free webinars. We have also a community called radiospark.org, which we created to help the larger field of community radio be able to communicate with one another. So nationwide, people have been chiming in to say, you know what, I can't start a radio station, but I know how to operate a board, or I'm an engineer, or I'm with a DJ and I'm at a college radio station, and I'd love to help out your project. How can I help you? Or I have these resources, or I'm a lawyer, and I'd be happy to help you with this part of your application if you need that help. So radiospark.org has been a really great resource for people, community radio enthusiasts to gather and figure out how they can share their skills. We've also reached out to existing community radio stations and LPs to have them upload their station manuals and documents so that there can be a sharing of information to make this next wave go as smoothly as possible. So Katherine, do you have any cautions about the application process? I think you need to be taking this seriously. I would not like a small organization to think of this as a little project. I mean, this is an application before the FCC. You're going to have to show a certain amount of engineering wherewithal. You're going to have to show financial wherewithal. You're going to have to meet the legal obligations or the legal requirements that you'd be locally owned, prove that ownership. But that being said, this isn't impossible. I mean, these could be small organizations that have gone through the IRS procedure to get their 501C3. So this is all very doable. But it's a question of being prepared, going through it step by step. And I think especially getting your financial act in order because that's the first question I get asked when diocese is called. How much is it going to cost me? How much will it cost to get it running? And how much would it cost to keep it running? And can I do that? And that's another aspect that the FCC is also encouraging if there are many organizations within a community that has an available channel, encouraging them to work together. This could be a station operated by a number of organizations. There have to be a certain amount of legal framework for that, but that's very doable. I think that's something that I'm encouraging people who might even look at a $15,000 financial obligation for the initial setup as a big obligation and are a little afraid of that to say, you don't need to be alone doing this. You could perhaps just donate your talent. If your talent is programming, you could do that and not be the owner. Or you could become a part owner. That's all, again, quite doable. Because the FCC's requirements are also different for low power than for full power. You don't need to be operating 24 hours a day. You are only operating for a portion of the day for at least five days a week, depending on whether you're an educational association or not. And I think there, too, schools need to be educated here because this service was created with them in mind, as well as other community organizations. And they've certainly got the people power. So I think that's a good place to start is with existing educational institutions. I think Nick is going to help us in a short bit or maybe Anthony is going to help us get questions from the audience. But let me ask you, Liz, do you suggest this is a piece of cake running a low power FM station and, you know, like a hundred volunteers and this is just like putting on a show every day, right? You know, I was trying. I was trying not to smirk when Catherine was talking because I was thinking that's the easy part. Starting starting, we have 200 volunteers. We want to run 24-7 and they are individual people with individual needs and ideas and directions and ethics and habits. And it's an amazing thing to do. And it's really worth it. It gives you life purpose and passion and, you know, I wouldn't change anything. But it's, yeah, that's just the beginning. So do we have any questions from folks here in the audience? Nope? Oh, sorry. I'm the chairman of a board of a nonprofit. It's a youth media organization. We train young people in media skills and photography for social justice kind of campaigns to help them find their voice. And we've been approached by somebody who wants to do this. Somebody with a radio background who has the engineer in place who has the lawyer in place. So, I mean, everything looks good. But at the same time, you know, I'm the chairman of the board. So I have, you know, fiduciary responsibilities and my concerns are do I open the organization up to any sort of liability by doing this? You know, you're responsible for compliance. So that is, that's the fiduciary responsibility as board president. So yes, you are. But I, you know, I wouldn't put my name on any grant or donation that I couldn't meet the requirements up. So I don't know if it would be any different than what you're already working within now. Well, it would be because we're not regulated by the FCC right now. I guess that's my biggest concern, is opening us up to outside regulators and understanding all of that before I sign my name, you know, on a dotted line. So Prometheus does have some resources available on our website to help answer some of those questions. It gets into a little bit more thorniness than maybe this is the right space for right now. But I can definitely get you in touch with those resources to answer those questions. Because we understand that that's obviously not going to be a fit for every type of organization and that, yeah, that those concerns are real and we'd be more than happy to help you navigate that. That'd be great. You know, as an LPFM, we are not subject to nearly the filing and, you know, and everything else that full powers have to keep up with. I mean, it's really, they've minimized it so that the community can do it as a volunteer. It's really, it's really pretty easy. It's a matter of just setting policy on the beginning, you know, on process. It's pretty easy. Yeah, and I would say that that probably goes to, that speaks to like what, when we talk about capacity and what it takes to get a station off the ground that, yeah, setting those policies early and making sure that you have the right kind of buy-in from the people that are there that are willing to participate and creating those policies will go a long way to ensuring that they're followed. You have something that runs a little bit more well-oiled than trying to just like bring everybody on board first and then figure it out as you go along. We definitely don't recommend that that way. So we can definitely point you in the right direction to get those kind of questions. I'm wondering where do you distribute your programming now or how do you distribute the programming you do create? You too. You know, social media, you know. Because there's a certain, I'm just thinking this, there's a certain level of liability there. There is. So that you're responsible for the content. Exactly, and we're familiar with that and that feels real comfortable to me. I think right now there's the fear factor, you know, which I have been to your Prometheus's website and I want to commend you. It's excellent and it's been really helpful so far. It's gotten us to the point where we've filled out the board questionnaires in order to move forward, that sort of thing. And I would recommend that I even, on their website several times, just to find random places where I've lived or I have friends that live to see, does this work? Can I understand whether or not, because I'm not an engineer and I don't play one on TV. So when I understand when I get the answer, can a radio station fit here? I get it. It's understandable. So it's a really useful tool just to begin to clear the deck to say, is this even a possibility? Well then let's look at it. Thank you both very much. All of you very much. My question's for Liz. Your station in Richmond, is it downtown? And if it is, how do you interact with the local music scene? Yes, it's downtown. And how do we interact? We air, we have quite a few programs there, nothing but local music. We bring in live bands into the studio. This weekend we're putting on an event that's got 20 local bands. We are making our own community. And our community is making us. We are, you know, our DJs are musicians. I mean it just, we are Richmond, Virginia. And so we are everybody. They come through. We cater to them. They cater to us. I don't know how to explain it. But there's definitely a space for local music and we give back to our local community constantly. I think the music piece is an important part of Low Power FM because let's face it, what would make you want to tune into a local station? It would probably be music you don't have to hear 50,000 times in a week on some commercial radio station. You know, I ask people my age to say, well perhaps this isn't the best example. When was the last time you heard something from Bonnie Raid from her lavender album on the radio? Yeah, I haven't. I know that there's a need in radio to actually hear music that's actually chosen by individual people who can come up with something approaching a musical experience. Yeah, it's curated programming, curated music. And it also can go to preserving cultural heritage in some areas. There's a station KOCZ in Apollosis, Louisiana that their main, part of their main mission is to just preserve local zytoco heritage. That music came from that area and yet there had been no station that was broadcasting that music. And so their Low Power station actually made it so popular again that it started to get picked up by the commercial radio stations. So clearly there was a desire for it and that need wasn't being met because it didn't meet a national consolidated playlist that someone thousands of miles away picked out for that region. So there are really a lot of opportunities for diverse music programming to happen. My name is Clint Sloan. I'm with the National Religious Broadcasters and I was wondering with this expansion do you see any potential conflict between high powered and low powered radio stations? I don't think so. And let me explain my experience with the National Religious Broadcasters that when we were on the cusp of finally passing the necessary legislation to expand Low Power FM the religious broadcasters were very frank with us and said that we would have been with you all this time but as you can imagine we have a large and diverse board and not everyone could agree and if there is one voice that's not in agreement with a policy position we won't take it. But for the most part they were supportive of Low Power. They certainly never got in the way. They never stated that this is going to be a huge problem for them particularly as the years went on because they could see that there's really no conflict. There's no conflict in terms of financial problems because if you're a full power commercial station you're not competing with a small station that is non-commercial and when it comes to full power non-commercial stations again it's a very different donor base. I don't think the WAMU here in DC is going to suffer if there's a small radio station that covers three or four miles on the outskirts of DC there would be two different donation funding sources and I think that full power religious broadcasters understand that if anything these stations could provide an additional outlet for programming which is good for everyone. And to speak to the technical aspect of just low power versus full power the onus is on the low power station to assure that it will not cause interference and in fact their application would not make it through the FCC if that demand wasn't met and should an LP get on the air and at other times due to if antennas change or locations change or anything like that all of those changes are again it's the responsibility of the low power FM broadcaster to correct any interference that may happen due to any other changes that happen after the application goes through. So it's really fail safe in a lot of ways. There's so many checks that an application would go through in that process before going on the air that it's not a signal competition for the full power or in any of the other ways that have been outlined in terms of competing interests or anything like that. And is it any of your, do you have the sense that this is progressive or conservative or liberal or I mean does low power FM sort of adhere to some particular party or ideology or is it all over the map? I think if you go to the FCC's website and check out just the names of current low power FM licensees you'll see a huge range. It's going to be everything from our Lady of Perpetual Hope Church which is going to have a message that's going to be far different from a local Zydeco station but let a lot of the thousand flowers bloom. I think there was one great intersection that I always I am old aren't I? But there's that nice intersection happened in Florida with the workers program that there were workers working in the fields that are largely picking crops that are used by McDonald's and other large corporations in their food processing and they had some serious labor issues with their working conditions but nowhere were they getting any news coverage of this long ongoing struggle which was actually picked up a little bit in Florida but not on an ongoing basis. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops actually gave a grant to them through not through its communications program but through its social justice program to say you need to continue your struggle to have decent working conditions. Those workers decided well no one else is reporting let's get a radio station. So now they have a radio station and so they were reporting on their local issues and other local issues so that you can get even an organization like the Catholic Conference which is going to have, as the bishops would call it a prophetic message which is not popular and that includes everything from contraceptive coverage no abortion to preserving the rights of workers for a decent life. So we think that we're a good example of any of those messages deserve to be heard and Low Power FM is a good way to hear them. And I would also just like say that's WCIW in Immokalee, Florida that she's speaking about and one of, I love that station for many reasons and it's very inspiring for many but one of the most recent things I'd heard from one of the people that worked there was that people often think of Low Power FM as being this low power and I say high impact because even though they are only broadcasting to that community, those migrant workers that were there take the messages and information that they've learned and take it with them when they go to other places and have been able to continue to fight for their rights in other areas outside of that community. So it really does have, it shows that the power of information and education for people really goes much further than just what the 100 watt power of an LP FM station can provide. I have a question about, and this might be a moot point at this time since the FCC has already come out with its rules, but what are everyone's opinions on localism requirements for LP FM stations because I have noticed that that can be a problem when there's too much networked programming that doesn't actually speak to local needs on an LP FM. So unless, I don't know if you both are familiar with what the actual localism requirement is for the application that's coming out this October, you get a preference point if you pledge eight hours or more programming that's locally originated and that means that it's actually being created by someone in your station and that can either be a news show or a call-in show or if you have a DJ that's playing music there that as long as it's generated from that home base of that station, that counts towards that localism requirement. And I think that that requirement and the preference point is great. I think it really, it holds the FCC to the accountability of keeping this to be a radio service that is of use to local communities without being overly restrictive. I think it allows a lot of flexibility for communities to decide how they want to use their station. There may be communities that can fill 24 hours a day with locally originated programming and that works for them. There may be others that have to have a hybrid of pulling in of different content that doesn't necessarily have to be syndicated from a large group like NPR or PRI or American Public Media or any of that. Like you said, there's so many good independent programmers creating content. It can really allow people to bridge and grow and take care of what their community actually says they want to hear. From my perspective, I see it as being flexible enough to offer. And the other aspect of ensuring that localism is honored which was the point of low power is that the ownership structure is necessarily local. That those making the decision about whether to use anything from PRI to EWTN or local is made by people who live and can prove they live in the community in which that radio station in which it's serving. So that they're making the decisions based on what they local people want to see and hear. So there's that kind of preservation of localism that's built in to low power FM. Liz, can you talk a little bit about what you have done in the past to make sure that you're reporting to the FCC so that you don't have a challenge with the license? What do we have to do? Recently within the last, so we've been on the air for nine years, seven years I think our permit expired after seven years and so I had to reapply to the FCC and it was very simple, really. We had to run certain scheduled announcements at a certain period of time every day or on certain scheduled days and then we knew that the FCC was going to tune in and listen within this six month window and I emailed the station and I said this is what's going on. You care about the station? Don't screw up. You know, hit your mark at the top of the hour under your station ID at the top of the hour and don't screw up and so our interaction with the FCC has been nothing. We've never heard from them. My antenna went down and I had to file and say that our antenna was down and that we were working on our antenna and we were broadcasting from a very reduced signal and that's something that comes with the territory but other than that there's been no problems. I mean it's filling out and following directions exactly as they say to do them and that's what it takes. If it says fill this out, fill it out and that's the FCC, following directions. So we've never had any problems but then we said I'm strict but we have specific broadcast requirements and behavior and we follow those and those are very clear. Any other questions? We're actually at five o'clock and we have another program that we're going to start immediately. We're going to talk to an independent filmmaker, Kevin McKinney about corporate FM and whether maybe low power FM will solve all the problems and we'll outline his documentary portion. So thank you all very much and thank you audience.