[Public and Community] Radio’s Fall – Part One: No Money, Mo’ Problems

[salvorhardin]

An excellent post outlining why the future of public* and community** radio is so grim, but this paragraph really made me sit up straight. Why don't our progressive and social justice organizations invest in public and community radio?

What makes no sense to me is why the social justice community, from MoveOn.org to the NAACP, doesn’t get behind the build-out of community radio right now. Instead of repeatedly handing over millions of dollars to corporate broadcasters for fleeting ad messages, MoveOn.org could help communities build and sustain new infrastructure for communications using affordable radio equipment.

Link: http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2010/12/22/radios-fall-part-one-no-money-mo-problems

*Note for the haters: public radio does not equal NPR. NPR is primarily a production and distribution company that your local public radio station buys programming from.

**Community radio is a whole other thing. Here in the U.S. it mostly refers to Low-Power FM (LPFM) whose broadcast power is limited to 100 watts (public and corporate FM stations' broadcast power are in the tens of kilowatts range) to broadcast to very specific communities.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. The loss of the LPFM, and other local radio is a true tragedy.

It signals the loss of local, unique area-centric programming of all sorts...and will ultimate result in the homogenization of all radio... Sad...very sad.