This past weekend the New York Times published a story on low-power FM community radio, with a particular focus on Washington and Oregon, where there is a unique concentration of stations. In assembling his story correspondent Kirk Johnson visited many stations and talked with a host of broadcasters and advocates, including Radio Survivors Jennifer Waits, whom he quoted, Matthew Lasar and myself.
Though limited by the space constraints of a major daily newspaper, Johnson was able to get to the communitarian heart of LPFM:
What low-power urban radio creates, believers say, is a sense of community, a defined physical stamp of existence that goes only as far as it can be heard. So new licensees and programmers are knocking on doors near their antennas and holding fund-raisers at the local brewpub. That’s a stark contrast to the amorphous everywhere-but-nowhere world of the web, and the web-streaming radio or podcasts that a few years ago seemed most likely to take center stage in low-budget community communications.
Todd Urick of Common Frequency—instrumental in so many West Coast stations going on the air—puts a very fine point on the critical importance of LPFM community radio:
“If it gets harder for independent media to stream online, the low-power FM stations will become even more important[.]”
On this week’s podcast (releasing Tuesday) we’ll have an interview with staffers from Seattle LPFM KBFG-LP, recorded at the station’s launch party in the city’s Ballard neighborhood, and featured in the Times article.
