What: Community Cable Public Access TV Channels And  Radio  stations	Why: We need competition.	How: Educate Organize	Who: YOU  (150-300 volunteer DJ/News/Talk hosts =300 different views/cultures.
See our plans in our application to the FCC for a Low Power FM broadcast license!

I Think I'm Right, But I KNOW I'm Wrong.

Published in Television & Entertainment 4/26/99

Richmond Virginia
 
 

By Maxwell Scott
 
 

"In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
--Subdivisions --
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth"
Rush, "Subdivisions"

Everybody wants to matter. The members of "The Trenchcoat Mafia" individually felt rejected by those around them. So they did what so many of us didn't have the guts to do … join together and reject the rejectors. How many of us have not secretly fantasized about "killing the jocks" (or other popular "annointed ones")? Let's face it, "Best Years Of Your Life" is a cruel joke to many. I remember thinking "you mean it gets worse ?"

It is a tribute to the ethics of youth that this does not happen more often. We are not nearly as horrified when the freaks and geeks turn their anger inward and commit suicide (32,400 a year). That is only the known suicides, how many of the car wrecks and drug addictions are a slow version of suicide?

How often are drugs used, cars drag raced or driven recklessly, or driven to a field for sex and alcohol consumption all in a desperate attempt to matter, to have an impact on society around them? Furthermore, they want to matter to the surrounding society in a way that acknowledges their reality, not one that says that what they value or understand to be true is to be rejected.

Americans used to live in downtown areas where the butcher and the baker (that you lived above, or just down the block from) would look over your kids while you were at work. The rich and the poor did not live so far apart. Most people took public transit and took their family to the cemetery or the park for an afternoon picnic. Previous to the airconditioner and the cancerous growth of suburbia, New York City was so safe that families would go out with a blanket to sleep under the stars in Central Park, on the roofs and on the fire escapes. People knew each other, they knew which of us had predatory predilections and which were just having trouble socializing.

We were not so isolated into homogeneous neighborhoods where a year long revenge fantasy can fester so effectively below anyone's notice.

In short, a recent study shows block parties do more to reduce crime than jails!

Here's a radical thought: Instead of running away, constantly away and thereby causing the destruction of neighborhoods where people know each other … face the fear! Throw a block party.

Instead of stories that make everyone so afraid of strangers that they will not come out to meet their neighbors in the first place, the media could go beyond merely reporting the news and sponsor block parties in stressed neighborhoods.

For more information on that study and what Radio Free Richmond plans to do to help you be who you want to be, surf our web site at http://members.aol.com/Wrfr/ or contact us at Wrfr@aol.com or 649-WRFR.

Radio Free Richmond
seeks to be a light unto those who are not illuminated by existing commercial, religious or public radio stations.

We will play the News Views Jazz and Blues techno and free-form other radio stations would rather not use.

In this way we will contribute to a stable and just society where everyone can become who they want to be. 

We seek to enable the weakest links in our society to become strong  so that no-one can thrive on the pain and weakness of others.

Get on the air before 2000: 

 

More information on LPFM

 

Effort to defend our ability to hear WDCE 90.1FM as well as any new LPFM stations.

The Fall 2000 "Murrow's Hope" newsletter is the Video SlideShow and Audio File (playing now on AT&T and Comcast Cable Public Access channels)... or you can read the script here.

 

Read more details on the LPRS in Spring'99 Newsletter "Murrow's Hope"

 

Subscribe to eMurrow's Hope

.......

------------------------
WHAT IS LPFM?
------------------------

LPFM stands for "Low Power FM". LPFM is essentially the re-legalization of small affordable radio stations for new entrants to create competition to serve audiences ignored by larger stations.

The Big Broadcasters have had the rules bent for decades to make room for their 40,000 and 100,000 watt stations to squeeze onto the dial and spew horrible morning shows and repeat the same music over and over and over ... 
for DECADES!

Now a few thousand churches, educational and community civic groups want to get the same deal and make space on the FM dial to build affordable radio stations to bring those stories, values, culture and music that the big religious, NPR and commercial networks can't be bothered with. 
Your stories, values, culture and music.

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) received 13,000 requests for a slot to 
build a station in 1997.

Thousands of "pirate" radio stations have taken to the air for $1000 each or less. 

The FCC received over 3000 formal comments in the Low Power FM hearings, more than any other issue in FCC history!!

And so the FCC created the "Low Power FM" broadcast service. Designed to be affordable (less than a new car) and protected from the big boys (only new and only new local ownership can apply for one).

LPFM has BROAD public support, half of the LPFM applicants are (often) conservative churches, half are educational organizations or radical change organizations. 

And the Big Broadcasters know this and can't stand the competition. The Big Broadcasters are trying to cut costs, cut jobs by running all their radio stations by remote control. They don't want to have to hire back that staff because some 98 watt LPFM weakling is doing a better job on local music, culture and news than they can remotely. 

And so here we are at the tail end of a Senate Session. They were due to adjourn last week. 
Many Senators want to go home and campaign for reelection.

The Big Broadcasters are working hard to get our Senators all lined up to kill LOCAL COMMUNITY AND CHURCH radio 
that would increase their expenses because they would have to compete with us for your heart and soul.

The Big Broadcasters hope that President Clinton will not follow through on his promise to veto 
any bill that harms Low Power FM.

We need to provide Clinton with the support he needs to veto anti-LPFM legislation no matter what.
 
 

ALSO: remind Clinton that you don't appreciate NPR President Kevin Klose going against his own NPR membership stations in opposing Low Power FM, using tax money to kick thousands of church and educational LPFM radio stations off the air.
 
 

NPR affiliate Brasher, "I felt a little like a citizen might feel if he woke up one morning to find that a new president had been elected, but nobody told him there was an election. Frankly, I really doubt that the position taken by the officers, and I understand, this Board, represents the true feelings of the men and women who work in National Public Radio and in our stations.!"  (Speaking to the NPR board about President Kevin Klose's apparently renegade attack on LPFM.)