On August 9, 1998, as part of Weekend Edition Sunday, NPR broadcast a story on broadcast ownership diversity. Here it is in Real Audio format. This was followed by a story that included an interview with FCC Chairman Kennard in support of the concept of LPFM. That story is here.
On August 25, 1998, as part of Morning Edition, NPR broadcast a story on the shutdown of several unlicensed stations in Florida. As part of the story, they stated that action on the LPFM rulemaking is expected this fall. Here's the story in Real Audio format.
As of 26 September, the FCC has their Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) up and running. They show over 500 comments filed on RM-9242. The comments are available as scanned PDF files (you need the Acrobat Reader from Adobe to view the files). Since the files are scanned, they tend to be rather large and can take a while to download. You can go directly to the FCC ECFS by clicking here. Key in RM-9242 to see a list of comments on LPFM. I will continue to review the comments and reply comments from these PDF files. Summaries with links to the PDF files will be posted. The OCR HTML versions I compiled will continue to be available.
On December 7, 1998, NPR's Talk of the Nation broadcast a program that included Andy Schwartzman, President of the Media Access Project and Stephen Dunifer of Free Radio Berkeley. The program is here in Real Audio format. Dunifer suggests reallocating TV channel 6 to LPFM after the DTV transition. NPR is taken to task for its opposition to LPFM.
The FCC has started a web page devoted to LPFM. It is located at http://www.fcc.gov/mmb/prd/lpfm/.
On 1/28/99, the FCC released a NPRM looking at establishing an LPFM service. The text of the NPRM will be posted here shortly. Meanwhile, you can listen to the meeting by clicking here. The discussion of LPFM starts about 1 hour, four minutes into the meeting. In addition, there is a press conference where the issue is discussed starting at about 1:31:30. The text of the NPRM is available here in plain text form, and here in Word Perfect format.
Harold Hallikainen
harold@hallikainen.com