April 24, 1998

FCC, Room 222
1919 M Street NW
Washington, DC 20554

RE: FCC File nos RM-9208 and RM=9242

Forty years of my personal dedication to the Radio Industy and 20 years this year in individual community station ownership and operation will be placed is serious jeapordy by creation of numerous low-power local access radio stations.

First, this will further congest an already congested service. Next, it will dilute the media pool and audience will fragmentize to the extent that no voice will be sufficiently viable to be a serious community service.

My personal experience with the vast majority of those espousing this new service are individual "pied pipers" interested in their own personal and narrow causes and program streams.  They complain of being unable to afford a station? It took me from 1958 to 1978 to acquire mine. The answer is work, patience and credibility, not lowering the access threshold to valuable community resources.

Our community is served by local cable access channels, two public radio stations with widely diverse programming, four local stations, numerous wide-area signals, plus the Internet which could prove ideal for the type of access most low power advocates seem to feel deprived of.

The pressures of media explosion audio and otherwise makes my licensed property less valuable today than when I purchased it in 1978.  Remaining in business is more difficult every year.  And I am a "smaller"  community station.  I shudder to think what these idealistic want-to-be operators  will face in trying to function as a broadcast service, and, what they will do to my ability to continue a level of involvement the FCC and our audience should expect from my frequency.

Don't destroy the most diverse and successful broadcast system in the world.
 

Sincerely,

Wm. Reck, Pres.
Skycountry Broadcasting Inc.