The item on the latest pop music has kind of drifted into a discussion of local radio stations and the lack of a classical music station here in Ann Arbor now that WUOM has gone talk radio. I wonder what it would take to put a real community-based radio station on the air instead of what WUOM offers? How would such a station be staffed? Could we enlist a lot of student interns like WCBN? Could it somehow be carried on cable TV instead of having to build studio facilities and set up transmitting facilities?39 responses total.
Gosh that sounds like a nice thing. The cable company would be the people to talk to about carrying it. Not going RF would make it a whole lot easier to do. A facility need not be bigger than a space like the pumpkin, at least at first. I much more wonder what the problems/legalities are with using music from various sources. Given that CD's would want to be played, so you have to give someone like Deutcsh Grammaphone money when something of theirs is played?
It *might* be possible to get something arranged with MediaOne, though your chances would have been much better about a month and a half ago when the city was renegotiating its franchise agreement. *Possibly* the signal could be carried over cable. But you wouldn't be able to get that kind of studio space from CTN. There's just not the room, nor the resources.
How would this differ from WCBN?
Playing classical?
I recall that at last summer's art fair there was a table in the vicinity of the Michigan Theater and SKR classical that had a petition of some sort for a classical radio station. I don't remember the details, but I signed my name and email address. I haven't heard anything more about it. Does anyone know if this went any further? Was this a figment of my imagination? I've asked once or twice at SKR classical and they don't seem to know anything about it.
#0 just refers to the lack of a classical music station, it wasn't at all clear to me that it meant that the proposed station would be an all-classical format.
an all-classical format would be a great thing. after the demise of wqrs, i jsut about stopped listending to the radio for several moths, then discovered that msu's npr affiliate plays classical most of the time. there's still nowhere to hear classical music on the radio between 4pm and 6pm, though.
There are three stations that play classical most of the time -- WKAR in East Lansing, WGTE in Toledo, and CBE, the CBC affiliate in Windsor. As void points out, there are periods when none of them broadcast classical, not only the All-Trivia-Considered time on PBS, but long periods in the evening with folk, jazz, and Lake Wobegon. In addition, all three stations are 50-70 miles away, which means that reception in a car or a portable radio can be a disaster. And, of course, CBC has decided that they can attract more listeners by intermixing some pop with classical, although this just leads me to change stations. We definitely need an all-classical station here, but we also need $100,000 a year to finance it. Anyone know of a source of funds?
Hey, micropower broadcasting! After years of gradually tilting the tables in favor of giant comglomerates, it appears that enough people are now starting to think that lots of tiny stations would better serve communities. For a long time there have been "pirate" radio stations of less than 100 watts, often just 1-5 watts (couple miles coverage), which of course are illegal. But there are some people in charge that are starting to try to make it possible to have a small, legal station. (agh, I'm not yet awake enough yet to be eloquent)
Could we do some kind of internet classical station?
What I'm thinking wouldn't be all classical, but I imagine a large part of the programming would be classical music. Basically, what I'm thinking of is a "Grex on FM" kind of thing. It would be run cooperatively, and its policies and programming would be the result of what the membership decided and who was willing to work on it. I like the Internet idea, too, but doing an Internet-only would limit its appeal and reach.
Ah, but would it limit its reach as much as a low power system would? What Scott says makes sense, and in a "grexian" sense would be the way to go. The net would be heard over all Ann Arbor, unlike the a little 5W station. I'm still wondering how you legally broadcast music. I think that might be harder to deal with than the technical aspects of how to get the signal out?
Do you mean the royalty questions? I don't know how that is handled, even for music for which the copyright has expired, because the *performance* can still be copyrighted.
You get performance licenses from the organizations who hold the license. ASCAP is the one that comes to mind, although there is another that is equally universal. After you copyright music, you register the copyright with one of these performance organizations. They monitor the airwaves, stages, etc, and collect royalties from anyone who plays your music, then remit part of that royalty back to you the musician. The monitoring is partly sampling, and the money is paid to ASCAP, etc, in the form of a yearly licensing fee. Bars, radio stations, music venues of all sorts pay yearly fees to the performance licensing organization.
I would presume that bars pay for this in the service contract for their juke boxes. Do you have any idea how much it costs per piece played?
Right Rane, its the costs and how to pay (and when) for playing various things that I could see as the hardest part to overcome.
They send you a bill based on 1) how many of their pieces of music you played, and 2) the size of the audience listening.
have the name for it.... RADIO GREX! perfect little public access outlet with a cool name that crosspromotes the computer bbs of the same name :)
Re #14: BMI (SESAC is another more recent one)
My rather limited understanding of how playing commercial recordings on the radio works is that the record companies ask the radio stations to play their stuff, because it's good publicity for them. I could be wrong about that, though. I think there's a classical station in New York that also does all its broadcasts in streaming real audio.
There is a tangled web of relationships in who plays what and why. "Payola" is the (illegal) practice of record companies paying for radio play of their product. At various times it has been a widespread practice. Generally most radios stations now pay for "consultants" or "programming services" to decide what to play. DJs rarely get any control over music.
So now record companies pay promoters to convince the consultants and programmers to play certain songs . . . .
re #12: Maybe I need to rephrase my idea about an Internet radio station. Putting it on the Internet solely would certainly change the listener base, and therefore, the station as a whole. Maybe that's not a bad thing, though. The Grex membership and participation in the conferences is still mostly from Ann Arbor, after all.
As for how pay for the music we play, I don't imagine that's a real big deal. Perhaps an email to Thayrone is in order. He seems to play whatever he or his audience wants without much thought to how he's going to pay for it.
(( Winter Agora #133 <---> Music #181 ))
Thayrone works one floor above me. (One floor and a couple of cubicles over, actually.)
Record companies and radio stations are not the people who collect and pay _performance_ royalties to artists. That's BMI, ASCAP, SESAC (thanks cyclone). Radio stations have to have licensing agreements with _all_ those groups, or face legal penalties for playing music they control. (same for bars, clubs, concert venues).
The most interesting example of a "community" (non-commercial, non-NPR) radio station that played classical music was WVCA in Gloucester, Mass. Gloucester is located on a peninsula called Cape Ann, and the call letters stand for "the Voice of Cape Ann". The station was set up many years ago, back before FM radio frequencies in metro areas were thought of as hot properties. The owner, manager, and sole on-air personality was an old curmudgeon who ran the station out of his apartment, playing all kinds of classical music. Sometimes, if he didn't time it right, there was an interval of dead air when he ran to get a roast out of the oven or use the bathroom. I don't remember the curmudgeon's name, but in interviews he said he *hated* Gloucester. There's only two things you can do here, he said gloomily, work or have sex; "I don't have a sex partner, so I work." Some commercial radio group tried to get his license taken away, on the ground that he didn't have news or weather or all the usual kinds of radio blab. The Gloucester community rallied in support of the curmudgeon, and the FCC renewed WVCA's license. However, about five or ten years ago, the old curmudgeon retired and sold the thing, so it's presumably some random Boston-area FM station now.
(Is there any basis for taking someone's FCC license taken away because he doesn't have news, weather, etc..., or were they just casting around for some excuse to get rid of the guy?)
At one time, stations did have minimum requirements for news coverage. In the last couple of years, they have either cut way back on those requirements or eliminated them altogether.
There are many, many rules...you must give out call letters and frequency every so often (station identification). You must run X number public service announcements. You must meet a bunch of financial requirements... I know that a few years back, WQBR at EMU tried to get a full lic. They currently have a low wattage permit and a lic. to broadcast on the cable run through the dorms. The FCC is a serious group. They needed at least $200,000 per year for five years **before** they could apply to broadcast. That applies to brand new lic. only. An alum was going to donate the tower, that was another $1 million or so (he got it cheep, but)... Or you can broadcast with out FCC approval. It just can not reach more than 1 sq. mile.
Re #31: I believe you can transmit anything you want in the FM band, as long as you aren't interfering with another service and you stay below 100 milliwatts (that's one tenth of a watt) output power. The law doesn't say "one mile". It couldn't; the distance you can be heard depends too much on the receiver and the terrain, so who could say you were legal or not? Measuring power is something you can define. Doing a few quick numbers... I seem to recall a received power of something like -80 dBm (that's 80 dB below a milliwatt) to get a good received signal. Let's assume that's -70 dBm for a stereo FM signal. If we assume that the receiver's antenna can get the energy from an area a half-meter square, this means we need -64 dBm/m^2 wherever we are. Transmitted power can be up to +20 dBm, and the antenna probably adds 3 dB in effective power (a doubling). A fancy antenna would add a lot more, but let's stick with that. Our path loss allows us 87 dB of dissipation, which allows the signal to cover a sphere of about 500 million square meters of area. By A = 4 * pi * r^2, that sphere has a radius of 6300 meters, or about 4 miles. That's line-of-sight. A good antenna which throws all your power at the horizon instead of up or down could double that range; any kind of blockage between could cut it by a factor of ten. Four miles LOS seems reasonable. So yeah, if you wanted to run your amateur classical station, and your house was up on a hill, you could probably be heard over a big part of Ann Arbor. Just pick a locally vacant FM channel and go for it. You could even transmit on different channels in different parts of town, and get coverage all over. Keeping several transmitters doing the same thing at the same time could be fun; I suggest looking into a bunch of Diamond Rio MP3 players and siting at friendly ISP's.
I've violated FCC regs. When I was at WJBK. Not prepared to go into details right now.
Bad Erik! To the pit with you!
The long and the short of it: Whenever we got a piece of mail that made some comment about programming or Channel 2's role in the community (events, billboard advertising, whatever) I was supposed to send it upstairs to our traffic department, so they could keep it in our Public file, per FCC regs. One day, as I was shuffling through contest entries, I found a postcard that said: "Hi. Please enter me in the 'Corrina, Corrina' drawing. I love Warren Pierce--he's the best!" And that, along with Channel 2's address, was all that was on the postcard. No name. No address. Detroit postmark, which could have meant anything. Well, anyway, I was so impressed by that card that I swiped it. It could have been that one missing vote of confidence in Warren that could have kept him from getting fired.
The FCC is considering adding a Low Power FM group of licences. It is currently in the public comment portion of their rulemaking process I belive. Expect lots of opposition from the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters)
Monday's New York Times reports that the broadcasting lobby has given up on the FCC in their fight against the FCC's proposal to issue low-power broadcast licenses. The broadcasters are now putting heavy pressure on Congress to pass legislation to kill the low-power station plan, and Congress seems to be caving.
<sigh>
There are currently two LEGAL low power stations in Gainesville (under 100 watts..or maybe it's 1000...not exactly sure) each of which has been fighting for a long time with the local FCC. This new measure was passed in the past 6 months. I remember hearing stories about a bust last summer with all of one of the stations equipment taken or broken. There is a major dissatisfaction with the radio in this area (me included). Especially after the shutdown of 97X, which, in my opinion was the best commercial radio station I've ever heard. So, a vast number of the student population got behind the 'pirate' stations...
You have several choices: