Radio: Can The Black Community Take Back The Airwaves?

There may be a ray of hope when it comes to the Black community and media. Congress recently passed the Local Community Radio Act that should soon be signed into law by President Obama. Many media advocacy groups were upset that the new Net Neutrality rules will allow the telecommunications industry, (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc;) to discriminate against Internet content producers who can not afford to pay fees so that mobile phone subscribers can access their content, the passage of the Local Community Radio Act may be a consolation prize if groups can act quickly enough to take advantage of the new legislation.




Reclaim the Media writes:
"Washington State elected officials played a pivotal role in passing the bill into law; Senator Maria Cantwell championed the bill in the Senate, and House cosponsors included Washington Rep. Jay Inslee.


"This is a huge win for communities across the northwest and across the country who have been pining for more and better local radio, more support for local music and more diversity on the airwaves," said Jonathan Lawson of Reclaim the Media, a Seattle-based media justice organization which has worked alongside other advocacy groups since 2002 to expand community access to media, including LPFM. "Senator Cantwell deserves our thanks for seeing this through to the end."


The FCC initially created the Low power FM service radio in 2002, as a way to counter the dramatic consolidation of radio ownership which followed the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and the resulting drop in diverse programming and local voices. However, pressure from commercial broadcasters quickly led Congress to impose substantial barriers to LPFM, so that only a relatively small number of stations were able to launch, and mostly in rural areas.


The new law removes most of those barriers, creating the opportunity for many more stations to occupy unused space on the FM dial. LPFM stations are noncommercial, must be operated by a local nonprofit, religious organization or public institution, and are limited to 100 watts. read more


Low Power FM has long been a part of the vision of Scotty Reid, President of the Black Talk Media Project, which was founded as an North Carolina non-profit in 2008 to encourage the Black community to produce an alternative to the corporate media that currently pollutes the public airwaves and as a way to engage our youth in new media production.




However, getting Black media online producers to work together has proven to be challenging. Funding has also been challenging but with the passage of the new legislation, the Black Talk Media Project hopes that it can gain support and traction. Today Black Teen Empowerment Radio will discuss what this new legislation can mean to youth and the Black Urban community at large.