| Number 28 | The Green Party of Virginia Newsletter | Winter 2002 |
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ActivismMaking Trash and Jamming Free Speech For Fun And ProfitBy Chris MaxwellHow much would it cost you to replace every radio -- walkman, clock radio, car radio, home stereo and boom box? Don't forget that the new radios will be hundred$ of dollar$. Are the landfills looking forward to receiving 500 million radios in America alone? Is the EPA ready to watch out for the potential pollution caused by manufacturing to replace those 500m radios?! Even worse, are you ready to lose your favorite radio station, maybe the ONLY one that carries your music, culture, environmental, consumer and local news, or commentary that challenge the dominant paradigm? There's a new plan for the control of America's "Free Press". It requires radio stations to broaden their bandwidth on the radio dial. It would cover over and jam your favorite radio station's signal if it's next to a huge local station. This effort to double the bandwidth size and cutting in half the number of frequencies available for radio stations is called by industry the great digital radio revolution. Others call it a terrible disaster. For example, folks living in Williamsburg, Virginia can now hear both WHRV 89.5 (one of the few eclectic NPR affiliates) AND WAUQ 89.7Fm (Central Virginia's 8th ‘family-values Christian' radio station owned by the American Family Association [AFA]) in Charles City Virginia. Because these two stations are immediately next to each other on the dial, when they both double their width, people living in-between (Williamsburg) or rural folks outside of both areas will LOSE BOTH STATIONS. Richmond could lose 18 out of 32 radio stations! In order to hear any of the remaining stations that survive this forced conversion, listeners will pay hundreds of dollars PER Digital RADIO to hear them because they will all sound like fax machines. Over one in five Americans find that the only radio station that speaks to our souls is inevitably the weakest and/or most distant radio station on the dial. Technology Investor magazine noted that the new Satellite Direct Audio Radio Service [SDARS] (XM Inc. and Sirius Inc.) are going to be successful because "30% of all the music genres purchased in music stores are rarely heard on the regular radio dial." SDARS offers over 100 channels of largely commercial free music, news and talk channels beamed directly from orbit to your car for $10/month. Back on the ground, historically over 20% of Americans rely on tiny noncommercial religious, college, and community radio stations to find that programming that resonates with their values. Unfortunately, MANY OF THOSE STATIONS ARE LIKELY TO BE GONE IN 5 YEARS. America's larger broadcasters and radio manufacturers have created a coalition to pressure the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to in turn FORCE broadcasters to cease "analog" transmissions that your current radio can decode. This coalition is creating pressure to push conversion to a new "fax for your radio" kind of system called "IBOC-DAB". I call it "fax for your radio" because just as you talk in ‘analog' communications mode to your friend, your modem or fax machine must talk (in ‘digital') to another modem or fax machine in that hideous screech. Similarly, IBOC-DAB (stands for "In-Band, On-Channel, Digital Audio Broadcasting) receivers must be able to interpret the "screech" of Digital Audio Broadcasting. The Europeans and Canadians began their push to establish Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) back in 1992. Ironically, they used the American model from the 1950's by creating a third separate DAB band. In the 1950s, when Fm was established, we wisely did not try to push one or two FM stations onto the AM dial and thereby destroy 7 or 10 Am stations, instead we created a separate FM band. FM provided a huge increase in sound quality (and in stereo!) and thus was successful. Unfortunately, the new DAB signals only provide a microscopic decrease in noise and tend to choke and "warble" like a digital cell phone or like Internet audio does, and so European and Canadian DAB was a market FLOP. So the American manufacturers and large broadcasters that want to "go digital" had to figure out how to FORCE us to make the conversion. They came up with a brilliant idea -- they would COMPEl all broadcasters to convert to digital *on the existing* AM and FM bands. This idea is especially brilliant for the monopolists because they need a "transition time" of a few years to transmit their spreadsheet-programmed pabulum programming in both ‘analog' and in ‘digital'. To do that they claim they must double the amount of space they use on the AM and FM dial. This is advantageous for monopolists because their double-wide signal destroys the smaller and more distant independent signals that they have competed with for that remaining 20% of audience. Even better, by forcing the conversion, many smaller stations such as all-volunteer WDCe 90.1FM college radio for University of Richmond will not likely afford the $30,000 to $120,000 conversion costs and will probably just go off the air altogether. When conversion is complete, the big broadcasters plan to keep the new now double-wide all-digital signal and sell subscription delivery of digital down-loads from the internet, wireless broad-band internet. In fact, Sony Inc. states in the official FCC record that they only need 30 of the requested 430 (yes, four hundred and thirty) kilohertz of space on the dial in order to duplicate the audio feed in digital form. They plan make their money off subscriptions to that extra 400kHz of bandwidth ("auxiliary channels") and not by creating programming that attracts you to listen to the station. They can simply play any hideous schlock to appease the FCC that they are ‘serving the public' and the ratings that are show they are ACTUALLY serving the public will be utterly beside the point. You literally will no longer count on the corporate financial spreadsheets that inform their decisions on programming. To find out more about this potential environmental and free speech disaster (including congressional testimony), visit: http://www.DigitalDisaster.Org To stop this disaster; Call your Congress-Critters, and FCC Commissioners: 1) Tell them to require that anyone interested in transmitting in Digital Audio Broadcasting format must move to another whole band. Just as FM was established on a separate band from AM, so should DAB. NO JAMMINg OUR STATIONS! 2) Tell them that the European version of DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) [called "Eureka 147"] was a market-place failure because they asked people to pay hundreds of dollars for new radios carrying the same old tired programming. We don't want independent American radio stations destroyed to force us into buying new radios just to hear the nearly monopolized radio stations and bad programming that would remain, We WANT CHOICE AND COMPETITION. Contact Lookup:
Senators and Members Of Congress: Comments are due NOW at the FCC ... while those submitted after the dead-line of March 21st are still valid politically, they don't have "legal standing. Chris Maxwell is a member of the Richmond Greens.
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