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IP: Religious broadcasters knocking NPR off the air -- on purpose
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 09:50:33 -0400
------ Forwarded Message From: Denise Caruso <caruso () hybridvigor org> Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 06:32:05 -0700 To: farber () dsl cis upenn edu Subject: Religious broadcasters knocking NPR off the air -- on purpose Good morning, Dave, Just got this and since I notice you're up and IP-ing, thought I'd pass it along. Unfortunately, as you can see, not the usual NPR Internet hoax. From the New York Times. Denise http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/national/15RADI.html September 15, 2002 Religious and Public Stations Battle for Share of Radio Dial By BLAINE HARDEN AKE CHARLES, La., Sept. 13 - The Rev. Don Wildmon, founding chairman of a mushrooming network of Christian radio stations, does not like National Public Radio. "He detests the news that the public gets through NPR and believes it is slanted from a distinctly liberal and secular perspective," said Patrick Vaughn, general counsel for Mr. Wildmon's American Family Radio. Here in Lake Charles, American Family Radio has silenced what its boss detests. It knocked two NPR affiliate stations off the local airwaves last year, transforming this southwest Louisiana community of 95,000 people into the most populous place in the country where "All Things Considered" cannot be heard. In place of that program - and "Morning Edition," "Car Talk" and a local Cajun program called "Bonjour Louisiana" - listeners now find "Home School Heartbeat," "The Phyllis Schlafly Report" and the conservative evangelical musings of Mr. Wildmon, whose network broadcasts from Tupelo, Miss. The Christian stations routed NPR in Lake Charles under a federal law that allows noncommercial broadcasters with licenses for full-power stations to push out those with weaker signals - the equivalent of the varsity team kicking the freshmen out of the gym. This is happening all over the country. The losers are so-called translator stations, low-budget operations that retransmit the signals of bigger, distant stations. The Federal Communications Commission considers them squatters on the far left side of the FM dial, and anyone who is granted a full-power license can legally run them out of town. Religious broadcasters have done this to public radio stations in Oregon and Indiana, too, and many large-market public radio stations, like WBEZ in Chicago, complain that new noncommercial stations, most of them religious, are stepping on the signal at the edge of their transmission areas. Stations are scrambling for these frequencies at a time of rapid growth in the national NPR audience and even faster growth in religious networks like American Family Radio. It owns 194 stations, has 18 affiliates and has applications for hundreds more pending with the F.C.C. "The noncommercial band is getting very, very crowded, and there just is not a lot of room for new stations in desirable areas," said Robert Unmacht, a Nashville-based radio consultant. "The competition is fierce, and the Reverend Wildmon is especially hard-nosed. His people are very good at what they do." Public radio is belatedly fighting back.... [snip] -- Denise Caruso Founder & Executive Director The Hybrid Vigor Institute +1 415.543.8113 vox/fax http://hybridvigor.org http://hybridvigor.net Subscribe to HVNEWS: http://hybridvigor.org/participate/mailinglist/index.html ------ End of Forwarded Message For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- IP: Religious broadcasters knocking NPR off the air -- on purpose Dave Farber (Sep 15)