[Imc] Come Help Build a Radio Station on the Chesapeake Bay!

Tue Jan 22 21:25:02 UTC 2002

Awhile ago I told folks that we had been invited to radio barnraisings by
Prometeus Radio project for the Spring.  Below is the official invite.

danielle

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Low Power FM Radio Barn Raising Conference

A radio "barn raising" conference and master class for new LPFM radio
stations and applicants will be held Presidents' Day Weekend from
Friday, February 15th to Monday the 18th, 2002. The event will be in
Churchton, Maryland, just 45 minutes east of Washington DC. In the spirit
of neighbors pulling together to put up a new building, we'll gather low
power radio applicants, journalists, radio engineers, students, lawyers
musicians  and all sorts of folks to raise the antenna, build the studio ...
and flip on the station switch at the end of the weekend! The conference is
being sponsored by the Prometheus Radio Project and hosted by South
Arundel Citizens for Responsible Development (SACReD).

SACReD is a grassroots, community action organization dedicated to
preserving sustainable, environmentally responsible communities along
the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. In the last few years, the group saved
nearly 500 acres of wetlands on the Bay from development, convincing the
state and county to purchase the land for a natural wetlands park.
SACReD holds the closest low power radio license to be issued near DC.

Jeremy Lansman, the legendary engineer who helped start many of the
best community radio stations in the country in the sixties and seventies,
will come from his TV station in Alaska to help out. Producers and
engineers from some of the country's best communnity radio stations will
be there too.

It will be a time where new programmers will meet, new stations can
compare notes on fundraising and equipment, and broadcast
professionals can share their skills with the new low power radio station
licensees. We will also plan the course for media activism for the next
year, and plot our continued fight to put the media into the hands of the
people and communities.

Workshops Will Include:
What everyone should know about a radio station even if you never touch
a dial
Audio
Legal issues
Intro to radio engineering
Advanced radio engineering clinic
Local news and public affairs programming
Towers
Internet radio
Advanced audio and processing
Basic electronics repair
Media democracy issues
Internet radio
Fundraising
IBOC and digital radio
Studio transmitter link options
Station governance
Using a minidisc recorder
Congress and low power radio

And of course, the Radio Barn Raising, with tips on selecting equipment,
purchasing, and building a low power radio station from microphone to
antenna!

Workshops  will be organized with a technical  and a non-technical track.
at the same time, crews will form to do various parts of the job of putting
the station on the air. Another group will conduct interviews throughout the
weekend with radio applicants and produce a piece at the end of the
weekend suitable for national broadcast.

Entertainment will include Radio Volta's Hooligan Players, who will
perform live  their radio plays about the heros and heroines of early radio:
Nathan B. Stubblefield, Radio Pioneer,  &
The Matrimony of Science: The Doomed Love of Nora Stanton Blatch and
Lee DeForest

To register, go to:
http://prometheus.tao.ca/barn.shtml or write to prp at tao.ca if you have
trouble with the form.

Also, our next conference has been scheduled in Oroville, California with
Bird Street Media on April 12th to 14th,  north of Sacramento, CA. Bird
Street Media Project is a community based organization committed to
locally produced media in a city that very has very few outlets of it's own.
Activists in Oroville hope that the radio station will help organize the
community in their struggles with a nearby mining company.

Conference cost will be $20-$80/day sliding scale: meals and simple
lodging included.

For more info, call Prometheus at 215-727-9620.

***********************************************************
Reprinted from The Baltimore Sun, 11/26/01

Arundel group to launch low-power radio station
WRYR to offer forum for local interests, issues, planners say

By Jackie Powder
Baltimore Sun Staff
Originally published November 26, 2001

While fighting to preserve their tranquil towns on the Chesapeake Bay,
members of the South Arundel Coalition for Responsible Development
have drawn criticism and kudos for using the media to advance their
cause. Now the feisty environmental group has plans to control its own
medium.

Early next year, the group, known as SACReD, hopes to launch a radio
station - the first in the state to go on the air as part of a federal push to
revive low-power community radio.

Project organizer and SACReD leader Michael Shay says the station will
be much more than a megaphone for SACReD, which has prevailed in
two key battles to stop development in southern Anne Arundel County. He
envisions the airwaves crackling with the voices of the region, from
watermen and politicians to gardeners, bluegrass musicians and
birdwatchers.

"We're made of many different parts, and radio will provide us with an
opportunity to appreciate those parts and share them, said Shay, a
building contractor.

With a projected broadcast range of about 15 miles, Shay said WRYR -
97.5 on the FM dial - should reach the South County area and coastal
communities across the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County.

The station would be the first in Maryland to go on the air under new rules
approved last year by the Federal Communications Commission. The
stations must be noncommercial and no more powerful than 100 watts.

For decades, such stations were illegal, and the FCC shut down many of
the operations. Supporters of low-power radio hope that the change will
bring diversity to what they see as the homogeneous, format-driven
programming of large commercial stations.

"The point is to explore our culture and to bring news and opinions and
other things that aren't particularly successful at selling sneakers and
toothpaste, but are nonetheless important to express," said Pete Tridish,
who used that pseudonym while broadcasting for low-power stations. He
is a founder of the Philadelphia-based Prometheus Radio Project, an
organization that helps groups establish low-power or "micro" radio
stations.

Shay became intrigued with the idea of community radio three years ago,
when he attended a workshop in Baltimore held by the Prometheus Radio
Project. SACReD prepared its low-power license application with help
from Prometheus, and in April received an FCC construction permit to
build a station. The final license is to be granted once the station goes on
the air.

SACReD is one of three Maryland applicants to win FCC approval for a
low-power station. The others are St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in
Garrett County and Edinboro Early School in Ocean City.

Nationwide, the FCC has granted about 130 low-power construction
permits, and is still processing the nearly 3,000 applications it has
received. Of those, the agency estimates that half will be granted licenses.

Most of the new microstations will be in rural areas, said Michael Bracy,
executive director of the Low Power Radio Coalition, an advocacy group
based in Washington. He said that the powerful broadcasters lobby
resisted the FCC's changes, saying small stations would cause signal
interference with established stations in urban areas. Congress has
ordered a study of the issue.

Community radio - which had its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s before
the FCC imposed restrictions - gained momentum during the past
decade as pirate radio stations took to the airwaves to protest the trend
toward corporate ownership of media outlets.

"You had stations in housing projects, stations in really rural villages,
left-wing politics, right-wing politics, Spanish-language Christian
stations," said Jesse Walker, author of Rebels on the Air: An Alternative
History of Radio in America.

Since SACReD received its station construction permit, Shay has been at
work soliciting donations from local businesses to buy studio equipment -
at a cost of about $22,000 - and rounding up local radio talent.

Businessman Tom Maginau donated studio space for the station at his
small office building in Deale, and other area merchants have pledged
financial help.

Supporters believe that many in South County will tune in for a mix of local
news, music and talk.

"One of the main reasons that people live in South County is because
they're a little bit individualistic and really want to retreat into a community
that does have some unique characteristics and is not part of the urban
areas where they work," Maginau said.

SACReD came to prominence three years ago when the group triumphed
in its bid to prevent development on a 477-acre parcel known as Franklin
Point. Over the past three years the group has focused most of its
energies on blocking construction of a shopping center in Deale that
would have been anchored by a Safeway grocery store.

The group waged a savvy media campaign that included appearances on
local radio shows, a constant presence at county meetings and letter
writing. SACReD made headlines at a protest event last fall when it
unveiled a 12-foot-tall "Queen of Sprawl" puppet in the likeness of County
Executive Janet S. Owens.

The tactics drew criticism, but Safeway has backed off, and SACReD
appears to have scored another victory.

Shay and others involved with the station say that WRYR will offer an
eclectic mix of programming, and organizers have tapped the talents of
residents to be the hosts of a broad variety of shows.

Tim Finch, owner of Good Deale Bluegrass, is set to go on the air with a
show of the same name. Composting and native plantings will be topics
on a gardening show by retired University of Maryland agriculture
professor Frank Gouin. Yoga teacher and professional bassist Jeff Crespi
- who had a college radio show 30 years ago - will return to the airwaves
with his own jazz show.

Jackie Savitz plans to do a show closer to SACReD's environmental
mission, touching on responsible growth and policies affecting the
Chesapeake Bay. Savitz said she'd like to add some folksy touches, such
as informing her listeners when the northern lights are visible in Deale's
night sky.

"That's the thing you might not get from a big corporate radio station," said
Savitz, who runs an environmental organization in Washington.

Next month, SACReD plans to build its broadcast antenna at a site on
Tilghman Island. Radio engineers from Prometheus recommended the
location, saying it will allow for better radio reception than the Deale/Shady
Side area.

Shay is organizing a radio "barn-raising" for early next year to get the
station on the air. The event will bring together volunteers from
Prometheus and from other organizations interested in starting low-power
stations. Over that weekend, the participants will literally put the station
together and flip the switch at WRYR.

"This is a grassroots organization," said Deale resident Joe Gibson, the
station's volunteer program director. "That's where all good things start,
with the heart of the people."