National Public Radio (NPR), Public Radio International (PRI), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and the hundreds of public TV and radio stations across the U.S. are the institutions which, in aggregate, are known as public radio and television. Over the past 10 years, these publicly funded organizations have collaborated with corporate interests to erode the distinctions between commercial and non-commercial broadcasting, leading to the creation of a privatized "public" broadcast system that meets the needs of corporate and governmental sponsors but leaves local communities, ethnic "minorities," and the listening public out in the cold.

The recent response of these "public" entities to two new broadcast technologies--Low Power FM radio (LPFM) and satellite radio--hint at what public radio will likely become in the future, unless grassroots producers and listeners mobilize to reverse the current trends.

LPFM allows small organizations across the U.S. to set up micro-radio stations to meet the cultural, political, and social needs of their communities. Micro broadcasting equipment costs less than a thousand dollars; signals can be received on existing FM radios; and programming is created locally. Once LPFM stations receive licenses from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), their programming and broadcasting costs can be covered by voluntary listener support, institutional support from schools, native tribal councils, and municipalities, and other small-scale donations.

Satellite radio, on the other hand, will allow two multinational corporate consortiums to broadcast up to 100 radio channels each--direct from space--to specially equipped radios anywhere in the U.S. It will require the manufacture of millions of new receivers, costly and risky launches of multiple satellites into stationary orbits over the U.S., and millions of dollars from advertising and mandatory monthly subscriptions to keep it functioning. Content will be determined by two private corporations, Sirius and XM Satellite Radio, with none of the channels mandated to provide public broadcasting. Sadly, most of "public" radio has thrown its support behind satellite radio, and used deception and insider political clout to limit FCC licensing of Low Power FM stations.

Low Power FM

Last year, NPR teamed up with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) to head off what was clearly a potential competitor from the grassroots. According to Peter Franck, a lawyer with the National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications, NPR took up the NAB contention about possible signal interference from the tiny 10-100 watt stations as justification for limiting them to largely rural areas. FCC engineering studies and almost all independent studies had already shown that properly tuned LPFM stations would not interfere with other radio broadcasts. According to Franck, the legislation which overturned the FCC rules for licensing these low power stations would not have gone through without the backing of NPR. Swing votes such as U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and other liberal Democrats responded to NPR lobbyists and supported the NPR/NAB position. As evidence of NPR's use of deception, Frank cites NPR President Kevin Klose's claim that potential interference with "Reading Services for the Blind" was the basis for their concerns about LPFM. (These reading services are broadcast alongside the main station signal and provide books-on-tape type services through specially equipped radios.) But even after the FCC changed the regulations to add additional protections for these signals, Klose continued his lobbying to cut LPFM service, still using the Reading Services argument. Franck believes that NPR is facing a significant challenge in providing the local content that public radio audiences want and that its real fear is about losing audience to the new stations.

Despite this potential competitive pressure, however, some local public radio stations actually have been in favor of LPFM and are willing to help the new stations through technical support and training. Mike Brasher, general manager at KANW in New Mexico, sent a videotaped message to the NPR board of directors at its national meeting in San Francisco last year in an attempt to persuade NPR to back off from attacks on LPFM. Thousands of listeners tried to pressure local stations to reign in the national leadership. Obviously, it didn't work.

As a result of the congressional vote, NPR and the NAB were successful in cutting the number of FCC licensed micro stations by about two-thirds and kept them out of most urban areas altogether.

Satellite Radio

NPR's resistance to LPFM coincides with its receiving a grant of over a million dollars from the CPB to create programming for a new corporate-owned, for-profit satellite radio system. PRI, the producers of Prairie Home Companion, This American Life, and the World news, is committed to creating three channels of programming for the new for-profit satellite broadcasters. PBS' Jim Lehrer News Hour will also go out on the satellite band.

During the give-away years of the Clinton administration, shortly after the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC awarded the satellite spectrum to two for-profit companies, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. Both are publicly traded companies with the bulk of their shares owned by a consortium of corporate giants from the auto and audio industries, such as the Ford Motor Company, Clear Channel Communications, and multinational radio set producers. Both companies propose to run satellite radio on the cable television model. They've engineered partnership deals with all the major auto manufacturers to install satellite-capable radios in new cars, and pegged the subscription price at $9.95 a month.

CPB Vice President for Radio, Rick Madden, told MediaFile: "Unlike in 1945, when the FM spectrum was established, there is no public interest set aside. That was not mandated by the FCC." As a result, he says, "We [NPR, PRI, and CPB] had to negotiate our way on [the spectrum]." Their currency was their listeners' loyalty.

According to Madden, the logical place for Sirius and XM to find a paying customer for radio is among consumers who are already paying--listeners of public radio--"because $10 a month or $120 a year for this type of service sounds an awful lot like a [public radio] pledge break." Public radio's partnership with the Sirius Satellite Radio is a test of whether the American people, having received "radio for free forever," will be willing to pay for it, Madden says. "Both Sirius and XM have huge amounts of money invested in this model, but no one really knows if the model will work." From the CPB point of view, it was important to get in early, even at the risk of over $1 million in program development funds for spectrum that doesn't yet have an audience, he adds. "If we wait until they are a success, it will be impossible to get access to any of the channels. At that point, you've ceded territory to the competition."

Underwriting

Madden doesn't see a problem with publicly funded entities creating programming for a for-profit corporation nor with having that programming sold back to the public for a mandatory subscription fee. In fact, he thinks that NPR and PRI can use the larger audience they might garner through satellite radio to raise the underwriting fees for what should properly be called commercials, inserted in the broadcast programming. NPR or PRI might say to underwriters, "give us an extra 10% and get satellite underwriting credits," he says.

Listeners and viewers have, of course, noticed the ever-increasing amount of "underwriting credits" on traditional public radio. Commercial sponsors like GE, Chevron, Archer-Daniels-Midland, and Merck already underwrite individual programs and receive extended on-air announcements about their websites, 800 numbers, and new products. Recently, even the government of Kuwait got into the act, underwriting Morning Edition, NPR's national news show, with an announcement thanking America for the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Kuwait. This particular credit was a bit too embarrassing for NPR, which now says that it will no longer accept underwriting from foreign governments. But it has no such reservations about multinationals, whether based in the U.S. or abroad.

Dan Coughlin, former director of the Pacifica Network News, sees the deals between public radio and the for-profit satellite corporations as "a fundamental shift in the very idea and practice of public broadcasting, away from the idea of serving the public interest, to serving the private gain." In several speeches last year--including one at Media Alliance's annual meeting--Coughlin has outlined his view of what the new "partnerships" will mean for public radio. "This obviously has tremendous implications for content because Daimler-Chrysler is not putting 100 million dollars into new digital broadcast systems to have NPR News talk about the Nazi labor record with Daimler-Benz in the '30s or '40s, or the pollution of the Daimler-Chrysler Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio, [which has caused] environmental havoc in Northwestern Ohio."

Despite all the corporate backing, the high stakes gamble on satellite radio increasingly appears to be a bad bet. XM has failed to get its satellites into orbit. After repeated delays, the Sirius satellites are now functioning, but, according to Sirius itself, the only ones picking up the signal are Sirius' own "quality assurance" listeners. According to Madden, NPR has fulfilled its grant responsibilities to develop the programming, which should have gone on air in January of this year. However, despite repeated requests from MediaFile, NPR was unable to produce a spokesperson to speak on the record about the status of their programming.

Perhaps in an indication of trouble behind the scenes, the person temporarily handling PR for NPR's satellite radio programming told us that the former spokesperson has left and that she herself plans to be gone in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile Sirius, whose PR director is currently off on "personal leave," has turned its PR over to an outside firm, Fitzgerald Communications. Their staff, on the job for just about one week, could only manage to fax us a FAQ (frequently asked questions) sheet, which left many of the most intriguing questions on their own material unanswered.

PRI spokesperson Dan Jensen, who took his time returning MediaFile calls, would only say, "I have nothing new to report as far as satellite radio goes." PRI may make a public statement by mid-May, he says.

The only relatively recent information on the PRI website is an October 2000 press announcement that the project director of the PRI Satellite Radio Initiative is Bay Area favorite Pat Scott. (MediaFile readers who have observed the struggle for control over the Pacifica network of stations--including KPFA in Berkeley--will recognize Scott as the original proponent of Pacifica's "strategic vision" which has almost destroyed the network.)

The absence of PR people willing to speak on the record may be linked to Sirius' plummeting fortunes on the stock market. When Pat Scott joined the PRI Satellite Radio team in October 2000, Sirius' stock was trading at $60 a share. On April 4, 2001, the NASDAQ listed stock hit an all time low of $6.125. With 90% of their market capitalization evaporating, it's not clear how a corporation with absolutely no revenues will continue operating.

Sirius' annual SEC filing, released in March 2001, is filled with bleak warnings about the company's prospects. Each satellite launch costs over $100 million, the chipsets for the radios haven't made it to the production lines, XM and Sirius haven't agreed on a standard that will let radios receive both signals, the car radios will probably be too big to fit in the dashboard and have to be installed in the trunk, the signal will be blocked in many urban areas by buildings and other obstructions, necessitating a ground-based system of over 50 terrestrial transmitters that have not yet been permitted by the FCC, and the retail price of the radios is likely to be $200-300.

For-Profit Partnerships

So, why is a substantial part of public radio broadcasting's future linked to the rise and fall of the stock market when something like 80% of its revenue actually comes from the public? The answer goes back to the redesign of the public broadcasting services, brokered in the mid 1990s.

According to CPB's Madden, when Republicans first took over Congress in 1994, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and friends tried to "zero out the CPB budget." They succeeded in cutting it down to $250 million, but grassroots pressure from two million radio listeners and 4.5 million TV viewers forced the Republicans to back down, and, today, CPB has seen its budget grow to a new peak of $350 million for FY 2001.

CPB now provides only 10% of community-based radio stations' budgets, down from 15% before the funding battles, says Madden. And most local stations have turned to corporate sponsors to make up for the shortfall, Pacifica Radio being one notable exception.

Furthermore, the CPB has put $13 million of the approximately $80 million allocated to radio into competitive funding, emphasizing the need for "new revenue and infrastructure models that show how we might sustain existing and emerging services in a more competitive marketplace, while also upholding our values." Collaborations with for-profit partners are now accepted and, in fact, encouraged by the CPB. The guidelines say: "Collaborations can be among the toughest business relationships to perfect. They can also be among the most rewarding. . . . CPB anticipates funding proposals that explore or extend such relationships."

At the same time that CPB increasingly engages in partnerships with for-profit businesses--especially true of CPB's Internet radio funding--the CPB leadership has become more overt in using its clout to rein in content contrary to government policies or propaganda. CPB's controversial role in the governance changes at Pacifica radio has been widely reported (see MediaFile, Nov/Dec 1999). But more recently, Coughlin revealed that he was "also told by the executive director [of Pacifica] to tone down the news coverage. CPB wanted me to tone down the news coverage, to be more 'balanced' as they put it."

Pacifica Campaign organizer Juan Gonzalez (who resigned over the censorship at Pacifica) cites CEO Robert Coonrod and NPR President Kevin Klose's shared experience in running U.S. propaganda radio for the USIA in Eastern Europe and Cuba as part of the "forces outside and within Pacifica [that] threaten the network's existence." Gonzalez says that these two men exert tremendous influence over the shape of public broadcasting and its relationship with the FCC and multinational corporations.

Clearly, channeling the content of a centralized corporate-owned satellite radio system to support corporate and governmental interests will present few difficulties for a team with this sort of orientation.

Tuning in to the new signals

At the beginning of April, the FCC finally began licensing a trickle of new LPFM stations under the restrictions engineered by the NAB and NPR. People in Opelousas, Louisiana and South Arundel, Maryland can now listen to free local programming on the cheapest of FM transistor radios. Of course, hundreds, or perhaps thousands of unlicensed stations like San Francisco Liberation Radio and Berkeley Liberation Radio 104.1 FM have been broadcasting illegally despite FCC threats.

Sirius still maintains that the "satellite is the future of radio." All told, over a billion dollars have so far been invested in efforts to make this high tech vision come true. But is satellite radio really in your future? To find out, you'll need a subscription at $9.95 per month, a $300 satellite radio receiver, and a metal plate installed in the roof of your car. Stay tuned, if you can.

 Ben Clarke is editor of MediaFile.