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Looking through some of the FCC Citations/NAL/NOV page, I noted that a thing some of the licensed stations are getting hit for includes the failure to provide:
Looking through some of the FCC Citations/NAL/NOV page, I noted that a thing some of the licensed stations are getting hit for includes the failure to provide:
“a list of programs that have provided the station’s most significant treatment of community issues during the preceding three month period. This list is known as the Radio Issues/Programs List.”
..and it got me to thinking it might be interesting to try and get a brainstorming session going on here about what sort of community issues part 15 stations can do “significant treatment” of, and what sort of things some of us maybe already do in that regard for listeners.
I know, it’s not a requirement for part15. But if it’s important enough that the licensed stations get hit for not doing it, perhaps it’s a good thing to consider having at least a bit of in our programming. I don’t assume it would give us any extra consideration if we were in violation or anything, but if we make some efforts in that direction it *might* help to shape opinions a bit of part 15 stations as potentially being a desirable part of a community rather than just a potential source of interference.
Having a record or statement onhand of things in our programming that fall under “community issues” would be neat to have ready when somebody asks about our stations, rather than saying “oh, it’s just sort of a hobby” and leaving it at that. It’d fit in nice with the explanation of how we aren’t running a pirate station.
(Note: I am not saying that some pirate stations may not be community oriented and of great value to their community, but this forum focusses on legal part15, and I’m sure most of us have explained to a neighbor or visitor at least a few times how legal part15 stations aren’t pirates.)
So, thinking of my own programming.. Well, there’s weather. Especially in the winter up her in the northern part of the country, that’s something some of my listeners need to know for safety. Beyond the automated weather, I also can just take a look out at the street from my front door (since almost all my listeners are within 2 houses of mine) and say “Well, the plow hasn’t been through yet, so there’s about 6 inches of loose powder snow on the street. Looks to be about 9 to 10 inches on vehicles that were parked overnight, so allow yourself some extra time this morning.”
Then there’s *very* local news. Like when a neighbor had her car sideswiped at night when it was parked and I let her go on the air and talk about it for a few minutes and vent a little and ask anyone who was listening who might have heard or seen anything get in touch. She didn’t know about the station at all, but one of my neighbors suggested she ask when she was going door to door asking if anyone had seen or heard anything. She might have become a listener, but she’s about 4 houses up the street and her home stereo doesn’t pick up the station.
On another occassion, one of the neighbor girls (6 yrs old I think) wasn’t home yet when it was getting dark and her mom called and asked if I could ask anyone who saw her to call and keep her there and she’d come and get her. Her daughter came home while she was talking to me on the phone and giving the info though, she’d just been playing with other kids in a snow fort in a yard a few houses down.
Now, in neither case was my station the solution to the problem. But it kind of established that the station is an option/resource that *can* be brought in for those kinds of situations. A few more pairs of eyes and ears are good in such cases.
Other than that, morning time announcements are scheduled to be near when particular neighbors have to get up or be heading out the door soon, and since I have kids in school, my highschool daughter takes a personal delight in taking the mic when school is closed for the day to announce it.
During the 2006 Nov elections we also ran a PSA every hour on election day to encourage people to get out and vote for their candidate of choice.
Now, I recall seeing here that some folks have their stations set up to broadcast emergency weather warnings. That’d be another thing a part 15 could do for the safety of their listeners.
What else do folks here do? Or what things could we work into our programming for that “treatment of community issues”?
Now, the licensed stations have their thousands of watts to serve a large part of the area/populace. For them, “local community” is probably city-wide or at least a good sized chunk in bigger cities. Maybe our focus would be tighter, since our listening range is smaller. But still, having some regular bits in our programming to serve even the small listener bases we have could be a good thing, I think.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
Daniel
Total posts : 45366One thing I am seeing more and more often is the local media totally turning thier backs on local news and information. The last local TV station in my town just dropped local news and laid off the entire news staff so they could squeeze in four more sit-com reruns a day. BLEECH! as Mad Magazine used to say.
I’m thinking about socially networking with some of the neighborhood folks and trying to develop a “10 square block micro-news service” where I change my web site to be an information gathering tool rather than an information dissemenation tool.
This way locals can email or form mail or blog local info and I can use the Read Please program to read the submitted items.
Anything from “The roads are being resurfaced next week” to “little Johnny got an ‘A’ in gym class!”
It’s gotta be better than what’s going on now!
Experimental broadcasting for a better tomorrow!
Total posts : 45366Great thoughts there. I hadn’t been thinking much about websites in regards to stations because most of my listeners don’t do internet. More often they’ll call over here to ask me to look something up on the net for them. But I’m working with FM range right now, so rather than “10 blocks” we’re more like “less than 1/4 block”.
Excellent idea though.
daniel
Total posts : 45366We do local weather. I am lucky enough to have a guy with a great voice that does weather for several LPFM’s and throws mine into the mix.
Weather for days and nites
WDCX AM1610 Part 15
John
Owner-Operator-Chief Engineer-Program Manager, et cetera et cetera
Total posts : 45366Daniel,
I have always enjoyed your contributions to this board and admire your efforts to provide your neighbors with programming that they enjoy under the restrictions of part 15 and I would hope others emulate what you have done. Your can do attitude is most welcomed.
With that in mind, here’s a different perspective of part 15 AM as I view it and as I have practiced it. I enjoy the technical challenges and do the best I can to produce a clean signal without bothering anyone but my only intended audience is me. I use it so I can listen to webcast streaming audio or other things on my own property without any interest in attracting my neighbors as listeners, and have been very sucessful in this application.
You have proposed some very reasonable enhancements in your other posts including increased power and perhaps an add-on to licensed amateur radio priviledges, which I find most intersting, and which may increase the range of part 15 AM, but they are about “community service”. This is an honorable goal but where would it leave folks such as I who just want to use the limited range technology for personal purposes?
We now have a system by which the casual broadcaster who just wants to listen to his own programming in his own yard is permitted to do so and it works. My take is that extended range allowances, by any means, will result in the demise of this “yardcasting”. What would you do if I am transmitting and I interfere with your broadcast? Neither of us, under part15, have any exclusive rights to the spectrum, yet a licensed “community broadcaster” would preempt my unlicensed operation. How would this be resolved?
Neil
Total posts : 45366On my station, I air FSN News at the top and bottom of each hour. After that, I do a one minute extended weather forecast that I read from the NWS page. I also intend to start airing Community events and neighborhood related info along w/ PSA’s in the very near future.
Travis
Total posts : 45366Well, Neil.. I don’t know actually. There’s a number of factors involved that we’d have to think about to even be able to make guesswork or pipedreams.
The same problems could also occur (especially in urban areas) with the proposal for licensed 30-300 watt LPAM, except their range would be larger and they’d be licensed and as such those freqeincies would be simply off limits as “interference with a licensed”.
First question would be how many part15 AM operators are there actually out there that would be competing for the spectrum? Range is pretty limited even with the pipedreams of allowing a more efficient antenna and/or 1-3 watts. We usually think of that as an undesirable thing, but it *does* allow for a whole lot of part15 AM stations to share an area. Unless there were an awful lot of part15 operators real close together, it might not be an issue.
Say there’s your station and there’s also some of the community type stations I was talking about in the other thread in the area. Well, depending on if you or they came on the air first, logically neither of you would pick one of the frequencies there was already a station on?
Going on logically with the idea, the FCC wouldn’t be likely to want to have a whole new contour nightmare on a small but widespread scale. So they could sidestep that issue by saying frequency usage allowed to both the part15 AM regular and the extra privilege allowed by the permit are “shared, cooperative, and must result in no interference with licensed stations)” and leave it to be worked out on our own, since at least in most places it probably would not be a big issue.
I hadn’t thought about it, but I can see your point, Neil. Especially in very heavilly populated urban areas.
One solution I can think of in areas where open frequencies are scarce would be if only so many permits were allowed within say 5 miles or so of each other. That way there could still be open space on the band for yardcasting and a decent amount of local community coverage.
Daniel
Total posts : 45366Daniel,
I don’t know where this will lead, but it is interesting to raise questions and have a good discussion. Thanks for your input.
Neil
Total posts : 45366Our City installed an Advisory Radio system a couple months ago. It was purchased from ISS. I assisted with the install and program the playlist (community info and PSA’s.)
The transmitter power output is set at 2.5 watts into a center loaded antenna that would be Part 15.219 compliant. The antenna is on the flat roof of a two story building (metal roof deck.)
The coverage area is easily a 4 mile radius and can be heard 10 miles out.
This info just for the sake of the discussion about what you can do with a couple watts into a good antenna.
Total posts : 45366Mram,
That is good to know. We are kicking around the effects of power and antennas and it is good to have some real life experience reported. Thanks.
Neil
Total posts : 45366The transmitter power output is set at 2.5 watts into a center loaded antenna that would be Part 15.219 compliant. The antenna is on the flat roof of a two story building (metal roof deck.)
Just curious – does this antenna system include a conductor extending toward the earth (to a ground rod, or maybe program audio lines)? If so, the radiating length of the antenna system could be longer than 3 meters, which along with the higher power certainly will provide better coverage than a ground-mounted 3-m system with ~ 75 mW of tx power.
//
Total posts : 45366The antenna is mounted on a 3 foot tripod, held down with concrete blocks.
The main ground for the antenna system is a number 6 awg about 15 feet long which attaches to the metal roof super-structure. There is a second ground that attaches to the aluminium parrapet cap which runs around the edge of the roof. I doubt the cap helps much as the 10 foot sections are not bonded together. There is no conductor extending directly toward earth.
The transmitter is located in a room directly under the roof area where the antenna is. The coax run is about 15 feet horizontal across the roof. It passes through the roof deck and runs about 25 feet to the transmitter cabinet.
When installed the SWR measured 1.2:1 which is nearly perfect. When the output power was lowered to 100 mW for comparison, the signal could still be heard quite well at 3 miles out. I just had to know!
Here is a LINK to a picture of the antenna. The white section of the antenna is the loading coil. The black sections are the 1 1/4 inch radiator. Note the short section above the loading coil is adjustable for tuning.
The box at the base of the antenna contains a lightning protector and is big enough for a small transmitter like a RangeMaster, Metzo, SSTRAN, etc.
Total posts : 45366Ok, so PSAs (at least on their own) are apparently not what is meant. I ran across this NAL on the FCC website..
Now, checking part 73.3526, in paragraph 12 I can see:
“(12) Radio issues/programs lists. For commercial AM and FM broadcast stations, every three months a list of programs that have provided the station’s most significant treatment of community issues during the preceding three month period. The list for each calendar quarter is to be filed by the tenth day of the succeeding calendar quarter (e.g., January 10 for the quarter October–December, April 10 for the quarter January–March, etc.). The list shall include a brief narrative describing what issues were given significant treatment and the programming that provided this treatment. The description of the programs shall include, but shall not be limited to, the time, date, duration, and title of each program in which the issue was treated. The lists described in this paragraph shall be retained in the public inspection file until final action has been taken on the station’s next license renewal application.”
But I’m still not sure what their definition of a “community issue” is or what counts as treatment.
Still, fascinating reading. Now along the lines perhaps of what scwis was talking about with his website or the websites many folks here have for their stations, the list of things to have in the public inspection file might be a good starting framework for a very informative “about our station” sort of page.
Some items would need adjusted a bit to be meaningful for a part15 station (or anybody looking for info about a local one they heard about), like under the Authorization section, one could have a link to a page quoting the applicable sections of part15 and explaining how such stations have the privilege to operate under the laws and etc. Maybe instead of contour maps, a simple range map. That sort of thing.
The publication that commercial stations are required to have, “The Public and Broadcasting” I also found interesting reading, though it’d be more of interest to people looking to doing community oriented things with part15 than yardcasting or strictly technical experiments, most likely.
Not like any of it is actually required for part15, though the sections on obscenity, indecency, “clear and present danger”, humor, hoaxes and etc I think very likely *do* still apply. But it perhaps gives some idea of what the FCC prefers to see on the public airwaves, at least a good bit of which is going to be what they have found to be in the public interest.
Daniel
Total posts : 45366An example of “Community Issues” is a log showing a candidate running for office in a local election. You give him/her air-time to discuss his/her point of view. You also want the opposing candidate to come on but he/she declines. The log would show dates and times of when your station attemped to contact the candiate. The prefered method would be in writing. All this is stuffed into a file.
WDCX AM1610 Part 15
John
Owner-Operator-Chief Engineer-Program Manager
Total posts : 45366We are in an FCC “Comment Period,” now extended, during which we are invited to submit comments on the question of whether the indecency rules should be kept the way they are or entirely done away with.
http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2013/db0712/DA-13-1560A1.txt
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