Future of Music Coalition's Series on Community Radio Applicants

The Future of Music Coalition (FMC) is an amazing organization and their website is full of great information about radio. They are supporters of non-profit, non-commercial radio and worked with other organizations (including the low-power FM advocacy group Prometheus Radio Project) on Radio for People to encourage cultural and arts groups to apply for FCC radio licenses last fall. In January they began a series of blog postings about the flurry of full-power non-commercial FM license applications in October (according to FMC, the FCC hadn't accepted new non-commercial FM license applications since prior to 2000) and provide a good overview of the whole process. According to the post:

"The FCC accepted roughly 3,200 applications from October 12-22, according to Public Radio Capital. Nearly 40 percent of those applications came from community and public radio groups, according to a statistical sampling analysis performed by PRC. The rest came from religious groups, including those Christian broadcasters that already operate large networks of stations all over the country and are eager to acquire even more. Last fall, the FCC decided to accept a maximum of just ten applications from each applicant; if the cap hadn’t been put in place, religious megacasters would have no doubt kept submitting. (At least 49 groups whose name includes 'Calvary Chapel' filed during the window.)"


FMC has profiled several stations who have applied for licenses, including the North Fork Angling Society in Colorado and the Hare Krishna community of New Vrindaban in West Virginia and will continue to highlight radio station applicants on their blog. They also include a link to the complete list of organizations that applied for FM licenses in Fall 2007...it's nice to see that there are some colleges/universities on the list.