The Washington Monthly has a feature by Brian Montopoli about how all NPR hosts sound exactly alike.

Another recent e-mail forward to me, this one from Elias Senter, read:

"Please sign this petition so we don't lose an irreplaceable resource....NPR On NPR's Morning Edition last week, Nina Tottenberg said that if the Supreme Court supports Congress, it is in effect the end of the National Public Radio (NPR), NEA & the Public Broadcasting System(PBS). PBS, NPR and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and stream line their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as not worthwhile."

My response? First of all, besides the fact that it's not true, NPR is not an irreplacable resource.

Twenty one years ago, National Public Radio petitioned the FCC to stop accepting applications for the low-power Educational License class. WMUC in College Park was one of the last stations to get a ten watt FM radio license under this plan, but this was a year before the UMBC campus even established a radio station.

Because of these rules that NPR brought about, UMBC cannot get a license under 1000 watts, and due to the large amount of high-power corporate radio saturation in this area, no higher-powered licenses are available.

The Federal Communications Commission has recently introduced a plan to roll out hundreds of low-power short range community FM stations. However, right away, the National Association of Broadcasters (the assocation of high-power media conglomorates) and National Public Radio descended on our legislators with phone calls, letters, and faxes to make a law to prevent the FCC from re-opening their media monopoly.

As a result, H.R. 3439, the 'Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act', actually a bill to outlaw LPFM, was introduced and passed the House a few weeks ago. The Senate 'companion bills' are also out: S. 2068 and S. 3020 are both called the 'Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act' and will most likely be attached as a riders to budget bills.

National Public Radio has only their own interests in mind, not the interests of smaller communities and people who still want localized, non-corporate free radio.

Forget about NPR. Support your local communities and your university and urge Senator Sarbanes and Senator Mikulski to oppose S.3020 in any form that it might appear.

For more information, see the following sites:
Pirate/Free Radio on About.Com
Prometheus Radio Project
Media Democracy Now

And my own letters to the Senators, here and here.

Thanks to Todd Keithley for reminding me to mention that the e-mail was an urban legend.

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