"I've had all the diversity I can stand." - Senate Communications Committee Chairman Burns (R-MT) speaking on why regulations for new low power radio stations is unnecessary.

On Thursday, February 18, 1999, the University of Maryland, College Park campus radio station, WMUC, hosted a discussion with Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard to discuss his vision of low-power FM community radio. Although low power stations cost far less to equip and can be squeezed into markets where the radio dial is already crowded with high-powered operators, a 1978 decision by the FCC substantially raised the bar for licensing small operations.

Thanks to Kelso Jacks of the College Music Journal for the link in the RadioNews section of the March 15, 1999 issue. Unfortunately, there were a couple of errors in the blurb. Most importantly, the conference was hosted by the WMUC station at the University of Maryland College Park, in College Park, Maryland. The last thing we want to do is take false credit for all the hard work that General Manager Rachel Weintraub, News Director Adam Longo and many other members of the WMUC staff put into coordinating and advertising this event. Both myself and UMBC Student Media General Manager Ray Dubicki were happy just to be a part of this great forum.

On the program with WMUC were students from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) radio station who have no over-the-air radio and currently broadcast via carrier current systems and Real Audio. In the 30-minute FCC College Radio Forum, broadcast on WMUC AM and FM stations, Kennard and student officials from UMBC discussed the benefits of low power radio stations for college campuses. To hear the proceedings for yourself, you can download either the high audio resolution (10,917K) or low audio resolution (5,312K) Quicktime files of the program.

The resulting press and publicity for the LPFM/Kennard conference was all very accurate and positive. The Reuters article "FCC Chairman Presses Case for Microradio" was the first out, and is the largest distribution so far. It also has a whole three quotes from yours truly. There is a mirror version of it available in case it disappears from the Yahoo site in the next few days. The Diamondback, the UMCP campus paper had a nice long article titled "FCC chair visits WMUC" with a picture of Chairman Kennard and WMUC News Director Adam Longo on the front page.

The Freedom Forum, an organization dedicated to free press and free speech put out an article on the forum by Max Cacas titled "FCC chairman stumps for low-power FM." This page also includes a link to the Freedom Forum webcast of the interview in Real Audio format and some other pictures of the event. I'd also like to personally thank Max for this excellent picture of myself and Chairman Kennard.

For more information on Low Power FM and the implications for community and educational radio stations, take a look at the FCC's article entitled "FCC Explores Creation of Low Power FM Radio Service for Local Communities" and the home page of the Low Power Radio Coalition. If you're unfamiliar with the college radio scene, you might want to look at " Advising, Managing and Operating a successful student/noncommercial Radio Station" by James J. McCluskey. A good web reference for newcomers is the FCC checklist.

Best regards to everyone I met at WMUC. Here are links to my contact information and to WMBC Campus Radio, where I'm the Chief Engineer. If you have any questions or comments about this page or the discussion, please contact me at rcarls2@umbc.edu.

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