The year 2025 marks 25 years since Low-Power FM (LPFM) radio broadcasting was legitimized in the United States — after years of official obstinacy, corporate opposition, contentious Congressional hearings and raids of unlicensed radio stations by federal agents.
According to LPFM Database.com, more than 1,900 LPFM stations are now authorized. The road to that 25th anniversary leads right through San Marcos — with a radio voice that was loud, proud and against the law.
As reported in the July 19, 2020 issue of the Daily Record, San Marcos was the home of Kind Radio, a 24/7 community radio station busy with local news, talk shows and music by local bands. Kind Radio played no commercials, depending on support from donations and memberships.
Kind also had no license, required of all stations by federal law. While Kind’s founders sought a license, the Federal Communications Commission had no room for small stations, despite receiving constant requests for low-power licenses.
“Kind earned additional attention and praise during the Halloween flood of 1998,” the Record reported, “when the staff cleared out the flooded station, picked the cables out of the water, and fielded constant phone calls, broadcasting continual reports to warn people and direct them to safety.”
But arguments that low-power stations could enhance safety faced FCC resistance. While it had tolerated 10-watt stations licensed to universities, in 1978, it acted to close such stations on the basis that they represented a “highly inefficient” use of airwaves. Kind left the air in 2000. The FCC continues to pursue unlicensed “pirate radio” stations, imposing costly fines and even seizing their transmitters.
But the dream of legal, licensed, low-power radio never died — it expanded. With the prevalence of unlicensed stations like Kind — and one high-profile “pirate” station at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia — followed by formal petitions by advocates, FCC engineers took a fresh look at the issues. They pronounced LPFM feasible and nonthreatening to incumbents, if some technical constraints were applied.
That didn’t please conservatives. One FCC commissioner said that instead of what he called “microradio,” people should use e-mail, “internet home pages, bulletins and flyers, and even plain old-fashioned speech” — that is, talking instead of broadcasting.
In the end, the FCC did approve LPFM. Effective industry lobbying, however, hamstrung its expansion. It would take a shift in the political winds to make LPFM, and local stations like KZSM, possible. Learn the rest of the story in our next column.
