LPFM Rhetoric Sharper As Congress Nears Close

The PR war about LPFM has ratcheted up into full gear as the second session of the 106th Congress speeds to an expected adjournment.
National Public Radio and the International Association of Audio Information Services claim FCC Chairman Bill Kennard had several errors about LPFM in an op-ed piece that appeared earlier this week in the Washington Post.
The IAAIS and NPR say they’ve asked the commission for more than two years to maintain reasonable protection for translators and radio reading services operating on FM subcarriers. The FCC has, but it’s temporary, pending testing of SCA receivers for interference.
“It is indeed a sad day when the agency charged with ensuring adequate protection for the nation’s listeners abdicates that public trust,” they wrote.
FCC Chairman Kennard, in turn, lumped NPR in with NAB, which he said, “dispatched their high power lobbyists to prowl behind closed doors and use(d) the Congressional appropriations process to quickly and quietly bury the program.”
Kennard’s referring to an attempt to get a bill that would restore full channel protection to existing stations by LPFMs attached to a larger spending measure in the frenetic last days of lawmaking.
The IAAIS and NPR say LPFM can be compatible with public radio, but not under the FCC’s current plan.
Leslie Stimson