104.3....Waiting......

[amisdead]

EMF claims their local studio waiver for KLOP is because of "financial hardship" - what a GIANT crock of ****!

"Financial hardship" is really only a formality that the commission uses.

This "ministry" rakes in millions off gullible people (blind faith believers) and convinces another group of gullible people (government officials) that they have "financial hardships".

EMF does generate huge amounts of revenue, but I wouldn't dismiss all of their success to gullible listeners. K-Love is a very good on-air product and the ministry provides off-air services to those who need it 24 hours a day. Maybe they are doing some things right? Maybe their listeners value the radio service they are receiving.

Also, the FCC is not being duped, they are only honoring their own rules that EMF is playing by. Even if hardship is a bit of misnomer here, there isn't any funny business going on. This is totally legal.

[Goldilocks94941]

Maybe it's technically "legal," but it certainly isn't ethical, according to the type of broadcasting system we have in the United States. 

If we are to have national radio services (not networks, but repeater stations nationwide), instead of locally-based statinos, then make it a new policy.  And accellerate the decline of locally-based media.  Not because local radio isn't feasible, but because someone else with bigger bucks horns in and hogs the available frequencies!

Are any station-based managers willing to speak out on this issue and to the FCC?  Otherwise, are you compfortable having more and more stations from far away cities filling up your airwaves, driving up prices, and keeping other aspiring broadcasters who don't have the big bankroll of these "ministries" off the air? 

Squezing in on the dial in hundreds of far-flung communityies on a technicality still seems rather sleazy to this broadcaster. 

[amisdead]

Maybe it's technically "legal," but it certainly isn't ethical, according to the type of broadcasting system we have in the United States. 

Care to elaborate on your claim that playing by the FCC rules isn't ethical? That is a pretty serious charge.

Seattle-Tacoma is a very large market. You can't enter a market of this size (albeit with a rimshot) without "big bankroll" as you put it. This is true for both commercial and non-commercial spectrum and has been the case in markets of Seattle's size far before EMF came onto the national scene.

Also, this notion that EMF and others are hogging or hoarding frequencies is absurd. They had no preferential treatment from the Commission. They did not steal frequencies. In most cases they bought stations either from previous owners or through auction and at very fair prices. They have played by the Commission's rules and they have played quite well.

[Bongwater]

Maybe it's technically "legal," but it certainly isn't ethical, according to the type of broadcasting system we have in the United States. 

Care to elaborate on your claim that playing by the FCC rules isn't ethical? That is a pretty serious charge......

Also, this notion that EMF and others are hogging or hoarding frequencies is absurd. They had no preferential treatment from the Commission. They did not steal frequencies. In most cases they bought stations either from previous owners or through auction and at very fair prices. They have played by the Commission's rules and they have played quite well.

Well, have you LOOKED at the swamp of applications that have FLOODED the FCC office in the middle of the last decade from all these satcasters? There were TENS of THOUSANDS of them, 90% of which were dismissed for lousy technical data. But the satcasters didn't care. They just kept shoving them in. Often there were as many as six applications for different frequencies in the same coverage area.

Don't tell me that's not trying to hog or hoard frequencies.

You probably don't think they would get away with it legally, but they COULD. All it takes is ONE slip up on the FCC's part and any measure to correct that would be met with a vicious legal fight from the satcasters. And in such a deliberate blizzard of paperwork (and an FCC bent over and saying "Thank you sir, may I have another" to these satcaster lobbyists, a Republican president and/or Congress, the room for error is pretty substantial. To have to sit there and read every application.....do you think deliberately overwhelming the system is "playing by the FCC's OWN rules"?

Show me where in the rule book that says it's kosher to be doing that. Because I don't see it.

The Commission also dealt with FAR more of these satcaster apps than those of community LPFMs.

They are NOT providing any LOCAL public service to their broadcast areas outside of Twin Falls - if even that. Or information.

I mean, it's Christian radio. Show me an area anywhere in the US that doesn't have it locally already....

Oh....you want "Christian alternative rock" on the radio.....Well GEEZ! Is it so hard for local religious stations to daypart a little? Or put something on an HD2 subchannel? Let's see, we got a mega ton of Salem stations not doing much to provide anything listenable.....
 
And the FCC's rules that allow this s--t to continue unchecked ARE unethical. Just because you think taking a simple loophole for public broadcasters (and one that needs to be CLOSED) and EXPLOITING IT because they can do it is ethical doesn't mean it actually is (it's the furthest thing from "Christian" I can think of.)

Finally, KAWZ and KEFX are radio stations in TWIN FALLS, IDAHO. IDAHO I TELL YOU!! What the hell are they doing HERE??!! If I want to hear any Idaho religious stations in the radio, I'll go online to find them.

THAT'S where they belong....

[Goldilocks94941]

Amen, Bongwater!  Just because EMF now has a ton of money doesn't mean they should get to have golden frequencies in any market they want.  But that seems to be the case now.   "Them that's got, gets more.  Them that ain't, who cares?" 

EMF didn't have that ton of money when they were just a local station in Santa Rosa.  I give them credit for "playing the game," if that's what this all is.  But the "technicality" that allowed them to put up translators anywhere at all since they were "noncommercial" was not challenged by the Republican-led FCC in the years this happened.  Because they knew they would support them politically, and help cover up signals that didn't toe the party line. 

Same for Calvary Chapel, American Family whatever in Tupelo, Family Radio from Oakland, and a few others just like them.  Here's one example:  Calvary Chapel put a 100 watt "translator" on the air on top of a tall building in downtown Cincinnati, giving it coverage for about 20 miles (most of the population base) and covering up the otherwise audible signal of a class B NPR affiliate from 50 miles away because it was 'technically" a transmitter site a few miles beyond that station's secondary coverage contour.  They squeezed in on the second adjacent to two 50kw FMs in town - something the low power crowd was told they could not even apply to do, much less get granted, for essentially the same type of facility.  But CC did, and got away with it.  Their application claimed the new signal was "first service" to Cumminsvlle, Ohio.  FCC probably couln't find it on a map, or didn't even bother to look.  Because there is no town of Cumminsville.  It's the name of a neighborhood post office in the middle of Cincinnati, not commonly used anymore as a part of town, certainly not a separate community, which already got clear coverage from the 50 some stations already in the Cincy market, and several from nearby Dayton. 

These actions required the aggrieved stations to file legal challenges, and in the case of the station I worked at that got knocked off the air in its fringe coverage in  Cincinnati (where it had dozens of contributing members) -- when nthe Twin Falls folks put up their new station, it also caused interference within the protected contour of the adjacent market station, due to the terrain.  But, again, there wasn't enouvh money to fight in court for the coverage area the station had always had, so they've had to get along without coverage in the adjacent market anymore.  And I was told we couldn't lobby on the air, or to the FCC, to protest, since it was "technically legal," tho' just barely withint the parameters of what used to be standard practice regarding signal allocations.

This kind of scenario has been repeated many dozen times in many markets, and the stations that lose coverage are usually NPR affiliates.  Wonder why they didn't try to put their litter of translator into the non-reserved part of the dial, where there was still plenty of room without having to cover up another signal that provided programming (like bluegrass) unavailable on other stations.  Maybe because they want it all, and no one else to have equal access to the airwaves.  That's my take on it.  Seems consistent with right wing political attitudes, too.   

Personally, I wouldn't complain if they bought the rights to a 50kw AM and got wide coverage that way via skywave at night.  But clogging up the FM dial and chewing up existing signals is really not in the entire industry's best interest when sometimes half of an actual FM signal is broken up by national networks of indiscriminate class D signals.

[crainbebo]

On some frequencies, I get CSN, CSN, CSN all the time. Even if I null out one translator, I get another (this is on 89.1, KAWZ (CSN) AND a Radio U translator)

-crainbebo