Your morning announcements... the Gay/Bi Fellowship Association and theatre program is cancelled, however the Glee Club has free reign of the gymnasium. That is all.

Sounds like those high school students just got a crash course in what it will be like dealing with the government and the church in their adult lives.

Define "better use", please. How can having yet another station spewing X-tian BS be better than a school boradcasting it's own individual programming be a better use of the airwaves?

/Fundies are EVIL.

"Using a point scale that considers such factors as audience size, the FCC ruled the Christian broadcasting network the better applicant"

sounds like it has nothing to do with the format of the station.

Everyone torether now...

"O-Oh say, can you see. By the dawns early light..."

Actually, I don't see why they don't just apply for a different frequency. Either their radio is crystal controlled, in which case all they have to buy is a new crystal, or (more likely given they wanted to increase their power output) they were going to buy a new transmitter, and they will be able to set the frequency to whatever the FCC says they can use.

Also, I don't get the increase in transmitter power. You don't gain much, in this case about 4.5dB (Every time you double the power, you gain 3dB). That isn't going to make a heck of a difference considering that this is wideband FM. For weak signal stuff, yeah, it would make a difference. But not in this case, due to technical reasons that I can expand upon if anyone is curious.

My advice to the school? I'll give them the same advice my father gave to me: Life isn't fair. Suck it up, apply for a different frequency, and move on.

I will however state that the FCC should have given them a bit more notice.

/Sucks for the school.

Shut.....UP is right, the X-bots said look, we have a 50,000 watt transmitter for this frequency and we are going to have a market of >1 million people. The FCC looked at the HS station and its 250 watt transmitter and said sorry, not the best use. It didn't have anything to do with the format.

radio?

dittybopper
Actually, I don't see why they don't just apply for a different frequency.

Available freqs in any band, especially FM, are in extremely short supply. Allocation of freqs are often huge battles with the FCC trying to determine what the greatest utility will be for a particular allocation. This little HS station had no chance.

lefande [TotalFark]

Shut.....UP is right, the X-bots said look, we have a 50,000 watt transmitter for this frequency and we are going to have a market of >1 million people. The FCC looked at the HS station and its 250 watt transmitter and said sorry, not the best use. It didn't have anything to do with the format.

The fact that the Christian station didn't choose to put their signal elsewhere shows a complete disregard for anyone but themselves.

It's like "I don't care who we fark over, the word of Gawd must go through!" They think because they are doing something holy, they can push others aside to promote their righteous message.

Hypocritical bastasges.....

The X-bots probably hired a bandwith consultant who reviewed all the licenses for the market and determined that the HS freq was the softest target to get a presence in the market. Clear Channel or any other radio company would have done the same thing.

Why do Christians hate education so much?

Death to al Christian fundamentalists.

Yeah, because Christians have such a hard time getting their message out in this country.

It debunks their fairy tale that the invisible man in the sky created the earth 6,000 years ago.

Sorry kids. Sometimes our gubment sucks.

yeah, like the school needs a radio station, i say give it to the local jewish community instead.
/SHALOM!

This reminds me of those frustrating times when I'm trying to tune into some intriguing international broadcast on my shortwave radio and some irritating bible-thumping station out of Kentucky keeps barging in. There are about a half-dozen other stations just like theirs all up and down the dial, and here I'm desperately trying to listen to the Japanese broadcast of music for the upcoming spring flower festival or whatever.

Shut........UP: "Using a point scale that considers such factors as audience size, the FCC ruled the Christian broadcasting network the better applicant"

sounds like it has nothing to do with the format of the station.


You know the rest of the calculations? Does it include format, and if so, weighted how much?

farking christians. >:(

Talk hard.

one word for high school radio: dead air.....two words.

rpm

Goverment decisions on media content quickly run afoul of the First Amendment. Audience size is a much more neutral metric.

Don't like the gummint? Get the rules changed. The FCC is putting in force a set of rules that try to do the best with what is a very limited resource. And they can't take into account format - either they are anti-christian because they are opposed to this, or racist because they wouldn't support that...

FM frequencies are a finite resource. The christian station wanted a frequency, and in a place like Boston they probably are available about once in a blue moon. End of story.

Read it carefully...

Maynard High School's radio frequency, 91.7 FM, is being seized by a network of Christian broadcasting stations that the Federal Communications Commission has ruled is a better use of the public airwaves.

In other words, a Jesusy clone of ClearChannel is hijacking the station. They've been doing this with NPR retransmission stations for awhile now.

Maybe this is really a non-issue... I don't see from the article, and from some of the posts here, how this has anything to do with the radio station being Christian.

I mean, I'm all against Christians, but it looks like this was perfectly legal.. ish.

Those people who think there's an invisible man in the sky are so insane.

Since when do high schools have radio stations?

zappaisfrank

Yeah! Except not like that at all.

Maynard High's WAVM, which has been broadcasting from the school for 35 years, found itself in this David vs. Goliath battle when it applied to increase its transmitter signal from 10 to 250 watts.


According to Magno, that ``opens the floodgates for any other station to challenge the station's license and take its frequency.'
Using a point scale that considers such factors as audience size, the FCC ruled the Christian broadcasting network the better applicant. WAVM is given 30 days to appeal, and has done so.

_______________________--

Shame Air America Radio already has plenty of stations in Massachusetts. Clearly there is more demand for The Randy Rhodes Show than there is for horrible Christian pop.

dittybopper: Either their radio is crystal controlled, in which case all they have to buy is a new crystal



Crystal controlled?

/obvious

Boy, there are some bitter, bitter people in here.

I live in this area. The word on the street is that the station is pretty good and provides pretty solid educational resources for students interested in media. You know, real world tools for kids to grow on. Compare that to the fantasy of religious dogma with a history of war and suffering? Ya, I'd go with the evangelists.

/runs and hides

Where's Christian Slater when we need Happy Harry Hard-on?

Maynard. Name my dog Maynard.

I'm thinking the reason the reporter left off the other criteria the FCC considers in re-assigning a frequency is because the other ones make the move seem more legitimate.

Has anyone at this school ever heard of a thing called Internet radio? Maybe they should just SFTU and deal with it. There are just as many wired computers out there as there are radios these days anyway.

dittybopper

My advice to the school? I'll give them the same advice my father gave to me: Life isn't fair. Suck it up, apply for a different frequency, and move on.

My advice to Ghandi? Sometimes imperialism isn't fair. Suck it up, learn to like the Brits, and move on.

My advice to the colonists? Sometimes taxation isn't fair. Suck it up, learn to live without representation, and move on.

My advice to Europe? The Nazis are winning. Suck it up, learn to speak German, and move on.

My advice to....

NokNoKCPU: This is more of an indictment on the pro-corporate nature of the FCC. Low Power FM, a.k.a. bringing some airwaves to the people? They quashed it.

Its just funny that the Christians took the frequency away from some kids.


/Won't somebody think of the children?!
//Sorry kids, you're stuck with single sideband AM...

lefande: you can't just turn on a 50,000-100,000 transmitter because you have it. The FCC pays NO attention to what equipment you may have -- after all, that 50k-100k transmitting pattern would most likely overlap someone else on that same frequency or an adjacent frequency.

The lord taketh, and the lord giveth away.

dittybopper: Either their radio is crystal controlled, in which case all they have to buy is a new crystal

may I suggest the Dark Crystal?

2005-10-19 08:31:31 AM lefande [TotalFark]

The X-bots probably hired a bandwith consultant who reviewed all the licenses for the market and determined that the HS freq was the softest target to get a presence in the market. Clear Channel or any other radio company would have done the same thing.
============================
There are already plenty of Christian broadcasters in the Boston area:
* WEZE 590 AM -- Christian Radio
* WROL 950 AM -- Religious
* WJLT 1060 AM -- "Piercing the Darkness (Christian) ?
* WNRB 1510 AM -- "Today's Christian Radio"

Okay...blah...blah...blah. The usual hate mongering retard posts....

Now for people with a brain...that's how FCC regulations have always worked no matter who runs the station. Amateur local broadcasters get trumped by more powerful regional broadcasters.

Before expressing an opinion, I would like a clarification. Is it more insulting if I call someone a farktard or a total farktard?

Thanks for the help.

Maynard High?

The FCC has totally jumped the shark. 300 million taxpayer dollars better spent elsewhere.

TheOther
Thanks for the help.

Call them lightards.

Oh, yeah ... the FCC would NEVER make a decision skewed to favor the current (hyper-christian) administration's political interests ... that would be breaking the RULES ... how silly of anyone to think they would EVER do such a thing ...

/I would definitely go with Total Farktard

According to this article from 2000,

The trouble began when the Maynard High School sought to upgrade its station in response to a recommendation by the Federal Communications Commission. At the FCC's behest, student-run station WAVM (91.7 FM) filed an application to change from a Class D to Class A license, enabling it to increase its power to 250 watts.


A Class D license affords no proprietary rights to a given frequency as a Class A license does, which was another reason to make the change....

...Maynard's 10-watt station is unprotected and vulnerable to competition because of its current license. That's why the FCC recommended that the school upgrade its signal...

It looks like this had come to some sort of settled arrangement 5 years ago when the university-affiliated station (WUMB) agreed to share programming time with WAVM...but the FCC eventually awarded the frequency to yet another applicant...


So, the FCC recommended that they file for an increase in power to protect their license from challenges? Then awarded the license to someone else? Sounds like they were set up to lose their license from the beginning...