Believing that democracy cannot function if only a few have access to the media, Radio Free Nashville, Inc. (RFN) intends to be a community forum for the music, voices, and viewpoints generally ignored or misrepresented by the corporate media.

Radio Free Nashville is expanding and soon its signal will reach all of middle Tennessee.  The expansion will require the purchase of several pieces of equipment.  WE NEED YOUR HELP to the raise the money, and to make studio upgrades to accomodate our growing audience.  $40,000 is needed for the expansion, but your continued support is critical through the expansion and beyond.  Please donate today and help us grow.

There are several ways for you to donate.  You can earmark funds for the expansion, adopt-a-bill or give a monthly subscription.  You can make a workplace desginated to Radio Free Nashville through Community Shares. You can purchase  merchandise at our online store.   Or you can become an underwriter.   Contact ginny@radiofreenashville.org to find out how. 

MTV featured Radio Free Nashville as part of it's Choose or Lose '08 THINK campaign. Here's the piece, produced by Dustin Ogdin.

RFN's own Scott Sanders, aka The Colonel, represented Radio Free Nashville during Low Power FM Leadership Days February 25 and 26 in Washington, DC.  Activists from all over the country compared notes, strategized and met with members of Congress and the FCC to ask them to support the Local Community Radio Act.   This bill will lift the restrictions on LPFM. It  has 70 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives and last fall unanimously passed the Senate Commerce Committee.  The FCC is currently accepting your comments on the future of Low Power FM!  Through April 7th, you can click here now to tell the FCC you want a station, and click here now to tell the FCC to keep your existing low power FM from being knocked off the air!

New media ownership rules passed by a 3-to-2, party-line vote at the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday and they are far worse for the public interest -- and more favorable to Big Media companies -- than anything FCC Chairman Kevin Martin previously revealed to the public.   The new rules will unleash a flood of media consolidation across America -- and further consolidate local media markets -- taking away independent voices in cities already woefully short on local news and investigative journalism.

The Republican majority of the FCC voted to approve more than 40 "waivers" for pre-existing cross-owned combinations in markets large and small. These waivers will shield companies like Tribune, News Corp., Media General and Gannett from even the weak standards of Martin's new media ownership rules.

"Martin's claims that consumer groups approve of these new rules couldn't be farther from the truth," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press. "What the FCC passed today is significantly worse than indicated in his proposal by press release. The waivers and giant loopholes contained in these new rules could spell disaster for citizens everywhere."

Prior to today's vote, Martin portrayed his proposal as a "moderate compromise" that would allow one company to own both a daily newspaper and a low-rated broadcast TV station in only the 20 largest media markets. But research from Free Press -- collected in the Devil in the Details report -- exposed how the loose and ambiguous "waiver" standards in the proposal left a giant loophole for Big Media companies to sidestep the ban in any market and for any station.

But the final rule -- rewritten in the middle of the night before the hearing -- is even worse.

The new cross-ownership rule retains all of the loopholes -- and adds two get-out-of-jail-free cards.  And based on the statements made by the commissioners Tuesday, it appears these new loopholes will allow cross-ownership mergers in virtually any market.

StopBigMedia.com and its allies pledged to fight the new rules in Congress and in the courts. A bipartisan group of 26 senators sent a letter to Martin, vowing to "immediately move legislation that will revoke and nullify the proposed rule." In 2003 -- the last time the FCC tried to change media ownership rules -- the Republican-controlled Senate passed a similar "resolution of disapproval." In addition, the new rules must past muster with the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which remanded the previous rule changes back to the FCC.

"It's time to raise hell," said Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press. "More than two dozen senators have already vowed to throw out these new rules. And the courts won't look too kindly on the broken and corrupt process that brought us to today's vote. The fight is far from over. The growing public outcry is only going to get louder."

Congress has the power to throw these rules out, and if we demand it they HAVE to listen. Sign the open letter to Congress urging them to STOP THE FCC and stand up for the public interest. 

In 2000, the Federal Communications Commission established the Low Power FM (LPFM) radio service -- noncommercial, local, low-powered radio that schools, community groups, churches, and any nonprofit like Radio Free Nashville could use to broadcast local information to their local community.  There are about 800 LPFM stations on air all across the country -- but groups in many communities and most big cities who applied for these great new stations all lost out.  Why?  

Because the big broadcasters -- represented by the National Association of Broadcasters -- convinced Congress that little LPFM stations like us would interfere with big radio stations in big cities and make the radio dial unlistenable.  So Congress limited low power FM to rural areas.

But when they passed that law, Congress asked the FCC to study whether or not LPFM stations would really cause interference. The FCC hired a big, independent engineering firm to study this potential interference, and five years and $2.2 million later, they proved that LPFM was a great idea in big cities as well as small communities.

Congress is now working to change the law to expand low power FM to all the communities that lost out -- with House Bill 2802 -- the Local Community Radio Act of 2007.  The bill has 41 cosponsors but more folks on the Energy and Commerce committee to sign on.  Both Bart Gordon and Marsha Blackburn are members of this committee, and both are very close to cosponsoring this bill -- but they need to hear from us loud and clear that community radio is something we want.

We need your help in getting that message to them, and the other members of the middle Tennessee delegation. 

Please call their offices and let you voice be heard.  Or write to them at http://www.commoncause.org/SupportLPFM!    Then forward this action alert to your lists.  And sign up to come with RFN when we make office visits next month.  You can also write letters to the editor and sign the petition to expand LPFM at http://www.expandlpfm.org. 

Here are their numbers.
Congressman Bart Gordon - 202-225-4231.
Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn - 202-225-2811.
Congressman Jim Cooper -  202-225-4311.
 
Thanks for taking action.  The result could mean expanded community radio for the whole country.  And that can only be good for us all.

Radio Free Nashville received a visit from FCC Commisioner Deborah Taylor Tate on Friday, March 2, 2007.   Commissioner Tate was so impressed with the showing Radio Free Nashville made during the recent FCC hearing on media ownership that she paid a personal visit to the station to see what local community radio is all about.   

Commissioner Tate talked with programmers, met listeners, toured the studios and saw first hand how important it is to our democracy that all voices be heard when issues that affect all our lives are debated, discussed and decided upon.   Commissioner Tate said she wil do all she can at the FCC to support the growth of community radio.

The FCC held an official hearing on media consolidation December 11, 2006, in Nashville, and Radio Free Nashville was well represented.  RFN executive director Ginny Welsch was an invited panelist and spoke out on behalf of LPFM and against proposed new media ownership rules.  More than 40 RFN programmers testified before the commission, speaking out in favor of localism, diversity, and the public interest.   Radio Free Nashville also provided food to all hearing attendees, free of charge.  Over 600 people testified during the all day event,  the vast majority of whom testifed against the proposed rules. 

The December hearing was one of six official hearings the FCC is holding across the country as it  considers new rules that will increase the number of newspapers, radio stations and TV stations that one company is allowed to own in a city. The commission is specifically looking to do away with the cross-ownership rule that prohibits one media company from owning both the newspaper and a television station in the same city. And the commission is considering eliminating the rule on duopoly, which prevents one company from owning more than one television station in a single market.

If these rules are eliminated, one company - say Clear Channel - could potentially own The Tennessean, Nashville's' daily newspaper and two or more Nashville television stations as well as the five Nashville radio stations they already own and more. That will decimate what's left of true local media coverage.

For more information about the proposed rules changes and how they affect you, visit www.stopbigmedia.org.