As much as I dislike the contour requirements placed on stations by the FCC, I still have to give them credit for their quick responses to e-mails and the helpfulness of them.
The previous plan won’t work, because the FM translator auction we saw is not for new FM translator licenses, its to determine who gets the license in a previous window where the construction permits were found to be mutually exclusive.
So, back to square one.
This is potential service area number one. It’ll work if we can participate in the upcoming FCC translator auction. If not, then we won’t be able to hit Fort Collins with FM.
There might be ONE frequency available for broadcasting from Livermore/Red Feather to Fort Collins. ONE. Maybe. Who knows.
I tried faxing the contract to Office Evolution today. And apparently I sent it to their corporate headquarters…and not my salesperson….bad thing. Hopefully we don’t lose the donation or get anyone (a.k.a. our contact person) into any trouble for donating something. Aahh now I’m worried and I’ll be worried all night and all day tomorrow. We really need that conference space 🙁
Mhm, I want that frequency. We also need a name. Which brings us back to the name contest that Kim suggested that’ll be talked about, and the prize for it, blah blah blah.
This is what i like to call a random “brainstorming session.” Only minutes after I posted another blog. Yay.
So basically if we were to run on FM…and Internet…we lose a lot of potential pros of Internet-only, and it’s making me re-consider. The board of directors ultimately decides what’s going to happen, but in the meantime, I’m considering….
If we were to do FM, we’d have to censor our programming. Censorship = expensive. If we were to do FM, we’d have to censor our music. Music censorship = cheap, but not fun.  It mainly boils down to the censorship issue, and that FM airwaves put a major lock-down on what we can and cannot do. A potential solution is operating on a huge delay where we can dedicate a volunteer to censor everything by hand, but that’d be expensive.
Another solution is to create Internet-only shows and FM-only shows, or shows that air on both. Internet-only shows can be uncensored, FM shows need to be censored, and hybrid shows would have to be censored. Plus, an Internet-only show and an FM-only show could broadcast at the same time. Wowzers! Or we could use the FM station as sort of a “teaser” station to try to entice people into listening online.
OR what we could do… is run shows on FM 24 hours delayed. So that way we can edit the shows afterwards and make them FM-safe. Then broadcast them? Potentially? That could get confusing with call-in shows though.
There are plenty of things that could be safely said on Internet that can’t be safely said on FM. Then again, there are also things that shouldn’t even be said on Internet radio.
FM radio is also expensive. Internet radio is fairly cheap. However, Internet radio music licensing is EXPENSIVE. As in thru-the-roof expensive. FM reaches more local people and increases the chance for sponsorships. Internet radio is global and reaches more people worldwide; at the same time decreases the chance for local sponsorships but increases the chance for nationwide corporate sponsorships. Since this isn’t a for-profit endevour though, it shouldn’t matter. Firefox says I didn’t spell endevour right but I don’t particularly care.
Seriously, though, this is a serious brain-teaser. I’ll probably talk to some people tomorrow about it and see what they think. Who knows.
And get people to sign my yearbook! 🙂
For a couple weeks, we were pretty disappointed that there weren’t going to be any FM frequencies available in Fort Collins, and that we’d have to do Internet-only and lose some potential listeners. But we’ve re-visited the possibility of an FM frequency through a more elaborate, more expensive method. For now, we can’t reveal what we’re thinking about doing, but in the end it should all play out.
Simply put, the project is elaborate enough to warrant an entire department dedicated to it.
Tomorrow, I’ll be faxing a contract to Office Evolution and scheduling our first out-of-school meeting for the summer, so members, directors, and anyone else interested: be prepared.
– Jake
We have some shows lined up. The first is the GSG Show, starring Grethe, Sonya, and Glade. Or maybe it’s Glade, Sonya, and Grethe. I don’t know. The second is the Chelsey and Chelsea show. Or maybe it’s the Chelsea and Chelsey show. I don’t know. So we already have two shows lined up. Programming is basically set.
What ISN’T set is our Form 1023. We need to get that form to the IRS by mid-June. Since it’s the middle of the year and it’ll probably take 6 months processing, and we need any donations to become tax-deductible. I’ll have to review our new financial goals to see if our processing fee will be $750, $350/500. I can’t remember the smaller number.
I am looking forward to Office Evolution, though. They’ve been nice enough to donate 10 hours of conference room space every month, and will probably get some airtime because of that. In addition, note to members, I’ll be making some phone calls to see about meeting this summer. Likely the first week of summer, depending on who’s here and who’s not.
As for studio space, that’s a completely different story. Ha. We’ll probably head into Old Town this summer and do a “loft space” search or something like that while soliciting donations for tax-exempt status.
We also have a new member from the PaCE program, and she’s pretty excited about doing stuff, which is just as exciting for us.
And right about now is when I wish I had a fax machine for contracts….
Before we were even broadcasting, Office Evolution donated 10 hours per month of conference room time. Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to meet over the summer to get the station on the air. Many thanks to Office Evolution for this in-kind donation.
We’ve moved everything from WordPress to a Dreamhost account that is paid for by Jake and is used for his other web sites. Yippee.
Yes it does. We found it quite funny. Special thanks to the people at FOX who have probably had lot’s of difficulties with the FCC.
Recent Comments