No-Powered FM in the Bronx's Hunt's Point
Inside the basement studio of WPNT-AM in Hunt's Point, a 17-year-old named Joseph is preparing to go on air at 5 p.m. He's surrounded by the typical setup of a radio station, albeit a very small one. In the white-walled room where he'll sit is a black leather chair and a desk on which there is transmission equipment and a microphone, facing a window. On the opposite side of that window is another desk with two chairs and two microphones where his guests sit. But today something has gone wrong. He'll have to wait until tomorrow to broadcast.
In the room next door, which houses drums, congas, timbales, bongos and shakers, middle-aged, ponytail-wearing percussionist Angel Rodriguez is planning a Latino jazz program for the station. He's plenty qualified to host it. He once served in the house band of the Apollo Theater and backed up pop singers Vanessa Williams and Evelyn Champagne King, as well as funk artist George Clinton. He uses the instruments to teach percussion classes to neighborhood youth, adults and the disabled.
As he's speaking to me, a young man of about 18, medium height, walks in. "How ya doin'?" Angel asks. The kid asks Rodriguez if he can borrow three dollars to get something to eat. Rodriguez doesn't hesitate. "Of course you can," he replies, while reaching inside his pocket. "Pay me back one of these days. And the day I die? I want you to party!"
Rodriguez later informs me that five years ago this same youth was dealing drugs. His entire family was in the trade. But now he and the rest of them are trying to go straight. And Rodriguez, Joseph, a tarot card reader, and a Latino man who hosts a Spanish language program on the station are trying to both educate and entertain them in a manner that says they aren't part of a "target market" to be sold to some sneaker company, SUV manufacturer or pharmaceutical firm pushing its newest laxative.
Yet these programmers at WPNT have seen their dream that the station's range will extend beyond the confines of the blocklong building where the Point (the Hunt's Point community development corporation, under which it operates) is located go up in smoke. Last December, Congress placed severe curbs on former FCC Chairman William Kennard's plan to license approximately 1000 nonprofit low-powered FM (LPFM) radio stations to schools, community and religious groups for the purpose of providing local news, arts, language training and so on to their neighborhoods.
Increasingly, commercial radio broadcasting is being standardized by huge conglomerates that buy up stations and centralize their operations, eliminating local staffs and neighborhood news in an effort to economize. Kennard's community radio plan was intended as a counterbalance.
"The FCC promised a whole lot," says Craig Tendell, a community outreach worker at the Point, regarding the proposal. "It was like saying 100 people can come in free. Then when you lined up at the door to try to be one of those 100, they said, 'You know what? We're only going to let five of you in.'"
Tendell is aware that Kennard wasn't responsible for Congress' virtual about-face; that the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)?speaking on behalf of special interests like the top 10 radio conglomerates, which bill close to 50 percent of all the advertising revenue in commercial radio?lobbied heavily to kill the proposal. In his previous position as one of five FCC commissioners, Michael Powell, the new FCC chairman under President Bush, spoke out against the plan. The NAB is headed by Edward O. Fritts, former college roommate of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. "If we were in Idaho, it would be different," says Tendell, reflecting on what happened to the plan. "You show me someone in New York City who gets a license now, and I'll jump off a roof."
What he's referring to is the fact that such powerful opponents?aided, ironically, by lobbying from National Public Radio?argued that creation of the new low-power stations would interfere with transmission of regular radio signals in large and medium metropolitan areas. Thus the plan was significantly scaled back to allow for the distribution of a few licenses only in remote rural areas. Kennard and other proponents of what also became known as the proposal for "micro-FM stations" insist that their engineering tests indicated this argument was a canard. They claim the possibility of interference with existing stations was minimal and could easily be handled with the right administrative equipment.
They also argued that the opponents' real concern was new competition for listeners, even though the range of the typical LPFM wasn't going to extend beyond two or three miles in areas with low-level buildings, or 15 blocks in densely packed urban areas, because the transmission signals were to be no greater than 100 watts. Given this fact and the community-based do-gooderism of the proposal, one might wonder why NPR added its voice to the opposition.
"They were also afraid of losing some of their audience," insists Michael Eisenmenger of Paper Tiger TV, a proponent of alternative media in Manhattan. "But NPR is useful for national news. Of course, they also do some quirky local-type stuff as well. But why can't we have local stations doing more of that too?"
Indeed, why can't we? There's a group of nine-to-14-year-olds taking photography classes at the Point. On Tuesday evenings they go out to capture images of bodega owners, elderly people in senior citizen centers, workers in nearby Hunt's Point Market. Where can they broadcast to the neighborhood when their work will be featured in the gallery of the community center? Then there's news to be broadcast about the 14- and 15-year-old girls performing in Death by Disco, to be staged in the 160-seat Live from the Edge Theater located in the former currency storage facility. Not to mention outings organized by the Point's Environmental Stewardship Program, teaching how to navigate a kayak and identify different aquatic species living in the waters near Hunt's Point.
As it stands now, only those who walk inside the building's spacious atrium, one flight above WPNT, can hear about any of this on the station's tiny signal. According to Tendell, WPNT's reach can be expanded legally a bit farther via the usage of links. Right now the station uses a 100-milliwatt transmitter, allowing it a range of only 250 feet. Taking advantage of links, it could broadcast to another 100-milliwatt micro-transmitter and then another, up to a limit of about 3000 feet, so that they could conceivably cover about two blocks of the neighborhood without getting into trouble with the FCC. But they will need people outside the confines of the center to place the transmitters on top of their homes or commercial buildings.
If that happens, perhaps good news about what's going on at the center can spread a bit farther?along with sad news about important people. While we were talking, Rodriguez received word of the death of a good friend from a sudden massive heart attack. Armando Pereles was a fellow middle-aged percussionist who in the late 70s and early 80s helped Rodriguez popularize rhumba drumming in the streets and parks. Pereles worked as a porter at Lincoln Center, a job he held down to pay the bills for himself and the 12- and 13-year-old sons he was caring for on his own (their mother had been hospitalized for mental illness). During the summers, at 182nd St. and Amsterdam Ave., Angel and Armando would drum and draw 50 to 100 people. And the cops wouldn't bother them.
Rodriguez is adamant that attention be paid to the life of his fellow drummer, and plans to organize a memorial performance. Maybe he'll get a local commercial station, or WNYC or WBAI, to broadcast his intentions. Maybe not. If WPNT had that LPFM license, at least he'd be assured of giving notice and playing arrangements in honor of his friend to a good 15,000 or so people in the surrounding community.