Monday is Washday and Tuesday we Talk.  Take your choice.  Wednesday may be better, Thursday might work.  Saturday could be the choice for some communities.

I guess the wringer washing machine left our American civilization about 50 years ago.  Prior to that time here was the typical game plan for the housewife:  Monday we wash.  Tuesday we iron.  It get’s grittier than that.  Go back to the 1930s, the 1940s, many households did not have running HOT water.  Washday could begin with a big outdoor kettle-pot sitting atop mesquite firewood bringing the water to a suitable temperature for laundry.  The water was then put in the wringer washing machine.  The first load of the day would be the “whites”.  After a suitable time letting the machine beat the dirt out of the clothes,  they were taken out of the machine and run through the wringer into rinse water.  And then a second rinse tub. The soapy, sudsy water stayed in the machine to receive the next batch of clothing.  Repeat this process maybe eight or nine times and at the end of the day, drain that one batch of soapy water.

Truth be told… it was one rough, tough day for a housewife.  But it could have some redeeming qualities.  Maybe you and your Mother, or maybe a sister who lived nearby, would get together and share the facilities and the labor.  So it could be a great day of sharing, of gossip, of humor, and sometimes tears.

In your little small community radio station,  what if you set up one day a week to handle the “laundry list” of programming content for the coming week?  Bring in as many volunteers as you can round up.  Invite the community at large to come by and give their own voices to the audio recorder announcing civic events, club meetings, church events, fund drives;  High school students could drop in and talk about the Thursday night pep rally,  the Junior Play, and announce they will be out selling ads for the school Year Book. 

Get the mayor, the county commissioners, the county agent, the Chamber of Commerce manager to drop in on Talk Day and “lay down some tracks” to be used in the coming week.  While you’ve got the lights on and some volunteer staff present,  invite merchants who voice their own endorsements/commercials to drop in on the same day.

There is nothing more drab than someone sitting in a lack-luster lonely recording booth pretending to talk with people.  Bring everyone in at once.  Let them exchange smiles while they talk.  Get rid of the “I’m the only human being left on earth” lifeless audio that populates so many radio stations.  Everyone soon learns that if they blow it, just pause, yell “Take Two” and execute a Do-over.  The editor will clean it up.

This whole scheme assumes you will have at least ONE somebody who can take possession of the hard drive at the end of the day and edit, edit, edit and load all the little segments into you automation machine.

And to really add some ZING to this process,  create some little two-sheet NCR paper slips (like you get when you drop off your dry-cleanaing) that have NINE random times on them.  Get each person speaking to do three different versions of their message.  Each version will run three times.  Write the “recording clip ID” on the slip so your editor (who gets the copy you keep) knows when these announcements are to air.  Give the other copy to the person voicing the clips and tell them to have their friends listen at these times.

If you succeed in developing this weekly talk festival,  you might be able to invite those church ladies who like to do fundraiser events to sell sandwiches or bowls of chili during your talk and recording event.  Maybe add tables for a Farmer’s Market in the Spring and Summer.

If you can run 100 people through such an event  (that’s thinking big!) you now have 900 lively and localized clips to run this coming week.  When is the last time you heard radio with that level of organic content?  Now, before you hit me with the “people want uninterrupted music” agrument, remember:  listeners who will listen to community radio are NOT music centric listeners.

vkuehn

How many times have you driven past what was apparently a radio station, or used to be. Is it operating? Is anyone in there that could show me around?

I never had any intention of operating a passive radio station. Some of you who are hoping to build and LPFM may be planning on putting it in a closet in a spare bedroom, or a spare closet in a place of business, or a non-active space in your church. Little more than an automation machine. You will have to think hard and creatively to come up with an alternate feature for your station to replace the Plant Flowers concept.

I want people who pass by to be curious about our station. What are they doing in there? Are they good at it? I guess I should listen and find out. Maybe I should knock on the door and see for myself.

Here is the image I want you to grab hold of. Have you noticed how apartment communities spare no expense when they Plant Flowers at the entrance. Gives you the idea that if you move into an apartment there, the sun will always shine, you will have lots of friends, life will be active, and you will just feel good because you live there. Now your radio station may be in a building where flowers on the sidewalk cannot point to your 3rd story studio. But you get the idea. Your station needs some kind of image that gives people the idea that when they listen to you, and when they participate as a volunteer, the sun will always shine, they will lose weight, they will have lots of new friends and their health will be better than ever.

The flip side of this “we need some excitement” image for your station is that in planning your station entrance, the design should also include some very obvious signal that “This entrance is not currently open” for the hours your facility is not occupied. Maybe an obviously dark, unlit lobby. Maybe a drape or mural that makes it clear “This door will not open for you”.

I know some of you have come up with the perfect playlist of music and you are confident that will make your station a real winner. Not to rain on your parade, but you may find that a handful of these image ideas will do more for the success of your station than the perfect playlist.

So. If you can, Plant Flowers.

vkuehn

This week one bit of that housekeeping took Step 1. 

A little over two years ago there was a Application Window for Non-commercial Educational stations at regular power levels.  These applications need to be granted or denied before we can know what frequencies are available in the community we may be interested in.

A proposed list of the “winners” for applications that were, as they say in FCC-talk, “mutually exclusive” applications, was released this week.  (You can see the list here.)  There will a period of time during which the ‘losers’ can appeal the proposed decision of the FCC.

We still don’t have a target date when LPFM applications can be made, but you are now half-a-step closer.

vkuehn

In traditional, commercial radio, the morning program sets the pace for the day.  It is the one time of day that decision-making business people are most likely to listen.  (You know, those people who decide advertising budgets and make underwriting decisions. If they listen, conventional wisdom is they will think everybody listens. )

The decision on how you will program early mornings on your station will impact choices you make when you start planning facility, studio and building.

The decision on how you will program early mornings on your station will impact how you go about pledge drives or other funding promotions.

For those of you who do not have a background in broadcasting, here is a thumb-nail history. 

Following the “Golden Age” of radio the Television Age arrived and big changes took place in the industry. These new up-start music stations with disk jockeys began outpacing the old line network based heritage stations. In the ratings wars, the last daypart that fell to the upstart dj operations was the traditional morning hours program.

When automation based programming and sattelite delivered programming arrived in recent history, the one day-segment that remained a live production with a real human being “driving the ship” was, and is, the morning show.

Serious consideration of what your new LPFM is going to do during what is called Morning Drive Time should be considered very seriously.

vkuehn

“Turn OFF the stereo.  Spend most of your time in MONO.”

If you are bound and determined that the central focus of your station is going to be the presentation of a genre of music that no one else makes available in your area,  move on.  Go for a walk.  Check on the blizzard conditions in your area.

If you have a vision that includes a lot of interviews,  a lot of ‘long form’ information broadcasts, then follow along on this logic.  Early automobile radios with FM and a lot of audiophile quality home receivers have included a switch that allows the listener to turn off the stereo.  Why would anyone do that?  If you are out at the fringe of the listening area, and various forms of noise, static and interference are messing up something you that you want to hear,  flip your receiver to MONO and listen to the improvement in reception.

LPFM with its current 100 watt limitation on radiated power has a very, very small footprint.  Someone living at the top of a hill with an outside antenna and one of those older audiophile receivers may pick up your station 7, 12, maybe even 15 miles away but that will be the exception.

Your core over-the-air audience will be limited to an area four to eight miles across.  The receivers will for the most part be no more than 2 to 4 miles from your transmitter.  If doing without stereo gives you an extra mile of coverage area….  that can be huge.

But before you lock yourself in on what you plan to program,  we need to think together another day about ways you may be able to reach out to a wider audience.  A repeater/translator transmitter may be possible.  Streaming on the Internet may be possible.  Getting a channel on the local cable system may be possible.  Getting a TV station to “rent” you that audio channel sometimes used for a second language may be possible.  But all of these things cost extra, and require that your group have some technically strong people as participants.  For now, keep the question open:  “Will you have stereo with that?”

vkuehn

What if you were one of the new-hires, and you showed up for work and your supervisor took you down this big industrial sized hallway,  opened a door and said:  “Come in.  This is where you will build your car today.”  It’s a small room… the size of a two-car garage at your house.  You ask:  “Where is the assembly line?”  And your supervisor says:  “We are one step ahead of the Japanese companies.  We don’t use assembly lines.  You build a car.  You drive it out.  You then start on your next car.  You should be able to do one a day.”

Think about how we have done radio in past years.  At least in medium and small stations.  An announcer or programmer or whatever you wish to call the person, shows up, goes into a studio, and spends anywhere from three to eight hours building not cars, but building audio content.  Today I want to stir the water by suggesting that sending one person by themselves in a studio to assemble complete radio programs borders on being unreasonable.  I’ve done it.  Many of you have done it.  And some of you are mentally trying to assemble a plan for your LPFM station that works on that methodology.  And even after reading my verbal picture of what could be,  you will eventually settle on “doing radio” in the traditional way.
What I encourage you to do is to work up some “mental sweat” and figure out how you can break up the process of manufacturing “audio content” into little granular modules.  Computer programmers have been using this concept for years. 

Instead of trying to run your LPFM using 8 to 12 dedicated volunteers,  think about recruiting 60 or 80 and give them small increments of the task.  Mothers of little children who could never come to your studio and do a three hour stint hosting and announcing can set up what I call a “Murphy-bed Studio” at home like the podcasters are doing.  Molly:  I want you to prepare fourteen little two minute essays per week on the following subject.  Do them at home.  Upload them to the computer at the station.  We have 59 other people doing their own assignments. 

That means our listeners will find every hour of the broadcast day cheerful, exciting, innovative with twelve different voices cover twelve different fields of interest.  Voices they will come to recognize as people they regularly run into at the supermarket, the PTA meeting, the Soccer practice.

There will be very few hours in your broadcast schedule where one person dominates the hour.  Some of your volunteers will be great, creative programmers.  Some will be a bit light-weight.   Some people hate the thought of an automation machine because it becomes predictable and monotonous.  Wrestle with this concept.  Brainstorm the idea with the other people who are working with you to create an LPFM.  This could be the difference between a drab glass of un-sweet tea,  and ice-tea with some lemon and a small twig of mint to give it some punch.

Please.  Don’t create an LPFM station as drab as a glass of un-sweet tea with the ice 90% melted.

vkuehn

Those who come here regularly may not go rummaging back through the previous posts, and may not come across my response so let me also make the response part of this current post:

Carl:  Thanks for posting your comment.  The holidays have been a busy time, and I decided to wait and see if anyone else wanted to respond to your comment.

No, I don’t intend to suggest that thinking about programming content does not happen before radiation begins.  My vision is that all this planning is a “circular” process.  You think about your justification or purpose for establishing an LPFM.  Then you think about what programming would accomplish that purpose.  Then you think about the facilities, both building and equipment that it will take to support that programming.  By then the cold, hard reality of dollars-and-cents begins to impact your thinking so you go back a re-think and may change the scale of your justification and purpose.  That done, guess what:  you may need to rescale your programming plans which leads to rescaling your facilities plan.

And this is not a process you do once and it is forever complete.  Once your station is operational you will continually come and revisit all these issues, and revisit your analysis of your community.  Over time your community, your tribe, will change and then the LPFM operation has to re-evaluate:  Does our present set-up meet the needs,  or do we change our justification and purpose.  And you can see where that can lead.

I hope more of you will jump in and contribute to making this Blog site a two-way conversation.  Your comment will not immediately appear.  I had been warned that Blogs have become a target for the spammers and the hackers and I have quite a collection of trash that these less than upright citizens have tried to sneak into our conversation.  The policy of having a human being preview each comment will continue for now.

vkuehn

Chuck has been active in more than one discussion forum that I read and I look to him for good sound advice.  I think even though he has stepped out of LPFM into traditional commercial broadcasting, he will still be a friend to us as a community (a tribe?) and he will still be a friend to that one particular LPFM in his back yard.

If you follow forums you know there is a big hue and cry for “Live and Local, Live and Local”.  If broadcasters would all take these wicked automation machines down to the town square and burn them, and hire live DJs,  radio would again be financially healthy and EVERYBODY would be happy.

 Not so fast, says Chuch, one day about a week ago in a discussion group thread.  I couldn’t get to the message tonight to copy it word for word but basically this is what he said:  “The only people who ever say that are radio people and ex-radio people who want to live that thrill again.”  His non-radio friends never lecture him or ask why not.  His customers/ sponsors/ endorsement funders never ask about the possibility.  The public is not crying and screaming for Live and Local.  Maybe the public wants “fresh”, wants “relevant”, wants “interesting”.  If the station manager decides to do a daily five minute commentary, which one of the managers I worked for did,  it didn’t matter whether he recorded it two days ago before he left town for a conference, or whether he actually got up in time to be at the station at 7:25 A.M. and actually do a LIVE delivery.  It was his tone of voice.  It was his way of teasing or scolding.  He could have phoned it in from St. Louis.  Either it was listenable or it was not.

So.  If you are out twisting arms, trying to round up some people who will become volunteers, become board members, become donors to make LPFM work in your community, or for your “tribe”….   don’t get sand in your underwear over all the shouting by the people who insist it must be Live and Local, Live and Local.  I hope a reasonable portion of it is.  But making one of these things work and be financially practical is hard enough without going to the expense of providing the extra facilities that may be necessary if you insist on being Live and Local every hour of the broadcast day.  And I think Chuck Conrad would also say at this point:  “But don’t just shove a computer in an upstairs bedroom closet at your house and let it run and run for days at a time.”

 Chuck:  you are in lake country so this term should be a familiar one:  “May the wind always be at your back!  Bon Voyage as you travel now in the commercial world of broadcasting.”

Remember Fred Rogers and his children’s TV program, Mr Rogers Neighborhood?  As Fred might have said at this point:  “Boys and Girls, can you say COMMUNITY?”  The masthead of my blog refers to “Community Based Radio”.  That is an immediate effort to suggest that LPFM is NOT mass media for a large city.  Sometimes I find myself thinking:  LPFM is designed to serve a small geography, maybe seven miles across.  And there will be times where it is appropriate for an LPFM to serve the same basic purpose for some rural village in an Applachian Valley or out in Kansas in the wheatfields.  This idea is reinforced by the FCC rules:  You will have a “City of License” and a majority of your board must live within 10 miles of the station or the city of license.  Sounds pretty geographical!

When you go to the dictionary and as you listen to the use of everyday language it quickly becomes obvious that “community” is often divorced from geography.  Seth Godin, author of “The Purple Cow” has another word for community and he gave that word to be the title of one of his books:  “Tibes”.  Buy the book.  Check it out of your library.  Let Seth stir up your imagination as you contemplate LPFM. 

I was commuting Sunday afternoon.  No, not work.  I “commute” to church.  I prefer that my church be geography but I currently commute because of the concepts of community and tribe.  I’m on autopilot, making good time on what someone recently called the Alpharetta Autobahn  (a little Georgia humor) trying to compose this post.  And then, like a deer dashing out of the woods to cross the road,  SERENDIPITY happend.  I’m listening to Bob Edwards Radio.  He is interviewing Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone magazine and they are doing a rundown of the writer’s favorite music from the year 2009.  They began discussing the jam band Fish, who came together in a reunion to produce this album.  And here comes the deer across the highway:  “It was more than a runion,  it was community.  Like when Bruce Springfield and the E-Street band had their reunion… it was community.  And not just the bands.  It was community for the fans also.”

Amateur Radio Operators (Hams) like to gather, like to talk shop.  They practice community.  Sports fans now have restaraunts named after their enthusiasm for sports.  They practice community.  They are a tribe unto themselves.  Ethnic groups that have immigrated to our country often gather geographically, but beyond that they become community even if they have to commute on a Sunday to gather.

As you study the history of the legislation and the FCC rulemaking that created the LPFM concept,  it becomes obvious that meeting the needs of community and tribe are a legitimate goal of an LPFM licensee.  Needs specific to the concept of programming to meet the needs of unserved tribes more than the needs of the geography colors the law and regulations.

This has been lengthy, maybe a bit tedious for a post but the end is in sight, and the end is a question that poses a bit of heresy:  Is it possible that in planning your LPFM you should think of community and tribe the people who come together to plan and establish the LPFM station.  The board members.  The volunteers who do the programming and the fund raising.    Is it legitimate for this “community” to establish a radio station that meets their needs first, and they then invite those within listening distance to come be guests at the party?

It worked so well they tried it all the way to the largest cars.  Sometime in the 90′s they figured out that some large cars work best with rear wheel drive.

When the building floor plan and equipment layout that works so well for big city radio is imposed on the Small Market or Community Oriented station… but just scaled down, we get the Crosley and the Falcon  and the Chevette and the Corvair of radio.  (Ralph Nader made a name for hemself attacking the Corvair.  Poor performance Small Market Radio never attracted his attention.)

So what are the features of this “front-wheel-drive” radio facility?  Five years ago I thought I could define it for small market commercial radio.  Society keeps changing.  Radio keeps changing.  I cannot draw you a picture of what front-wheel-drive looks like for an LPFM radion station.  I can only try to vacinate you with this low-grade virus which will cause you to challenge your self and your team every step of the way as you plan your facility.  An often asked question should be:  Why are we planning to build it this way?  Is there a better layout?

The layout of the house or apartment will affect how your family lives.  If your church building committee does a poor job of planning a new building, your congregation will wake up 20 years later wondering why the mood of the church has changed.  In future Blog essays we will tackle some indiviudal scenarios within the radio station design.

And the door remains open for another possbile discussion:  Is there a front-wheel-drive style of programming?  Things that make you say… “Hhmmmmmmm…..”

vkuehn