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Music Media

How Would You Start a Radio Station? 372

Posted by Cliff from the beating-back-the-static dept.
MurderINC asks: "For the past few months, I have been looking into starting up a radio station here. I am a student in a college town. The university here has around 10,000 students, but in my opinion, not a single decent radio station. There are a couple of country stations, a couple of 'today's hit music' stations geared towards the junior high audience and a few talk stations, but that's about it. I would LOVE to start a classic rock / alternative / hard rock station. I'm thinking this could probably be run right off of my Mandrake box (just load up a playlist and go with it). The problem consists of: I know very little about the FCC's regulations, the costs of the equipment, and what equipment I would need, and was hoping someone out there knew a lil' somethin somethin, or has done the same thing."
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How Would You Start a Radio Station? More

How Would You Start a Radio Station?

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  • cake (Score:5, Funny)

    by SlamMan ( 221834 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:37PM (#4303359)
    Just head on down to your local book store, and grab a copy of "Starting Your own Classic Rock Station for Dummies"
  • Go rent "Pump Up the Volume" with Christian Slater

  • Find a Good Lawyer (Score:5, Informative)

    by Helmholtz ( 2715 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:39PM (#4303371) Homepage
    While I don't know from any first hand experience, I think the very first thing you would want to do is fine a good lawyer and sit down and have a very long talk about all the legalities, rules, and fees that you're looking to incur.

    • You're looking at it all wrong! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:42PM (#4303700)
      Go to the student affairs office and tell them you'd like to start a radio club. Should they approve (i've heard of very few clubs being turned down at campuses) you can get funding thru the school to buy equipment and such. Since it would be for "educational use" the FCC lisence is really out the door. Granted you can't broadcast too far (I think 2 miles but that's enough for a campus typically) but it's a start!
      • Many schools have already bought the FCC licenses. So if you get the school's OK you might be able to co-operate with them, operating under their license. You may also be able to use much of their hardware, since many of today's transmitters, repeaters, and broadcast towers can transmit multiple simultaneous signals.

        That said, you can also reduce the number of royalties you must pay by getting in touch with a company called Clear Channel [clearchannel.com]--they dictate what is played on most US radio stations.

        Further, your little Mandrake box can do it, using shoutcast, an icecast-server, and a microphone, but that would give you an "Internet radio station" as many of the shoutcast servers you can listen to with winamp or Windows Media Player are called.

        Finally, a local station I listen to [bvu.edu] was discovered to be transmitting a syndicated Internet radio stream--you can hear a bit of "tinniness" to the audio when doing this (because many stations use a very low bitrate to accomodate dialup users) but it seemed to work rather well for them. That would be a way to allow people to listen when you're not manning the studio...

        HTH. HAND.

        • you can also reduce the number of royalties you must pay by getting in touch with a company called Clear Channel--they dictate what is played on most US radio stations.
          Excuse me? I think the article is all about getting AWAY from the pap that clear channel is cramming down our throats. If you have to sell out to cc before you even get started, what's the point of trying?
      • Acctually I belive it has something to do with broadcasting over the powerlines. As for range I can pick up Carneige Mellons campus radio station (which is imo the best in the area) a good deal father then 2 miles away(all the way out in Mckeesport).
      • My campus radio station is in Bristol (WQRI) and we reach Newport and Providence. And we still qualify as nonprofit.
  • You will have to buy the rights to rebroadcast the songs from the record companies, song writers, and publishers. You will also want to broadcast at 50k to 100k watts to cover a decent area. That is 50k to 100k per hour. You know your electric bill may be $100 per month. Imagine a radio station and several thousands of dollars in electricity per month. Also you will need some sort of advertisement so people know about your station and to pay the royalties and electric bill. So you need some sales/marketing people.

    If you do decide to do this though, please don't be lame like other radio stations and between every song say your station call sign letters and FM frequency. Like we didn't hear yout he first million times you said it, ok?

    • Re:you got a lot of money laying around? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mr. X ( 17716 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:43PM (#4303398)
      If you do decide to do this though, please don't be lame like other radio stations and between every song say your station call sign letters and FM frequency. Like we didn't hear yout he first million times you said it, ok?


      Um... you are actually required to do a station identification at least once an hour. also, i seriouslly doubt any radio station has 50k-100k/hour electrical bills. I work for a 26k watt volunteer station, and our total budget is under 10k a YEAR. we broadcast almost 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

      • "Um... you are actually required to do a station identification at least once an hour."

        Yes, once an hour. The original poster was complaining about something else entirely - the fatal habit of radio stations to announce their callsign, frequency and style between every song.

        As an example, in the Boston area tune up WCRB - a highly respected classical music station. Excepting those highly-touted 'uninterrupted' moments, you'll here "Classical 102.5 WCRB" at least three times whenever the announcer speaks.

        I don't know what posseses these people to be so obnoxious.

        A.

        Bringing you offtopic posts since the 50,000s.
      • asnd you dont pay for the entire ascap and BMI library. so if he wants to start a non-popular radio station... he can do what you guys are doing...

        ASCAP and BMI play fees are insanely priced... espically for the parts of their catalogue that get's lots of airplay. The "listener supported" station I have a friend as the programming director at has informed me that they avoid the expensive parts of the song library... which limits anything that has been popular from the last 5 years.

    • 50kW for FM or AM? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Fantome ( 7951 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:52PM (#4303461)
      I think the 50kW is way off base. Given a good antenna (better than he'll probably have) sitting on top of a building, you can reach a good 20 mile radius on a lowly 30 watts. Watts, not kilo watts. My campus runs a radio station on 5 watts, and that's more than enough for the 2 mile long campus (and the tower that the radio is on is awefully short).

      Going up on the scale of power, the campus's amateur radio club used a 2kW setup to talk to Mir a while back. We practically blew them out of the water (space, whatever). By the time we heard back from them, they were mighty pissed that we were stepping on other people's transmissions even with their antenna pointed as far away from us as they could.

      • Re:50kW for FM or AM? (Score:4, Funny)

        by carlos_benj ( 140796 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:52PM (#4303748) Journal
        and the tower that the radio is on is awefully short

        Man! Imagine, a tower so short it inspires awe...
      • the campus's amateur radio club used a 2kW setup

        I doubt that. 1.5kW is the legal limit for amateur radio, any more than that is illegal. And hams are pretty good about following the law, given that usually we are victims of illegal interference and operation from other users (well, that and very few of the commercial linear amplifiers are capable of more output than that...).
    • > You will also want to broadcast at 50k to 100k
      > watts to cover a decent area.

      I think you can squeak by with a bit less than that.

      There's a smaller station in the chicago area that runs at 1000 watts, and the signal can still be picked up about 40 miles out from the city. Yes the signal is prone to a decent amount of static, but recall that the original poster implied this was for a small town type setting.

      Wish I could be more specific but I read about this in an article somewhere recently, and can't for the life of me find it again.
    • 50k to 100k? Where the hell are you getting these numbers? According to this page:

      http://www.howstuffworks.com/question330.htm

      a 100w transmitter should have a range of 3.5 miles. That's plenty for an average town or college campus.

      Oooooh. Can his electric bills handle the equivalent cost of a single light bulb?
      • You have to remember that 100 watts is the final output of the transmitter. It takes more than that to run the transmitter because amplifiers are not 100% efficient. (This is also why they heat your house in the winter, and not only that, they heat your house in the summer. That loss gets translated to heat.)

        Plus you have non-transmitter equipment -- lights and your computer, and the fridge for the beer, if nothing else.

        As for the range, it really depends on where your transmitter is located. As an example, here in the Seattle area there are several 2-meter ham radio repeaters in the Cascades that cover the Puget Sound area from Everett to Tacoma. (The 2-meter ham band is in the same general frequency band as FM radio.) Where your antenna is located and how efficient it is are as important as how much power your transmitter is cranking out, maybe more so.
    • ...of what you are talking about!

      I was part of the board for a local volunteer radio station in Norway some years back. We covered an area of about 20x20km (actually we covered a lot more, but that was what we had a license to cover), with very rough terrain on two 10W transmitters. Unless you where as unlucky as we where with the terrain, one would be more than e enough.

      Another interesting fact about radio-transmitters is that boosting up the effect isn't really going to buy you that much. The signal-strength X kilometers away decreases by at least the square of the distance.

      Lastly, unless you are a commercial radio-station, there is no reason why you would want to broadcast in stereo. People listening to the radio usually don't care much about that. We had some people complaining about the stereo-light on their radio not lighting up, so we fixed that (making the stereo light shine up, while still broadcasting in mono) and heard no more complaints.

      Royalties however, are a problem. In Norway, there are no differences for royalties for songs whether you define yourself commercial or for-profit. Most local radio-stations solve this by having some kind of income. This would either be commercials (which are really boring to sell), or the much simpler concept of "radio-bingo". The last is an attempt to squeeze money out of poor old people instead of wealthy corporations, and is thus much easier. Student-radios usually get too much money from the student-organizations anyway, so they do neither.

      I don't know about FCC in the US, but in Norway, our equivalent (whatever it's called these days) actually care about content. If you don't have a certain percentage of self-produced content, royalties suddenly jump to the roof. So most local radio stations will at least attempt to do some actual journalism.

      This makes a lot of sense to me, if all you are going to do is to send music, there's no reason why the FCC is going to prefer your music over anyone elses to fill up the available spectrum with. So you either pay, or you send something of interest! But I have no idea if this is true in other countries (although I find it a nice arrangement).

      But my guess is that factors such as these probably will come into play, if you ask the FCC for bandwidth. They will probably ask you what you are going to do with it, and check up on that at random intervals. And if all you are going to do is to stream mp3's out of your home-box, chances are that they aren't going to be thrilled. On the other hand, if you ask them to get some bandwidth for an actual student-radio, with actual student content, it's likely (or at least it should be that way), that they will be much more interested in cooperating with you.

    • Sorry, this post is really incorrect. Why do so many people post to /. without knowing the facts?

      Let me get you started in the right direction:

      You don't need to "buy the rights to rebroadcast the songs from the record companies, song writers, and publishers". You merely need to pay royalties for the public performances of copyrighted compositions to ASCAP [ascap.com], BMI [bmi.com] and possibly SESAC [sesac.com]. The total of all these will be around 5-6% of your stations gross revenue.

      Copyright law specifically exempts FCC-licensed radio stations from any fees for public performance of the "Sound Recording" (that is, the copyrights owned by the record companies).

      As for the power you will need to cover a decent sized metro area - you sure don't need 50-100,000 watts. The FCC breaks the license classes down into 3 main groups, Class A, B and C. Class A are typically around 5kw, Class B, 50kw, and Class C, 100kw. But an important distinction here is that these amounts are not transmitter power, but ERP (effective radiated power). Also, depending upon your transmitter's HAAT (Height above average terrain), you may be authorized for a lower power than the class of license's maximum.

      You would be surprised how well 1000 watts ERP on a hill into a good circular-polarized antenna system will cover a metro area. In fact, in Los Angeles, one station transmits a mere 600 watts from Mt. Wilson and covers all of the greater Los Angeles metro area. In their case, it's the height that gives them the coverage, not so much the power.

      You can learn more about station coverage contours, power and classes from the FCC [fcc.gov].

      But before you get into all that, you should read the FCC's Broadcast Station Application Process [fcc.gov]. Did I forget to mention that you need to either buy an existing license or apply for a new one [fcc.gov]? And before you can even apply for a new license, you'll need to prove that you have the financial resources to complete the station and do a technical feasibility study - usually a spacing study for commercial FM (to make sure you can fit your station into the band without causing interference to existing stations) or a Interference study for noncommercial/educational stations (in the 88.1-91.9 part of the band. You can't do these yourself, you'll need to hire a company who specializes in this and has access to the FCCs databases. Dataworld [dataworld.com] is a company that has been doing this for over 25 years.

      Before you get started on this, you should do a lot of background reading. An FCC licensed station is not a toy o hobby and there is a tremendous amount of responsibility that comes with it. Fortunately, the FCC has a How to Apply for a Broadcast Station [fcc.gov] section of their site. Unfortunately, it starts off like this:

      Potential applicants for radio and television services should be aware that frequencies for these services are always in heavy demand. For example, the Commission received approximately 30,000 inquiries from persons seeking to start radio broadcast stations last year. Where broadcast frequencies remain available, competing applications are routinely received. Thus, you are cautioned at the outset that the filing of an application does not guarantee that you will receive a broadcast station construction permit. You should also be aware that in many areas of the country, no frequencies may be available on which a new station could commence operating without causing interference to existing stations, which would violate FCC rules.

      There are so many other things you're going to have to think about before you apply for a license as well.

      • Is the transmitter going to be at the same location as the studio? If not, how are you going to get the signal to the transmitter? (A STL, microwave band studio transmitter link, is a popular way - but you'll need a license for this too...
      • If your studio is going to be co-located with your transmitter, you have to pay a lot of concern to keeping RF interference from your transmiter out of your audio signals. This means 600 ohm balanced audio feeds, not the typical RCA or miniplug consumer unbalanced audio lines.
      • The minimum hardware you'll need is a transmitter/exciter [bext.com], audio processor/stereo generator [orban.com], antenna system [shively.com], tower, Emergency alert system hardware [tftinc.com], etc.
      • You may be required to provide the FCC with a "Proof of Performance" - going out with a GPS and signal strenght meter, and proving that your transmitter and antenna system are operating as planned.
      • You'll also need some monitoring instruments [tftinc.com] to make sure that your station isn't putting out too much power, or transmitting with too high of deviation (overmodulation).
      • Last you'll need a way to feed audio. A Linux box playing MP3s probably won't cut it. At a minimum, you need to schedule the "legal IDs" at the top of the hour. There are commercial broadcast automation packages out there that cost under $2000, alas they all run under Windoze. There is no reason you couldn't write one for Linux.
      • And I think you need at least a small mixer and a microphone so that when you need to, you can address the audience. (And aternatively play music when you're doing upgrades to the automation system.)

      I suggest you subscribe or read online Radio Shopper [radioshopper.com], a radio tech centric newsletter that also covers things that small operators need to do to fufill their oblications to the FCC and the community. And of corse, it's a great place to find used transmitters and antenna systems.

      Some places to get a feel for the prices of this equipment are Broadcast Supply Worldwide [bswusa.com] and Harris Broadcast [harris.com]. If you are on a budget and need used equipment, Mooretronix [mooretronix.com] is a great place to start.

      Here's a great pictorial of the installation of a new FM antenna system and 60kw transmitter [well.com] for KPFK in Los Angeles. Just to give you an idea of what is required. KPFK is a non-profit.

      I also suggest reading Bob Gonsett's CGC Communicator [bext.com], a really great technical newsletter for broadcasters in the Southern California area. There are hundreds of his past newsletters online, and you can read about the saga of new stations in SoCal, as well as issues with construction permits (station upgrades). Lots of good info here.

      I hope this has helped give you some good background on what all is involved in starting a radio station. I've worked at a couple small commercial broadcast stations in the past. I assisted in some upgrades to the transmitters and antenna systems, so I got to see all that was involved with just the construction permit with the FCC. I even got to assist in a proof of performance once, back in the days before GPS. We had to do it all using topo and street maps.

      So don't give up hope - you CAN start your own radio station. But it's really hard to do with just one person. And it will take a bunch of money. Get a critical mass of people together in your town, form a non-profit, there is a really good chance that it you're not in one of the top 100 radio markets that you can get a license and start a station.

      I encourage you to try!

      --rusty

  • Go Internet (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You will probably not get a license. First, the FM band is too crowded, and secondly, FCC regs are very restrictive for newcomers. They are supposed to be public airwaves, but try to tell that to the FCC!

    What about your university radio station? Can you become a jock there?
    • In his post, he mentioned that there are only a few radio stations in his area.

      "There are a couple of country stations, a couple of 'today's hit music' stations ... and a few talk stations, but that's about it."

      He'd have his pick of frequencies, I imagine.

      Besides, Internet Radio [slashdot.org] seems to be far more expensive and restrictive.

  • don't. (Score:4, Funny)

    by mozkill ( 58658 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {tjnetsua}> on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:43PM (#4303399) Journal
    don't.

  • prometheus radio project (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:44PM (#4303405)
    The Prometheus Radio Project [prometheusradio.org] works with applicants for new Low Power FM stations, while also advocating for new laws that will actually allow for new community stations. They were a major advocate during the last fight for new FCC regulations allowing community stations, although sadly those regulations were gutted at the last moment by the National Association of Broadcasters.

    • You don't have to be a Kreskin to see that *LPFM is dying. In the United States, applications for new low-power FM radio stations must be filed electronically within a five-day filing window. The FCC hasn't released any new filing window dates in 17 months [fcc.gov]. For all practical purposes, *LPFM is dead.

    • good luck.. as the FCC is no longer taking any applications for LPFM stations... they in fact are interested in completely closing down the LPFM project due to pressure from media concerns.

      Other than buying an existing radio station... he has a snowballs chance in hell at getting a legal FM station on the air.

      • The FCC is violating the First Amendment, period. I would love to see someone start a LPFM station, be challenged by someone, and take this before the Supreme Court. Maybe then we could begin to unfuck the FCC.

  • Pirate Radio (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tyrani ( 166937 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:47PM (#4303424)
    What ever happened to pirate radio?

    I guess that streaming music over the internet has taken much of the need away. But I wonder if you could setup an old style pirate radio station.
    • Well of course there's pirate radio on the internet :) And for everyone who doesn't have a T3 handy you can use Streamer P2P radio. [streamerp2p.org] It's a P2P program that makes it easy to broadcast, (and listen!) all you need is a DSP plugin like Oddsock [oddsock.org] and bandwidth greater than dial-up, but even with dial-up you can have a 24kbps stream which has decent quality. Unfortunately there isn't a linux port YET, but we're actively seeking some to do so. If anyone can help just drop by the forums. [streamerp2p.net]

  • getting on the radio (Score:5, Insightful)

    by schussat ( 33312 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:48PM (#4303430) Journal
    You might want to consider a couple of things before you go full-on on the air: Do you want to become a full-time station manager? Who is going to run the show 24/7? The Saturday morning 5-7 AM shift is real drag, I can guarantee you that. If you just want to hear the music you like, play some CDs for yourself -- why start a radio station?

    Alternatively, if you just want to have a good time talking on the radio, why not try to get a show on the local college station? Many colleges have free-format stations; you just have to sign up (but be forewarned; you'll probably get the last slot, the Saturday 5-7 AM). It's a good time, but a lot of work to do a regular show. You ought to give it a try before actually trying to run a real broadcast station.

    -schussat

  • From the FCC site (Score:5, Informative)

    by krusaderx ( 530761 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:50PM (#4303442)
    Here's a link to everything to do with Commercial Broadcast FM Radio from the FCC's site. You should try to glean what you can from "the horse's mouth", before seeing how other people have done it. http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/main/fm.html Good luck with your endeavor!

  • AskSlashdot + Linux != radio station (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:51PM (#4303453)
    I don't know anything about radio, but I'm pretty sure that I can do it myself with my trusty Linux box. I can just rig up a playlists for all my content, right?! I just need that little box that puts it on the air waves.

    Perhaps you should consult with somebody who has experience in the radio industry to find out what is needed. I don't think that slashdot is a good forum for this.

  • Webcast instead (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:51PM (#4303455) Homepage
    If you've got the money to burn on royalties, you can always use something like Shoutcast and just webcast over the Internet instead. Unless you are talking about setting up a pirate radio station ("Arrgh, that was Bluebeard McFearsome singin' his favorite song about lootin' and pillagin', next up we've got a young lassie we'd all like to plundarrr, Brittany Spears!"), you're gonna be buried in fees.

    If you'd really like to introduce people to your music collection inexpensively, just run a P2P client with the share settings turned all the way up. ;)

    • Re:Webcast instead (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nessak ( 9218 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:46PM (#4303719) Homepage
      Not anymore. Due to the DCMA/Copyright Office/RIAA, online radio stations now need to pay a fee PER song PER listener. While one could setup a station underground, you could only promote it so much and would get letters from laywers every so often. Check out: The LOC webcasting rate page [copyright.gov] for more information about the fees of webcasting.

      The costs for a edcational, non-profit station arn't all that much if you don't have many listeners. The lowest it could cost is $500/6 months, as determined by the LOC. If you have a lot of listeners or are determined to be commersial then the costs are much more.

      Setting up a FCC licenced radio station is next to impossible. It takes years of hard work and nowadays millions of dollars. That is assuming there is even space on the dial for you. (All Primary and most secondary markets are over-saturated allready from an allocated spectrum point of view.)

      Honestly your best bet is to:

      1. Find a community/college station and get a show. It isn't as hard as it seems. There are a lot of low watt stations and they can all be found below 92Mhz. (With a few exceptions.) Check out: MIT's www.radio-locator.com [radio-locator.com] to find a list of licenced stations near you.

      2. Just find a whole bunch of CDs/Records/MP3s and play them on your stereo. You could even record some annoying ads/promos/spots and mix them into the playlist to make it sound like it is a commersial station.

      3. Do the above and hook it upto a low-power FM transmitter. You can buy low-power (FCC Part-15) transmitters in electronics stores and on the internet. Check out: Free Radio Berkeley [freeradio.org] for information on how to build your own station.

  • Talk to your schools lawyers. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jspaleta ( 136955 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:54PM (#4303474) Homepage
    Are you looking to do internet, cable-fm or broadcast am/fm.

    I was on the first student executive board for WPI's radio station. Thankfully I didn't have to do much of setup leg work...the 3 core people spent a year getting things roughed out then the first executive board got in all together. But I think i knew enough to know it wasn't fun. A lot of the more ambitious ideas fell through...like getting the signal out on the cities' cable network so even students living off campus could get access to a feed by splitting the fm off the cable line....without having to try to be approved for an FCC licence....

    First thing to do is talk to the schools lawyers about what the royality payment issues are for the type of station you want to create. You WILL have to pay royalties even if your just on your campuses cable network on an FM band. Talk to the RIAA about the restrictions they place on the types of webbroadcasts allowed under the flat royality agreements. Just having a playlist on a mandrake box without a human to annouce songtitles and what not might not be allowed. You don't want to open up your school to ANY legal liabilities. And if you want to actually do a radio broadcast there are a whole set of requirements that the FCC has...and even non-profit broadcast licenses aren't cheap.
    Do you have anyone on campus that has ANY radio or broadcast experience....even a licensed HAM radio operator would be a good resource for technical issues.

    Assuming you aren't even going to try for an FCC license....The hardest thing is getting the greenlight from the school's lawyers...the second hardest thing is getting a funding comittment for the annual royalty expenses...the technology issues fall in place prety easily.

    -jef

  • Check out recent news from the FCC (Score:4, Informative)

    by fence ( 70444 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:55PM (#4303479) Homepage
    Assuming that you are in the United States, you might want to check this info out at the
    FCC [fcc.gov]on low power FM broadcast radio stations

  • Good idea, but here's the reality... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by greysoul ( 62792 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @12:56PM (#4303486) Homepage
    Never you mind the stiffling laws of the FCC and the millions of dollars it takes these days to set up a commercial broadcast station....yes it DOES take at LEAST a million bux, which isn't much in a business world, but a lot in a "college student" world.

    Getting a lawyer, and a group of investors is step one. Most people with money wont want to talk to you, mainly because you don't have money (unless you do, but then you wouldn't be asking, you'd already know to hire a professional consultant and a legal team)

    So how do you get these people to talk to you? You could try to kidnap one of them, but you'd most likely go to jail for a very long time. A better solution is to socially engineer your ass into an elite private party and make your pitch on the covert op level.

    Of course, the _RIGHT_ way to go about it is to get a degree in broadcasting, and perhaps elctrical engineering, get a job at a radio station for 10-20 years, build up a network of contacts and then pitch your idea to them, and offer to put the money up yourself.

    Either way you decide to go, you're still going to have to suck ClearChannels cock for minimum wage and be forced to sell your station to them or risk lawsuits on behalf of the RIAA, who I suspect works for CC.

    Anyways, it's a valiant idea, but it's not likely to happen. Being a student takes too much time. You'dprobably be best off calling the local radio stations and start up a popular movement to get the music you wanna hear played. The radio stations DO NOT care about music, they care about advertising revenue. If they think there is an audiance, they'll play 24 hour polka classics on 50 stations.

    BTW, do you look to see if your school has a radio station? if they do you could probably volunteer to DJ a show once a week and play WHATEVER YA WANT! EVEN POLKA!

    Anyways, that's it for my playing devils advocate, I swear I'm not jaded, the world really is going to hell!

    CLEAR CHANNEL WILL OWN US ALL

    -GuS

    • Don't listen to these fools who say you are doomed to fail. You *can* do it, and it won't cost a million dollars. A little imagination and elbow grease and you can do anything.

      Just remember that all the naysayers in the world never got a thing done. Just do it. Jump in headlong and get yourself in over your head. That is how you learn to swim, not by wading in the kiddy pool.
  • Here's [fcc.gov] the first place to look, its the e-filing page for the FCC, sign up for your call sign, register your antenna and so on...
  • So how would you go about it as a pirate? A lot of posts are just bitching about the FCC and saying "Get a lawyer." C'mon guys, be a little more counterculture than that. What's the -technical- way you'd do it?
    • In that case it's rather simple if you are electronically inclined or have such friends.

      RF amplifiers arerather simple beasts and it would be rather simple to build one that runs in the 88-101MHz range. You mght be able to start with some off-the-shelf 'linear amp' and modify it to the appropriate range.

      Antennas are easy t come by or build. There are many books on the subject for CBers and HAMs. As long as you know the frequency and power you are targeting making the right size and shape is pretty simple.

      Source material: A computer with a large MP3 random playlist and a line-out connection to an R/F converter would take care of that.

      With 802.11b, a custom set of directional antennas and a second low-end computer, you might rig up a system to move the converter/amp/antenna around town randomly, and provide remote control of the transmitter.

      The question is: in this day of the Bush dictatorship, would you be labeled a terrorist for running a pirate radio station? Seriously, I don't dobt that if caught today that you wouldn't be held indefinitely by the military until you could prove that you weren't encoding secret plans in the music and sending them out to terrorist cells.

      They are OUR (the people's) airwaves. If we, the people, use them in a conciencious manner (low power, not trampling other's freqs, etc) then I don't think the FCC should bother us. That of course is my opinion, not reality.

      • Re:Assume Pirate. (Score:3, Informative)

        by adolf ( 21054 )
        Ramsey Electroniccs [ramseyelectronics.com] is probably the best-known vendor of consumable FM transmitters, with power levels ranging from a fraction of a Watt (good for broadcasting MP3 to your boombox out on the patio), to 500W.

        The local college station here broadcasts with effective radiated power of 150W, from a not-so-big tower on top of a 3-store campus building. I can recieve it quite well within a 10-15 mile radius with the radio in my car, and understandably-well for a few miles past that. I consider this pretty good.

        Whatever anyone does who might be considering pirate radio, I can only suggest this: be considerate to your neighbors. Nothing will draw the attention of the FCC and corporate lawyers faster than stepping all over a commercial broadcast, overmodulation of your signal (you need a stiff, brick-wall limiter in-line before the transmitter, set up by someone with a clue), or distortion of your broadcast.

        The latter troublespot, distortion, is likely to be physically dangerous to others: There's aviation bands at about 2x FM broadcast frequencies, and any malformed waveforms (harmonics) eminating from your antenna will show up in exactly this spot. This Is Bad. If you kill a the pilot of a Cessna because you feel like broadcating "good music" to the masses during bad weather, I hope you rot in jail for the rest of your life.

        That all said, you really want to at least borrow someone well-versed in radio broadcast to help with the setup and calibration of your transmitter rig. As long as you're considerate of others, you may be just fine, broadcasting away for free...until, of course, a knock at the door signals the end of the party. ;)

  • Here's How You Do It (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:09PM (#4303555)
    Incidentally, I work in radio, so I speak from a little experience.

    If you're talking about a Web "radio station," there are inexpensive packages that you can use. Needless to say, you'll need a fast internet connection (ADSL isn't really fast enough, because they cheat you on the "send") if you plan to serve more than a couple of people at a time with any quality.

    There are also commercial services that will take your streaming audio over a slower connection and refeed it into the net at much higher bandwidth. Naturally, these cost.

    One big expense will be the licensing. Many broadcast stations dropped streaming audio from their Websites because they objected to having to pay duplicate fees for ASCAP, BMI, et. al. If you're reaching a large audience, these fees can be many thousands per month. Many small web-only "broadcasters" went off the air entirely, because they couldn't afford it anymore.

    If you're talking about an over-the-air, straight-up broadcast station, be careful. You can build a low-power station for a few hundred bucks, but be warned that the FCC takes a dim view of unlicensed stations. You're limited to less than a watt (IIRC) unless you're willing to go through the (not inconsiderable) expense of filing for a license.

    (THAT takes a lot longer, and costs more, than most people think. First, you have to find a frequency. Then you have to prove that you won't interfere with existing stations. Then you have to ... you get the idea.)

    (Oh, and by the way ... your application can, and probably will be, challenged at least a dozen times. You'll have to fight each challenge, sometimes in court. If you start today, you may finally be on the air by 2005. If you're lucky)

    (Again, speaking from experience.)

    If you're talking about a station with some real power, the other poster here wasn't joking about the expense. Just filing the FCC paperwork costs a lot of money. The electric bill is very high (to get an idea, even for a modest 3,000/6,000 watt class "A" FM, it's the same as if you were to let every burner on your stove run wide open 24/7; for a 100,000 watt station, it *is* several thousand a month).

    Then there are the maintenance costs (my area of specialty). Most people overlook this. They'll find an old, worn-down and struggling AM or FM and buy it, sinking their live savings into it. Aside from the electric bills, the aforementioned licensing fees, etc., etc., the first time the transmitter gets hit by lightning, they're looking at several thousand in expenses. I have actually known such people, and have seen them FAIL just for that reason.

    (If it's an older tube transmitter, just replacing the tubes -- required at least once a year, possibly more often -- can cost thousands.)

    It costs a lot more than most people think.

    But if you're serious, find some friends who are willing to go in with you and see if you can purchase a struggling station (in this economy, there ARE a few!). You'll have to outbid Clear Channel[g], if they're interested in it, but you might get lucky. :)

    • Yup - I'm in radio as well (on the show host side, though - you engineers scare me with how you fix some of the equipment :) ), and before I got into it, I seriously looked at starting a station. It's quite horrendously expensive. Technical licensing issues minus physical property for the station and a broadcast location (which vary greatly), run an absolute minimum of $10k. Sure, you can use a Linux box and automate the audio stream - but if your station starts to creep frequency, the fines for an unattended automated system failing are really hefty, and one of the few that the FCC will enforce even if it's been subsiquently fixed (incidently, for most other things they will waive the fine if it's taken care of).

      There are loads of stations that exist on a hairwhisper and hope. Most are brokered time, run out of rundown offices, and you would be better off buying one of those. Having a MBA would do you much better than any music or broadcast knowledge - stations can be profitable, but an indie station relys on good management. And when I say profitable, I mean bare level, break even profitability.

      To sum up, it's a business - horribly expensive, brings in money just about equal to what it costs, and if you're starting out, has a huge initial investment, whether you're buying a station or building one. And it's usually cheaper to buy.

      --
      Evan (no reference, and I just woke up, am groggy, and may have stated in this post that I wash with lobsters - ignore that which makes no sense)

  • If internet radio is good enough for you, I recommend you take a look at peercast (www.peercast.org). Peercast is peer2peer stream relay program based on the gnutella protocol. At the moment it can relay mp3 and ogg streams.

    It has one big advantage over other streaming software: you only upload a few streams and do not have to worry about serving streams to all your listeners. Listeners automatically become relay points.

  • Some options (Score:5, Informative)

    by dodongo ( 412749 ) <chucksmithNO@SPAMalumni.purdue.edu> on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:12PM (#4303567) Homepage
    After five years in radio, I've learned a couple things... One, do it cuz you love it. Two, if you're in it for the money, go do something else.

    You need to consider lots of things. If you license the station through the school, you can get an educational FM frequency (88.7-91.9 MHz) which has VASTLY different rules and regs cuz it runs as a non-profit station. You need people and money to underwrite the station, of course, but as far as being one guy wanting to start a radio station, it'd be *really* nice to not have to deal with quite so much of the crap. And because you can only have underwriters and not advertisers, you don't have to deal with the absurd spot loads that plague radio today.

    You can also look into Title 15 / LPFM stations if you want a really low wattage AM or FM station, respectively. A little tranny and upkeep on it is a pretty reasonable prospect. I don't know what the deal is with moving up to a full license is, though--you may not have much of an upgrade path outside the constraints of the low-wattage restrictions.

    I'd be interested in hearing your ideas about the software you'd use to run the setup. Broadcast computers are some of the damndest pieces of hardware I've EVER worked with. It is truly a place where I don't think computers are yet up to par. They're flaky and not terribly idiot-proof. And some of the folks in broadcasting aren't the most smartest ;) so idiot-proofing is important.

    I guess that's a roundabout way of saying "you probably don't want to fulfill full FCC licensure for FM broadcast." It's a crapload of money. You'll have to deal with spot production, traffic, reconciliation, discreps, make-goods, and more affidavits than you care to shake a stick at. You'll need a full-time engineer for the tranny, and at least a part-time notary public for said affidativts. Not to disourage you at all, but I'd shy away from the full kit and kaboodle!

  • Creating your own station (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:12PM (#4303571)
    I looked into this last year, but dropped the idea once I put a cd player in my truck. You aren't going to be able to just start up a regular radio station, but the FCC did come up with some rules for low watt non-comercial radio broadcasting. The fees were fairly reasonable. Only somewhere in the neighboorhood of $90 per year, but you were limited to about 1w of power.FCC [fcc.gov] Just enough to go a mile or so. Equipment was pretty cheap. There are some all in one rigs that were only about $350. Just plug in your mp3 box and go. Check out this website.Pirate Radio [irational.org] They have some good info on equipment. The only thing that might hold you back would be the greedy music companies that want royalties everytime someone even thinks about one of their songs, much less plays them. A little legal advice or at bare minimum, legal mp3 copies (you actually own the cd's) of the music you're going to play is a must.

  • idea (Score:2, Interesting)

    by atarrri ( 580364 )
    I have an idea to make a radio station that plays every song once. It doesnt matter what kind of music it is, as long as each song is played no more then once time. And I'm not talking about once per day, or week, I'm talking about once it's played it's never played again. I think that would be sweet.
  • Question: How would you start a radio station?

    Answer: Like two porquipines fsck... very carefully.

  • Experiences from college radio (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ewann ( 209481 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:17PM (#4303594)
    My former university's radio station started as a cable FM station and existed for years that way. While I was in school, they decided to go "on the air" with a 100 watt transmitter. There are several things that have to be done to get an FCC license:


    (1) Site survey. This cost a few K$. Basically an engineer has to figure out how far your signal will propagate given your proposed antenna location and broadcast power. This determines whom you'll be interfering with, if anybody. It also helps determine what broadcast frequencies are available.


    (2) You need a broadcast engineer on staff, at least part time. This is an FCC requirement. In our small town, we just paid the engineer from a local commercial station a modest sum to help us out and fulfill the FCC requirement.


    (3) Not sure you'll have to pay royalties if you're an educational station (below 92 FM, I think). But, you'll have to get licesned as such, and your university will have to buy in.


    (4) There are a ton of rules and regulations you have to follow. Examples: hourly monitoring of your broadcast power & modulation to be sure you're not 'bleeding' into adjacent stations & violating your license; I think you have to have someone there 24/7 when you're broadcasting in case things go wrong; station IDs at the top and bottom of every hour; maintenance on your transmitter; etc etc.


    (5) You have to get an antenna. A tall building in the area might let you site on top of their building, but you'll have to pay for the antenna, transmitter, cabling back to your station, etc.

    There's more, but I'm tired of typing.
    I would suggest getting your university involved and setting up a campus radio station. The school might throw in the funds. You could also consider cable FM. It's a pretty cool way to more easily get your signal out there, particularly if other stations are already on cable FM.

  • Tough battle ahead (Score:5, Informative)

    by interociter ( 587446 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:17PM (#4303595) Homepage
    What you're attempting is going to be extrordinarily difficult and amazingly expensive. If you go the comercial radio route, you'll need between $1 and 4 million to get you up and rolling. You said you're in a small college town. Is that a small town in the middle of nowhere that's serviced by one Top 40 station, a Country, and a news station? Or are you withing listening range of a larger city's stations (which still suck)? If the latter is true, the odds are that all the freqwuencies are already taken, and would cost millions to purchase.

    First thing you need is a frequency. You'll have to do a formal frequency search to determine if there's space on the dial for another station. If the engineer you hire can find that there's space for, say, a 10 megawatt station operating at 93.5 FM, you've passed the first test.

    Odds are, that's not going to happen. I would suggest trying to start a college or public radio station. There's frequencies reserved for these stations at the bottom of the dial: 88-91.9 FM. There may be room there.

    OK, you have the frequency. Now you have to jump through all the FCC's hoops. Get a lawyer. You have to prove that you can serve the public interest, and obey all relavent laws. This is a long drawn out procedure, and one I've never personally had to go through.

    Once you have all the legal stuff done, you need an engineer. Broadcast engineers are expensive, and hard to find. Think $50-100K a year, no matter where you are. Next, you'll need a transmitter and antenna. Call it $100K. Look for a used one. Another way to go is to find a small Mom and Pop station nearby that hasn't been bought out by Clear Channel and make them an offer.

    Time to build studios! Don't skimp. This is where the magic happens. Get gigahertz pcs to run Sound Forge or ProTools. Invest in a good sound effects library, not "300 sound effects on a cd!" from Kmart. Your air studio is going to need a mixing board (10K or so), 2-3 broadcast quality cd players, a cassette deck (for recording shows), and an UberPC to run the whole thing.

    A cheaper way to go is to use cart machines (they're kinda like 8tracks), and reel-to-reel tapes, but the price you pay is that you can't automate. That's important.

    OK, you built it all. You've got a broadcast studio, an engineer to maintain it, and the tower is up and humming. Now you gotta staff it. Start with sales. You need to bring in a lot of advertising to stay afloat. It's a full time job and then some. You also need someone to do traffic: scheduling ads and billing for them.

    Next is the Program Director, and I assume that's you. Brace yourself: it's an 80-hour-a-week job for almost no money. You pick the music, the promotions, hire and fire, and keep all the onair stuff rolling. Plus you'll do an airshift, that's 25 hours a week where you can't do anything else.

    If you use an automation system, you can cut your airstaff severely. That sucks, but keep in mind that you have to pay your jocks (minimum wage). 168 hours a week x $5.15 an hour = 865.20 a week on salary for airtime alone. Add production duties, promotional stuff, and you'll be spending $7-8 grand a month on jocks salaries alone. and being as you're in a small town good DJs will be hard to find.

    I haven't even discussed music programming, which is a whole other rant. Suffice to say that you are trying to get into a business with a low profit margin and an extremely high cost of entry. If all you want is to have cool tunes for you and your freinds to listen to, try this:

    Get an mp3 player for your car with a big-ass hard drive. Run a shoutcast server and broadcast on the net. It's orders of magnitude cheaper, and you can do it all yourself.

  • I have already looked into this. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Krashed ( 264119 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:25PM (#4303630) Journal
    This is not an easy or cheap thing to do.
    First you need to have a company look into the area and analyze all radio stations within a certain distance to try to determine any regulations or interference. Cost : Several thousands
    Then you need a license from the FCC for a call sign and permission to broadcast at a certain
    frequency. Cost : Several thousands
    Then a site permit from the city to set up the equipment as well as permission to transmit near any delicate area (hospitals in some cases)
    Then you need a license with the RIAA (Music Industry). Cost : Tens of thousands a year
    Then you need a transmitter, aerial (antannae), cable (even cheap cable is expensive), and installation. Cost : Tens of thousands
    Then mixer, limiter, cables, computer, mics. (Low end is around $1000)
    Then you need the music. Not only do you have to pay the RIAA a bunch of money, but they make you buy the discs too. Sometimes you will get free radio promos from music that will soon be released.
    Then don't forget to factor in electricity for the equipment, transmitter, cooling.

    I don't mean to squash your dreams but I seriously looked into this plus I got several chance to visit a radio station, KESO on South Padre Island. If any of you visit the island, you probably have heard it "92.7, the valley's only alternative". Their situation is very starange, to me at least. They buy most of their programming from somewhere else, then mix it with their stuff and broadcast it by microwave to Port Isabel to the FM transmitter. They have a pretty short range yet it is still expensive to run.

    You might hear people talking about pirate radio stations. Keep in mind that unless you load the equipment in a van and constantly drive around, you will be caught sooner or later, plus you only will have a range of a couple of miles.

    krashed
    Brownsville, Texas
    • Then mixer, limiter, cables, computer, mics. (Low end is around $1000)

      sorry but a low wnd optimod limiter is $2900.00USD.. with a good-n-cheap 3 band compressor running in at just under $3995.00

      these two items are REQUIRED... not if's ands or butts... anyone running a station without them are idiots and morons... you MUST keep your station from overmodulating. if you overmodulate, you get an FFC fine or get your station shut down forever and ever..

      the compressor? that's so that you sont sound quiet.. you must bring the apparent volume of your station up.. and only a 3 band compressor is worth a damn... I have a single band compressor here I'll sell you for $500.00 but it's crap, you dont want it, it will make your station sound like crap.

      as for the jock's workstation? nahh, give em a radio-shack mixer and a 2 CD dj player. with a shure highball mic... less than $1000.00 spent and you are on the air.... you dont need a $5000.00 CD player for a radio station... the transmitter is going to butcher audio quality anyways... a $59.95 cd player will sound just as good.

      ASCAP + BMI fees? be sure to bend over and bring lots of vaselene....

  • Pirate Radio info (and legit stuff too) (Score:4, Informative)

    by torklugnutz ( 212328 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:26PM (#4303636) Homepage
    I found a site with a lot of good links here:
    http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hall /8701/p iralynx.htm

    He has a link to some stories about the FCC's new regulation which licenses 10 and 100 watt stations (10 Watt is the lowest legal amount of power you cna have). This would be the cheapest legal way for you to get set up.

    Pirate radio stations are often in the 2.5 watt range, which is enough to cover about a mile to 2 mile radius. Once you get more power than that, you become easier to catch. Typical pirate stations only run for a few hours a day, or week, since they are usually operated by a lone DJ.

    A kit to get you started should be about $500.

    On a side note, just about everyone has pirate broadcast equipment sitting around their house, but doesn't know it. You can take your VCR and hook up an antenna to your video-out co-ax connection (instead of a piece of coax cable into the back of your TV) and bango! You're boradcasting at an incredible .75 watt to channel 3 or 4 of all the TV's in the vicinity. What fun.

    • On a side note, just about everyone has pirate broadcast equipment sitting around their house, but doesn't know it. You can take your VCR and hook up an antenna to your video-out co-ax connection (instead of a piece of coax cable into the back of your TV) and bango! You're boradcasting at an incredible .75 watt to channel 3 or 4 of all the TV's in the vicinity. What fun.

      In the early 80s my dad's business bought an early Quasar VCR (the videotape deck was portable and seperate from the tuner/timer portion) and a Panasonic color camera as a tax writeoff. We had loads of fun with the dubbing cable, a boombox, the camera, a tennis racket and a selection of obnoxious hard rock music making our own music videos.

      Somewhere in the manual was a "Do Not" pictograph showing you not to hook the tv out jack to your antenna with "FCC warning" or something written near it. Needless to say, this is all the encouragement we needed to actually do it.

      We put on our best music videos -- me jumping around with a tennis racket to "Whole Lotta Rosie" -- a very time-consumingly shot video of matchbox cars smashing into legos and wood blocks, and other cinema verite and then went to all the neighborhood houses we could get into to see what fabulous programming could be found on Channel 3.

      Nothing. Not even a faint signal. No audio, no video, zilch. We had the tallest house in our 5-house Nielsen sample, and a big antenna on the peak of the roof and not even our next door neighbors could get the signal.

      Anyway, maybe it was just our VCR but I don't think you really can broadcast with a VCR.
  • Some guys did it at RPI [rpi.edu] when I was there. They started it out of their dorm room, posted signs around campus listing the station, and did a decent job involving the listeners. It went for a while, but listeners dropped off, as did participation ... but for the month or so that it ran, it was amusing.

  • Music licensing (Score:2, Informative)

    by rbruels ( 253523 )
    One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that the prohibitive cost of running a radio station is music licensing. If you were to just turn on your Mandrake box, run the playlist, and then broadcast it over the airwaves, you'd have suit-clad lawyers all over you in minutes.

    I don't know the costs of doing this for commercial radio stations, but we know how loving and understanding the Recording Industry of America is when it comes to helping out the little guys...

    Make sure you research that before digging too far! Good luck!

  • Why Would You Start a Radio Station?

  • Some preliminary steps (Score:5, Informative)

    by tutal ( 512222 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:42PM (#4303699)
    I was station manager for my college's radio station and I have also helped start another radio station in the Milwaukee area (still waiting for our frequency).

    Most likely if you live in any kind of metropolitian area of 100k people or more, then you probably are going to have to fork over big bucks to a radio conglomerate to even have access to a radio frequency (after deregulation, radio conglomerates bought up all available frquencies).

    If you are able to obtain rights for a frequency from the conglomerate, or there are available frequencies, then you must applie to the FCC for control over the frequency. In the application you must choose if your station will be low or high power and if you will be a non or for profit station.

    So now you got approval from the fcc, for lets say, a high power commercial station. Now you have to rent the use of a broadcast tower (big bucks). You also need to buy equipment, a transmitter, an amplifier. At minimum you will want to be able to play music, so you have a few more expenses.

    You need to buy a soundboard at minimum something like a Mackie 1604 VLZ (wich runs about $700-1000 US). Cabling will run you anywhere from a mere $200 to over $5000. Oh and if you want to play anyone's music, you have to pay for your music or get record company demos, (no Napster mp3s here) and you must pay for royalties to a company like BMI, rates are based on revenues (a $500 minimum yearly fee).

    IF, you can get thru all of the above (you are probably looking at startup costs of upwards of $50k-100k), and I probably left some things out, then you should be well on your way.

    Here are some useful links:

    BMI Licensing: http://www.bmi.com/licensing/

    FCC Broadcast Radio Page: http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/

    In all, good luck.
  • http://www.beosradio.com/tunetracker

    very cheap (especially compared to other radio automation systems) and very stable.
  • First the hardware costs, and someone to maintain the gear and engineer the shows. You need a FCC license, and guess what you have to pay for the music you play. That's what BMI and ASCAP do is make sure you are tracking what you play and pay tne mechanical royalites that the artists eventually get.

  • Microbroadcasting (Score:2, Informative)

    by ssafarik ( 63841 )
    To start a "real" station is for the most part impossible, due to the NAB, Clear Channel, FCC, big money, etc. But you can go ahead and create your own micropowered station with a couple of watts that will cover several miles, and not interfere with any existing stations. Get yourself a 4-watt transmitter from http://www.nrgkits.com [nrgkits.com], put it into a case, make yourself an antenna, and hook it all up to your mp3 list. This setup is affordable and doable with a bit of effort. Although the FCC rules presently say otherwise, the airwaves are public and you can assert your right to use them.
  • 10 years ago myself and a few friends did just that. We built a couple of Ramsey stereo FM kits and just started broadcasting music. The range was short (around 1/3 mile) but a few of the dorms could pick up the radio without any problems. The Ramsey kit can be had for around $20-30.
  • Oh, for crying out loud. Give us a break.

    Lots of money. You are competing with Clear Channel

    License from the FCC, frequency assignment. NOTE: There are unlicensed stations, but they are low power.

    Transmitter - rated in watts, more is good.

    Tower for antenna to be mounted on - rated in feet, more is good

    Antenna - rated in Db Gain, more is good

    Transmission line/wave guide

    Nitrogen gas for transmission line/wave guide/antenna bay

    Clearance from the FAA if the tower is in a flight area.

    Land to plant tower

    Building to plant Transmitter

    Power to run Transmitter (around $5,000 to $30,000 per month, depending on AM/FM and power output.)

    Audio equipment

    License agreement with ASCAP, RIAA, others

    permits from your state and city

    An accountant

    A sales farce

    Engineers & Technicians

    listeners

  • After two low power college radio stations... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:38PM (#4303946)
    I worked at Assumption College's AM over AC power and their LPFM station and was on the team that started St Anselm's LPFM. The steps are largely what is detailed - but forget royalties if you're LPFM and college radio.

    it's a lot of hard work, but it's fun and rewarding.

    LPFM went away for a while and is now back - but see the FCC about what's different.

    You do have to do a frequency & call sign search, you have to do a power survey (an engineer divines where your signal will reach with a given effective radiated power) - this is a real cost by a pro. The great thing about both of these stations was that they were on hills in Worcester MA and Manchester NH - we carried pretty far on both - more than the mile you expect.

    The "new" LPFM is 100 watts and 100 feet - 100 watts ERP at an antenna height of 100 feet. That should cover about 3 miles in most cases, YMMV.

    You do have to have the school involved. It has to be official. The school will be the applicant to the FCC - we stared the NH one with board approval and in 1979-80 it cost roughly $80,000, though if we sweated a lot we figured we could have done it for $40,000, again from scratch.

    You do have to wait for an application window - you can't just walk up and do this when you feel like it.

    You need a studio, transmitter, and people to take care of these things. The engineer is a licensed person generally, though the LPFM regs are forgiving - we got a geek to be "it" and ran him thru the courses.

    Many trips to the Boston FCC - whose offices at the time were in the top of the Customs House.

    We lucked out in NH because we started with people who were geeks and band members - so they did a lot of the background work oin getting good stuff right the first time.

    You will have to do a demographic survey of the area you'll be serving. I at one point knew exactly how many persons of each race were in Hillsborogh County NH - for some strange reason southern New Hampshire had a whole lof of Philipinos.

    In this capacity, the FCC is not the draconian bunch many make them out to be - they will lead you by the nose to get these steps done, it's their job to promote this stuff.

  • More College Radio Experience (Score:3, Informative)

    by da3dAlus ( 20553 ) <dustin.grau@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Saturday September 21, 2002 @03:07PM (#4304054) Homepage Journal
    For the last 3 years I've been a DJ at a college radio station. My second year I was chief engineer, and my 3rd year I was general manager. I had to contend with a lot of projects during those last two years, including petitioning the FCC for a new frequency.

    If you're looking to start up a radio station yourself (not internet broadcast, but real over-the-air station), and you don't have at least $50K laying around, then I'd say forget about it. Even if you are planning to do an internet-broadcast-only station, I assume you haven't been keeping up with legislation about royalty payments even for small broadcasters.

    Now, if you are planning to help start up a station for a college, you may have a better chance. Again, you'll need roughly $50K just to get the station off the ground (no pun intended). Depending on how saturated your radio market is in the area, what part of the country you're in, how much of a surplus budget the college has, and the logistics of building a studio and placement of the antenna, there's a lot to do before you even think about asking for the money in the first place.

    Now, here's the rundown for what you'll need, monetarily speaking:

    Minimum $8K operating expenses per year. This will mainly be needed for royalty payments and other payments to the record companies. These fees are NOT cheap by any means. This is a re-occuuring cost, so you'd need some real financial support to keep the station going. Stipends, new equipment, etc is not even factored in here, but that's an additional $6-8K a year.

    The FCC no longer allows any less than a 100W Class A license for new radio stations. You may still qualify as a non-commercial, educational (NCE) station if you are building a station for your college--this allows you some reduced fees.

    Low power FM (LPFM) licenses are also possible, but I'm not familiar with how the FCC deals with those--it's a whole other type of license scheme than what I'm familiar with.

    Your antenna will cost roughly $3-4K, and a 100W transmitter will run you $6-8K. This is just a basic estimate for the lowest possible license class.

    Site survey and engineering paperwork will run you about $3-4K minimum. This is absolutely neccessary for filing with the FCC. I recommend actually paying a company to do this work, even if you attend a technical college.

    FCC Lawyer--get one. They can really help with the paperwork and answer any questions you have, but it's not cheap either. Expect anywhere from $8-20K for that expense (roughly $300/hr)!

    Good news: filing the application for a non-commercial license with the FCC is free. Bad news: you will wait a minimum of 4-6 months just for the FCC to look at your application. That doesn't even include the waiting around for new application windows and postponements for rule making sessions. There's a whole list of crap the FCC does that will delay your license.

    Contact and subscribe to magazines such as CMJ (College Music Journal) to help you get music for your station. This is about $300/yr, and can be included as part of the first expense I mentioned.

    Most importantly, you'll need a broadcast studio. Mixer, CD players, mics, etc will run you another $10-20K, unless you plan to hook your computer straight to the transmitter :)

    I don't mean to discourage you, but if this list hasn't made you turn tail and run, then I wish you the best of luck in sticking it to the world of commercial radio.

  • This story peaked my interest and I headed over to Ebay to see what kind of radio stations might be for sale... you never know.

    What I found instead was a Ramsey [ramseyelectronics.com] FM Transmitter (model number FM-100 [ramseyelectronics.com]) that was currently at $349. Turns out that's way overpriced, considering Ramsey sells it for $224.95, unless this is the high-power version that Ramsey isn't supposed to sell inside the US -- in which case that might be an excellent opportunity for somebody in the US to get this one from a "third party" -- I'm not saying you SHOULD, just that you COULD.

    Anyway, I thought this was really neat. Is it going to give you miles and miles of coverage? Heck no. But it's an all-in-one FM transmitter, and replaces a bunch of hefty equipment that I remember from my days in FM radio as a kid. Especially if this is the "overseas version", you could get enough coverage for you and your friends.... then you can head over to the FCC's site about LPFM [fcc.gov] (Low Power FM) to see if, through your school or something, you could get a LPFM license. Apparently they're pretty straightfoward.

  • Some thoughts.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mkldev ( 219128 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @03:30PM (#4304141) Homepage
    1. Get your school to set one up. Because it is an educational institution, it could probably find a frequency in the bottom end of the spectrum where the spectrum is less dense, which means that A. they'd be more likely to be able to -get- a license, and B. they'd have less interference problems at lower wattage. A typical college station is 300-600 watts and can reach about a 20 mile radius. (The advantage of being at a lower frequency and having less adjacent stations.)

    2. There's the issue of the site survey, filing for a construction permit with the FCC, getting said permit, building the tower and getting it up and running within a year, and REMEMBERING TO UPGRADE YOUR LICENSE WHEN CONSTRUCTION IS FINISHED! I can't emphasize that enough. Failing to notify the FCC of completion of construction is the surest way to get pulled off the air, fined, or both.

    3. Decide on how many hours you will broadcast. You don't have to broadcast all day, but if you don't, someone else could insist on taking over your spectrum slice the rest of the day. It is better to defend it by broadcasting 24x7 unless you are in a rural area and can't afford to do so.

    4. Make sure you buy a transmitter with automated monitoring capabilities. You do not want to have to have an engineer on-site at all times.

    5. The college must hire an engineer to be on call.

    6. Set up the on-air studio. Lots of other people have commented on that, so I'll keep this brief. For the on-air studio: decent mixer, decent CD players, decent cassette deck, decent on-air automation computer, decent microphone, and at least two cart machines. They don't have to be new digicarts. Find a couple of old ones that a commercial station is throwing out. This is important because you need to be able to broadcast liners even if your automation goes down.

    7. Set up the production studio. Similar equipment to the on-air studio. Networking between them, preferrably not part of the campus network to avoid hacking issues.

    8. Automation software and possibly hardware. Scott Systems makes a decent system, as do several others, but they're all exorbitantly expensive for a new station. If you don't mind getting your hands dirty in either Mac OS X or Linux to set it up, there's always songcue [songcue.com]. It's open source, runs on top of MySQL or PostGreSQL, and knows how to drive a slightly hacked mpg123, ogg123, or esdcat. Requires esound. Ideally, you should dedicate a machine to this, and I'll note that the Mac OS X version does a better job at avoiding dropouts in the audio. :-)

    9. Talent. You'll need on-air talent to staff the station. A good way to do this is to get your school's communications department to make learning the system (say as a news reader) a mandatory part of a radio broadcasting class and to provide course credit for people who stay on and work at the station.

    10. BMI -and- ASCAP reporting. You'll need to check with them to find out what needs to be reported to each.

    11. As mentioned, you may also consider either a carrier current AM (extremely low power) or a cable radio (soundtrack for campus information channel) setup. That's a good way to get started initially, since you don't have to mess with the transmitter and FCC licensing. However -all- of the other costs and issues remain true, so the cost is not really that different. It does, however, allow you to get something up and running much more quickly, which can be good as a proof-of-concept for getting additional non-recurring funding the next year for equipment improvements, something which is essential in a college environment.

  • we did it (Score:2, Informative)

    by manofoar ( 584867 )
    I used to volunteer for my school's on-campus radio station (we used to broadcast directly to the dorms by hooking an AM transmitter onto the power line leading to each dorm). The way to start a radio station in your town is to appeal to the students first, as they will be your chief source of FREE labor. Yes, FREE. When we would run recruiting drives to fill up time-slots for our station, all we had to do was stick a table with "Be a DJ!" on a sign, and we'd have 100-200 people sign up with us in a day. So much for dead-air!

    As for equipment, you can get great equipment for cheap as well. First, talk to your local TV and radio stations and see if they'd like to donate old equipment to you instead of chucking it. We survived for about 5 years on an old Ward-Beck board that was donated to us from KIRO in seattle. After it died, we got $10K and upgraded to a nice digital board and also got a digital logger as well :)

    The music end of the whole thing isn't that difficult to set up; once you have a designator from the FCC (i.e. KIRO, KING, KZZP, or WAL, etc.), you can land-line broadcast no problem. As for air-broadcast, there is a way to broadcast on the air without getting a liscense, but your coverage is useless. FCC regs say that you can broadcast with at most a 100 meter range before you need to ge a liscense. So, I'd say stick your small (and it is small, about .1 watts!) antenna and transmitter on the tallest building on the college campus (if it's the most central, great!), and hope it can reach the dorms.

    If you want to go higher power than that, you'll need cash, and lots of it, espeically if all the open slots in your area are used up. Right now, my old U is trying to get donations to purchase a frequency to broadcast on, since the radio station right now is as good as it will get unless we can broadcast somewhere that's not on campus :).
  • Anyone who says "a lil' somethin somethin" should not be starting a radio station.

    Steve
  • I've been listening to RADIOSTORM.COM .. it's amazing. These guys do "internet radio" the right way. Plenty of bandwidth, so I just press the play button, and it plays almost immediately (xmms). They have a good hard rock stream, without commercials or interruptions. Their stream is 128k, so the quality is good enough to actually listen to it and be able to enjoy. Screw the FCC.. "internet radio" is the way to go, especially if you do it right. People will listen.

  • I am in the radio business.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Newer Guy ( 520108 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @07:41PM (#4304937)
    It's impossible right now to apply for a FM commercial radio station. The FCC has had a freeze on applications for new commercial FM stations since 1998 and will probably not allow them until late 2003. In addition, the FCC will only allow you to apply for vacant frequencies that are in their rules (95CFR 73.204). If you want to put an FM station in another community, you need to file a Petition for Rulemaking which needs to show that a channel can be put there without stepping on other stations. The FCC uses mileage separations between transmitter sites to determine this. If your petition is accepted (and there's no sure thing it will) it takes 6 - 12 months for them to assign the channel. Right now there are over 600 vacant FM channels waiting for the freeze on applications to lift. It likely will be several years before even the first one of these can actually begin constructing their station. Noncommercial FM stations in the reserved band (88.1-91.9) are easier to get. First off, you need to be either a school, church or nonprofit educational foundation to qualify. Second, there's no requirement for a rulemaking; you can 'put one where it fits' and that also allows for directional antennas (perhaps half of the non coms operate directionally). The downside is that you can not sell commercials. Finally, there's a whole new class of FM stations; The Low Power (LPFM) ones. These mostly operate with the effective coverage of that obtained with 100 watts radiated power and an antenna height of 100 feet. They cover a radius of about five miles and are non-commercial. Here is a web site that will let you find a LPFM channel: http://www.recnet.com/fmmap/ Be warned however that the whole status of LPFM's are being challenged by the big commercial broadcasters because they are not restricted to 88-92; they may exist anywhere between 88-108. The commercial broadcasters are threatened by the prospect of 100's of these LPFM stations cutting into their signals. I hope this helps you out.

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