The Smallest Radio Station in Los Angeles

 

Back in May of 2015 LA Weekly ran the story "L.A.'s Smallest Radio Station, 97.5 KBUU, Broadcasts Out of a Malibu Bedroom."  Station founder Hans Laetz figured prominently. Thought probably well-intended, it also described that radio station in the same terms you might describe a basement-dwelling teenager playing Minecraft.

"The KBUU-FM radio studio is in a ranch-style tract house, on a cul de sac on one of Malibu's few suburban-style streets. In what used to be Emily Laetz's bedroom, the detritus of a recently moved-out kid is everywhere. Puka shell necklaces hang near the door and a stack of Malibu High School yearbooks is piled on the desk, along with an LP (The Doors' Greatest Hits) and a wadded up clump of bathing suit. On the wall are a tide calendar from 2011 and a homemade a poster that says “Big Dume September 2007.”

In an era of tiny houses this tiny station begins to sound positive, perhaps even trendy. The article (which was actually very good) went on to to cite more tiny things about KBUU:

1. It the only local radio station in Malibu
2. It’s the smallest radio station in greater Los Angeles (by wattage)
3. It's the smallest NPR affiliate in the world [here and here]
   

I think we should look at the merits of those claims currently and in a historical context because that's what we're here for.  So excluding repeaters below is a list of all the LPFMs in the Los Angeles area. As you can see, KBUU's 71 watts has 95% more watts than the three smallest (KFEP, KLDB, and KZUT) but in terms of pure wattage, ignoring HAAT, they still rank 10th in a field of 16 LPFMs at least nominally in the Los Angeles MSA. 

But KFEP only got their CP in 2019, that's years after that article ran. It's the same case with KLDB and KZUT was only a little earlier with a January 2018 CP. The closest was KZKA which was granted in 2016, and KQEV which was granted in November 2015, that's a mere 7 months after KBUU went on air with their original 2014 CP.

FREQUENCY	CALLS	WATTS	CITY
96.7	KGAP	50	Los Angeles
97.5	KHUG	100	Castaic
99.1	KFEP	3	Los Angeles
99.1	KLDB	3	Los Angeles
99.1	KZUT	3	Los Angeles
99.1	KTPC	50	Venice
99.1	KWSC	100	Simi Valley
99.1	KWSV	7	Chatsworth
99.1	KLBP	100	Long Beach
101.5	KQBH	50	Los Angeles
101.5	KQSG	100	El Monte
101.5	KROJ	50	Panorama City
101.5	KZKA	25	Los Angeles
101.5	KHBG	100	Pasadena
104.7	KQEV	48	Walnut
107.9	KQRU	100	Santa Clarita

KBUU hit the news again in 2019, when the FCC ruled cited them for operating at an unauthorized power on an unauthorized channel. That is a total no-no and can result in some big fines. Instead, the FCC lowered the fine to a more modest $6,000 and then waived it entirely stating "...we will cancel the forfeiture for inability to pay and instead admonish Zuma for the violations."  [SOURCE] That's not usually how that story ends. One gets the impression they're doing something right.They are still the only local station in Malibu.

KBUU has come leaps and bounds since it's initial CP. They were briefly the smallest radio station in Los Angeles but are no longer. Instead they led a trend of fully legal micro-broadcasters in the metro. In 2018 KBUU was granted two construction permits for boosters to further improve its signal in the Malibu area: one at 19 watts and another at a mere 2 watts. When it is constructed, the latter will be the smallest booster in the greater Los Angeles area.

LPFM on US Islands

The LPFM license is in a precarious position on the best of days. But co-channel protections on US territorial islands are even more challenging for one primary reason: spacing. The co-channel protections require much greater distances. Take a class A station for example. On the US mainland a 24 km co-channel protection is required. But on a U.S. territorial island that triples to 80 km. The first adjacent protection more than quadruples from 24 km to 111 km.  The second and third adjacent channel minimum separation increases from 29 to 42 km. More here.

Currently, the United States has five major U.S. territories: American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. All of those islands groups combined only have 14 LPFM radio stations. Most of them reside in Puerto Rico, which despite occupying over 5,000 sq miles Puerto Rico only has 9 LPFMs.

Out of that list. only one University is represented: 97.3 WUVI at The University of the Virgin Islands. The University was granted a CP in 2014 to build the 100 watt LPFM station. But the station has it's roots in a much older religious station.

The LPFM station descends from the original AM stick 1090 WUVI-AM, founded in October 1985 as WIBS. It was sold to the Three Angels Corporation in 1989 and renamed WGOD. Dr. Alexander Randall managed to arrange for the University to lease the station from Three AngelsCorp. in 2012 whereupon the station changed calls to WUVI. But in 2017 hurricanes Irma and Maria did so much damage to the WUVI-AM facility that it was too expensive to repair. Its license was cancelled September 23, 2019; leaving the LPFM the sole facility surviving.

Below is a complete list of the LPFM stations currently licensed to US territorial islands.

Puerto Rico:

City	Frequency	Call sign	Format
Aguada-Aguadilla	90.7	WQHD-LP	Latin Oldies
Mayaguez-Anasco	90.9	WLYM-LP	Adult Contemporary
Caguas	90.9	WODB-LP	Religious
Moca	93.7	WMAA-LP	Religious
Moca	97.9	WZFE-LP	Religious
Isabela-Quebradillas	98.1	WCXQ-LP	Tropical
Cabo Rojo-Mayaguez	98.1	WZCL-LP	Adult Contemporary
Mayaguez	107.9	WVPJ-LP	Religious
Aguadilla-Aguada	107.9	WYKQ-LP	Religious

---

The US Virgin Islands

City	Frequency	Call sign	Format
Charlotte Amalie	96.9	WTJC-LP	Religious
John Brewers Bay	97.3	WUVI-LP	College

---

Guam (Yes, just one LP station)

City	Frequency	Call sign	Format
Tumon	106.9	KGCA-LP	Religious

---

American Samoa

City	Frequency	Call sign	Format
Tafuna	94.5	KKAS-LP	Religious
Ili'ili	95.1	KULA-LP	Religious

---

If you were curious I did not skip the Northern Mariana Islands. They have no LPFM stations as of this date, and very few stations in the first place. They have at present: 7 FM stations, 1 FM repeater, 1 FM translator and 1 very lonely-looking AM station. Before you ask about those scant US minor outlying islands... most of them are uninhabited and there are no radio stations on the few that are: Midway Island, Palmyra Atoll and Wake Island.

Peanut Whistle

From Transistor Transmitters for the Amateur by Donald L. Stoner

For decades, possibly up to a century "peanut whistle" has been slang for a low power transmitter. The two words have been bound together for 150 years or more and have evolved through multiple  different meanings.

In 1880 some models of peanut roasters released exhaust steam from the boiler or heat chamber through a pipe to sound a whistle. Ex patent # 225561. Metal working trade magazines shared simple designs. An 1897 issue of the magazine The Metal Worker describes the whistle itself.  "The whistle is made from two disks 1½ inches in diameter, raised and soldered together, and having a small hole in the underside, on the edge of which the steam is blown."  These typically brass steam whistles were the OG peanut whistles; and are now pricey collectibles.

That usage tied to the sound of the peanut roaster cart was later conflated with cheap and colorful plastic toy "peanut whistles." In the 1950s Planters manufactured them by the thousands. The term came to include any cheap toy whistles, plastic, brass, tin, anthropomorphic and/or otherwise. Strangely both of these meanings came to dovetail in small, under-powered transmitters.  Here [LINK] is a great story about a pirate station in Vietnam 30 years later.

In March of 1897 Forek Bain a then well-known electrical engineer in Chicago, wrote an article Whistling Arcs - A case of Electrostatic Induction, and the remedy for The Western Electrician:

"The strange phenomenon to which I refer was a loud, harsh whistling noise produced in the lamps as soon as the arcs were struck. The whistle was nearly identical in tone to that of the deviling whistle of the familiar peanut roaster. It registered somewhere between upper and middle C. It was very loud and could be heard at about two blocks distant from the lamb engaged in this disagreeable pastime."

There lies the onomatopoeic connection between small transmitters and the peanut whistle. They poth emitted a high-pitched sound. But it appears that the continuous radio wave itself was imagined by some as a "whistle" in comparison to the make/break nature of the telegraph. This goes back to the earliest spark gap transmitters. In 1892 George Francis Fitzgerald wrote in Nature:

"...the electromagnetic vibrations set up by Leyden jar or condenser discharges die out very rapidly, it was very desirable to obtain some means whereby the vibrations could be maintained continuously. Comparing such vibrations with those of sound, he said the jar discharges were analogous to the transient sound produced by suddenly taking a cork out of a bottle; what was now required was to obtain a continuous electromagnetic vibration analogous to the sound produced by blowing across the top of a bottle-neck. In other words, some form of electric whistle or organ-pipe was required."

So starting from there it's not hard to imagine why the original WOR transmitter with it's antenna on the roof of Bambergers department store would be called a peanut whistle back in 1922. Or why New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia would dismiss the WNYC facility at the Commodore Hotel as a 'peanut whistle' in 1934. Even as Edwin Armstrong began to develop transmitters that would improve clarity on the VHF and UHF bands, the usage continued. Vincent Galloway of Omaha, NB wrote into Radio World in November of 1922 and asked:

"In making up the Armstrong super-regenerative receiver, I have experienced a “peanut whistle.” This sometimes develops into a sound like a hiss or a water fall. My tickler coil, or ball, is 4 inches in diameter wound with No. 24 enamel wire and has about 90 turns. The filter condenser is not affected; neither is the potentiometer which feeds the coupler."

The magazine's editor wrote back to answer in the same column:

"The 'peanut whistle' you describe is the correct whistle to obtain. It should not be very strong, but it proves your oscillating tube is OK, or as we say 'She motes.' the connections are correct. We suggest that you get the switches on the primary of the vario-coupler at the exact adjustment for 360 meters, otherwise you will get nothing but the whistle. If there is a very great difference even the whistle will be blotted out..."

The term became more popular in WWII, referring to small transmitters, and moved into popular HAM jargon where continued to refer to low power transmitters. The term appeared often in QST magazine in reference to 2 and 5 watt transmitters. But we must not forget the disposable cheapness of those toy whistles. Those play their own part. The book The Birth of Top 40 Radio by Richard Fatherley and David MacFarland hammered home the idea that the facility of the 250 watt 1450 WTIX-AM in 1953 was in poor nick. They referred to it as both a "chewing gum & bailing wire operation" and a page later as a "peanut-whistle" technical facility. Already low power, small transmitters were synonymous with low quality... like a toy peanut whistle.

Joe Harris: Bad DJ

I was reading Radio-Info and caught the second half of a story I wish I'd had been paying better attention to.  It turns out that Benton Harbor Emergency Manager Joe Harris put the Benton Harbor city LPFM radio station, 96.5 WBHC on eBay. It turns out that it's not legal to do that, not even a smidgen. The FCC actually calls it a scam in their own documentation here. The auction was listed with a starting price of $5,000. It ended on February 9th with zero bids. Even today, the FCC still has not received notification for an STA for the station to remain silent. The FCC has taken no action, probably trying to stay out of the very ugly politics. More here and here and here. The expired eBay listing is here.

The city was operating with huge budget deficits so there is certainly a valid argument for cost-cutting. Harris was of the opinion that closing down the radio station could save the city $10,000-20,000 a year. The station hasn't been in the city hall basement all that long either. Benton Harbor had applied for a license in August of 2000, and the FCC granted a CP on June 17, 2003 for the 100 watt station.  They signed on in November of 2005 shortly after Thanksgiving. Harris shut down the radio station on January 1, 2012, just about 50 days ago. Let's review: How did this happen?  There's a lot of back story.

It's hard not to get a bit political when something like this goes down.You may or may not be aware, but in 2011, the Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder [R] signed a law allowing him to appoint an Emergency Financial Managers (EFM) to take over any city in his state with the power to overrule all local governance.That's a situation with all kinds of implications. Essentially America practices democracy coast to coast... just not in Benton harbor. Snyder has used this new power in about a dozen cities. In Benton Harbor he used it to appointed Michigan's worst DJ: Joe Harris. Now I will admit that Benton Harbor clearly has some serious money problems, but is this legal? There's some debate as to Mr. Harris' power within Michigan state law. But there is no debate as to his sway over federal law—bupkis.  The law is clear. Allow me to quote the Broadcast Law Blog:

"Once a station has ceased operations for 10 days, a notice must be filed with the the FCC providing notification that the station is not operational.  If the station remains silent for 30 days, specific permission, in the form of a request for Special Temporary Authority to remain silent, must be sought from the FCC."

So the question remains.. who will file the complaint that earns Benton harbor a big 5-digit fine? Nassau Broadcasting Partners was served a $17,000 fine for a similar incident regarding 960 WPLY-AM in Stroudsburg, PA just this January. That sort of makes the imagined 5k payday seem a bit short-sighted.

Broadcast Station Totals (Pt 3)

This is where we get extra snazzy and graph our data array. Patterns get very obvious when you start drawing pretty pictures. Note to open source software users. The spreadsheets in Open Office are unusable for this sort of basic graphing, it will assume extra decimal places when it renders graphs or charts, producing completely wrong data in the graphs.  It's not  actually fixable either manually or problematically. It's just a crappy app. I recommend Gnumeric. It not only works, but is actually intuitive.

Let's start with AM radio. The general consensus is that it is in a slow decline.If you look below that's true. The AM  band has lost 200 stations in about 20 years. That's only an average of about ten per year, less than one per month. I find this data unsurprising and therefore uninteresting.

Next is FM radio. FM began to match AM radio in ratings before 1980. My gut feeling is that FM is today where AM was 30 years ago. Growth is slowing, but it's faring better than AM by far. I'll compare the two in this chart.

You can see here that AM and FM bands actually cross in column four aka 1994. After that the growth of FM tapered, but continued. In other words it's rate of growth is diminishing but it is still growing. So while AM is closing stations, others are opening FM stations.  Nothing surprising here either.

Above is a chart for the growth of LP FM. It too has no surprises. It began rolling out in 2004 after some fits and starts. It was ultimately rescued from the malice of the NAB by U.S. Senators John McCain [R], Maria Cantwell [D], and Patrick Leahy [D].  Thank you all.  So what you see here clearly is that it didn't exist until 1994 and then rockets up to what will probably be a bumpy plateau. The truth is that they only began including that data in the summary reports that year so there should be a bit more of a ramp on the front end of this line. It's also important to point out that this was tempered in licensing by the Great Translator invation of 2003. More here. 13,000 translator applications were filed in March of 2003. This was an organized effort by large-scale religious broadcasters to block out RF real estate while it was still possible. For the most part they succeeded and many small markets got satellite-fed religious programming instead of local content.

While we're on that topic here are the "Educational FM Stations."  That's in quotes because that category is mostly religious stations. You can see by the slope of this line that their rate of growth is increasing. Despite the overall slow down of FM radio as a whole, their growth rate is almost at a 45 degree angle. They are pouring money into this deployment. This is all privately funded as this group has no advertising revenues. As I stated previously I consider this unsustainable.

The general public still listens to radio. The ratings book tell us that while tastes are diverse the general categories of popular radio stations are music, sports or news. A radio dial crammed with religious chatter is not what the public wants. There is definitely room for some religious programming on some stations in every market. But what graph indicates above is not appropriate. They are effectively spamming the radio dial, and as a result they will drive users away from the platform. In other words: this is part of the problem.

NEW TOY!

I want one.

Radio Express is just a small automated radio signal for temporary applications. It's a noncommercial radio information service that can broadcast directions, schedules, safety info, rules and regulations, parking and traffic info.

It's intended for public events such as fairs, festivals, conventions and sports contests can give inbound patrons information on parking, directions and special instructions. Like EAS, it's meant to aid organizers in the case of bad weather, fire or any other emergency.

But nothing says you cant broadcast live programming to listeners and with the allowed signal, that can be 5 miles. It's a license, a tripod antenna and a radio station in a suitcase. It's just badass. Radio

LPFM Rules!

I rarely cover current events but this is all too important to skip over.

Late last night after everyone sober or sane went to bed and there was no chance of seeing the handshakes or the duffel bags of cash but Kevin gave in. Maybe it was a token, maybe it was pure bribery, maybe it was an admission of his total loss of juice inside the beltway.

The room was mostly empty when the FCC voted for Proposed Rulemaking (FCC 07-204). The result was that LP radio would be allowed to survive and perhaps even to prosper. Commissioner Michael Copps said it "put low-power FM on a firmer foundation." I'm pleased, but I'm also suspicious. After half a century of aiding and abetting consolidation, in the same month that Martin spoke of permitting a satellite radio monopoly.. why this? I suspect that this is a token. We get LP but lose ownership limits. From the outside it's unclear.

Remember these are recommendations. Congress still hs to approve it. But here's the basics for all they are worth.

· Allows the transfer of LFPM licenses subject to significant
limitations.

· Reinstates the Commission’s rule that all LPFM authorization
holders be local to the
community and limits ownership to one station per licensee.

· Clarifies that repetitious, automated programming does not meet the
local origination
requirement.

· Encourages voluntary time-sharing agreements between applicants.

· Imposes an application cap on 2003 FM translator window filers.

· Limits the responsibility of LPFM stations to resolve interference
caused to subsequently authorized full-service stations.

· Establishes a procedural framework for considering short-spacing
waivers and a going- forward displacement policy for LPFM stations.
In the Second Notice of Proposed Rule-Making, the Commission:

· Seeks comment on technical rules that could potentially expand LPFM
licensing opportunities.

· Tentatively concludes that full service stations must provide
technical and financial assistance to LPFM stations when implementation of a full service station facility proposal would cause interference to an LPFM station.

. Tentatively concludes that the Commission should adopt a
contour-based protection methodology to expand LPFM licensing opportunities.

· Intends to address the issues in the FNPRM within 6 months, and
that the next filing window for a non-tabled aural licensed service will be for LPFM.

· Recommends to Congress that it remove the requirement that LPFM
stations protect full-power stations operating on third adjacent channels.

The application cap on 2003 FM translator window is really big. The religious sat casters have been flooding the FCC with literally tens of thousands of apps essentially overwhelming any attempt to monitor them. That may be over. If that actually happened, that could be the biggest filing change in decades.

Third Adjacent Protection

When the FCC originally approved Low Power Radio (LPFM) they in one way were just rehasing the D-license. In another way it was a very controversial to not address the third adjacent protection of full power stations. You could say it was in ignorance. You could also say it was a set up. It's hard to say at this remove.

This "decision" was made based on studies done by NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) and a second study conducted by the FCC's own Office of Engineering and Technology. The FCC opened up some filing windows and allowed applications without the third adjacent channel protection. The protection is so bogus even the EMF agrees, letter here.

It's safe to say NAB opposes LPFM service in general. And also that it used it's mighty lobbying power to get Congress to pass a bill that imposed third adjacent channel protections to both full power and FM translators. It also banned former pirate broadcasters from geting an LPFM license. Hundreds of LPFM applications were voided. They also ran adverts to buttress their cause and muddy the water. Thankfully their href="http://www.beatworld.com/images/adlie101500.gif">propaganda was retarded and transparent.

The Radio Broadcast Protection Act was passed and eventually codified in the FCC rules. The FCC then had a short remedial filing window where those impacted by the RBPA could file a major change application to move their station to a different location and/or channel. Some stations filed applications while others were deadlocked. Those who were deadlocked were dismissed on March 17, 2003, a day we call the "St. Patty's Day Massacre".

RELATED READING: The infamous Mitre report that exposed the bogus protection.
the http://www.recnet.com/mitre/2.pdf