Toledo Low Power FM Radio Project

September 2013 - Toledo City Paper - Good Morning Lucas County - "Local radio station planning to hit Toledo's airwaves"

Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock once said “creativity shouldn’t be following radio; it should be the other way around.” This sentiment appears deeply embedded in the goal of a number of Toledo residents who recently have been hard at work organizing the creation of a low-power FM community radio station.

The Toledo Low Power FM Radio Project has been incorporated as a non-profit group with the moniker TIME, or Toledo Integrated Media Education. TIME is now appealing to the Toledo public to submit radio program content ideas.

During the last year, the members of the Toledo Low Power FM Radio Project have worked to ready their non-profit for the FCC license application process which begins on October 15. The group is actively accepting applications for programs to be included with the FCC application.

“It’s an FCC provision that at least eight hours of our daily content must be locally produced,” TIME board member and mediator Sean Nestor clarified. “The only criterion that we set early on is that we want this radio outlet to give a voice to underrepresented perspectives. Those perspectives could be musical or social, almost anything so long as they aren’t already being done to death by some mainstream media outlet.”

LPFM broadcasting does not use as much energy as traditional high-power FM stations, meaning the reception range of the community station will be somewhat limited. However the station’s signal, broadcast at 106.1, should cover most of the Toledo area.

“Since we’re only operating on 100 watts of power, we’re looking at around a five mile terrestrial reception radius,” project member and technology supervisor Josh Eppert explained.

TIME plans on mediating the issue of reception range by offering live online streaming of its programming. Internet streaming also will enable the station to potentially garner a global audience.

“While the FCC doesn’t allow us to advertise on LPFM, we can still underwrite our programs,” Williams confirmed, “and that’s good in the sense that we can represent local places that need support.”

https://www.facebook.com/ToledoLpfmRadioProject

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