Over the last five years there has been a war going on right in the air around us that you may not have noticed. While companies like Clear Channel have been quietly consolidating power in the radio spectrum all across the country, low-power FM stations, musicians and pirates of all kinds have been fighting for their right to broadcast at the FCC.

The new terminology for these low-power, local radio stations is called “Localism.” The FCC has setup a task force where you can read some of the dry descriptions of the battle.

Many of our friends over at the FMC (the Future of Music Coalition) have been filing interesting briefs on behalf of those voices that are lost in the monopolization of the public airwaves.

On January 3, FMC, AFTRA, AFM, the Recording Academy and the Recording Artists’ Coalition filed joint reply comments at the FCC on localism in broadcasting.  In this filing, the musicians’ groups focused on three areas in which the Commission sought input, and which broadcasters and citizens filed comments:

• Local musicians’ concerns about local programming and access to radio;
• The existence and impact of “pay for play” business practices; and
• The domination of centralized programming masquerading as local programming through such developments as voice-tracking.

Our filing included excerpts of comments filed by citizens, broadcasters, on-air talent and musicians, many of which articulated the problems of localism and access to local radio on a very personal and concrete level.

In addition to these points, the recording artist groups repeated at the outset – media ownership matters.  It is simply impossible to discuss how to promote localism without consideration of the consolidated ownership patterns emerging throughout this country.

Now that Chairman Powell is stepping down the whole future of broadcasting is up in the air again (no pun intended).