I have a pretty dim view of how this whole situation has worked out. Originally, little Class D radio stations were supposed to be for the nearby community, si

I have a pretty dim view of how this whole situation has worked out. Originally, little Class D radio stations were supposed to be for the nearby community, since the reach is quite small. Local radio, for local people. We'll have no trouble here! But during the wild media deregulation of the 1990s, the barriers to entry were lowered, standards relaxed, and to the FCC's surprise, they provoked what could only be called The Night the Translators Came. Thousands of applications came in for "translators," which meant translate in the geometric sense -- to move. In other words, they merely rebroadcast other content, non-local content. This almost always means religious (re)broadcasting networks, like Moody, taking over. Local content suffered massively. Even today, most of your Low-Power FM (LPFM) stations are religious in nature, piped in content that might have been recorded decades ago. To make matters worse, now-tight FM space where LPFMs might live got tighter as NPR whined to Congress about how much space they needed around their signal. How they love to play the underdog. Real radio engineers disagreed but hey. I've held a small grudge ever since, only compounded when they muscle in on stations elsewhere. My old college station, well, they let us know the temperature in that town occasionally! So now there's just not much room for community radio.