Radio serving the public? Not exactly.
So, you’re living in a town on the periphery of the Seattle area — say, Covington. Your town doesn’t have its own radio station. An Oregon station decides they want to move their station to your town to serve your sadly-underserved community — but to do this, they’ll have to force a high school radio station, KMIH, off the air.
Well, it makes you sad to know the high school kids are going to get hosed, but you think “Hey, this is for a station that will serve our local community, so maybe it’s worth it.” Um, think again. The company involved, First Broadcasting, has a history of acquiring frequencies specifically for rapid resale, “moving licenses around like chess pieces to get desired licenses into desired markets.” In this case, they are touting the Covington station (when they aren’t trying to butter up the locals and the FCC) as their “entry into the Seattle market.” Not the Covington market. The nicely-profitable Seattle market. There won’t be a single bit of Covington-local content except for the station ID at the top of the hour.
The FCC, supposedly in existence to protect the public’s interest in the public airwaves, is bending over backwards to make this move possible for First Broadcasting, though they must be aware of the reality of this situation. Apparently, they don’t care.
The radio kids are getting screwed. This is just wrong.
The people who should be doing radio are those who have passion to deliver appealing DJ commentary and music that fits the community.