Chicago Tribune
April 24, 2015
The latest installation at the Co-Prosperity Sphere, a hip Bridgeport gallery and performance space, may look like another sculptural project at first glance. Neon bent into a glowing blue hand, a demure lightning bolt on its palm, hangs above a stack of reclaimed speakers that recalls a Tetris-like wall of castoff audio equipment.
The artwork is part of the temporary home of WLPN 105.5 FM, a new community-oriented freeform radio station with plans to start broadcasting this summer.
The brainchild of Ed Marszewski, owner of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan St., and backed by the Public Media Institute, the local arts non-profit that publishes Lumpen magazine, WLPN intends to hit the airwaves with a signal stretching from the Near South Side to Logan Square, reaching more than 1 million potential listeners.
“It was a no-brainer to apply for a license,” says Marszewski. “With a radio station, we’re able to truly amplify ideas of many different authors, activists, storytellers and artists who work within Chicago.”
WLPN is part of a wave of low-power, locally focused FM radio stations, five in the Chicago area alone, set to come online this year after more than a decade of debate and licensing battles. After the Telecommunications Act of 1996 relaxed rules on the number of stations a company like Clear Channel could own, commercialization and consolidation swept the radio industry. The FCC’s recent move to license thousands of new community stations backed by local non-profits will potentially add an array of new, vital voices to the media landscape.
Supporters believe the new stations will not only revitalize the medium, but prove that in an era of music and film discovery informed by algorithms, the wide reach and personal touch of radio makes it as relevant as ever.
“This is the largest influx of new stations in the history of radio,” says Allan Gomez, station support director of the Prometheus Radio Project, an advocacy group that has been pushing for low-power FM licensing for more than a decade. “It’s an amazing opportunity to reach hundreds of thousands of people with hyper-local content and evolve the media landscape.”
That optimistic view fits WLPN’s conception of itself within the local media landscape. The station’s goal, according to Marszewski, is to become a messy, eclectic, and hopefully vital outlet for music, art and public discourse, broadcasting the pulse of Chicago’s cultural scene and continuing the mission of the Public Media Institute in a new medium.
“People are really narrowcasting their interests with podcasts and standard radio,” he says. “We want to widen people’s interests.”
Eclectic may be an understatement when it comes to the still-coalescing lineup. The station’s managing director, Logan Bay, already has 45 potential DJs and shows lined up, and has commissioned local musicians to produce jingles and interstitial music that fits the station’s anti-establishment energy. He describes the vibe as “having the most amazing DJs, crazy artists and awesome people in your house, but they won’t steal your silverware.”
Two of the shows Bay was most excited about were The Lounge Ax Radio Hour, hosted by local musician Seth Kim-Cohen, which will feature live recordings of concerts from a trove of audio recorded at the venerable ‘90s rock club, and TRN Wrestling, a talk show hosted by wrestling promoter and improv comedian Nick Hausman.
“Lots of people have great ideas,” says Bay. “They just need to know how to do it. And now, the barrier to entry is lower than ever.”
The Co-Prosperity Sphere hosts the Version art festival through May 3, and will serve as both an introduction and fundraiser for WLPN, with a radio booth and stage set up inside the gallery space. Interactive and responsive, the live broadcast sets the tone for how the station, and the wider low-power FM movement, hope to engage the community.
“We want to re-engage old radioheads,” Marszewski said.
To understand low-power FM, think of the FM radio spectrum in a major market — the range of frequencies from 88 to 108 megahertz, or all the numbers you’d see arrayed on an old radio dial — as a garbage can. The high-power commercial stations with large broadcast ranges are basketballs stacked inside. The new low-power FM stations are like golf balls trying to fit inside the gaps.
Limited to a 100-watt signal, effectively a three- to five-mile range depending on the height of the broadcast tower, these stations are both local and relatively inexpensive to set up. According to Marszewksi, WLPN, which is currently raising funds to pay for equipment and engineering fees, needs just $100,000 to go terrestrial.
The current wave of low-power FM stations are a direct result of the 2010 Local Community Radio Act, as well as new rules that allows stations to be closer to one another on the radio dial (previously, requirements that stations maintain a certain distance from each other on the spectrum meant only low-power stations in less crowded rural markets could get licenses). It became quickly evident there was a hunger for more local media. When the FCC opened a window for applications in the fall of 2013, 2,827 community groups applied. Currently, 1,804 organizations, such as WLPN, have been granted construction permits to build towers; once they’re up and running, they’ll file for radio licenses.
Radio may seem outdated in the age of podcasting and on-demand listening — Marzsewski has compared the appeal to that of vinyl — but it’s far from insignificant. According to Nielsen’s 2014 Year End Music Report, 91.3 percent of the U.S. population listen to radio at least once a week and 51 percent of consumers surveyed use radio to discover new music.
Shawn Campbell, founder and general manager at CHIRP, currently an online Chicago broadcaster planning to launch a low-power FM station this summer, believes radio is as relevant as ever in the current media environment.
CHIRP (Chicago Independent Radio Project) formed in 2007 with the hopes that the FCC would eventually allow low-power stations. When it hopefully begins broadcasting as WXCP 107.1 FM from a north side radio tower near Wilson and Damen later this summer, it’ll gain more than a massive new audience. When done well, according to Campbell, radio offers curation and a personal connection with listeners that you can’t match with services such as Spotify, a local voice at a time when online media can be faceless and placeless.