I live in a community of 1800 in the Sierra Nevada. Our nearest
radio stations are 35 and 50 miles away. They offer little if any local
coverage pertaining to my town. I recently attempted to serve Portola with
a Part 15 station that was very successful with community support and
advertising support. We broadcast City Council meetings, school sports,
emergency information and music. Unfortunatly, in working with the FCC
office in San Francisco, we found our Ramsey transmitter was not emitting the
proper amount of power. Our signal in some areas reached slightly over
a mile. Of course, we immediately stopped operations. However, it did
demonstrate that coverage of 2-3 miles would serve a rural community like
mine very well. Our signal did not interfere with any licensed station (we
broadcast at 94.5 and the nearest licensed station was 93.3 at 50 miles).
Your commissioners dissenting statement only refers to urban areas, I feel
the strength of low powered stations would be in rural areas. Licensed stations
spend large sums to cover vast areas with little audience and revenue. In
doing so, they have trouble programming to each unique town. A low powered
station like ours, was able to support itself financially, and give the
residents
excellent programming that truly pertained to them. I'm sure Portola is not
alone in it's need for this sort of communication service. I urge the
board to move forward with this much needed service.