taylorengineer said:
I do advocate breaking laws, if necessary, to change the law!
That would indeed appear to be where we part company quite thoroughly.
Middlega is wrong on this one!(And I say that rarely about Middlega!!)
FWIW, I wasn't real happy at the realization of how far apart we were on this myself.
Rather disturbed by it if you care to know the truth.
And if the programming is compelling....people WILL listen. Problem is......most of our leaders are not very compelling!
The issue of pirates aside here, turning to the LPFM sidebar, you're hitting on where I have an enormous inability to get worked up on this particular issue. In plainest language, there's no shortage of crappy radio stations already & I simply can't understand a motivation to create more of them.
Your phrasing here hits on something (probably more sociological than radio) that I think comes to the crux of the matter, at least when it comes to the notion of LPFM's as some sort of "community service" -- people are not generally compelled by what might be loftily described as "important stuff". There's already a shortage of people qualified/capable/willing to handle local government, trying to put them in the radio business is an unrealistic expectation that's doomed before it begins. (heck, I don't beleive there are enough capable people
in the radio/media business to manage the stations that already exist).
I'd say the same largely holds true if you take government out of contention & turn to, I don't know what phrasing fits best here, let's say "non-governmental community leaders" -- virtually every one I've ever encountered has an agenda that's at least as self-serving as it is selfless (and I'm being quite generous by counting many of them as even 50/50). And as such, even if I optimistically say their interests & mine match half the time, I'm not moved by the notion of putting them on the air either. Among the most obvious handicaps they would face is the limitation of time that we all must endure -- there's only 24 hours in every day for anybody. And if we're looking at "the greater good" as a motivation, I'm far from convinced that the best use of time for those few who might truly be capable of "leading" is worrying with producing content for an LPFM that seems almost certain to reach fewer people than could be reached by any of the methods they already employ (or by sticking their head out the car window & yelling their message to people on the street for that matter).
In short (yeah, too late for that, I know), I'm not steadfastly opposed to some method that would suddenly multiply the number of LPFM's, I just can't see getting worked up over the prospect because I see it as having virtually zero impact in any positive way.
