Perhaps, it's time for this to happen. NPR has got too big.. There was once a time when college radio stations were actually located at the college and were programmed by students and members of the community at large. But these stations out of greed towards the promotion of other university programs got bigger. Transmitter antennas moved off of campuses and on to mountaintops. Powers increased and suddenly public radio was big-time. With that, stations sprouted formats. Gone are the day of local music, local views, local people and most importantly, the students.

REC 2x70 Maps in PDF | KML files for Google Earth | REC Auction 83/GTI Page

REC's "2x70" concept for the handling of the pending Auction 83 (Great Translator Invasion) applictions is starting to gain support in the broadcast engineering community. Radio World's Michael LeClair recently described our proposals:

REC’s commonsense proposals go a long way to address the faults of the 2003 translator window and point the way to a more reasonable translator allocation system.

We are very confident that we have the most sophisticated handling method for these applications that would assure that translators are available in areas where they are the most needed (the rural areas) and LPFM stations are available in the areas where they are most needed (the suburban and urban areas). "2x70" imposes a counterbalance in the current structure where there are more urban translators and more rural LPFMs. Rural LPFM must continue to be made available and if anything we feel that rural LPFM deserves a boost, we also see the value of translators in rural areas. "2x70" assures that in the rural areas where there's plenty of room for both LPFM and translators, they can both co-exist. These are opportunities that would have been foreclosed upon with the 10-cap.

This was a Facebook comment that I had made in response to another reader thinking that I was advocating abandoning PEG (Public Education Government) channels on traditional cable TV systems and replacing with LPFM stations.

For those who use the REC Broadcast Query tool
http://cdbs.recnet.net:8080/fmq.php
there are some updates in progress. We are adding in functionality to support REC's comments in MM Docket 99-25 related to the handling of Window 83 (Great Translator Invasion) applications.