Difficulties of High School Broadcasting
Many HS stations were first licensed in the 1970s on the FM band, just as the band was beginning to fill up and become crowded in many cities. As a result, HS stations tended to be low-powered (under one kilowatt) in most instances.
- The expense involved with maintaining broadcasting equipment.
- Among more powerful HS stations, especially in urban markets, the station's license could become very valuable. This would tend to tempt school administrators to sell the license, usually to a local college, public, or Christian radio broadcaster. Several HS stations have met this fate: KCDC, near Denver, operated sporadically for years before being sold to a public broadcaster. WYCS-FM, near Hampton Roads, Virginia, is now a Christian radio station. Several smaller stations have been transferred to colleges.
- Many of the lowest-powered stations that held "Class D" licenses had no legal protection against higher powered stations applying for their frequency, and thus many were simply forced off the air.
- Instructors or faculty involved with initially establishing the radio station leave or retire and the school is unable to find replacements. Disinterest then begins to build amongst the students.
- HS stations must air at least 12 hours daily, or they are left open for a third party to apply for a timeshare on the frequency, as in the case of 2004, when Hoosier Public Radio Corp. of Greenfield, Indiana, applied for such against seven HS and college radio stations in Indiana and Kentucky. In March 2005, the FCC ruled against HPR in the case of four of the affected stations, granting the affected stations renewed licenses. The cases in the other three stations are still pending.
- A general perception that radio technology is no longer as exciting to high school students as newer technologies such as the Internet. Many HS stations are now spending more time relaying public radio outlets than producing their own programming.
Read more about this topic: High School Radio
Famous quotes containing the words difficulties of, difficulties, high, school and/or broadcasting:
“Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor’s art infinite.”
—Ellen Terry (1847–1928)
“All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sorts of difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)
“O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting.
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“After school days are over, the girls ... find no natural connection between their school life and the new one on which they enter, and are apt to be aimless, if not listless, needing external stimulus, and finding it only prepared for them, it may be, in some form of social excitement. ...girls after leaving school need intellectual interests, well regulated and not encroaching on home duties.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“We spend all day broadcasting on the radio and TV telling people back home what’s happening here. And we learn what’s happening here by spending all day monitoring the radio and TV broadcasts from back home.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)