FM Radio for the people, by the people

I once bought an FM transmitter from Ramsey Electronics that cost about $150 and could be modified to increase it's power ten times by clipping a wire on the circuit board. It covered about 5 miles around my house, I drive tested it to check. This is part of my idea.

The rest of my idea requires a PC, I think a basic Dell Notebook is the best value at about $600. I like the idea of battery backup being built into the notebook.

My idea is a small, inexpensive automated FM radio station that is built on the notebook and transmitter mentioned above. It requires a connection to the internet (cable or DSL) and a telephone line which could be VoIP. The station equipment needs someone to host it in their home.

The idea is a locally programmed, commercial free community FM radio station. News, sports and events would be phoned in by anyone who wished to contribute. Using Caller-ID, a trusted relationship could be established and anyone who put offensive language to air would be accountable. An example of someone contributing would be right after the local hockey game is over, a caller would phone in and leave a recorded message with the score of the game, and as much detail as they wished. The automated software would air this message every hour when all sports news was aired, for the next day or two. Every hour these local messages would play - news, events, sports. If enough of the stations were established in one area, say the province, then any local news worthy of provincial coverage would play on all the automated stations in every community. There would be a network of small, local stations.

So all that would be required is a telephone to contribute.

More advanced station programming could be done by listeners using a web interface to vote on which songs, or programs are most popular. Also, program scheduling could be decided using the web. Everything would be automated. A few people would be designated to monitor and remove any offensive contributions and screen first time contributers until they were trusted.

Licensing by the CRTC would be required because of the power transmitted by the stations. This particular type of station could be granted its own class of license.
It would also be nice to have three frequency assignments together for example 88.5, 88.7, and 88.9Mhz reserved for these local stations. This means people would know where to look on their FM dial no matter what community they were in. And some large communities could then support up to three stations to cover their area. In fact, frequency assignments would need to managed so overlap was avoided (just like cell sites). PEI is an ideal test area because of the open channels in the FM band here.

The initial cost to put a local FM automated station on the air would be under $1000 dollars. Monthly costs would be for internet & phone line which could be under $100 dollars depending if a plain old telephone line was used or a VoIP line.
These costs are a miniscule fraction of what CBC gets from the public purse, so government may pay them or maybe local listeners could contribute money or both.

The software needed to make this happen could be developed as open source. Since the stations are operating commercial free, copyright licensing isn't an issue - they are non profit so it would be similiar to a campus radio situation. Podcasts could form part of the programming schedule. The software would create a recorded log of all broadcasts, and a playlist as required by the CRTC.

The CRTC is concerned about the concentration of media ownership. Our local stations such as CJRW have been bought and owned by large media interests. Local shows like the 'trading post' on air flea market and much of the local content is gone. So, if this network of small, automated FM stations could be established then local radio would be part of our lives again. People without iPods could hear the revolutionary programming being created on podcasts.

I hope I explained my idea clearly, if not please ask me to explain more.

If anyone is interested in pursuing this idea with me, I have done some research on it and would like to join forces. The two big challenges are the software and the licensing.