Last year I started a radio station at my high school with a big vision. I soon learned that with everyone at my school being so darn busy doing a million things and spending 3-4 hours on homework a day, KUHS could not be what I originally dreamed. During my research phase, I spent a bunch of time learning about the FCC and how real radio stations work. I was particularly intrigued by Low Power FM stations, a category designed specifically for schools and community groups. There are only a handful of high schools that have radio stations, so I didn’t have a ton to work off of. But I did learn early enough that San Francisco’s airwaves are clogged to death and the possibility of stealing some space on the dial for KUHS (even with limited range) was slim and expensive. KUHS is now a webcast station that is doing mostly on-demand playback. I still want to do live broadcasts of school basketball games, to quench the thirst of budding sports broadcasters.
Despite this scaled down vision, I am still interested in FCC regulations and the oh-so-precious spectrum. Bluetooth, wi-fi, radio, TV, everything has to do with spectrum. So I found this article off Clay Shirky’s web site helpful in explaining the basics of spectrum. If this area is something that interests you, check out the article.