Visit the story link to read the complete mediachannel article.

...Congress responding to pressure from commercial broadcasters and, sadly, also from National Public Radio cut back the program with legislation tucked into the budget bill, which is a questionable process itself in such an important free-speech issue. As a result, only 255 licenses, instead of 1,000, will be issued in the first 20 states where the process started, and most cities are exclude. As a Hungarian, resistance to these small, but beautiful radio stations is surprising and troubling. Noncommercial radio and television stations in the United States have served as models for Hungarian media regulation in our newfound democracy. After the fall of the Berlin wall, we were convinced that the voice of the civic society had to be heard on the media market. The American and European tradition of not for-profit radio stations was a source of inspiration for liberal lawmakers like myself. In spite of the much-vaunted stereotype of the "clearly commercial" American media system, we found the work of the U.S. public radio and television stations very attractive. They were not state-owned, and they were not commercial.