Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, two of this city's slowest bureaucracies, are moving with remarkable alacrity in a fight over control of the airwaves and the future of FM radio.
The lawmakers and the regulators are quickly heading for a collision over the government's plan to transform the nation's FM radio band by giving away hundreds of new licenses for noncommercial, low-power stations for schools, churches, community groups and others.
But Capitol Hill, responding to a wave of lobbying from the nation's largest broadcasters, is moving swiftly to kill the plan. Last Thursday, legislation blocking the plan sailed through a House subcommittee, after the National Association of Broadcasters, National Public Radio and many lawmakers raised concerns that the signals from the new low-power stations would interfere with the signals of existing stations.
In recent weeks, the National Association of Broadcasters has blanketed Capitol Hill with compact discs that purport to demonstrate the kinds of interference that would be caused by Mr. Kennard's plan. The disc simulates such interference as a cacophony of radio programs colliding on one frequency. Although government engineers say the stimulation is downright fraudulent and cannot be replicated at the F.C.C.'s radio lab, the compact disc has had a substantial impact on the debate in Congress and has repeatedly been cited by lawmakers as evidence of the need to block the low-power radio program.
"The broadcasters have engaged in a systematic campaign of misinformation and scare tactics to shut off new voices from coming onto the airwaves," Mr. Kennard said in an interview last week. "This is not rocket science. We have studied the way FM signals propogate around the country. The interference argument is being used as a smokescreen to mask an historic battle by incumbents who want to protect their markets."
He said the F.C.C. had carefully crafted the rules, after study by its engineers, to preclude any significant new radio interference.