LPFM III: Return of the DJ

King... Jedi... whatever. This is hopefully the final instalment of my epic four-part 'War of the Guardband' trilogy on the LPFM clash in the Auckland CBD.

While there's still one more station in the CBD than is necessarily comfortable, a resolution has been reached.

“It won't replace the anarchy, but it will give it a committee structure…”

Up FM has plans to move to 88.1FM (pending the arrival of some doo-dads) and will broadcast from the ridge along Great North Road, near the McDonalds. They'll get good coverage from there - except for the CBD proper, where Static broadcasts on 88.1.

It's a shame for Jarra - he loses some key coverage, and particularly Newmarket - but it's a workable compromise. Fair or not, he doesn't have a lot left in the way of bargaining chips. Law of the Wild West applies and everyone else was quicker on the draw.

Julia FM, Twisted, KFM and CBFM will stay much as they are, but with a bit more of an emphasis on - y'know - legality and whatnot.

Meanwhile everyone's being outwardly helpful, polite and restrained - or at least back down to a suppressable level of frustration.

Julia's on 107.5, Up FM's on 107.6 and Twisted's on 107.7. It's irritating for all of them, but nobody's squashing anyone else any more than they're being squashed themselves - and it's not for much longer.

All is much more orderly everywhere else, and now that everyone's pretty much stopped over-modulating, over-deviating or under-limiting, the stations actually sound pretty good. Except for some of the music, but that's just personal taste.

My learning curve on broadcast spectrum physics has been steep over the last week or two. I used to think it was some sort of impenetrable black art, like cricket, golf or Antique Roadshow. Now I recognise several of the words, and understand one or two of the rules.

The idea of establishing an Auckland LPFM Users Group to deal with these sorts of issues has been the best outcome of this toe-treading and foot-stomping exercise (though, of course, it's difficult to stomp your foot while someone's treading on your toes).

A users group will help to self-regulate an essentially unregulated group of broadcasters. It won't replace the anarchy, but it will give it a committee structure.

I had a meeting with broadcasting legend Mike Baker on the weekend to speak with him about The Flea in Devonport which he operates from his home. Part verbal shopper's guide, part back-in-time community radio, part micro-empire, The Flea is a particularly successful example of something LPFM radio can do best: extreme localism. The Flea really sounds like Devonport. It not only provides the suburb (sorry... "village") with a voice, its music is entirely donated by and reflective of its people.

Let's just say when I arrived for a cup of tea on the back porch, Mike was segueing from Englebert Humperdink to Tom Jones with a vocal station ID from Deirdre, a regular New World shopper and Flea enthusiast.

He's totally legit - correct power and deviation and so on - but his transmitter's up so high (top of Mt Victoria) that his signal on 88.2 gets all the way across the water into the city and even along Mission Bay.

I was sent on behalf of the Not-A-Group-Yet to ask him to move to 88.3FM just to keep the spectrum tidy. I didn't fancy our chances - he's got a lot tied up in that frequency, and has been around there longer than anyone.

Still, I had history with Mike, so it was my job to talk to him. He had a massive heart attack once while I was recording him, and an aneurism under the same circumstances a few years later. I'm sure when I turned up on the doorstep his wife went to check they still had the ambulance guys on speed-dial.

However, I was surprised to find out that not only did he have a lot of signage, logo placement and stationery with that number on it, he had actually been specifically required by Spectrum Management to use 88.2 because anything else would interfere with the TV repeater transmitter they've got on one side of Mt. Vic.

They'd knocked on his door one day after several neighbours had complained about their Coro Street reception, and demanded compliance. Wish Spectrum Management still did that sort of thing...

No reason he should change from 88.2 anyway, even if he was allowed to - not really his problem. Still, he's very keen to be a part of the LPFM users group. The first meeting will be a couple of weeks away, which should give me the opportunity to think about some other stuff in the meantime.

I've got to go edit my chapter on digital radio which is overdue for the book Morry Shanahan from the NZ Broadcasting School is putting together. That'll be tonight's little exercise.

Tomorrow morning, I'm having a chat with Russell Brown for National Radio's Mediawatch programme to try to explain this whole LPFM thing to a general audience in the space of 5-10 minutes.

Speaking of National Radio, I went to a taping of 'Off The Wire' earlier this evening. That's the comedy news quiz show some of my former students produce. Have a listen on Saturday - 1.30pm, I think. A couple of international comedy festival stars in the mix. You'll no doubt hear me laughing out loud at the poo jokes. Amazing what you can work into a current affairs quiz show.

When the time comes, I'll raise my airy-fairy, lefty 'non-profit' idea at the first users group meeting, so that it can be shouted down immediately by the more ambitious broadcasters - and probably most vehemently from my own bosses at George FM, whose LPFM interest is the wonderful Base FM.

I disagree wholeheartedly with the commercial basis on which it exists, but I'm tempted to move to Ponsonby just so I can hear it (no, I'm not anti-commercial, but I'm not going over that whole public park argument again).

Still, I lay this whole debacle at the feet of George FM. They were the ones who started as a tiny 300mW broadcast from a bedroom in a Turakina Street flat and became the healthy national brand that Peugeot, 42-Below Vodka and Home Contemporary Design Furniture are falling over themselves to get involved with. They made the guard band sexy and set a high benchmark.

Given the fact that pretty much anyone can start a radio station, I suppose the amazing thing is not that we've had to go through this painful sorting-out process, but that there's only 9 people who WANT to broadcast in the CBD for free.

Incidentally, what do you think of the new site design? I've had to drop the old comments to make the new style work, but I vastly prefer this method of managing responses. Much more workable.