Underserved serve themselves with low-power FM

Paul Bame, a volunteer broadcast engineer with the Prometheus Radio Project, discusses Prometheus activities including how underserved communities serve themselves with low-power FM. He is interviewed by Spencer Graves. The Prometheus Radio Project was founded in 1998 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by supporters of the unlicensed "Radio Mutiny" station after the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) shut down their station. Their mission statement says, "The Prometheus Radio Project builds participatory radio as a tool for social justice organizing and a voice for community expression. To that end, we demystify media policy and technology, advocate for a more just media system, and help grassroots organizations build communications infrastructure to strengthen their communities and movements." In 2003 they initiated Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC, a series of lawsuits that made it harder for the FCC to relax media outlet ownership regulations. The Prometheus Radio Project has been a leader in helping communities create new low-power FM stations. This includes helping them through the application process, obtaining the equipment and getting the station on the air. They call the final step a "radio barnraising", where humans from diverse locations come together to build a studio, raise an antenna mast, and achieve first broadcast in three days. The name comes from the rural "Barn raising" tradition. The Wikipedia article on "Prometheus Radio Project" lists eleven "community radio barnraisings" in the US from Spokane, Washington, to Immokalee, Florida, and from Oroville, California, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They have also helped groups in Guatemala, Nepal, Colombia, Jordan, Kenya, and Tanzania get on the air. More details and a moderated discussion of issues raised in this interview are supported in the Wikiversity article on “Underserved serve themselves with low-power FM” with a video. Copyright 2026 Paul Bame and Spencer Graves, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 international license.