Staff at Radio for Peace International are now speaking out about the lockdown and presence of armed guards at the shortwave station. A news release from a group of station manager/directors says RFPI is being evicted from its building on the campus of the University for Peace, a United Nations-chartered institution.
The station has two weeks to vacate the premises; some staff have remained at the station since the initial confrontation on Monday, but it sounds like that might not be by choice.
Quoting from the release:
“University for Peace co-founder, former Costa Rican President Rodrigo Carazo Odio, invited RFPI in 1985 to build and manage its own office and studios on the university’s Costa Rica campus. Consequently RFPI constructed studios and transmitters, and has been broadcasting messages of peace and social justice as well as daily United Nations programming. RFPI is the only listener-supported shortwave radio station.”
What soured relations between the school and the station remains a real mystery: the story behind the story.
Closer to home, REC Networks continues to map LPFM’s impact on the nation as a whole. It has merged the latest U.S. Census data with the projected service areas of LPFM stations. The list includes both those LPFMs broadcasting now and those still working their way through the licensing process.
According to REC’s figures the LPFM station in Richmond, Virginia (97.3), to be run by the Virginia Center for the Public Press, has 250,319 people living under the coverage of its future signal. Second place goes to Calvary Chapel of Oxnard, California (101.5), within earshot of 230,475 potential listeners. Silverton (Colorado) Community Radio (KSJC-LP, 92.5) ranks as the most rural station with a projected listener base of 538.
This math is based, of course, on the rules currently in effect and does not consider the potential for LPFM’s expansion, now that the FCC has all the data it needs to open up LPFM channels in the big cities.
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