VOV Builds Support for a Community FM Station

During Strawberry Festival weekend, in the span of just 16 hours, Voice of Vashon volunteers collected over 1,500 signatures on a petition to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in support of a community FM radio station on Vashon Island.
 
If the license is granted, perhaps sometime next year, it will be the culmination of a dream first imagined by the late Bill Morosoff and Voice of Vashon’s Steve Allen in 2001. A community group including Bill Wood, Jeff Hoyt, Susan McCabe and many other volunteers pulled together when initial studies made it seem that a community FM radio station might be possible. Sadly, the first license attempt failed in 2003 because the old FCC rules made it extremely difficult to find a clear frequency on the dial. This new license application, to be filed in October, has a much better chance of success because the new rules have been changed to allow more community radio stations on the air.
 
"We have a lot more hope for getting a license this time because the new rules are less strict," says Steve Allen, a veteran broadcast engineer. "Also, the FCC has denied hundreds of applications for so-called translator stations that re-broadcast a single station over a wide area but suck up frequencies that might be used by small rural communities like ours."
 
Thanks to community donations at Festival, combined with grant funding from Puget Sound Energy, VoV has now covered the cost of the license application. Very sophisticated engineering studies will be required under FCC rules to prove the Island’s community radio station will comply with FCC regulations aimed at preventing interference with stations on the mainland.
 
VoV Community Outreach Coordinator Susan McCabe has been working all year, gathering endorsements for the FM station application from Vashon’s state and national legislators as well as many Island organizations.
 
The grant from Puget Sound Energy also includes other funding to expand distribution of the Voice of Vashon emergency alert service via the organization’s new website and the VoV television station on cable channel 21.
 
"This effort has come such a long way since we got started," chuckled Jeff Hoyt, one of the pioneers at Voice of Vashon whose voice is heard all over the country as he now makes his living as a professional announcer for hire on commercials and videos. "Who would ever have believed when we began that we would have the emergency alert service and a TV station and very soon the whole media network only a click away on the new website."
 
Those who attended Strawberry Festival saw the brand new Voice of Vashon logo proudly displayed on VoV’s broadcast van and on buttons worn by VoV volunteers and supporters. The new logo represents VoV’s vision for the future of Island powered media, which includes a new website that will make every VoV offering from AM radio to TV available over the Web. The website, projected to go live in September, will vastly expand VoV’s ability to provide our Island community with vital information and local entertainment content.
 
The Voice of Vashon media network currently features emergency alert broadcasts at 1650AM, and Island television Channel 21 and a web radio station at VoiceOfVashon.org. Voice of Vashon, founded in 1999, is a 501c3 organization that also provides emergency alerts to the VashonALL group and on FaceBook/VoiceOfVashon.