What is Low Powered Television (LPTV) and Would You Be Interested in Owning Your Own TV Station?

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 signed by that anti-business socialist commie Pres. Bill Clinton effectively capped the move to place all of the power of America media into as few hands as possible. This movement began under the administration of Pres. Ronald Reagan who was convinced that allowing just one person to own one network or even a local TV station was somehow undemocratic. The route toward consolidation of all American media and the homogenization of television to the point where nobody can really distinguish between 100 channels began under Reagan and was finalized under Clinton. The bone that was thrown during the Reagan administration to fend off charges that big media companies would ignore local interests was the authorization of low powered television (LPTV) licenses.

The FCC authorized more than 150 LPTV licenses in 1982 with the intent of allowing television stations to broadcast with signals significantly reduced in power from the standard stations. This signal would be transmitted on such a low frequency that they reached televisions within a radius of no more than fifteen miles from the transmitter itself. The low power ensured that the signal of these stations would not interfere with the signal being sent by commercial stations on the same frequency. Over the next few decades the number of licenses and stations had grown to over 4,000 LPTV stations across the country. The attraction of these low powered TV stations was not just the opportunity to provide very narrowly targeted programming, but also that the cost of setting up one's own independent station was, within the world of media, shockingly affordable. The estimated figure given at the time of authorization for setting up a station ranged from a low of $50,000 to as high as $300,000. Admittedly, those figures immediately prohibited just anyone who wanted to start a TV station from doing so, but compared to the cost required to buy an existing high powered station it was an unbelievable bargain.