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The Bernal Heights Non-Diet

MatthewLasar — Sat, 17 May 2008 14:40:39 -0500

Announcing the Bernal Heights Non-Diet, which has nothing to do with Bernal Heights, San Francisco. It just happens to be the place where I live. And, as the title suggests, I'm not trying to diet. I'm trying to come up with a structural eating plan that will help me lose weight.

I can't figure out in what order to put these rules, some of which I have stolen from the food advice I get from my health plan. Anyway, I've got nine of them. Here goes:

Rule #1: If you eat out, eat half.

It took me a long time to figure this rule out. One of the reasons why we are all getting fatter is because restaurants have doubled the portions of basic retail food items. Supersized hamburgers are the most famous example here, but just about everything seems to have been blown up to 200 percent, including bagels and plates of spaghetti and meat sauce.

So I assume that I should eat about half of what the restaurant sells me. What do I do with the rest? I shove it to one side of my plate, get a second plate to put it on, get somebody to help me eat it, ask the waiter to put it in a doggy bag, or just dump it in the garbage if I can.

I know, throwing it in the trash is a terrible waste of food. But the food is no better used sitting on my belly or rump as fat. It's not my fault that restaurants sell me too much of the stuff. If you are with me, I'll be happy to split it with you, especially those huge chocolate muffins they sell in cafes.

Rule #2: Drink a lot of water.

We all need to drink lots of water. So get a water bottle, fill it up and drink! Drinking water keeps me from craving snacks. Unfortunately, it also makes me have to run to the head at inappropriate moments.

But the more water you drink, the less soda you'll drink. Soda is really bad. If you drink a sugary soda every day, you'll gain about 25 pounds in a year.

Rule #3: Eat carrots and apples.

They're very good for you, and they're convenient, crunchy, and sweet. I have an apple and coffee for breakfast, and it keeps me nice and filled up until lunch time. Carrots are just perfect in the afternoon because they're so easy to handle. I can eat them while writing. We're all supposed to eat five servings of fruit and vegetables, you know. Apples and carrots fill the bill, but you obviously can substitute your favorite crunchy veggies and fruits for mine.

Rule #4: NEVER eat anything out of a bag.

If I buy a big bag of potato chips and start eating out the bag, as sure as E = MC squared I will eat that whole bag of chips. God apparently intended it to be this way. So I never eat out of the bag. I take the bag, pour some chips into something smaller, and put the bag away. Or I offer the rest to someone else. Or I throw the goddman thing out (See Rule #1). This applies to everything you buy in a bag: nuts, candy, chips, trail mix—all of it.

Rule #5: Don't forget to share.

If you absolutely cannot resist buying some candy—M&Ms, peanut butter cups, yogurt chips, whatever—pour half in your hand (remember Rule #4) and offer the rest to somebody else: a friend, a stranger, whoever happens to be around. If they won't take it, toss the rest in the trash. Most bags of candy are huge like restaurant meals, anyway.

Notice that the Bernal Heights diet doesn't forbid you from eating junk food. It just offers you structured ways to eat less.

Rule #6: The deck of cards meat principle

Most of us eat way too much meat—beef, pork, chicken—and not enough vegetables and grains. The amount of meat on your dinner plate should approximate no more than the size of a deck of cards. And guess what? You don't have to eat meat every day. Eating meat isn't a symbol of prosperity; it's a symbol of waste.

Rule #7: Small is beautiful

Order a taco, not a burrito. Order a cup of soup, not a big bowl. Order a small latte, not a big one. Don't worry. If you don't feel like you got enough, you can always order more.

Rule #8: The three hour "Am I Hungry?" rule

Generally speaking, if I want to eat something substantial, I ask myself the following question: When was the last time I ate? If I ate something serious within the last three hours, it usually means I'm looking to fill some anxiety or strong feeling with food.

Rule #9: Ignore these rules from time to time.

If you are at the house of someone who has prepared an enormous, sumptuous meal for you, don't be an asshole: eat! Next day, exercise a little more. There's no better way to show your apprecation for someone else's cooking than to throw off the guilt and enjoy the meal.

The point here is that I'm not trying to diet; I'm trying to structure my eating so that most of the time I eat healthy. Bitter experience has shown me that if I try to reach dietary heaven, eventually I'll rebel and descend into dietary hell.

I hope you've found my rules at least somewhat helpful. If you've got similar, I'd like to learn about them.

Will the FCC's new media ownership rule actually become a national election issue?

MatthewLasar — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:14:25 -0500

The Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission are crowing today. Yesterday the United States Senate overwhelmingly voted for a resolution condemning the FCC's recent relaxation of its newspaper/TV cross ownership ban. Only the Georgia twins, Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, expressed opposition to the resolution. It now goes to the House, where a parallel measure will be debated soon.

Happy are FCC Dems Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps. Here is Copps' press comment:

The Senate spoke for a huge majority of Americans last night by voting to overturn the flawed FCC decision gutting our long-standing ban on newspaper broadcast cross-ownership. With courageous leaders like Senator Byron Dorgan, the Senate has struck a blow for localism and diversity in a media environment crying out for more of both."

And Adelstein:

The Senate's complete rejection of the FCC's attempt to permit greater media concentration represents a great victory of the people over the powerful. In light of the Senate's action, any proposed transaction seeking to exploit the new rules will likely face intense scrutiny. This vote reflects a strong consensus across the ideological spectrum against further media concentration, from left to right and virtually everybody in between. The FCC veered dangerously off-course from the American mainstream, so our elected representatives are trying to steer us back. This unequivocal, bipartisan rebuke of the FCC is a wake-up call for us to serve the public rather than the media giants we oversee. Chairman [Dan] Inouye, Senator Dorgan, Vice Chairman [Ted] Stevens, Senator [Olympia] Snowe and the many other Senate leaders and public interest organizations who pushed this forward deserve our congratulations and the thanks of the American people.

President Bush has promised to veto the measure, of course, citing the "changing media landscape," and asserting that the FCC's denounced rule takes

"into account the abundance of news and information outlets that exist today and furthers the public interest by providing greater financial flexibility to newspaper and broadcast outlets struggling to survive in today's intensely competitive media environment. In addition to reducing the prior rule's excessive regulation of well-functioning markets, the new FCC rule includes substantial constraints to guard against excessive concentration. The administration supported this FCC action and strongly opposes any attempt to overturn this rule by legislative means."

And so if the House passes the parallel resolution, and Bush indeed vetos it, Congress is poised for a veto override debate that will force Republican presidential contender (and Arizona Senator) John McCain to decide how much he wants to run against the White House in his campaign. It will also catapult an FCC media ownership issue to national prominence, something that very rarely if ever happens.

In fact, I can't remember a single instance in United States history when it actually has happened. I seem to recall that when Herbert Hoover was Secretary of Commerce and was just starting to regulate radio, he got some flack from parties who feared that Hoover was constructing the service to suit his presidential ambitions (he ran for and won the White House in 1928). FCC Chair Newton Minow's Vast Wasteland speech, in which he condemned the low quality of television, made headlines. But Newton gave the speech before the National Association of Broadcasters in 1961, a year after his boss John F. Kennedy was elected President.

I guess one could go wayyyy back to the presidential election of 1892, when Populist candidate James Weaver called for the creation of a publicly owned national telegraph system. Weaver won a million votes, but I'm not sure how much national play his telegraph proposal got. The election mostly focused on the debate over the tariff, with Democrat Grover Cleveland trouncing Republican Benjamin Harrison.

Big telecommunications controversies just seem to miss Presidential campaigns. The 1913 Kingsbury Commitment, in which AT&T conceded the rights of independent telephone companies to connect to its national system, took place a year after the turbulent four way race of 1912. The creation of the FCC was accompanied by a debate over whether to create a non-commercial zone of spectrum. But that fight took place in 1934, two years after FDR won the White House.

AT&T agreed to break up during the Presidential election of 1984, but this was a done deal, and went undebated by either Ronald Reagan or Walter Mondale.

I guess that I could cook up some lefty explanation for this lack of a national footprint: the media deliberately silences these sort of discussions. That sort of argument. And I suppose there is some truth in that. But I think that it is also true that this stuff is often way too geeky to generate national froth. It just doesn't have the juice that you can squeeze out of national security, health care, the economy, Hillary's husband, Barack's minister, and John McCain's age.

But this time around could be different. Golly. We'll see. . .

How Henry Got Her Name - Conclusion

MatthewLasar — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:45:17 -0500

This continues from Part II of "How Henry Got Her Name."

One warm Sunday afternoon I was sitting here in my basement writing, when I heard a great ruckus above my head.

"No! Henry! No! No!" It was Sharon's voice, accompanied by some kind of scuffle. I ran upstairs and into our bed room. The...

Will the FCC investigate Pentagon fake news?

MatthewLasar — Sun, 11 May 2008 01:00:20 -0500

Who knows what the Federal Communications Commission will do with John Dingell's petition for an investigation of the Pentagon's fake news spree, as revealed by the

KPFA Indiana/North Carolina primary coverage Tuesday night

MatthewLasar — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:35:44 -0500

Go to KPFA.org on Tuesday night to listen and blog!

Special Election Night Coverage with Mitch Jeserich, Tuesday, May 6th starting at 7pm PST.

Join us online during the broadcast! KPFA will be Blogging Live during the show, with photos, polls, and links to online info about the primaries - post your comments in our liveblog chatroom, right on the KPFA.org homepage, starting at 7pm Pacific Time!

The next chapter in the Democratic Primary will be written Tuesday night as voters in both Indiana and North Carolina go to the polls, where there will be 187 delegates up for grabs. KPFA brings you election night coverage starting at 7 pm on Tuesday night. Host Mitch Jeserich will bring you election night speeches, insightful interviews, controversial clips from the likes of John Hagee and Jeremiah Wright, and your phone calls. We'll also have our on-line live blog up and running at kpfa.org so we all can see and hear what our on-line community has to say.

Become a Member of KPFA Online

Click Here to donate to KPFA Online! Our online pledge form is secure, and will allow you to pledge by Credit Card, Check or EFT.

Can't pledge online? You can also support KPFA by Mailing in a check, Donating a Car or Other Vehicle, Planned Giving, or Donating Stock!

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During fund drives we could use your help answering phones! We will be answering phones from 6:30 am to 10 midnight on weekdays, and 7 am to 10 pm on weekends. We especially need help before 8am and after 8pm. Come in for an hour, or all day.

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During our Pledge Drives, delicious vegetarian meals are provided to our phone volunteers by donations from local restaurants.

Would you like to become a Food Donor? Please contact us at: mariakpfa.org or (510)848-6767 ext. 258.

View the list of Food Donors from our last fund drive!

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Deregulaton = higher voice/data prices, says GAO

MatthewLasar — Sat, 03 May 2008 14:00:03 -0500

The smaller voice/data carriers are launching a new offensive against Qwest's efforts to get its access rates deregulated in four major markets: Minneapolis, Seattle, Denver and Phoenix. What that means is that, if the Federal Communications Commission approves the waiver, Qwest ...

XM/Sirius merger predictions

MatthewLasar — Fri, 02 May 2008 23:29:49 -0500

What will the Federal Communications Commission decide regarding the proposed XM/Sirius merger? The hell if I know.

But it's fun to come up with predictions, especially if you live 3,000 miles away from Washington, D.C. and mostly get your information via the Internet. One thing is for sure, the path is open to a decision. The Departme...

What is net neutrality?

MatthewLasar — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:05:35 -0500

I spent all of Thursday listening to the Federal Communications Commission's second hearing on net neutrality, held at Stanford University. It was an interesting day, because unlike the agency's . . . more

How Henry Got Her Name (Part I)

MatthewLasar — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 23:17:27 -0500

I love our cat. Her name is Henry.

You may be wondering how a she-cat came to be called such. I'll concede that ignorance played an important role in the decision. But let's start at the beginning. Read the rest . . .

Live National Broadcast on the Crisis in Veterans' Healthcare

MatthewLasar — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:48:21 -0500

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 18, 2008

Live National Broadcast on the Crisis in Veterans' Healthcare

KPFA/ Pacifica to Highlight Groundbreaking Class Action Suit by US Veterans
against the Department of Veterans Affairs

(Berkeley, CA - April 18, 2008) The first class action lawsuit brought by
Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans against the Department of Veterans Affairs will open next week in San Francisco. US veterans suffering from
post-traumatic stress disorder are alleging a systemic crisis in the way the
government treats injured US soldiers, in the case of *Veterans for Common
Sense et al vs. Peake*.

On Tuesday, April 22nd, KPFA/ Pacifica Radio will broadcast a three-hour
live national special delving into the crisis in the VA health care system.
The special broadcast will include live updates from the San Francisco
Federal Courthouse, interviews with veterans' attorney Gordon Erspamer,
advocates from Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for America, as well as interviews with veterans and their families, including Joyce and Kevin
Lucey who are suing the VA claiming their son Jeffrey committed suicide
after being turned away from the VA.

KPFA host and former Army medic Aimee Allison and award-winning journalist
Aaron Glantz will anchor the broadcast and take calls from listeners.
Listeners can also participate in a blog on KPFA's interactive
warcomeshome.orgwebsite, which highlights the human costs of the Iraq
and Afghanistan occupations for those in the United States. The special airs on KPFA from 10am PDT (1pm EDT) to 1pm PDT (4pm EDT) on 94.1 FM in Northern California and online at kpfa.org and warcomeshome.org, as well as on Pacifica stations and affiliates around the country.

The broadcast comes on the heels of KPFA/ Pacifica's broadcast of the Winter
Soldier hearings last month in Silver Springs, Maryland, where scores of US
veterans spoke out about war crimes perpetrated by the US government in Iraq and Afghanistan, including crimes they had witnessed or participated in.

###

Founded in 1949, KPFA is the United States' first listener-sponsored radio
station and the flagship station in the Pacifica Radio Network. Broadcasting
on 94.1 FM in Berkeley, CA, and 88.1 FM on KFCF in Fresno, KPFA's signal
reaches one third of the state of California. KPFA's website, kpfa.org,
serves thousands of listeners all over the world. KPFA's innovative news,
arts, public affairs, and music programs have won numerous awards and have
helped define radio in America.

Contact:

Sasha Lilley, KPFA Interim Program Director

510-848-6767 ext 209

New FTC videos about "phishing"; dorky but cute

MatthewLasar — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:03:52 -0500

I'm enjoying the Federal Trade Commission's new videos about "phishing"—Web sites that try to trick you into disclosing information about your bank account, social security number, security passwords and such so they can steal your identity and rob you silly. The little skits are simple and... Read the rest here.

Comcast, BitTorrent announce that they will collaborate, at least rhetorically

MatthewLasar — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:13:43 -0500

The cable giant and peer-to-peer innovator whose conflict triggered a renewed debate over net neutrality have announced that they will work together now, or at least adjust some of their rhetoric. Comcast and BitTorrent issued a press release this morning promising "a collaborative effort with one another and with the broader Internet and IS...

Chris Murphy fights Bush's wiretapping plan

MatthewLasar — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:33:28 -0600

Here's a message Congressmember Chris Murphy of Pennsylvania sent me last week.

They're at it again. And I need your help to fight back.

This weekend, a Republican special interest group, Defense Of Democracies, peppered Connecticut airwaves with a completely false TV ad criticizing my opposition to Bush's unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program. You can watch the attack ad here.

Here in the 5th district, we've seen this type of fear mongering before. The ad running against me now is eerily reminiscent of an ad that Nancy Johnson ran in 2006, infamously suggesting that I would not allow the U.S. government to intercept "a terrorist communication" from Pakistan to the United States.

With your help, we were able to muster the resources to beat back Johnson's misleading attacks. Now, I need your help again. Can you immediately go to our website here and make a contribution to help us fight back against these right wing attacks on our Constitution?

I believe that we won in 2006 because in the face of these ads, we refused to bend in our support for basic civil liberties and privacy rights. I support a strong terrorist surveillance law, but I refuse to sacrifice our nation's hard fought civil liberties in the name of George Bush's illegal wiretapping scheme.

But I can't fight this battle alone. These new ads show that Bush's supporters will go to any lengths to remove from office those of us who dare to oppose his growing imperial Presidency.

Right now, I need your help to grow our ability to fight back. Can you click here to make a contribution to our campaign?

Forward this email to your friends. We need everyone’s support in responding to this attack ad TODAY.

These ads don't scare me. If you give me the necessary financial resources, we can once again prove that campaigns based on fear and deceit have no place in Connecticut.

Every best wish,

Chris Murphy

P.S. Let's stand up for the Constitution! Go to my website's contribution page in order to make a generous contribution right now!

Public Interest Obligations in the 21st Century:

MatthewLasar — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:08:56 -0600

Update: Confirmed Speakers include: FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and
Jonathan Adelstein.

The Benton Foundation and the Public Interest, Public Airwaves Coalition
(PIPA)

invite you to a discussion on:

Public Interest Obligations in the 21st Century:

Where Do We Go from Here?

A Look at the Federal Communications Commission's
New Broadcast Disclosure Rules and the
Issues Raised in the FCC's Localism Proceeding

Confirmed Speakers include: FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and
Jonathan Adelstein. There will also be a panel of key actors and
discussion with attendees.

Time and Location:

Monday, March 3, 2008
12:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

National Press Club

Lunch will be served.

RSVP: Cecilia Garcia cgarcia@benton.org

or 202-454-5611

PIPA coalition includes the Benton Foundation, Campaign Legal Center,
Common Cause, Institute for Public Representation of Georgetown
University Law Center, Media Access Project, New America Foundation,
Office of Communications Inc. of the United Church of Christ, U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Public Interest Obligations in the 21st Century: Where Do We Go From Here?

MatthewLasar — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:20:40 -0600

The Benton Foundation and the Public Interest, Public Airwaves Coalition (PIPA)

invite you to a discussion on:

Public Interest Obligations in the 21st Century:
Where Do We Go from Here?

A Look at the Federal Communications Commission's
New Broadcast Disclosure Rules and the
Issues Raised in the FCC's Localism Proceeding

Invited Speakers include: FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. There will also be a panel of key actors and discussion with attendees.

Time and Location:
Monday, March 3, 2008
12:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

National Press Club

RSVP: Cecilia Garcia at cgarcia@benton.org or 202-454-5611

PIPA coalition includes the Benton Foundation, Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Institute for Public Representation of Georgetown University Law Center, Media Access Project, New America Foundation, Office of Communications Inc. of the United Church of Christ, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

KPFA to Broadcast Historic Winter Soldier Event in Full

MatthewLasar — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:20:40 -0600

From March From March 14th to 16th, KPFA will suspend regular programming to broadcast the historic Winter Soldier hearings in Washington, DC. The three day live broadcast will be co-hosted by myself and former Army medic and KPFA Morning Show host Aimee Allison. A live web-stream of the broadcast will be available through WarComesHome.org http://warcomeshome.org /content/kpfa-broadcast -historic-winter-soldier-event -full
The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support. Also, check out War Comes Home for this important unfinished legacy about the Vietnam war: Even as the costs of the Iraq war pile up, the human costs of the Iraq war continue to ripple out. On Friday, a federal appeals court rejected an effort by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange to reinstate claims that U.S. companies (including Monsanto and Dow) committed war crimes by making the toxic chemical defoliant used in the Vietnam War. http://warcomeshome.org /content/agent-orange%3A -federal-court-sides-against -vietnam-vets%2C-vietnamese -people

XM Sirius merger? a year of indecision

MatthewLasar — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:25:57 -0600

Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the proposed merger of Sirius and XM radio. Yes, it may be hard to believe, but on a bright, sunny February 19th, 2007, the two satellite audio services announced their plans to marry, and asked the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission to give their blessing.

They've been standing at the altar ever since.

Over the last year, everybody and his sister has weighed in on this matter. On one hand, a seemingly endless array of civil rights and identity groups have endorsed the merger. On the other hand, a strange bedfellows coalition of media reform groups and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) have opposed it, arguing that the union would enjoy a monopoly over the satellite radio spectrum.

Indeed, the merger XM/Sirius would become a monopoly, but the NAB coming out against media consolidation? Good grief. . . .

For a wide variety of widely speculated reasons, neither the FCC or the Justice Department have been able to resolve this question. Why? The way I see it, merger proposals are dangerous moments for the masters of our telecommunications sector. When two or three media moguls go hat in hand to the Federal Communications Commission, asking for permission to unite, they unleash a public comment cycle on the question. That always releases the reformers and dreamers, who ask uncomfortable questions and come up with alternative scenarios for the future.

Sometimes the reformers even get their way. AT&T had to pledge to honor net neutrality rules for at least a couple of years to get their merger with BellSouth past the FCC in late December.

Now that XM and Sirius satellite radio want permission to mate, the reformers have returned. The good folks at Public Knowledge filed comments with the FCC on the union shortly after its proposal. They want conditions for merger to include a requirement that the new entity reserve five percent of its resources for "non-commercial educational and informational programming over which it has no editorial control."

It's a very reasonable suggestion, but I'm going to play dreamer this time. I say let XM and Sirius sink or swim separately. If the two services sink, turn all of satellite radio into a listener supported, non-profit service.

XM and Sirius say they need to merge because they've still got a long climb to get to a sustainable plateau. Lots of smart people doubt that they will ever get there. When they first proposed to unite, Business Week offered a bleak prognosis under any circumstances, noting that neither firm had yet to earn "a penny of profit."

"Whether or not Washington lets XM Satellite Radio Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio merge seems beside the point," a column on the proposal began. "Even if they get the nod, there's no guarantee the six-year-old business model will survive."

The problem is that when the FCC launched its satellite Digital Audio Radio Service in 1997 (SDARS), it did not allow for the technology to go through what I call its natural non-profit period.

"The American consumer can now look forward to an exciting new radio service," the FCC's October 1997 press release on SDAR's promised, forgetting that when telecommunications technologies first surface, their founders often do not know how to make money from them.

That was early radio's story. As the historian Susan Smulyan notes in her terrific book Selling Radio, so uncertain were early broadcasters about how to monetize their industry, that in 1925 one radio magazine actually held a contest for the best essay on how to make radio profitable.

This dilemma goes all the way back to the early days of telegraph, when its investor deprived inventor Samuel Morse pleaded unsuccessfully with Congress to take over the technology. And it appeared more recently with the Internet, which functioned as a tool of universities and the Defense Department long before it morphed into America On Line. New telecommunications technologies sometimes have to find their sea legs in a non-market based environment before they can become monetized, as the IPO smoothies like to say.

Somehow the framers of our satellite radio service thought that they could skip this natural non-profit phase. In retrospect, their decision seems naive. FM radio struggled for decades with the same obstacles that satellite faces today: a potential audience that needed new receivers to access the service, and a new juggernaut competitor, television, that sucked away listeners and turned them into viewers.

Satellite's competing juggernaut is not TV, but the Internet, which links to a veritable smorgasbord of terrestrial stations that I can access via my wireless laptop and a pair of good speakers. And in the battle for freeway commuters, satellite still has to trounce terrestrial radio, which, remarkably, continues to hold its own despite a drop in listeners and an overall decline in quality.

So it seems unlikely that this version of satellite radio will make it, merged or unmerged. But there is another system for developing the service that better fits the bill: listener supported non-commercial radio (which for convenience's sake I will acronym LS-NCR).

Most U.S. radio listeners have become so accustomed to commercial broadcasting that they regard LS-NCR as a sort of weird, alien protocol. But, in fact, it's as American as apple pie. We invented it on the west coast of the United States after the Second World War. KPFA-FM, launched in Berkeley, California, in 1949, remains the world's longest running listener supported radio station. KPFK-FM in Los Angeles followed ten years later.

LS-NCR helped FM grow. Like XM and Sirius, KPFA founder Lew Hill sold receivers to subscribers so that they could listen to his station. A decade later a wave of "free form" radio stations, many of them strong on listeners and lighter on profits, built an even more passionate audience for FM.

In a very real sense, XM and Sirius are listener supported institutions, but they thought that they could build a loyal subscription paying audience from the top down, with auto manufacturers and cable companies as their partners, rather than from the bottom up, with the listeners. They were wrong.

I was talking about this with my friend Bonnie Simmons, who ran San Francisco's free form station KSAN for ten years. Bonnie pointed out that XM and Sirius recruited many of their deejays from terrestrial radio. Most of them had strong local or regional followings, but have not duplicated that loyalty on a national level. Bob Edwards and Howard Stern have come to satellite with a built-in national cache, but they are not typical of the genre.

And let's face it, a lot of XM/Sirius isn't even really radio. It's juke box; deejayless streams of music that you can put together just as nicely with your own iPod.

Skeptics of my proposal will point to the historic under performance of listener supported radio. And they're right to be skeptical. Most radio stations that depend primarily on subscriptions have relatively small audiences. There are two reasons for this shortfall.

First, the FCC has allocated only a tiny number of frequencies for listener supported radio stations. This has always forced them to cater to too many different audiences. As a result, "community" radio stations, which run primarily on the listener supported model, often become balkanized exercises in cultural power sharing; difficult for the average radio consumer to listen to on a regular basis.

Second, while the listener supported model sustains a radio station, it rarely capitalizes it. LS-NCR on its own usually keeps the frequency loping along on a maintenance level, but doesn't provide the money for professional talent and on-going development.

Giving our digital satellite audio service over to a wide field of listener-supported non-profits would address the first problem. A critical mass of LS-NCRs would allow them to diversify: to create sports LS-NCRs, and all-news LS-NCRs, and music format LS-NCRs - from hip-hop to classical, rather than forcing all these tendencies to cram themselves together into a few stations on the bottom of the FM dial. To the extent that terrestrial LS-NCR's have been able to specialize, they have become much more effective stations.

Second, the FCC, or Congress, should create a matching fund to support digital satellite LS-NCRs. Once the station reaches a threshold of subscribers, the matching fund kicks in with additional money.

And rather than coming from the highly politicized Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the fund should flow from spectrum auction sales or satellite leasing income. I would even look at the FCC's ever evolving Universal Service Fund as a source.

But even if a steady font of income isn't immediately identified, converting satellite radio to a listener-supported service will get the ball rolling. Because when all else fails, LS-NCRs run on fanatic power, led by "the little man with a large view," as FCC consultant and FM booster Charles Siepmann wrote 50 years ago in his book on FM, Radio's Second Chance.

And in the end, isn't it always the fanatics who pioneer the future?

So here is what I suggest that the FCC do. Let XM and Sirius run their course. Then open up SDARs in a manner similar to the FCC's application window for Non-Commercial Educational radio.

Launch an application period for as many digital satellite LS-NCRs as possible. Plug in the usual criterion: only non-profit organizations with accountable boards may apply. They've got to prove that they can run the station without income for at least three months.

But add one more requisite to the equation. Partition the matrix of licenses into about a dozen generally recognized formats: news, talk, various cultural forms, from hip-hop to a BBC Third Programme style format, even sports.

Make the applicants pick a format. Don't let the germinators of this new service fall into the old trap of trying to please everybody who hovers on the margins of our present commercial system of broadcasting.

Trust me. This will work. Ten years from now digital satellite radio will be crammed with passionate, loyal, paying listeners.

Then corporate America will have something viable to ruin.