Companion bills in the US House and Senate would open up more existing space on the dial to low-power FM stations. It's a move that could help diversify radio.

When, for the first time in decades, the FCC opened up a licensing window for new full-power FM community radio stations, mostly in rural areas around the country, the Pacifica Foundation, Prometheus Radio and several other outfits made a specific attempt to raise the number of African American owned and run community radio stations in the South. Out of their efforts, more than a hundred grassroots organizations, quite a few of them black, applied for new station licenses, especially in the South. This is not your daddy's black radio, or your momma's, or Radio One's discredited, conscienceless and commercial radio. This is the dawn of a new paradigm in black radio --- the other black radio.