Shhh...

"We are being 'hush hush' because if word gets out, this could muster competition and that would be bad," says Todd Urick of his hope to launch "a local community radio station. Not a pirate station; a real one, with serious watts that can get the signal far and wide." Urick claims to have heard that, later this year ("no one knows when exactly"), the FCC will offer public entities and private nonprofit community organizations a one-time, five-day window to apply for a full-power FM radio license, and San Diego is one of the few cities with potential bandwidth.

"I talked to Activist San Diego about all of this stuff; they got a prelim study done, and there is a frequency available," says Urick, whose past broadcasting endeavors include stints as both engineer and manager at KDVS, a 9200-watt free-form radio station near Sacramento. His nonprofit group (www.commonfrequency.org) hopes to raise money for a proposed indie FM station that would broadcast from atop a mountain in northern San Diego. "The FCC hasn't announced anything yet, [but] people into alternative media really need to get organized to make this thing happen." The big thing is getting the associated filing costs together." He expects those costs to total around $4000.