Catholic Church 1, Little Raleigh Radio 0.
The FCC has denied hyper-local station Little Raleigh Radio a low-power FM license it applied for more than a year ago.
Instead, the FCC granted the 106.5 frequency, which will reach listeners within southeast Raleigh and inside the beltline, to two Catholic organizations: the local Knights of Columbuschapter, and the Corporation for Educational Advancement.
The Corporation for Educational Advancement sponsors the Thomas International Center in Raleigh. However, the parent organization, Thomas International Project, has mailing addresses in Wisconsin and Italy. Its mission, according to its website, is “cultural renewal in light of Western and Christian intellectual traditions” as represented in the writings of Thomas Aquinas.
Jacob Downey and Kelly Reid, the co-founders of Little Raleigh Radio, wrote in an email to their listeners and volunteers that they are “deeply disappointed” in the FCC’s decision but “knew it was a possibility from the outset.”
Little Raleigh Radio will continue to stream on the web via www.littleraleighradio.org.
“We are living in the midst of a renaissance in radio where the Internet allows us to share ourselves unencumbered by the airwaves,” the email states. “And we are in the heart of Raleigh, a city with a hopeful, gritty and entrepreneurial spirit. This fuels our drive to create meaningful, informative and entertaining programming. We do what we do because we love creating and we love Raleigh.”
Three low-power FM stations exist in the Triangle: WRLY 93.5, which covers primarily a small section of northeastern Raleigh, WCOM 103.5 in Carrboro, and WHUP 104.7 in Hillsborough, which is scheduled to go on the air in May. Jane Porter
Durham Compass: a new honey hole of data
There is good news out of Southeast-Central Durham. The area near N.C. Central University has among the highest percentage per capita of four-star and five-star child care centers in the city. One hundred percent of these centers have attained that ranking, well above the county average of 59 percent.
Move farther east, though, near Liberty Street and Miami Boulevard, and there are none.
This is the kind of data that makes the Durham Neighborhood Compass so valuable not only for map and numbers geeks, but policymakers, businesses and residents.
The Compass, which operates out of the city’s Neighborhood Improvement Services and Technology Solutions departments, launched last year. And in the past month, the Compass, led by project manager John Kileen, has uploaded and mapped even more data that tells us not only important facts about our quality of life, but how to address issues in housing, voting, jobs, poverty, crime and access to groceries, child care and health care.
The most recent Compass upgrade increased the number of mapped neighborhoods to 189, up from 155.
It also provides data on:
• Areas with licensed child care centers, including those with four or five stars
• Voter participation in 2012 primary and general elections
• New certificates of occupancy (known as COAs) for business, industry and residences.
This data reflects completed construction or improvements to properties by neighborhood. Areas of Watts-Hillandale have 22 of these residential COAs per square milethat could mean there is not only interest, but space to build or money for improvements. Meanwhile, in one area of Northeast-Central Durham, near Canal Street, there is just one. And this is the same neighborhood where nearly 10 percent of homes are in poor or unsound condition.
• The proportion of residential units that the county’s tax administration office assessed to be in “poor or unsound” condition, showing severe deterioration or homes potentially unfit for living in.
For example, the city average is 1 percent; the Central Park and Cleveland Holloway neighborhoods exceed that, with 3 percent of homes in bad condition. In Northgate Park, that percentage is just 0.3 percent.
Ready to go down the Durham Neighborhood Compass rabbit hole? Go to www.compass.durhamnc.gov . Lisa Sorg
