When the Federal Communications Commission proposed giving low-power radio stations licens

es on the FM dial, they knew they'd get flak from big broadcasting. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), after all, spends millions of dollars every year lobbying to keep everybody else off the radio spectrum—even locally managed, noncommercial stations that broadcast only within a four-mile radius. Sure enough, when the FCC proposed its new regulations, the NAB began screaming about all the terrible things those tiny radio transmitters could do to the big ones, whose signals are 500 times as strong and whose reach is nearly 20 times as far.

It was a pretty thin argument. So thin, in fact, that for a while if appeared the proposed regulations might survive the lobbying onslaught. And then the FCC and its allies ran into a most unlikely opponent, one with the moral authority to do real damage to their cause: National Public Radio. One might easily assume that NPR would look out for the public interest. After all, NPR was born from the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which called for it to "encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences" while creating "programs of high quality, diversity, creativity, excellence, and innovation which are obtained from diverse sources." The charter, in other words, describes exactly the kind of programming low-power radio might provide, particularly in rural or heavily immigrant communities where locally oriented programming could be more useful than nationally syndicated shows. But the well-meaning lefties at NPR didn't see low-power radio as a potential ally or kindred spirit. They saw it just as the big broadcasters did—as a threat—and tried to squash it in much the same way.

They may have succeeded. NPR's lobbying supported a last-minute rider in December's Senate appropriations bill (which eventually became law). This amendment severely handicaps the low-power radio initiative. Specifically, it limits the licensing of low-power radio to just nine test markets, enforcing restrictions that effectively keep it out of urban are as and other major markets. It also mandates testing to determine the economic impact on established broadcasters. And, though John McCain has vowed to continue the fight for low power, for now at least NPR has won the day.

The primary motivation behind opening the airwaves to low-power radio was to undo the damage wrought by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That law was supposed to increase competition on the airwaves. Instead, it consolidated control of radio stations in the hands of a few large, national companies that syndicate programs (or even whole broadcasts) to their affiliates, thus squeezing out local programming. By allowing small, noncommercial stations, to break into the spectrum, the FCC hoped to reintroduce local material in places where it has all but vanished. In its application process, the FCC privileged local content and community involvement—for example, assigning spectrum space to stations in primarily Latino areas that broadcast family-planning information in Spanish. Part of the application asked aspiring broadcasters how their stations would serve their neighborhoods.

From the text we can infer that the NAB represents______.

A．backers of commercial radio

B．National Public Radio

C．large radio stations in the U.S.

D．companies which produce large radio transmitters