Radio World reports that Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Mignon L. Clyburn bragged to the audience at last week's National Association of Broadcasters convention about the success of the low-power FM service. “As you know, low-power FM radio service was created as a way to serve local and/or underrepresented groups within communities,” she said, according to a text of her remarks from the commission. “In just over two years since the LPFM filing window opened, 1,900 construction permits for new LPFM stations have been issued with the expectation that by the end of this year, there will be approximately 2,000 LPFM station operating on the air. This phenomenal success story will result in a diversity of new viewpoints and hyper local content that is so desperately needed in our country.” Clyburn, one of the three Democrats on the commission, spoke to a crowd once very hostile to the idea of low-power FM. The NAB and National Public Radio once argued that allowing community access to underused frequencies by tiny stations would interfere with larger stations. What they really thought was that adding community radio stations would steal their audiences. Turns out they are wrong on both counts, as studies have found that listening to the radio leads to more listening to the radio, not less, and that attracting new audiences helps similar stations.