MARS — A new radio station may be coming to Butler County soon, according to Mayor Gregg Hartung.

At a borough council meeting Monday evening, Dec. 4, Hartung announced that he had recently been in preliminary talks over a potential Low Power FM station in the borough. The talks were between Hartung and Phil Lenz, a retired former broadcast engineer for Pittsburgh radio stations who contacted the mayor’s office.

“(Phil) said there's a frequency available in Mars for 107.1 FM, low power, that could be used on a community basis,” Hartung said. “The FCC only makes them available on a rotation basis in certain regions where there might be a frequency open.”

The Low Power FM license was introduced by the Federal Communications Commission in 2000 and allows for noncommercial educational broadcasting from stations with a maximum effective radiated power of 100 watts.

By contrast, WWSW-FM -- the top-rated radio station in the Pittsburgh market as of November according to Nielsen ratings -- has an effective radiated power of 50,000 watts and can easily be heard in most of Butler County.

Hartung said Lenz has put together “two or three” community Low Power FM stations in the past.

If it does materialize, the station would most likely not be listenable far outside the borough through a traditional radio. Hartung said that the station’s estimated range would be 12 to 17 miles from its antenna site.

However, Hartung said that the hypothetical station would be accessible worldwide thanks to Internet streaming.

Sites floated as possible locations for the station’s antenna included St. John Lutheran Church, due to favorable topography.

Since a Low Power FM station license can be held only by a noncommercial entity, Hartung has reached out to local nonprofits to see whether they would be interested in the idea, including St. John’s and the Mars Robotics Association.

If the station is to materialize, any interested nonprofit must submit a license application to the FCC by Dec. 13.

According to the FCC website, any potential application would have to successfully prove that the station would not cause interference to WAOB-FM in Beaver Falls, which is at 106.7 FM.