The 2010 Burning Man Project is now underway, and for the past 10 years the impromptu desert-community tunes to their FM dial for the Project’s unique brand of infotainment.
Burning Man Information Radio, a derivation/evolution of what used to be Radio Free Burning Man, got a nice writeup in the New York Times over the weekend about its operations.
Interesting note: while the station does not have a formal license from the FCC (no proper call letters; the FCC’s station databases have no record of it; and the NYT article says it “covers a five-mile radius,” which most assuredly puts its power above Part 15 limits), it was founded to satisfy the federal Bureau of Land Management‘s (BLM) permit requirement that the festival-cum-performance-space “have a communications system to alert participants about critical health and safety issues.”
Aside from the fact that it would be just plain mean for the FCC to wade into the middle of 50,000-person, week-long art project to deliver a warning letter, and given that the radio station is integral to Burning Man’s BLM permit to exist, it would seem that Burning Man Information Radio is the one guaranteed place in the United States where you’re formally allowed to get away with a week of license-free broadcasting. Contributing to that autonomous creative space tugs at the heart-strings.
However, for those of us who cannot be there in person, BMIR is webcasting (apparently, for the first time in the Project’s history).
“The dust is hard on the electronics,” remarked BMIR station manager Bob Sommer. “We’re constantly having to patch things together.” I’ve never tried to broadcast from a desert, but I feel ya.
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