Powell’s Master Plan
There’s been little talk of the direction newly-anointed FCC chairman Michael Powell plans to take the agency, outside the mouthing of various platitudes he made following his nomination, where he pledged to make the FCC even more friendly to big business interests in Washington.
Powell has finally unveiled a little more about his strategic plan for the FCC: he presented an outline of it in late May as testimony to a Congressional committee chewing over the FCC’s latest budget request.
From the testimony, it’s clear that Powell is planning on keeping his mitts off the “public interest'” side of the agency’s mission, choosing to focus almost exclusively on providing the best service he can to his “customers” – media corporations. Continue reading “FCC: Still a Paper Tiger”
Category: Microradio
Parting Ways
There is much news to report as the introduction of America’s new low power FM (LPFM) service continues. While progress is good, it’s apparent now that the service – and its new constituents – are working to separate themselves from the movement of electronic civil disobedience which spurred its creation.
The FCC has been quietly issuing new LPFM station construction permits in small batches; the current count is now up to 41, and it’s expected that handfuls will continue to be released throughout the year.
The lack of fanfare from the FCC, who could certainly use a bit of publicity on an issue like this to at least maintain its rhetorical populism, is a bit disturbing. Continue reading “Parting Ways”
Party Pirate Gives it Up?
Pirate radio blooms around the world for different reasons and faces different challenges, depending on where the station is located and the reasons for going on the air. In the United States, pirates tend to take to the air for political reasons: whether it be to protest the corporate takeover of the local airwaves or to challenge the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), putting a pirate station on the air is a signal of open defiance to the status quo.
Nobody has exemplified this nature of struggle more than Doug Brewer. He joined the ranks of the microradio movement early on in the game, setting up Tampa’s Party Pirate 102.1in 1994 as an outgrowth of a small station he installed to broadcast Christmas music at his home during the holidays.
Listeners in Tampa flocked to the station but the FCC wasn’t pleased; an overzealous crew of enforcement agents based in Tampa made it their mission in life to take the Party Pirate off the air. They began with a visit in 1996 and issued Brewer a $1,000 fine for unlicensed broadcasting. Continue reading “Party Pirate Gives it Up?”
2001 "Pirate Hunt" Begins
The U.S. microradio movement is all abuzz over the recent raid on Radio Free Cascadia – the 90-watt unlicensed station broadcast for three years in Eugene, Oregon, and some members of the station conducted a broadcast in Seattle during the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization.
On Thursday, March 15, FCC agents backed by 11 federal and local law enforcement officers paid an early-morning visit to RFC. Guns were drawn, a battering ram was employed, and when it was over the agents had confiscated the station’s broadcast equipment and left Eugene with one less voice on the radio dial.
The RFC collective was quick to respond: “This was an obvious attack on free speech and autonomy,” said a statement posted to the station’s web site. “We will be back on the air!” Continue reading “2001 "Pirate Hunt" Begins”
Party Pirate Attacked Again; Former Pirate to get Second Station
The FCC appears to be experiencing a moment of schizophrenia.
On the regulation and enforcement fronts, the hands of the FCC are working in very different directions.
Yesterday, a new volley was fired in the ongoing battle between the radio police and Doug Brewer, operator of Tampa, Florida’s “Party Pirate” 102.1 FM.
There’s a long history to this skirmish, which has flared up twice before since Brewer put the Party Pirate on the air more than six years ago. Continue reading “Party Pirate Attacked Again; Former Pirate to get Second Station”
Guerrilla Radio News
One of the things mainstream radio in America has all but abandoned is journalism. It’s only been a half-century since the advent of television, and from then to now is the time it’s taken for radio news to all but disappear.
Radio news departments were some of the first casualties in the industry’s downward spiral into consolidation and cost-cutting sparked by the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It costs a lot of money (read: salaries) to produce local news, and offers some of the lowest return on investment (read: ad rates).
As an independent media movement took root at the end of the last century, activists rediscovered radio journalism. A portable minidisc recorder makes it possible for one person to archive a large amount of sound on a matchbook-sized medium; regular cassette tapes are cheaper still. And the MP3 file system makes coverage of events and interviews easy to produce and distribute online. Continue reading “Guerrilla Radio News”
New Year: Same Game
2001 will be a very interesting year for the U.S. microradio movement. It is enjoying more popularity than ever even though a recent legalization effort was severely curtailed.
Unfortunately the long and protracted battle for low power radio licenses has come to a dismal end: commercial broadcasters and National Public Radio brought their full weight to bear to quash a two-year grassroots effort to add more voices to the dial.
FCC Commissioner Michael Powell is the likely candidate to become FCC Chairman this summer; Michael is the son of Colin Powell, President-elect George W. Bush’s nominee for Secretary of State. Consider this: Shortly before the FCC approved the merger of AOL and Time Warner last year, Colin Powell moved much of his investments into AOL stock – and reaped a killing when the merger was approved by his son. Continue reading “New Year: Same Game”
FCC: More Bark than Bite?
Fudging the Numbers for Victory
Pirate radio broadcasters in America have been locked in a low-intensity war with the government that shows no sign of slowing down. The Federal Communications Commission “declared war” on unlicensed radio back in 1997 after the broadcast industry urged them to do so.
What’s resulted over the last three years has been a traditional guerrilla battle involving hit-and-run attacks that result in publicity for the FCC and relatively little damage to the pirates.
There are signs, though, that the free radio has an upper hand in the war right now. Continue reading “FCC: More Bark than Bite?”
Free Radio – A Documentary Video
Note: Clicking on any bordered pictures in this feature spawns a clip from the documentary
Real Player required
The last time someone chronicled the story of free radio in the United States on video or film was Pump Up the Volume, and before that there was only one DIY-style video out there, which has long ceased production and distribution.
The story of modern microradio had yet to be told; enter Kevin Keyser, a field producer working in mainstream TV news on the West Coast. He once did a story for his station on Stephen Dunifer and Free Radio Berkeley and was intrigued by the concept of unlicensed broadcasting. Unfortnately, the story that ultimately aired didn’t do Dunifer justice – as was the problem with much of the news Keyser found himself covering. It wasn’t his fault, though – it was the medium’s. Continue reading “Free Radio – A Documentary Video”
Global Microradio
From its roots some seven years ago as a completely homebrew station cobbled together from spare parts and junk, 2000 Flushes Pirate Radio graced the Twin Cities airwaves with its own brand of dissent.
It dropped off the dial pretty quickly, though, making sporadic reappearances over the past near-decade.
Earlier this month, 2000 Flushes came back with a vengeance. Continue reading “Global Microradio”