“Mosquito Fleet” of Microbroadcasters Occupy Seattle FM Dial During NAB Radio Convention, September 10-15, 2002
Operational Analysis – Behind the mics: a reportback on the fleet’s activities
Background
During the week of September 9, 2002, members of the radio industry traveled to Seattle, Washington for the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual radio convention. Continue reading “Mosquito Fleet Stings NAB”
I hereby present to you the Audio Library, which contains more than four gigabytes of material. In addition to 40+ hours of shortwave pirate clips (many new to the ‘net), featured MP3s and all things Mbanna, there’s some worthy video for you to check out as well.
Examples include “Free Radio: A Video Documentary” and “Evil Empire,” an oldie but still goodie, especially with the pending NAB radio convention in Seattle (just a month and a half away) and Clear Channel’s recent higher-than-usual public visibility.
Remember: this stuff just represents what was previously encoded, plus a backlog of stuff I hadn’t gotten to putting online yet. And we haven’t even gotten to media collage! Based on this, it’s feeling about time to officially “launch” DIYmedia, which means getting back into the real swing of things, with regular updates and the like. Look for that to happen within a week or so, once we get a few more essentials online. Continue reading “A/V Archive Unleashed, Launch Imminent, Random Notes”
A busy week. The Human Rights Information Network is back in action – all of Mbanna’s previous material is back online, and there’s 13 new episodes of the Human Rights Patrol, a new album of music from Ebony Kantako, and the start of a new archive of raw audio from the Human Rights Radio tape library. Mbanna now has more than a gigabyte of audio online, with plenty more sure to come.
There’s also new entries to the Enforcement Action Database – primarily a slew of NALs to operators in Florida, and one to the owner of a licensed station in Kansas who operated a pirate station on the same frequency out of a local nightclub. How smart is that?
We’ll be putting up the rest of our audio library and more features over the course of the next week. Soon, we’ll be back in business for real. Continue reading “Mbanna Material Resurrected, Good Riddance Randy Michaels?, IBOC Surprise”
It’s been tweaked slightly, and there’s still more improvements yet to come, but our world-famous (heh) FCC Enforcement Action Database is back online. One of these days I’ll write a FAQ. The restoration process should go much more quickly now that the two large jobs are out of the way…
On a related note, an online colleague, Lisa Nalbandian, a Master’s student at the UW-Milwaukee j-school, is working on a video documentary about microradio and LPFM. She’s looking for stations (both licensed and not) to speak with, preferably in the Midwest. You don’t have to be on camera if you don’t want to. Drop her a line if you want fame and enlightenment.
The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau has pushed a little paperwork recently, issuing notices of $10,000 fines to unlicensed radio station operators in Michigan and Brooklyn, NY.
The NY case is interesting, because the accused is the Rev. Dr. Philius Nicholas, uncle of Abner Louima, the Hatian immigrant who was worked over by the NYPD in 1997, most infamously with a toilet plunger. It’s unknown what his radio station broadcast, but I’m willing to bet it had something to do with police brutality… Continue reading “FCC Watch: NALs issued, S. Florida Sweep Imminent?”
This is going to take some time.
There’s five years’ worth of material not only to copy and paste into new templates, but we’re going through and doing some extra proofing, updating links, etc. The Radio Links segment takes precedence because it’s probably the most useful, but the process is pretty convoluted (not as simple as copy/paste, believe me).
Meanwhile, The Onion actually has something funny in this week’s issue:
Look Out, Corporate America, Here Comes My Pirate Radio Station Continue reading “The Grind is Underway”
FCC Issues “Progress Report”
As new licenses for low power FM (LPFM) stations continue to trickle out of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency’s Enforcement Bureau continues to wrestle with the “problem” of “pirate” broadcasters.
Unlicensed activity appears to be running high on both the FM and Shortwave bands. Shortwave activity is booming at a level not seen in years. In the past month alone, nearly two dozen shortwave pirates have conducted broadcasts, some broadcasting multiple times per week. The FCC has not conducted an enforcement action against a shortwave pirate since 1998.
The same can not be said for the FM band, where the FCC has been very busy. In January, 2002, four microradio stations were contacted by FCC agents for broadcasting without a license. One was fined $10,000. On a year-by-year basis, enforcement activity of this level for the month of January hasn’t been seen since 1999.
The numbers might look unnerving at face value, but the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau is facing numerous internal challenges that may hinder its future activity. Continue reading “Stimulus/Response”
“Attention Taliban! You are condemned. Did you know that? The instant the terrorists you support took over our planes, you sentenced yourselves to death…”
Such begins another broadcast day on “Information Radio,” the U.S. military’s psychological operations arm of the so-called “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan.
Now that the military campaign is in full seek-and-destroy mode, a specially-equipped plane from the Pennsylvania Air National Guard is making daily flights over Afghanistan, broadcasting music and messages for 10 hours a day on at least two AM frequencies (864 and 1107 kHz). A shortwave station, probably located in the neighboring former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, also relays the programming on 8700 kHz. Continue reading “Target (market): Afghanistan”
America’s new so-called “war on terrorism” has some interesting radio wrinkles running through it. In fact, “pirate radio” may play a role in the outcome of the current action in Afghanistan.
To tell the truth, since the Taliban took control of the country in 1996, what media there was in Afghanistan was all but destroyed. As part of its rigid imposition of ultra-strict religious law, the Taliban went on a seek-and-destroy mission against all television sets in the country; turned the country’s central TV station into a military boarding house; and established dominance over all radio outlets.
More than a dozen radio stations are active in Afghanistan, all part of the Taliban-controlled “Voice of Shari’ah” (Islamic Law) network, broadcasting mostly on AM and shortwave.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, then, that the radio voice of the Taliban was one of the first targets hit when America began dropping bombs. Continue reading “The Radio War in Afghanistan”
The following is the (heavily) edited text of the microradio “mass turn-on” proposal/presentation given by Tom Ness of the Michigan Music is World Class Campaign to a packed house at the Metro Detroit Area Green Party Clearinghouse on September 19, 2001.
Tom lays out an exciting and potentially powerful vision for the future of microradio in America. It will take more organization then has ever been seen before to pull it off – but it IS possible.
Dare to dream….If you would like a copy of the full text, simply Tom and he’ll be happy to send a copy your way.
If you can control what people think — or even what they think about — you don’t need expensive and messy armies. If you can control what people think, you’ve no need for police because people will happily do what you want — and think all along it is their idea. That is the power of the media, and why this subject is so acutely important. Continue reading “Give Me Pirate Radio”
