A Book and Movie in Seattle

The Globe Cafe in Seattle tomorrow night should be a fun place to be. There, Ron Sakolsky, the first historian of microradio, will be speaking about his new book, Creating Anarchy. Joining him will be the creators of a new documentary about microradio, called Pirate Radio USA. They’ve been quite tight-lipped about the production itself, although it is finally finished and apparently in submission to several festivals, public trailer still forthcoming.

Scene Reports: California, Illinois

California: Skidmark Bob just interviewed Monkey of the infamous Pirate Cat Radio. Monkey scored an early copy of Stephen Dunifer’s TV transmitter kit and put Pirate Cat TV on the air six months ago; its 80-watt signal can be seen on Channel 13 in the San Francisco area. Programming consists of a growing catalog of DIVX .avi files on a homebrew server with a terabyte of storage, and the station is actively soliciting more content.
As for Pirate Cat Radio, Monkey says there’s about 30 DJs presently, and the dues-paying fundraising model takes care of their needs. At the end of the interview he says the station will soon “upgrade” from 220 to 1,000 (!) watts, mostly by moving to a directional antenna system. Continue reading “Scene Reports: California, Illinois”

Netherlands Radio Protest Successful

News is scant but it appears the weekend’s “100,000 Antennes” mass broadcast/protest in Amsterdam in support of free radio movement went off without incident. Dutch police and radio enforcement authorities apparently kept their cool and let the events take place without interfering. People have published few articles to Indymedia Netherlands as of yet, but one of them features an MP3 interview with U.S. microradio academic Ron Sakolsky, who traveled over to take part in the festivities.