California: Freak Radio Santa Cruz will lose its current station location at the end of April. The hunt is on for new space. The landlord is apparently clearing out the entire building for some sort of redevelopment project, which is a shame because he’s otherwise been cool about the station (to the point of facing down the FCC twice). Freak Radio’s no stranger to moving – at one stage the station was “homeless” and operated out of a bicycle cart – but it is never a fun experience and this space had been the station’s single longest home.
Berkeley Liberation Radio continues to hum along and recently overhauled its schedule. The station’s adopted a dues format for fundraising and made out okay at their benefit show last month. BLR’s Cap’n Fred lays down the bassline on one of our recent additions to the pirate music MP3 collection (Countdown and the Blastoffs’ “We Want the Airwaves“). Continue reading “Scene Reports: California, Colorado, Oregon”
Tag: super bowl
Super Bowl Pirates Fined $12,000
Most pirates in the United States operate on sporadic schedules. The 24/7 in-your-face operations may be the best-known and most-heralded, but the vast majority of unlicensed broadcasting is done on the sly in the hopes of staying under the FCC’s radar.
The rules are different, however, if the broadcast piracy involves professional sports. A nebulous outfit called Global Radio, Inc. operated pirate stations on multiple frequencies during this year’s Super Bowl and got away with it with a slap on the wrist compared to what most busted microradio stations receive.
Global Radio reportedly specializes in “event broadcast services” and applied to the FCC for six “experimental” FM licenses for use inside San Diego, CA’s Qualcomm Stadium. These temporary stations would give fans in the stands their choice of play-by-play announcer teams to listen to. Game details would be broadcast to the surrounding parking lot and little radios were even set up in the stadium’s bathrooms, so fans wouldn’t have to miss a second of the action on the field. Continue reading “Super Bowl Pirates Fined $12,000”