Republican FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly has made the persecution of pirate radio one of his hobby horses. He’s been blogging about it all year, lamenting the fact that his agency has no muscle with which to silence most stations and suggesting some cockamamie ideas for trying to tackle the problem. Although the agency’s Enforcement Bureau is currently going through a painful downisizing, O’Rielly’s an impatient man who wants heads on sticks.
He convened a task force of the broadcast industry earlier this summer which put forth a litany of suggestions for improving unlicensed broadcast enforcement. A month later, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler acknowledged that while unlicensed broadcasting is very much alive and well, tackling the phenomenon will not succeed using traditional enforcement methods. Continue reading “O'Rielly Pimps Pirate "Policy Statement"”
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