Category: Pirate Radio

Scene Report: California

106.9FM, the on-air relay for RadioActive San Diego, is back on the air. The station went dark last year citing financial and FCC troubles (the host of its transmitter was hit with a $10,000 Notice of Apparent Liability). When it signed off it pledged to come back five times stronger. That pledge has been fulfilled: the old 30-watt transmitter’s been replaced with one that does 150.
Earlier this month, Free Radio San Diego went back up to full power, after hobbling along in a weaker configuration since being raided last summer. Station founder Bob Ugly reports the coverage area is “as good if not the best it’s ever been.”

Federal Judge Disses Radio Free Brattleboro

A short story reports that J. Garvan Murtha, the federal judge overseeing the FCC’s original case against the station, ruled in the FCC’s favor on March 31. The ruling contains a “John and Mary Doe” clause, which basically calls for a blanket ban on any unlicensed broadcasting within the community of Brattleboro.
Unfortunately, the story says nothing about the judge’s rationale. It does, however, quote station lawyer James Maxwell as saying that the station’s tactic of mustering community support for an alternate “authority to broadcast” is still valid: “The basic argument that a town gave an entity permission to broadcast still exists. That argument is still useable by other stations.” Continue reading “Federal Judge Disses Radio Free Brattleboro”

Dave Rabbit to Resurrect Radio First Termer

Following up on February’s reappearance of Dave Rabbit, the legendary DJ of Vietnam pirate Radio First Termer, Corey Deitz snagged extended correspondence with Rabbit last month, wherein he says there may be a feature-length documentary about RFT in the works. Rabbit’s also putting together a 35th anniversary program to air sometime this year, perhaps in Saigon (though he doesn’t say how).
Ragnar Daneskjold of the Pirates Week podcast has also extensively interviewed Rabbit and plans to play back that conversation in two parts, starting with next weekend’s show.

A/V Miscellany

Passed along recently was a link to Immortal Technique’s “The Fourth Branch” set to a slideshow of war imagery. If you’re of the queasy sort, viewer discretion is advised. In a related vein, Skidmark Bob’s most recent episode of Pop Defect Radio, “A Day in the Life 2006,” lives up to its tagline in an especially metal flavor. Fellow talented splicer rx lays down faint funk around Martin Luther King, Jr’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, resulting in“Rise Again” (9:56, 9.2 MB), making a piece first spoken 39 years ago (as of yesterday) sound like it’s talking about today.
Just for kicks, I looked up this site’s own top 10 music chart, based on the number of hits in March: Continue reading “A/V Miscellany”

FCC Watch: Enforcement Action Continues Apace

In the first three months of the year the FCC’s executed about half the total enforcement actions conducted last year, which broke all previous records.
Among the latest batch to be contacted is Pirate Cat Radio, the dual radio/TV station simulcast in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The FCC issued separate warning letters to two people – usually a single person gets the heat first. Not sure which one of them is the infamous Monkey Man, though you can now see him unmasked in a mini-documentary on Pirate Cat recently found on Current TV. He and a couple other DJs explain why they so love microradio.

FCC Still MIA on State Law Preemption

Jesse Walker recently wrote a nice treatise on the anti-pirate laws in Florida and New Jersey (albeit in dubious trappings, but you can read around that). Inspired, I decided to drop a line to the two Democrat FCC commissioners, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, both of whom are supposedly somewhat accessible via e-mail. They got this:
Since 2004 the state of Florida has asserted jurisdiction over the broadcast airwaves, something the FCC has historically worked very hard to keep within its exclusive domain. Last year, the state of New Jersey followed suit. Both states have essentially criminalized the act of unlicensed broadcasting, punishable as a felony involving jail sentences and multi-thousand dollar fines. Continue reading “FCC Still MIA on State Law Preemption”

Crashing Propaganda: The Miami Model

I’d been fixing to generally ignore this story but it’s been syndicated far and wide. When my mom said she read it on page two of the hometown daily the extent really sunk in. It’s a propaganda coup for the broadcast industry.
The main thrust, that pirate radio stations interfere with airplanes, gets hammered home quite nicely. In this particular case, involving a station in Miami that squats two FM frequencies, it should come as little surprise. In fact, with 20+ pirate stations operating in the Miami area alone, you are bound to encounter some problems with interference, in-band or otherwise. Continue reading “Crashing Propaganda: The Miami Model”

Inadvertently Going Mobile

Like much general-interest journalism that deals with science and technology, sometimes the important details can get a bit fuzzy as the journalist tries to put the facts in “language readers can understand.”
According to this particular story, some improperly-installed in-vehicle satellite radio receivers can transmit whatever programming their owners are listening to via the vehicle’s antenna. Some satellite receivers work by rebroadcasting the satellite feed using an onboard ultra-low power FM transmitter, which typically can’t be heard more than a few dozen feet away in optimal conditions. Drivers then simply tune their radio to whatever frequency the satellite receiver is broadcasting on to listen. Continue reading “Inadvertently Going Mobile”

Kulpsville Pirate Retrospective; N$X Demo Available

Thanks to Ragnar for recording a session from this year’s Winterfest gathering called the “Year in Pirate Radio” (1:01:48, 21.3 MB). After a somewhat sparse summary of 2005 activity on the AM, FM and shortwave bands, Allan Weiner commandeers the mic and takes questions from the audience. He offers up some interesting observations on the FCC, his offshore pirate escapades, and what it’s like to run a 50,000-watt shortwave station.
In Florida, Rayon Payne aka N$X has established a new web site which includes a complete copy of his demo CD called “Unfinished Bizness,” which intersperses interview clips with material from the pirate days of yore. He’s still on the hunt for an open mic on this side of the law, and he’s still thinking big.