Lawmakers in Massachusetts are hard at work trying to outlaw unlicensed broadcasting. H.1679 was introduced in the state House of Representatives in January and got a hearing in the legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary just last week. Floor votes are expected before the end of the year.
If approved, Massachusetts would become the fourth state in the country to pass an anti-pirate radio law. Continue reading “Massachusetts Mulls Anti-Pirate Law”
Category: Pirate Radio
Pirate-Hunting: FCC Plods While Local Scenes Bubble
Halfway through 2013, and the FCC’s pace of unlicensed broadcast enforcement shows no real change from 2012: 106 enforcement actions in all, targeting more than three dozen stations, with the majority of this activity wholly administrative in nature. Pirate stations who appear on the FCC’s radar can now expect a warning letter to arrive via certified mail 1-6 weeks after an initial visit. Ignore those, and the agency may start asking for money.
To date, the FCC has handed out $60,000 in Notices of Apparent Liability and $125,000 in actual forfeitures. However, not all of these penalties are new: in February, the FCC socked Whisler Fleurinor with a $25,000 fine for unlicensed operation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This is actually Fleurinor’s second go-round – he was first busted in 2010 and given a $20,000 forfeiture in 2011, which was later reduced to $500. It’s much the same story for Gary Feldman, who was first busted in 2004 for pirate broadcasting in Miami. He was caught again last year and fined $25,000 this year. Moreno’s 2004 forfeiture ($10,000) was never paid. Continue reading “Pirate-Hunting: FCC Plods While Local Scenes Bubble”
Checking the Pulse of Shortwave Piracy
Shortwave radio enthusiasts gathered in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania earlier this month for the 26th annual Shortwave Listening Fest. The Fest is the longest-running conference of its kind in the United States, and several pirates actually broadcast from the event; the granddaddy of them all is the Voice of Pancho Villa, which has closed out the Fest every year with a special midnight broadcast.
Each Fest also features a pirate radio forum, where shortwave scenesters provide an overview of the state of the band. This year’s forum was moderated by George Zeller, a long-time pirate radio enthusiast who’s written several columns on the subject for a variety of radio publications. Continue reading “Checking the Pulse of Shortwave Piracy”
Boston Radio Pirate Runs for Mayor
The city of Boston, Massachusetts is gearing up for a mayoral election later this year, and among the folks throwing their hat into the ring is Charles Clemons.
A former Boston police and corrections officer, Clemons may be better known as the founder of Touch 106 FM, a microradio outlet busted by the FCC in 2007-08. Clemons received a $17,000 forfeiture for unlicensed broadcasting and refusing to allow FCC agents to inspect the station. Continue reading “Boston Radio Pirate Runs for Mayor”
FCC Grossly Overstates Anti-Pirate Activity
A paragraph in the FCC’s annual performance report for fiscal year 2012 suggests the agency is on the warpath against unlicensed broadcasters:
The FCC shut down hundreds of pirate broadcast operations, which threaten the integrity of the nation’s communications infrastructure and caused interference to licensed broadcasters, air traffic control frequencies, and other public safety communications. There were $289,000 in penalties and 583 warnings issued during FY 2012.
Specious claims of the pirate threat aside, these numbers were quickly parroted by the Clear Channel-owned trade publication Inside Radio as evidence of a "pirate crackdown confirmed." But there’s no data to back up these claims. Continue reading “FCC Grossly Overstates Anti-Pirate Activity”
FCC Enforcement in 2012: Going Nowhere Fast
After plummeting in 2011, FCC enforcement against unlicensed broadcasting rebounded ever so slightly last year – but not in any meaningful fashion.
About 100 pirate radio stations in 19 states had contact with the federales in 2012, resulting in 245 specific enforcement actions. Interestingly, the vast majority of these happened in the first half of the year; for some reason, enforcement activity took a nosedive in July and never recovered. Continue reading “FCC Enforcement in 2012: Going Nowhere Fast”
Larry Bloch: 1953-2012
Larry Bloch, a founding member of radio free brattleboro, died last month of pancreatic cancer. He was 59.
Bloch was one of those rare and lucky folks for whom activism was a full-time vocation. After working with Greenpeace throughout the 1980s, he created the Wetlands Preserve in New York City in 1989. The nightclub became a magnet for many bands that rose to fame out of the “alternative” music soup of the 1990s. Continue reading “Larry Bloch: 1953-2012”
Human Rights Radio Turns 25
On November 26, 1987, Mbanna Kantako founded WTRA, an unlicensed microradio station broadcasting from the John Jay Homes in Springfield, Illinois.
Legally blind and in his twenties at the time, Kantako started the station to protest the imminent destruction of the housing project by the city and the pervasive police abuse that occurred there.
WTRA would later be re-named Human Rights Radio to reflect the Kantako family’s widening concern with issues of social injustice.
FCC Enforcement: Questionably Redundant and Retributive
Two-thirds of 2012 is in the can, and the FCC seems to be adhering to its “new normal” when it comes to pirate radio enforcement. Field agents have conducted 183 enforcement actions as of the end of August – this is up from the 132 actions logged by this time a year ago, but well off the year-over-year record-breaking enforcement pace set between 2006 and 2010.
The FCC’s been involved in anti-pirate enforcement activity in 15 states and Puerto Rico so far this year, as opposed to more than two dozen states by this point in 2011. The hottest spots continue to be the New York metropolitan area as well as the state of Florida more generally. Continue reading “FCC Enforcement: Questionably Redundant and Retributive”
Documentaries Give Props to Pirate Radio
My pal Paul Riismandel over at Radio Survivor recently wrote about a new pirate radio-based mockumentary that’s airing on the BBC. People Just Do Nothing profiles the principals behind “Kurupt FM,” a fictitious Garage-format pirate station in the London area.
People Just Do Nothing found its roots in (and lampoons) another pirate radio documentary, Tower Block Dreams. Aired in 2004 on BBC Three, this flick profiled the booming pirate scene in the London area, with special attention on how pirate radio stations helped disenfranchised youth do something more creative with their lives than “thieving and grass dealing.”
People Just Do Nothing‘s main characters, MC Sniper and DJ Beats, are spot-on caricatures of the folks found in Tower Block Dreams. Relatively accurate with regard to the conditions under which pirate radio stations operate, the funny comes when you realize that Sniper and Beats have no real idea what the f*ck they’re doing. It’s a send-up that really drives home the differences between the U.K. and U.S. pirate scenes. Continue reading “Documentaries Give Props to Pirate Radio”