Prometheus Home
Sign Up for Our Mailing List
 |
||
|
Prometheus Press ReleasesSupreme Court Rejects Corporate Media Appeal in Prometheus
vs. FCC
|
|
 |
||
Prometheus in the Press
'Pirates' a Threat to
Commercial Radio Stations
The Times Union(Albany, New York)
February 24, 1999
by MARK McGUIRE
Joan D'Ark -- no, that is not her real name, but you will see why in a minute -- does not have much in common with white supremists, neo-Nazis, militia members, clerics or skinheads, although her hair is shorn to a buzz cut.
She hates what they have to say, but wants them to be able to say it, and on radio. And not on what she sees as the kowtowing, monolithic, corporate mouthpieces that are traditional AM and FM radio stations.
She means microradio, low-powered and community-based FM radio.
She means pirate radio.
''People have a right to communicate with one another,'' the Memphis woman said last week, as she and former Philadelphia pirate broadcaster Pete triDish (Get it? Joan of Arc? Petrie dish?) stopped in Albany as part of an East Coast speaking tour.
''This is freedom of speech,'' she continued. ''That's what it is all about.''
These microradio stations, which pop up in the living rooms and rooftops from the East Side to the barren Western plains, are illegal. Both D'Ark and triDish, two left-of-center folks who spoke before a packed house at Mother Earth's Cafe in Albany last Wednesday night, had their stations shut down by the government in the past few years. The two, who ran stations featuring local talk, music, rants and almost anything else within reason that someone wanted to say or play, were in town to offer a primer on the history of microradio, and how to start your own rogue station.
The cost for getting such a station up and running ranges from under $1,000 (if you are good at rebuilding castoff components) to several thousand dollars. Traditional radio is replete with people who started out as kids building miniature radio stations in their garage that broadcast, oh, a block or two.
The FCC -- the Federal Communications Commission, although radio pirates can come up with a different definition for the abbreviation -- outlawed microradio in the late 1970s, out of concern that these unregulated "stations" would interfere on the dial with high-powered, traditional commercial and public stations.
But the FCC may become the new friend of pirates (named in part because these outlaw stations used to often broadcast from off-shore ships). The commission is considering changes to allow smaller broadcasters -- 1-to-10 watts (which covers about a mile in diameter), 100 watts (roughly 3.5 miles) to 1,000 watts (eight or so miles) -- to transmit on the FM dial.
The pirate radio debate comes as the radio industry becomes more homogeneous in ownership, the result of the 1996 federal Telecom- munications Act. That legislation vastly increased the number of stations one corporation could own, and giants like Clear Channel began gobbling up mom-and-pop stations at an alarming rate.
Microradio advocates argue that more corporate ownership has removed the local essence from radio. And, people like D'Ark say, these macro-ownerships taint the news and other information we receive. Are you, she asks rhetorically, going to hear an unbiased report on nuclear power or industrial pollution from a station owned by General Electric?
But as far as Alan Chartock is concerned, legalizing microradio would be the apocalypse of the FM airwaves.
''If this happens it is the death of radio as we know it, said the executive director of WAMC (90.3-FM) Northeast Public Radio. ''Commercial radio feels the same way. If people love public radio, this is the time that they have to be active, because later it will be too late.''
Chartock shares the position of the National Association of Broadcasters, which fears these micro-stations will crowd the dial and bleed into public radio and other signals. Proponents counter that with regulation -- and, yes, the pirates like D'Ark would accept regulation -- there is enough space on most dials across the country to prevent interference.
Would Chartock object to the changes if there was a guarantee there would be no interference with existing stations? He wouldn't answer: He says that premise is not possible. D'Ark said what the public radio execs fear is nothing more than competition. And, she says, the concept of small, community-based radio is as old as radio itself, and should be an option regardless of what the government says.
''Is it really illegal to be broadcasting,'' she said, ''if there is no legal way to do it?''
Here is another point: Radio can be broadcast, or streamed, via the Internet, which in itself is a local/global conduit. And satellite radio -- where stations will be able to be beamed across the country in the coming years -- poses another threat to the status quo. Local options are there. People like D'Ark and triDish are counting on at least one more.
