Page 375 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| P rate Rad o

States’s model of telecommunication regulations allows only a wealth-based
broadcasting system and that the dominance of media by corporate interests
is not accidental but is inherent in the design of the current regulatory frame-
work. Dunifer made the claim that micro-radio is the “leaflet of the Nineties”
and that to disallow it is tantamount to censorship. Free Radio Berkeley won
an important Ninth Federal District Court decision in 1995 in which Judge
Claudia Wilken refused to grant an injunction against Dunifer pending review
of the constitutionality of current FCC licensing practices. It took four years for
the case to make its way back through the system and in the meantime, Dunifer
continued broadcasting in a quasi “not legal but not illegal” state. Dunifer even-
tually lost the case on technical grounds, as, since he had never actually applied
for an FCC license, he was thus never officially denied one, according to the
court’s ultimate decision.
During the time his case was pending, however, hundreds of people across
the country took advantage of the apparent lapse in the FCC’s authority to regu-
late the airwaves and began their own unlicensed broadcasting. Accurate num-
bers are difficult to come by, but it seems upward of 1,000 pirate radio stations
were in operation across the country in the early 1990s, echoing Dunifer’s call
to see “a thousand transmitters bloom.” There were also conservative religious
and politically right-wing stations that emerged, including some stations run by
white supremacists.
Many of the politically progressive pirates responded en masse. Spearheaded
by Dunifer and Free Radio Berkeley and organizer Pete Tridish (co-founder of
the Prometheus Radio Project) and Radio Mutiny based in West Philadelphia,
they began to mobilize. When Radio Mutiny’s studio transmitter was seized by
FCC agents, the group responded by demonstrating outside the Liberty Bell in
downtown Philadelphia. Activists with Radio Mutiny organized a conference
of microbroadcasters and the “Showdown at the FCC,” in which 150 pirates
gathered in Washington, DC, in October 1998. The highlight of the demonstra-
tion was a pirate radio broadcast on the steps of the national headquarters of
the FCC.

Low-PowEr Fm (LPFm)
By the late 1990s, the FCC had begun a serious crackdown on pirates across
the country. But the sheer number of new pirate operators, and the community
support many enjoyed, put the new FCC chairman William Kennard in an awk-
ward position. Kennard admitted that the pirates had some legitimate concerns
regarding the concentration of media ownership and lack of community access
to the airwaves. Kennard was especially concerned about the declining number
of minority-owned radio stations following passage of the 1996 Telecommu-
nications Act. The FCC chairman announced he would prioritize creation of
legitimate opportunities for new voices on the radio dial. Robert McChesney
put it this way, stating: “[The pirates] showed the FCC that low-power broad-
casting is here whether you like it or not. And that they’re going to have to
deal with it” (quoted in Markels 2000). In 2000, the FCC created a new service