When the Federal Communications Commission tells you to zip your lip, it wants you to listen. Otherwise an agent may show up in your back yard with a pair of pliers.
That's what happened Wednesday morning to a pirate radio station in Austin.
An FCC agent scaled a 40-foot radio tower in the back yard of a Northeast Austin house and cut the cable to Radio One, an unlicensed radio station broadcasting since May at FM 94.3, said one of the station's founding members.
The sudden silence couldn't have happened to a more Austin kind of station. With hip-hop and techno music and shows by the Green Party, Native Americans, Rastafarians and natural health experts, people were just busy trying to present their point of view.
Authorities weren't amused. The radio station, housed in a shed behind a residence at 7526 Meadowview Lane, was violating the law by operating without an FCC license, according to a lawsuit filed by the United States government.
Federal communications agents declined to comment about the raid on Wednesday in which they seized the station's equipment, including two turntables, a cassette player, two CD players, a mixing board, a jam box and a phone...
The FCC has closed down unlicensed community-based radio stations across the United States in the past few years, including stations in Berkeley, Calif., and Tampa, Fla.
Agents found out about Radio One in Austin, tucked away behind a gray, nondescript house in a modest neighborhood, by reading about it on the Internet.