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Free Radio Takes To The Airwaves Despite all the future-tech hype about the how the "information superhighway" and its affiliated 500 video channels will unite us into one glorious electronic village, we still rely upon the 70 year old broadcasting technology of radio for a large percentage of our daily information. The power of radio-- Marshall McCluhan's favorite hot medium, still reigns supreme among a great proportion of the people of the world. In the urban areas, you'll find hundreds of millions tuning in to voice-with-no-picture during the mass civil ritual known as the daily commute. In the rural areas, radio is often the only link to the distant centers of power and commerce. It may not be as sexy as the new technologies such as CD-ROM and the Internet, but radio still packs a punch. The early days of radio were characterized by much of the same hoopla surrounding the development of our "great data highway." Radio, it was promised, would provide a voice for the common person, for a multiplicity of views. The first radio stations seemed to fulfill this promise. Radio technology was cheap enough so that universities, churches, labor unions, and community groups could raise an antenna and go on the air.1 The radio spectrum was seen as belonging to the public, and radio became the ideal free speech medium to communicate with neighborhoods, constituents, and the general population. Those days were short-lived, however, after major corporations like AT&T, Westinghouse, and General Electric realized the enormous profits to be realized by harnessing radio as a tool for advertisers and business interests. Through their powerful lobbying efforts, and the revolving door known as the FCC2, the corporations conquered broadcasting technology via the Communications Act of 1934. Radio became a vehicle to sell soap and cars, rather than a unique medium to permit the free flow of ideas amongst the citizenry. Through the decades radio, then television remained the private domain of the chosen few--those deemed worthy by the FCC and those with the financial ability to maintain an extensive network of radio stations and the necessary engineers, lawyers, and marketers. The rapid technological development of new electronic technology and its merger with communications systems such as cable and fiber networks, satellite distribution systems and computer on-line networks has served to not only offer an array of inexpensive and accessible electronic equipment, but also subvert the notion of communications as a one-way medium under the control of giant corporations. The proliferation of democratic and pluralistic media such as public access television and the freedom to communicate demonstrated by computer e-mail and bulletin board services has served to stimulate the public's demand for the right to communicate. This desire has caused many people to re-investigate the once great potential of radio, and to take back public control of the airwaves. The great advances in technology has occurred not only in new engineering areas, but has also affected the design and operation of standard electronic components such as transistors and integrated circuits. As many pirate radio enthusiasts have discovered, with a mere handful of components, a person can solder together a radio transmitter powerful enough to reach a neighborhood or a city. The typical mini-transmitter operates on the FM band, and is thus accessible to almost everyone. With the turn of one component, the transmitter is tunable to any frequency on the FM band and is thus able to avoid interference with other channels. Mini-FM radio operators have discovered that there is plenty of room on the bandwidth to accommodate these stations. The excitement generated by mini-FM stations can be contagious. A transmitter can be plugged into a regular outlet, and hooked to a small antenna strung up somewhere on a roof. A tape deck, microphone, or other input device is plugged in, and you're on the air! By turning on the FM radio in the house, operators can find a dead spot on the FM band, then tune the output of the transmitter until they hear it on the radio. The new station operators make note of the new frequency of the station, and tell their friends. No station is complete without an audience, so operating procedure is to post notices about the new station, with reference to the time and day it is on the air, and the frequency. The station is then moved to a different location for every broadcast to avoid detection by the guardians of the corporate airwaves, the FCC. But don't call it "pirate radio". "Free radio" or "micro-radio" is the preferred term for these mini FM station operators who, having tired of complaining about the state of radio, decided to make some of their own. Grassroot radio stations have been reported in many diverse areas such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Arizona, the Blue Ridge mountains and the lower East side of Manhattan. Perhaps the most famous station is Black Liberation Radio, run by African-American activist Mbanna Kantako in Springfield, Illinois. His station, operating in the heart of a central housing project, reaches a large majority of the city's Black population with only a few watts of power. Black Liberation Radio delivers a voice previously absent in Springfield, a voice from and for the Black community. Besides music and commentary, BLR also offers oral readings of African-American literature because, as Mbanna points out, many in the Black community can not read. For his radio work, Mbanna has faced several legal challenges by the FCC and relentless police harassment. Stephen Dunnifer, a founder of Free Radio Berkeley was visited by the FCC on a Sunday evening and served with a law suit of $20,000 for broadcasting a mix of music and political discussion- without FCC approval. Rather than lower the antenna, Dunnifer has enlisted the aid of the Committee on Democratic Communications, a project of the National Lawyers Guild. In a 13 page brief contesting the claims of the FCC, Luke Hiken, Dunnifer's counsel, has put forth the claim that this form of broadcasting is first and foremost a free speech right. Claiming that in our current electronic age, the ability to broadcast is akin to the right to print a pamphlet or leaflet the public, the defense will show the FCC action as one of "prior restraint" and therefore unconstitutional. They hope to show that "this means of licensing a means of communication is as outrageous as the attempts to license the printing press in the middle ages." FCC objections to micro-radio operators frequently rely on their claim that micro broadcasting endangers aircraft communications, a claim micro-broadcasters shrug off as unfounded, as mini-FM frequencies are far removed from the range of public service frequencies. Furthermore, the range of these stations is usually a few miles, only enough to cover a neighborhood or a voting precinct. Micro broadcasters suspect the real opposition comes from other commercial stations who fear that grassroots broadcasters will steal audience away from their commercial product. While commercial stations complain that businesses spend millions of dollars to purchase stations for the right to use their particular spectrum allocation, these arguments don't find much support among proponents of the right to free speech, who say that the first amendment takes priority over such commercial considerations. Even though free radio broadcasters manage to find empty space on the bandwidth which doesn't interfere with other stations, the FCC refuses to allow their operation. In a classic catch-22 situation, a low-wattage station which does choose to go through a licensing procedure to become legal would find the FCC does not offer any licensing procedure to stations under 100 watts. To further exclude non-commercial broadcasters from having legal access to the airwaves, the legal fees and engineering support necessary to meet FCC regulations would cost an estimated $75,000. Faced with these legal and financial obstacles to broadening the diversity of viewpoints on American airwaves, the micro radio option seems an attractive one to those underserved by present radio stations. As we enter further into the "age of information" where powerful communications devices such as video camcorders and computer networks become commonplace, the FCC restrictions on the radio waves seem increasingly archaic. Although it doesn't get as much attention as its more flamboyant cousin television, radio is still a critical means of communicating to a mass audience. With radio stations in the hands of corporate media giants promoting the likes of Rush Limbaugh, we can expect more and more "free radio" stations to raise their antennas and present alternative views. 1 For an excellent history of the
beginnings of radio in the U.S., see McChesney, R. W. (1993). Telecommunications, mass media, and democracy. New York: Oxford. For more information: Free Radio Berkeley 1422 A Walnut St., #406 Berkeley, CA 94709 Committee on Democratic Communications c/o Law Offices of Peter Franck One Sansome Street, Suite 900 San Francisco, CA 94104
Jesse Drew is an independent videomaker and an ex-electronics worker and writes about technology and the public interest. |