Hello all,
Hello all,
This is really wonderful to see so many people taking advantage of the Part 15 rules. Back in the late '80s I was an activist for, among other things, legal licensing of community radio. I joined many activists from a diverse background (anarchists, communists, libertarians, and more) for an effort variously called WCPR and Radio Free Detroit. (Not to be confused with the Techno station at http://www.radiofreedetroit.com) We started small, but eventually grew out station to 10 Watts which, at the time, I believed was the largest pirate radio station in the country. We followed FCC guidelines for language, dial placement, etc. But, of course, we couldn’t legally license our small station. Of course, we were deeply inspired by Free Radio Berkley and Mbanna Kantako.
We worked with the National Lawyer’s Guild and they agreed to represent us, if and when we went to court. Due to all the diverse ideologies in our fractious collective, we never cold agree to officially work with the NLG, though we represented ourselves and all microwatt guerillas at the NLG conference in Chicago.
Our lack of cohesion never really hurt us because we never were tested in the fire. Although our 30’ antenna was in plain site and the FCC white van regularly cruised to our location, we couldn’t get arrested. I don’t really know why. Some believe it was because the FCC was under a budget crunch. I personally believed at least the local FCC supported the spirit of our cause and would not bust us, unless we did something, well, uncool.
Eventually, a local news crew showed up outside our door and started broadcasting a story along the lines of “here we are in front of an illegal FM station, but why won’t the FCC shut it down?” Well, that forced the FCC’s hand, but the new station didn’t eve ask for our side of the story and it was all very anti-climactic. Somehow, I think we did reach some minds. We held a benefit to get a new transmitter and the turnout and funds received (I worked the door) blew my mind. I personally bought a new antenna, but it just never happened again.
However, I got the broadcasting bug. There was immediacy there not present with my tabloid music journalism. So, I ended up rather legitimizing my experience by being part of an AM Thursday morning drive-time show and later part of Public Radio in Detroit. Now I do college radio on WXOU and Internet radio on several stations: http://www.new-sounds.com
I produce one two-hour show per week of live artist interviews and new music available for download and re-broadcast at http://www.new-sounds.net/mp3
If you put my show on your schedule, please let me know. These are evergreen shows named after the record date: ORH-YYYMMDD for FCC “Safe Harbor” content and ORH-Clean-YYYMMDD for shows that can be aired any time of day.
Cheers,
Tom