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Pirate Radio
"They all laughed, the agents were not bad guys, they were reasonably friendly guys, they were polite" says Monk, the driving force behind Boulder Free Radio's, KBFR. Monk and Sparky don't look like the kind of guys who would break laws, or get visits by agents from the Federal Communications Commission, but they are facing the possibility of thousands of dollars in fines and up to a year in jail each. They didn't set out to break the law, they simply wanted to provide community minded, non-commercial radio to the Boulder Valley. Something a lot of people in Boulder liked-some five to 10 thousand of them, Monk estimates. "It was '70s FM album rock, that's what we were doing; but we were also playing current music as well as '60s and '50s, but it was a style. Back in the '70s they would play a whole album side to side." KBFR wasn't only about music, "It was about giving the radio back to the communities. It doesn't matter if you were a hooded KKK guy, a Born Again Christian, some militia nut or some Berkeley radical." The Media Empire Originally the FCC had reserved frequencies from 88 to 92 mHz for educational and political, not for profit, broadcasting. In 1979 the FCC, operating under its vague mandate of "public interest, convenience and necessity" stopped issuing licenses to stations with less than 100 watts. The smaller 10 watt college and community stations started to disappear. Under the FCC's logic, the bigger the wattage the more efficient the use of the spectrum. Media corporations were eyeing the newly opened frequencies but couldn't own them under existing anti-trust laws. Then, much to the delight of the media giants, radio was deregulated with the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The act doubled the number of stations a company could own in a single market from four to eight and did away with any restrictions on how many stations a company could own overall. This created the current radio landscape with corporations like Clear Channel owning 1,200 radio stations nationwide as well as 19 television stations, more than 700,000 billboards, and a concert promotions company that dominates the live event market. In the Denver/Boulder area Clear Channel owns eight radio stations including, KBCO, The Peak, KISS FM, KBPI, The Fox and KTCL. Clear Channel so dominates the market that Nobody In Particular Presents, a concert promotion company in Denver, was forced to sue, charging that Clear Channel has created a monopolistic empire that hurts consumers and severely restricts NIPP's ability to compete. In January of 2000 it finally looked like the wave of conglomeration was receding. After years of public comment, engineering studies and combined pressure from media reformers and activists, congress voted to allow Low Power FM (LPFM) radio service. This would breathe life into small community stations with minimal budgets and no commercial agenda. With a few hundred bucks and a CD collection, Low Power FM operators could have their own radio stations. Across the nation people ordered equipment and started applying for licenses. Things were finally looking up for community radio. More than 1,300 applications were received by the FCC, but hundreds of hopefuls across the country, including those at Boulder Free Radio, were disappointed when new legislation lobbied for by the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio changed LPFM laws. The FCC would now require three adjacent channels between stations rather than the original two. In urban areas, that much space simply doesn't exist. "They effectively gutted the bill without killing it," Monk explains. "Very clever." When KBFR's equipment arrived Monk was faced with a choice. Sitting on thousands of dollars of radio equipment, he could either sell it or go on the air. "I said screw it, I'm going to stick this thing up" and Boulder Free Radio was born. KBFR became part of an international movement, one that believes radio waves are a natural resource, like air or water, and should be public property. Thousands of unlicensed stations across the country broadcast everything from city council meetings to independent bands. It wasn't their intention but Monk and Sparky started broadcasting directly between Boulder's KBCO and Denver's The Peak. "We went to great lengths to find something that wouldn't hurt anybody," Monk says. "It just happened to sit between two Clear Channels." Nobody at KBFR knows for sure who turned the station into the FCC and the FCC isn't telling. Most likely, a local FCC license holder, like public radio station KGNU or Clear Channel's KBCO issued a complaint. Boulder Free Radio has always been friendly with KGNU, even directing donations and volunteers to the public station. Still Monk worries about a flyer, the only advertising they ever did, that was put on a car at KGNU's studios. "I told them to stay the hell away from KGNU, there's no reason to rub their noses in it." That flyer ended up on the windshield of KGNU's news director, Sam Fuqua who, like everyone at KGNU, liked Boulder Free Radio. An anonymous email sent to KBFR states, "I did want to let you know that no one... at KGNU would be the ones to notify the FCC... KGNU is very behind the idea of the airwaves being a public property and thus should be open and accessible to the public." Sparky wonders if it was Clear Channel station KBCO. "I was surprised that KBCO would really go out of their way to close us down so soon because we're just such a small percentage of their total audience." But Clear Channel has a history of aggressively challenging Low Power FM stations. In Virginia, Radio Free Warrenton's license application was held up by a "Petition to Deny" that Clear Channel, through its station WMZQ, filed. When they went on the air anyway, Clear Channel complained to the FCC. Most of the folks at Clear Channel's KBCO have never heard of Boulder Free Radio and the ones who have aren't very supportive. Scott Arbough, program director at KBCO, writes in an email to a KBFR fan, "Is it hard to believe that the government did its job and pulled the plug on the illegal broadcast on that frequency?" Arbough denies that the station alerted the FCC saying, "They informed us that KBFR existed and that they had been issued a warning." That statement is more telling than Arbough likely intended it to be, and lends substantial credibility to spectulation that KBCO turned in KBFR. According to an FCC spokesperson, the agency doesn't send out general notices on enforcement operations. The only station that would receive a notice such as Arbough describes, is the one that made the original complaint. The Corporate Connection It's not surprising that the FCC would act quickly to maintain Clear Channel's monopoly on the Denver/Boulder airwaves. The August 23 issue of Westword reports that Clear Channel chairman, L. Lowery Mays is a personal friend of ex-president George Bush. Clear Channel donated $80,000 to the Republican National Committee last year and the Mays gave a personal gift of $30,000 more to the George W. Bush campaign. To insure their lock on what was once a public resource, the corporate media has the FCC literally eating out of their hands. The September issue of Mother Jones reports that in a typical six-month period ending in March, FCC staffers enjoyed $300,000 worth of trips and meals compliments of the communications industry. Perhaps being wined and dined in exotic locations doesn't affect the FCC's sense of public duty. But since new chairman Michael Powell was appointed by George W. Bush, the FCC has taken a decidedly pro-corporate tone. While rolling back decades-old anti-monopoly rules they have simultaneously increased enforcement of things like indecency and, it would seem, unlicensed radio. How does FCC chairman Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, feel about this apparent corporate bias? In a recent panel discussion he dismissed the FCC's historic mandate to scrutinize corporate actions based on the public interest and instead considers media corporations "his clients" (Mother Jones Sept.-Oct. 2001). After the FCC officers slid a warning inside the door of Boulder Free Radio's suspected studio they returned to their vehicle and waited, listening to KBFR on their radio-loudly. KBFR turned off their components and the system went down. Monk continues: "Two minutes later they called our unlisted number and said, 'this is the FCC, we want you to know your signal stopped and we'll be in touch.'" Monk and Sparky hope that's the end of it. The FCC can be vicious. In Florida, a right wing broadcaster, who consistently attacked the government on his unlicensed station, was forced to wear an ankle bracelet. The FCC came in full force with helicopters, a S.W.A.T. team and several Ryder vans full of agents. They destroyed the broadcast tower and left it in pieces on the front lawn. The FCC operates in that grey area shared by such notables as the IRS and INS. They work not from laws but rules, written by the FCC, and they seem to enforce these rules in unpredictable ways. Sparky thinks the FCC's reaction might be based on the problems the new station creates. "It depends on how many people you piss off with your signal quality being poor, letting the signal drift around or splatter into other stations. That creates interference that could be a safety issue." Although Sparky, an electrical engineer and technical guru for KBFR, knows their signal never drifted, they were turned into the FCC anyway and decided to retire. Boulder Free Radio seemed to be dead. But the idea of grassroots, community radio is contagious and KBFR fans weren't about to let it die. In the middle of the night, at the urging of fans, Sparky and Monk handed their equipment over to a mystery contingent. Monk describes the ragtag group, none of whom he knows, "They got this beat to shit van and said 'Hey we want to keep it alive!'" Naming themselves, Free Boulder Radio, they have taken up the mantle of KBFR and broadcast sporadically from the new mobile unit. The group includes everyone from a heavily pierced and tattooed drama student to a 23 year old home remodeler. The Movement KBFR is part of a growing trend. Since 1989, when Mbanna Kantanko started broadcasting Black Liberation Radio from his Springfield, Ill. housing project, underground stations have had a revival. Across the nation people have started to realize how easy and inexpensive it is to create a station. Stephen Dunifer, inspired by Kantako, took his transmitter and climbed into the hills around Berkeley where, as legend has it, he planted a pirate flag and began Free Radio Berkeley. Dunifer, an anarchist, has championed the cause of the public airwaves and inspired hundreds of other stations. His transmitters have gone to the rebel Zapatistas in the Mexican State of Chiapas, to communities in the Philippines and to Haitian micropower stations. Like weeds, the more pirate radio is suppressed the more stations spring up. Texas is particularly fertile ground. Free Radio Austin broadcasted "24 hours of Civil Disobedience on your FM dial" before they were raided by the FCC with help from the FBI and the Austin police. When Austin's Radio One started broadcasting they were raided also-an agent climbed 40 feet up their tower to cut the coaxial cable-but continue their broadcast online. Now the new Resistance Radio, part of the Austin Resistance Network, offers "periodic mobile broadcasts in the downtown/campus area." They also offer classes in transmitter construction to help other stations get on the air for around $25. It seems the idea of grassroots, free radio for the community is catching on. People are beginning to reclaim a public resource for the public, in spite of government favoritism toward corporate radio stations. "I grew up in radio and I've seen it go down the shitter," Sparky laments. "Now radio's been relegated to the fast food industry, McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, that's all you get, everywhere you go. It doesn't matter what city you're in." "This is not going away," Monk continues. "Micro radio broadcasting is never going away and its probably going to slowly grow. The whole idea of us doing KBFR was about-listen, this is bullshit, gutting the LPFM law. Put it back to where you had it because it was just right, it wasn't too radical, it wasn't too conservative, it opened the door for the potential of thousands of small community radio stations." Respond: Letters@boulderweekly.com. For more information contact KBFR@msn.com |
What do you do when two guys in blue shorts and white polo shorts pound on your door and accuse you of running an illegal radio station? You ask them for a warrant, which is exactly what Sparky did (not his real name). He then told them, "I've watched enough TV for the last 20 years to know not to let a federal agent in without a warrant."
