Ya’Rrr… there’s pirates in the hills… ya’Rrr…
October 24, 2022Earlier this summer PBRTV told you about a pirate station at 99.9 which our friend, Pat Cloonan, heard up near Indiana, PA. We don’t know if that station has been heard lately, but we do know the FCC spotted an illegal station at 87.9 MHz on September 8.
The FCC sent a letter to Tammy Jones who owns property at 1002 N. Grant Avenue in Kittanning. The address is where the commission believes to be the origin of the broadcast. Jones has until October 29 to acknowledge the October 19 letter or face a fine of up to $2.1 Million.
Closer to DC Charles Baker of Stonewall Court West in Adamstown, MD, faces a similar fate should he refuse to respond. The station originating from his property is on 90.3 FM and was spotted by an agent from the FCC Columbia on August 9 of this year.
Still though, pirate stations don’t seem to be as frequent as they once were. With the consequences being what they are, it looks like the vast majority are testing the threshold less frequently if at all.
I’m not supporting people who choose to break the law in any way. But, as a piece of due process, fining someone two million dollars for not responding to a letter is bullhockey. I suspect this is not going to survive First Contact with the Federal courts.
The FCC loves to threaten… and there are times – particularly with the corporations – where they will follow through. I seem to recall them fining pretty heavily Pentecostal Temple Development a few years back for issues with WGBN. It was a threat turned into a promise! Meanwhile I think they find the “scare tactics” to be better up front rather than to show up unexpectedly at one’s door!
Carson spot on with the “bull hockey” remark….doubt the FCC ever collected a $2 million fine in a case like this, but I’m sure it’s frustrating for them to have to continually find illegal broadcasters. Maybe a “more friendly” way would be to find these people and direct them to their nearest internet connection. Podcasts, websites, blogs – c’mon. There are lots of ways to say what you wanna say and the FCC can’t control that. For now, anyway. The commission just leveled a fine-$20,000-for a station that’s operated with illegal parameters for (ready?) THIRTY years. Its bark is much worse than it’s byte. (spelling intentional.)
I think you’ve hit on the real reason why pirate stations are declining. Once again it’s our old friend the internet. Anybody can set up a webstream and broadcast to the entire planet without the headaches of having to deal with Uncle Charlie. Even established mainstream broadcasters like Audacy seem to be heading in this direction.
Ya know, with the gloom ‘n doom predicted for OTA broadcasts, all the pirates (not Pittsburgh Pirates) have to do is wait it out for the next 5 years or so. The transmitters and towers will be tumbling down, opening up the airwaves for anyone who wants ’em. Broadcasting will survive, but the delivery will be online more ‘n more ‘n more in the future it looks like. Thanks for your coverage.
I enjoy listening to a good pirate station from time to time. It’s the only time I don’t hear the same old corporate crap on the radio. It’s actually refreshing. Break the laws? That’s laughable. I see that happen every day, and nobody does anything. Ho-hum. As for Pentecostal Temple Development a few years back. They just simply didn’t follow through with the FCC, repeatedly. The FCC was very accommodating, but there needs to be a point of “no more” breaks.
Some teenager playing around with a Chinese exciter is threatened with a two-million dollar fine. Yet Roger Wahl remains on the air. It has indeed become a two-tiered system of justice.
Interesting tale about that pirate in Kittanning. 99.9 in Indiana has disappeared and hasn’t been heard in some time. I still tune there from time to time and get dead air.
I think a low power service should be created… on AM, LPAM. It could use frequencies between 1600 and 1710. Why up there? Those channels are sparsely populated in most areas of the country, and no stations up there in Pittsburgh. Antennas can be shorter and more efficient at the high end of the band, yet the ground wave is smaller, so the station’s signal strength will drop off fast outside of its local signal range.
I propose using a model that’s already out there: Traveler’s Info Stations, TIS. They run 10 watts into antenna on a pole, no more than 50 feet high. Even with 10 watts, the effective power, ERP, is around 100 milliwatts (0.1 watt), due to the short antenna and sparse ground system they use, yet the local signal range is almost a mile at 2 millivolts (0.93 mi).
This could be good for low power community radio, experimenters, media teachers, and could bring more listeners to the AM band at a reasonably low cost, and with low interference potential; I haven’t seen any complaints about a TIS interfering with a full power station in the 50 years that TIS has been around, the signal is so small.
What would you do with a 1 mile local grade radius AM signal? You could even run C-QUAM stereo AM!
There’s also a proposal by REC Networks called WIDE-FM, to expand the FM broadcast band into TV channel 5-6.
https://wide-fm.com/
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, pirates! I did my time in high school days with the “Dog Station” and still love low power radio.
Boomer