[00:48.140 --> 00:56.920]  What this has done is we've worked to get a new class of licenses created for community radio stations.
[00:58.610 --> 01:04.260]  But what I would like to do when I start is just talk a little bit about broadcast history.
[01:04.400 --> 01:07.830]  It's not something that people really learn very much about in high school history class.
[01:07.830 --> 01:22.240]  And I think that it tells us a lot about the way that governments control information and entertainment and our culture.
[01:22.880 --> 01:30.070]  And so I like to just go back to around where I think the story starts, which is around 1900 or so.
[01:31.660 --> 01:33.640]  1890s, 1900, when radio was invented.
[01:34.350 --> 01:42.340]  When radio was first invented, it was a combination of inventions of about 10 or 20 different inventors.
[01:42.500 --> 01:49.480]  It really wasn't Marconi so much as a whole bunch of different people working, competing to develop radio.
[01:51.240 --> 01:58.230]  And it was originally... actually, Marconi originally wanted to use it as a tool to communicate with the dead.
[01:59.540 --> 02:01.850]  He wasn't very successful with that.
[02:01.850 --> 02:07.480]  But what he was successful at doing was... was getting a signal from point A to point B.
[02:08.010 --> 02:15.200]  And so his original vision of radio was that it would be for communicating between ships and shores from point to point.
[02:16.820 --> 02:22.680]  He basically thought of it as a communicating device, not as a medium of entertainment.
[02:22.680 --> 02:34.060]  That idea basically came from his office boy, a guy named David Sarnoff.
[02:34.260 --> 02:45.020]  And Sarnoff had this idea that you could build this box and you could sell people these boxes.
[02:46.550 --> 02:50.280]  And out would come music and entertainment and news and information.
[02:51.550 --> 02:57.140]  And his business model was that you would sell the box to people, they would buy it, and you would provide the content for free.
[02:57.420 --> 03:00.220]  Just sort of as a public service to get people to buy the box.
[03:00.220 --> 03:04.820]  And that... that is how broadcast radio really started for the first bunch of years.
[03:05.160 --> 03:09.520]  At that moment, people... America was different.
[03:09.860 --> 03:10.940]  People were culturally different.
[03:11.220 --> 03:11.800]  They...
[03:11.800 --> 03:16.200]  It was kind of unheard of to let strangers into your house to talk to you.
[03:16.200 --> 03:24.660]  Um... and the idea of having a salesman in your house was even more, uh... uh... more horrifying to people.
[03:24.820 --> 03:29.080]  So people at first thought that advertising on radio would be a total flop.
[03:29.500 --> 03:34.080]  And, uh... Sarnoff was among the people that refused to even consider putting advertisements on radio.
[03:35.140 --> 03:42.140]  Uh... they thought that most Americans would... would... would never allow that... a... a box that was a salesman to be in their house.
[03:42.140 --> 03:48.760]  Of course, the people that overestimate the taste and discernment of the American consumer are always the ones that lose.
[03:49.460 --> 03:56.660]  And... and within a few years, someone tried broadcast radio with advertisements, and it was remarkably successful.
[03:56.920 --> 04:07.100]  And they made tons and tons of money, not really necessarily by getting people to listen, but by convincing the people that wanted to advertise goods and services that they were getting people to listen.
[04:07.260 --> 04:11.960]  And so they started selling the product, which was the public's ears.
[04:12.500 --> 04:18.330]  They weren't... they weren't... they weren't really trying to sell entertainment, per se, or information, per se.
[04:18.540 --> 04:24.660]  They were trying to sell the attention of people, and that... and that was a kind of a... a novel idea at that moment.
[04:25.360 --> 04:30.700]  As soon as that happened, there was a crisis, uh... in spectrum allocation.
[04:30.880 --> 04:39.770]  Up until then, the main people that were using the spectrum were university professors, amateurs, uh... people, uh... quack doctors.
[04:39.770 --> 04:43.740]  All sorts of people were just sort of experimenting to see what the new medium would bring.
[04:44.320 --> 04:50.140]  But when, uh... when advertising hit, there was very quickly a spectrum crisis, because...
[04:50.140 --> 04:56.680]  every venture capitalist wanted to jump on board and stake their claim in, uh... in the ether.
[04:57.240 --> 05:00.440]  In, uh... you know, on the spectrum and get their little piece of it.
[05:00.440 --> 05:05.970]  And, uh... so, in 1927, Herbert Hoover said...
[05:05.970 --> 05:11.520]  Radio is the first industry I ever ran up against that begged me to regulate it.
[05:12.150 --> 05:15.900]  And, uh... it's interesting that they begged to be regulated, because...
[05:15.900 --> 05:20.580]  what... the kind of regulation they were asking for was to shut the door.
[05:20.970 --> 05:24.030]  Whoever had spectrum at that moment would keep it.
[05:24.240 --> 05:27.200]  Whoever had not gotten any yet would not get any.
[05:27.200 --> 05:32.160]  And so, it was... it was a very effective way of keeping out competition on the airwaves.
[05:32.360 --> 05:47.880]  And, uh... uh... after much lobbying, and after a... a very heavy political battle between a group of broadcast reformers, uh... including some labor unions and, uh... uh... professors and universities, uh...
[05:47.880 --> 05:52.040]  there was a... a very contested political battle over... over who would control radio.
[05:52.040 --> 05:54.380]  And, uh... guess who lost?
[05:55.580 --> 05:56.040]  Anyone?
[05:57.300 --> 05:58.340]  We all lost.
[05:58.560 --> 06:02.700]  And, basically, a... a handful of corporations got the vast majority of... of the frequencies.
[06:03.840 --> 06:05.720]  And, uh... and they said no one else.
[06:07.020 --> 06:10.660]  What they did then was... and it was interesting.
[06:10.780 --> 06:14.600]  The next 20 years... a lot of people talk about it as the golden age of radio.
[06:14.600 --> 06:17.560]  But there's... there's another story to tell from that.
[06:17.880 --> 06:20.700]  Uh... actually, Lee DeForest in...
[06:21.750 --> 06:32.960]  1945 or so, after 20 years of almost exclusively commercial radio, uh... came out one day and... and... and issued this big statement that said, what have you done to my baby?
[06:33.960 --> 06:48.300]  What I thought was gonna be this wonderful medium that would educate the masses and have the... the working class listening to opera and have the... you know, have all kinds of news and information that... that would inspire people and... and lighten public debate.
[06:48.560 --> 06:55.860]  Now it's nothing but a huckster salesman that is, you know, hell-bent on selling soap to... to... to ladies in the living rooms.
[06:55.860 --> 07:03.300]  And, uh... and... and... and a lot of people, uh... realized that it was just a... a crying shame what had happened to radio at that moment.
[07:03.520 --> 07:21.420]  And so, when they allocated the FM band, what they did was they... uh... they decided that they were going to leave a spot where non-commercial, uh... messages could fit, which was from 88 to 92, which is where you hear, to this day, most public radio,
[07:22.320 --> 07:24.720]  uh... community radio, and so on.
[07:25.930 --> 07:42.360]  And... and... so... what... what happened then... was... they... they created FM, which was, uh... obviously a much better technology, much... uh... much less noisy, much less, uh... subject, uh... thunderstorms, uh... creating static and so on.
[07:42.980 --> 07:50.700]  And... what they did with it was... they... uh... at first, they designed this very interesting license.
[07:50.780 --> 07:52.720]  It was called a Class D Community License.
[07:52.720 --> 08:00.300]  And it was mostly given out to, uh... high schools and colleges, and neighborhood groups, and... and... and groups along those lines.
[08:00.580 --> 08:11.680]  And what they did, uh... there was this... this sort of giant blossoming of... of... of... of small-scale, vocal community radio that was just really very neighborhood-based.
[08:13.800 --> 08:20.300]  And... uh... that went for about 20 years, uh... from 45 to 65.
[08:21.320 --> 08:27.460]  And... uh... and there was basically, like, a much more grassroots form of radio than... than... than we really had.
[08:27.640 --> 08:37.860]  And... and some groups, uh... started really, uh... uh... going after these licenses and... and... uh... and creating the community stations that we know of today.
[08:38.600 --> 08:45.260]  Uh... you know, sort of the Pacifica's and... uh... the WRT's and... and... and those sorts of... those sorts of stations.
[08:46.600 --> 08:52.600]  Along came in 1967 or so, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
[08:53.120 --> 09:04.840]  These guys, they looked at the... the broadcasting of other countries, and they said, America... I mean, it has all these little community radio stations, and it has all these commercial stations, but it doesn't have anything like the BBC.
[09:05.980 --> 09:14.840]  And... we really think that... that... that it's important that there be a national news service, uh... that... that... uh... that... that comes into existence.
[09:15.100 --> 09:18.300]  Actually, they were mostly thinking about TV, and... so they created PBS.
[09:18.960 --> 09:22.760]  Uh... and they... they pushed the government to create PBS, and... and... and they got their way.
[09:23.080 --> 09:28.160]  And they created, uh... almost as an afterthought, National Public Radio.
[09:29.000 --> 09:32.840]  Uh... these were... relative to community radio, really well-funded.
[09:33.620 --> 09:44.190]  And they, uh... proceeded over the course of the next 10-15 years to, uh... professionalize and... and... and create this, uh...
[09:44.190 --> 09:49.880]  and create this, uh... this new, uh... sort of radio empire in the non-commercial band.
[09:50.380 --> 09:59.100]  And... at a certain moment in the mid-70s, they said, you know, all these little 10-watt stations, all these community groups, and... they're sort of in our way.
[09:59.860 --> 10:03.620]  And... and... we'd really like them all to just move out of our way.
[10:03.880 --> 10:13.930]  And... and... so they went to the FCC, they made their case, and... uh... they got the... the... the entry-level 10-watt community radio license thrown out.
[10:14.640 --> 10:24.220]  And, uh... although a couple of them still survive to this day, uh... they haven't issued a new 10-watt community license in about 25 years or so.
[10:25.140 --> 10:29.260]  So, uh... sort of fast-forwarding to... uh... the mid-80s.
[10:29.430 --> 10:34.980]  People started to realize that this, uh... that... that NPR had staged this little coup.
[10:35.380 --> 10:40.460]  And... that... that there was no way for sort of ordinary community groups to start up.
[10:40.660 --> 10:47.520]  And... that's where, uh... a group of, uh... where people sort of started...
[10:47.520 --> 10:51.900]  this sort of nationwide resistance in the form of pirate radio.
[10:52.420 --> 10:56.360]  And, uh... the... the very first one was this guy, um... that... that I know about.
[10:56.500 --> 10:57.700]  There... there's always been pirate radio.
[10:58.000 --> 11:03.060]  But the... the... the... the way pirate radio used to be, it was sort of more like...
[11:03.980 --> 11:06.300]  Oh, you know, there would be some kids in their garage.
[11:06.600 --> 11:09.580]  They would figure out how to... you know, how to build the radio station.
[11:09.860 --> 11:13.890]  And, uh... they would be broadcasting, and the FCC agent would come...
[11:15.040 --> 11:17.620]  and... and... you know, open the door and say, All right, kid.
[11:18.700 --> 11:19.760]  You're real smart.
[11:19.980 --> 11:22.220]  But... you're gonna get in a lot of trouble here.
[11:22.500 --> 11:24.940]  If you don't stop right now, I'm gonna tell your mom.
[11:25.780 --> 11:27.360]  And... that's gonna be the end of it.
[11:27.540 --> 11:30.320]  And... and it would sort of be... that would sort of solve it.
[11:30.840 --> 11:32.640]  Um... there was other... there was other pirate radio.
[11:32.760 --> 11:37.920]  There was, uh... we'll see Alan Wiener, uh... this, uh... this weekend.
[11:37.920 --> 11:41.140]  But... but... what Mabon and Kentako did that was really different.
[11:41.620 --> 11:48.280]  He was, uh... he was a blind, uh... 45-year-old African-American man who lived in a housing project.
[11:48.620 --> 11:51.080]  And he decided he was gonna start his own radio station.
[11:52.340 --> 11:57.060]  And, uh... he just started broadcasting with one WAP, just to the people that lived in this housing project.
[11:57.420 --> 12:06.020]  And he... he basically created, uh... a little alternative press inside his... inside his little neighborhood.
[12:07.300 --> 12:12.620]  And... uh... he went for about three years without anybody noticing, uh... outside of the project.
[12:13.320 --> 12:16.500]  Uh... the... the day that changed was when...
[12:16.500 --> 12:20.940]  uh... a friend of his got beat up by the police as he was walking home one night.
[12:22.060 --> 12:28.700]  And... Kentako went to the hospital and interviewed the guy and his son who had gotten beaten up.
[12:29.280 --> 12:32.340]  And, uh... you know, he took it back to the station.
[12:32.520 --> 12:33.280]  He played the interview.
[12:33.280 --> 12:38.320]  And the next day, there were really big protests, uh...
[12:38.320 --> 12:41.740]  at... that got the local police incredibly, incredibly scared.
[12:42.220 --> 12:50.920]  And, uh... about a week later, the FCC showed up for the first time after three years of broadcasting and said, ah, you're... you're gonna interfere with airports.
[12:51.160 --> 12:52.640]  You're gonna knock airplanes out of the sky.
[12:52.820 --> 12:54.580]  You've got to turn off that pirate radio station.
[12:55.220 --> 12:57.960]  And what Kentako did, which was a little different than what...
[12:57.960 --> 13:01.920]  what many people had done before, was he took that up as a challenge.
[13:02.120 --> 13:04.860]  And... and he, uh... called a press conference.
[13:05.520 --> 13:09.900]  And he said, look, I've been broadcasting for three years.
[13:10.520 --> 13:11.340]  Nobody's noticed.
[13:11.620 --> 13:17.160]  It's the FCC's job to prevent interference, technical interference, uh... caused by radio broadcasting.
[13:17.580 --> 13:20.520]  How come they never noticed me before if that was the issue?
[13:20.520 --> 13:23.500]  I think what happened is someone didn't like what I was saying.
[13:24.120 --> 13:28.300]  And if there's one thing the FCC's not supposed to do, it's not supposed to be regulating content.
[13:28.540 --> 13:33.580]  It's not supposed to be, uh... telling people what they're supposed to say and what they're not supposed to say on the radio.
[13:34.040 --> 13:37.360]  And, uh... by the way, I dare them to come and arrest me.
[13:38.040 --> 13:39.780]  And, uh... he...
[13:39.780 --> 13:42.320]  so he stood out there broadcasting with his transmitter.
[13:42.840 --> 13:44.960]  And, uh... and nobody came and arrested him.
[13:45.100 --> 13:46.080]  So he took all the cameras.
[13:46.360 --> 13:48.220]  He said, okay, everybody, follow me.
[13:48.360 --> 13:48.860]  We're going downtown.
[13:49.200 --> 13:50.360]  And he went to the police station.
[13:50.360 --> 13:53.440]  He said, okay, I want somebody at the police station to arrest me.
[13:53.560 --> 13:56.240]  He knocked on the door, and no one would arrest him.
[13:57.000 --> 14:00.360]  And they were like, oh, it's not our jurisdiction exactly.
[14:01.160 --> 14:02.560]  You know, that's a federal thing.
[14:02.680 --> 14:04.460]  He was like, okay, everybody, let's go to the federal building.
[14:04.560 --> 14:09.080]  So he went to the federal building, down a few blocks.
[14:09.700 --> 14:13.560]  And he said, you know, someone arrest me.
[14:13.720 --> 14:14.880]  I'm broadcasting without a license.
[14:15.360 --> 14:18.160]  And basically, they didn't want to deal with it.
[14:18.300 --> 14:21.480]  They were sort of like, oh, well, I don't know what they said.
[14:21.580 --> 14:25.440]  They probably said, you know, come back, make an appointment, you know.
[14:28.360 --> 14:29.780]  And he turned to the media.
[14:29.880 --> 14:32.880]  He said, look, I'm going to keep on doing this until someone comes and stops me.
[14:32.920 --> 14:34.060]  Because I think it's my right.
[14:34.540 --> 14:37.500]  And interestingly enough, no one ever did.
[14:38.500 --> 14:40.000]  For many, many years.
[14:40.740 --> 14:42.680]  And it was just too embarrassing.
[14:43.400 --> 14:44.580]  Obviously, he was right.
[14:45.080 --> 14:46.940]  And obviously, they were targeting him.
[14:47.180 --> 14:49.820]  Not because he was knocking airplanes out of the sky.
[14:50.460 --> 14:54.100]  And a whole bunch of people around the country sort of saw this story.
[14:54.680 --> 14:57.900]  And said, huh, this guy's broadcasting without a license.
[14:58.400 --> 14:59.840]  This guy's not getting arrested.
[15:02.840 --> 15:03.360]  Hell.
[15:05.900 --> 15:07.460]  And it was interesting.
[15:09.540 --> 15:15.300]  The sort of next step of it was some lawyers approached him and said, look, we want to take this case to the courts.
[15:15.480 --> 15:18.540]  And there's an interesting legal argument they came up with.
[15:18.800 --> 15:24.460]  It's basically, the FCC, under the law, it has the right to regulate the broadcast spectrum.
[15:25.200 --> 15:28.820]  Basically, to prevent interference is the rationale behind it.
[15:28.820 --> 15:35.320]  But they're supposed to do so in the way that is the least, that causes the least possible harm to the First Amendment.
[15:35.540 --> 15:41.160]  And they're supposed to create a radio system that is the most open to the public that it possibly can be.
[15:41.340 --> 15:49.780]  And these lawyers, they said, at the National Lawyers Guild, they said, we have a system where corporations own all the radio stations.
[15:49.780 --> 15:52.900]  And everybody else owns none of the radio stations.
[15:53.180 --> 15:57.340]  Is this the least restrictive possible means available to regulate the airwaves?
[15:57.860 --> 15:59.920]  They wanted to, they wanted to take this.
[16:00.040 --> 16:01.020]  They didn't care where it went.
[16:01.160 --> 16:02.960]  They wanted to get it up to the Supreme Court.
[16:03.040 --> 16:04.600]  And they just, they wanted to see what would happen.
[16:05.500 --> 16:08.040]  Well, they did, uh, Kentaco didn't want to do that.
[16:08.580 --> 16:12.880]  Because he, he was mostly just, he mostly just cared about his station.
[16:13.480 --> 16:18.820]  But, uh, but another guy did want to do that, which was Steven Dunifer in Berkeley.
[16:19.980 --> 16:21.340]  And, uh, sorry?
[16:22.640 --> 16:25.040]  Uh, about 93 or so.
[16:25.300 --> 16:33.820]  Uh, and what Dunifer did was he very deliberately and fairly publicly broke, broke the same stupid law.
[16:34.200 --> 16:41.260]  And, uh, and in his case, uh, they, they did decide that they wanted to, uh, to pursue him.
[16:41.440 --> 16:43.340]  First they fined him $20,000.
[16:43.840 --> 16:46.000]  Then they tried to get an injunction against him.
[16:46.000 --> 16:56.140]  Um, and when, when the case actually went before the judge, the judge said, well, gosh, that's, the, the National Lawyers Guild has a very interesting argument.
[16:56.340 --> 16:57.660]  I'm not going to rule on it.
[16:58.020 --> 16:59.820]  I'm going to, I'm going to have to think about this.
[16:59.940 --> 17:02.720]  And in the meantime, Steven Dunifer can continue to broadcast.
[17:04.010 --> 17:11.400]  So, for about four years there, there was a federal judge that refused to grant an injunction against a pirate broadcaster.
[17:11.900 --> 17:14.640]  And that's when all the rest of us were like, whoa!
[17:15.400 --> 17:16.920]  Uh, we're doing that now.
[17:17.160 --> 17:22.600]  And within about a year, well, first of all, the first thing that he did was he went and he got a storefront.
[17:22.600 --> 17:24.530]  Um, he opened up the doors.
[17:24.750 --> 17:28.820]  He said, everybody, um, um, there's no injunction against me from doing this.
[17:28.960 --> 17:29.920]  We're starting a radio station.
[17:30.100 --> 17:36.200]  And within a few months, he had a hundred programmers on the air all the time in Berkeley, uh, coming in and out.
[17:36.400 --> 17:42.560]  And, uh, you know, community radio licenses were, were pretty much reborn, uh, just without the licenses.
[17:43.730 --> 17:49.920]  And, uh, that's where a whole bunch of us jumped on board and, uh, started radio stations across the country.
[17:50.180 --> 17:58.880]  The one I was involved with was Radio Mutiny in Philadelphia, which ran from about early 97 until it was confiscated in, uh, in, uh, mid-98.
[18:00.760 --> 18:13.900]  What we realized was, even though the law was unclear, that this was, uh, this was a political opportunity to raise the issues and to give people a taste of what community radio could be if the airwaves were opened up.
[18:14.140 --> 18:22.760]  And so we, we decided to, uh, uh, all break this same stupid law for, uh, for as long as we could manage.
[18:23.180 --> 18:32.160]  And, uh, and, and basically use it as an opportunity to, to get the public to thinking about these issues and to get the FCC to reevaluate what it was doing.
[18:33.010 --> 18:37.200]  And, uh, Radio Mutiny was probably, like, one of the funnest projects I ever got to do.
[18:37.200 --> 18:43.460]  Because, you know, within a couple months of starting a radio station, well, at first, no one believes that you can do it.
[18:43.800 --> 18:45.240]  Uh, none of us knew anything about radio.
[18:45.440 --> 18:49.120]  We blew up three or four different amplifiers, you know, in the course of it.
[18:49.400 --> 18:51.640]  No one knew any, any radio engineering.
[18:51.640 --> 18:54.100]  And we certainly, uh, made a show of mistakes.
[18:54.640 --> 19:02.500]  But after a few months, once, you know, once you could turn it on and people would hear it around the, around the neighborhood, all of a sudden everybody starts coming down.
[19:02.500 --> 19:09.920]  They, you know, they want to do their show about the music of lower, lower Czechoslovakia or whatever, and bring out their polka records.
[19:10.180 --> 19:16.240]  And, uh, and pretty soon you just have, like, a, almost always you have a giant, diverse group of people.
[19:16.880 --> 19:23.620]  At our peak we had about 60, 70 shows on seven nights per week and, you know, ran off the back porch.
[19:24.460 --> 19:32.620]  After about nine months or so, uh, the FCC finally showed up and, uh, they came to shut down our, our station.
[19:33.920 --> 19:42.700]  And, uh, you know, first they threatened to kick down the door and, uh, you know, we, we kept the door closed because they don't have a right to come in.
[19:42.700 --> 19:52.520]  And then, uh, we, uh, we started to, uh, well we did what all good leftists do when, when the, when the law finally comes.
[19:52.740 --> 19:59.340]  Uh, we sat in a big room with about 20 of us and yelled at each other for about three hours trying to figure out whose fault it was.
[19:59.340 --> 20:12.700]  Um, and then we, uh, then we, we came up with a, with a strategy, which was that we were going to sort of follow in Cantaca's footsteps and we were going to challenge, uh, the FCC sort of face to face.
[20:12.860 --> 20:23.740]  So, about three days later we set up our, we, we, we called all the press and we set up our transmitter in front of Benjamin Franklin's printing press, which is conveniently located downtown in Philadelphia.
[20:24.260 --> 20:33.300]  And we, we set it up and we said, uh, we told the FCC we were going to be there and we dared them to bust us in public instead of coming in the middle of the night.
[20:33.940 --> 20:44.420]  And, uh, we put forth at that point a seven point platform for how we were going to make the FCC's life really suck if they did not legalize community radio.
[20:44.780 --> 20:52.240]  And the first thing we said was that we were going to put, uh, uh, we were going to host a conference and, and teach people how to build these stations.
[20:52.240 --> 20:55.970]  We were going to, uh, we had the ACLU on our side at that time.
[20:56.140 --> 20:58.560]  And so we, we were going to file a lawsuit against them.
[20:58.700 --> 21:01.020]  We were, I don't know, we said a bunch of things.
[21:01.360 --> 21:15.000]  Uh, the main thing that we said was that for every station like ours that they tried to, to capture or to shut down, we would open up 10 more around the country.
[21:15.140 --> 21:22.520]  We were going to go on tour and we were going to start just like scattering these everywhere and create a law enforcement nightmare nightmare for them that they would never be able to solve.
[21:23.080 --> 21:27.520]  And what, what, uh, of course it was all bluster.
[21:27.700 --> 21:29.020]  I mean, we had no plan whatsoever.
[21:29.140 --> 21:31.040]  We had one transmitter.
[21:31.210 --> 21:36.710]  We had, uh, a, a nice, a nice group of people that were all like really scared and upset.
[21:36.710 --> 21:44.620]  But, uh, but it was, uh, it was, it was enough for us at that moment to sort of go out there and throw the gauntlet down.
[21:44.840 --> 21:47.640]  And that really sort of blew them away.
[21:47.840 --> 21:53.300]  They did not know what to do with us for a good six months before, before we heard from the FCC again.
[21:53.300 --> 21:58.140]  Cause they, they really just didn't expect, uh, that kind of a public, public thing to happen.
[21:58.720 --> 22:07.320]  So in the meantime, we tried to make good on our threats, uh, by going around and, and talking to people, setting up, setting up stations and, and, and doing all that sort of thing.
[22:07.800 --> 22:17.460]  And what we decided to do was, uh, just to keep on, uh, to keep on building these stations as, as long as we could.
[22:17.720 --> 22:20.400]  Now, the FCC was in a weird quandary.
[22:20.400 --> 22:25.860]  They had a new chairman and the chairman was, uh, this guy, William Kennard.
[22:26.060 --> 22:30.600]  He had just come to the FCC from being a chief counsel at the National Association of Broadcasters.
[22:31.600 --> 22:36.820]  And we didn't know what to, uh, what to do, uh, with him exactly at first.
[22:37.340 --> 22:42.220]  And, uh, at first he seemed hell bent on enforcing, uh, like no chairman had before.
[22:42.520 --> 22:50.300]  Because he was doing all these giant raids that people came in with assault rifles and, you know, would, would raid three stations in Tampa simultaneously.
[22:52.290 --> 22:55.900]  But, at first I think he thought that would make him look cool somehow.
[22:56.570 --> 22:59.700]  Uh, because he, he was like a, he was the enforcer.
[22:59.960 --> 23:04.140]  But the, the media that came out of it was, was terrible for him.
[23:04.380 --> 23:08.180]  And, uh, they, they just like, it was, it was a real David and Goliath story.
[23:08.320 --> 23:10.340]  And he did not want to be Goliath.
[23:10.340 --> 23:19.600]  And, and so he, he came up with a different strategy, which was to say, look, you know, the ones that want licenses, the ones that want to broadcast, I'm gonna give them licenses.
[23:20.630 --> 23:24.320]  And, we're gonna figure out how to, how to create a new community radio service.
[23:24.320 --> 23:29.460]  And, at first we thought he was bullshitting, uh, for, for a good while.
[23:29.600 --> 23:37.180]  But, but, uh, some of us started, as he started saying it again and again, and in all different sorts of, uh, contexts.
[23:37.680 --> 23:49.160]  And when the broadcasters started criticizing him for it, we just, we started to believe that, uh, we had actually sort of swayed something, uh, through, through, through what we were doing.
[23:49.160 --> 24:03.420]  And, uh, so by the time that radio mutiny was confiscated in June of 98, we were actually pretty sure, uh, that same week, they, they announced that they had opened up a formal rulemaking that they were going to create a low power FM service.
[24:03.860 --> 24:17.240]  And, so, uh, uh, as we were, as we were mourning the, our station being dragged off in, in cartons, we started to be looking at these proposals really closely.
[24:17.240 --> 24:19.620]  And that's when we started Prometheus Radio Project.
[24:19.980 --> 24:31.180]  We decided that, um, in some ways we'd lost the battle, but maybe we were about to win the war in terms of getting, uh, getting community licenses, uh, for, for radio stations around the country.
[24:31.500 --> 24:34.820]  I have to say, we also, pirate radio was really cool.
[24:35.020 --> 24:39.760]  I loved doing pirate radio, but at a certain moment I felt like we hit a glass ceiling.
[24:40.380 --> 24:42.900]  When we approached, uh, we had great shows.
[24:43.040 --> 24:51.860]  I mean, we had this guy from South Africa, Malinga, he had fought in the ANC, he would do Africa Report every week, and we learned all these things about African politics.
[24:51.860 --> 24:59.120]  And we had, uh, the condom lady who, like, who did a safe sex, KTEL classic disco show every week.
[24:59.300 --> 25:00.960]  We had great, great programming.
[25:01.240 --> 25:13.540]  Um, but we started to hit a glass ceiling, which was, as we approached, like, the consumer groups, as we approached the Black Women's Health Project, as we approached all these other groups that we really thought should be on the air, they just were like,
[25:13.700 --> 25:17.080]  uh, we can't get arrested for this.
[25:17.080 --> 25:20.260]  It's really cool, but we just can't, we just can't go there.
[25:21.760 --> 25:28.000]  And, uh, a few of us made this realization that community radio should not just be for the, uh, for the reckless.
[25:28.720 --> 25:34.880]  And for, you know, for people that are, are not afraid of going to jail for a little while.
[25:35.020 --> 25:35.900]  It should be for everybody.
[25:36.220 --> 25:48.520]  And, and that was one of the reasons that, that, um, in spite of the years and years of, of headaches that, that it's cost me later, um, we decided that we were going, we were going after legalization.
[25:48.720 --> 25:54.360]  We were trying to create ways that, that community groups could, could go out and get these stations.
[25:54.920 --> 26:05.820]  And, so, uh, that began for us a, a two year process of engaging the FCC, uh, wrangling over the, what kind of language should be in the rules.
[26:05.820 --> 26:17.260]  And it all culminated in January of 2000 with them passing a new radio service that would, uh, that, that would allow, uh, community groups to have radio stations.
[26:17.280 --> 26:20.940]  It was called Low Power FM and it was, uh, 100 watt, 100 watt licenses.
[26:22.060 --> 26:30.280]  And what we, uh, at first we, we were a little dubious because it was not as good a service as we had hoped.
[26:30.280 --> 26:39.040]  It had been wrangled through the political process and, and, and it was really, uh, we didn't think that there were as many stations as, as could have been allocated.
[26:39.900 --> 26:48.560]  In the top 25, in the top 10 urban markets in the country, there were about 25 low power radio stations that would come through.
[26:48.820 --> 26:51.220]  There weren't going to be any in New York or Chicago.
[26:51.440 --> 26:52.900]  There was going to be one in Philadelphia.
[26:53.500 --> 26:57.020]  On the other hand, there were going to be about five in New Orleans, about five in Minneapolis.
[26:57.020 --> 26:58.980]  And we were like, did we win?
[26:59.080 --> 26:59.700]  Did we lose?
[26:59.840 --> 27:00.540]  I don't know.
[27:00.940 --> 27:04.520]  Um, but by that time we didn't have much control.
[27:04.720 --> 27:09.460]  You know, it, the rules were going in and we were going to try to make the best of them.
[27:12.810 --> 27:14.880]  Then is what really surprised us.
[27:15.560 --> 27:20.140]  Usually the FCC is the one that makes the decisions about who gets broadcast licenses and who doesn't.
[27:20.340 --> 27:21.480]  They're a technical agency.
[27:21.620 --> 27:27.400]  They're the ones with the radio engineers and everything that, you know, sort of decide where radio, where radio licenses fit.
[27:28.260 --> 27:36.180]  And a bill went into Congress, uh, from the broadcasters to entirely kill the low power radio service.
[27:36.560 --> 27:44.280]  And at first we, we didn't really take it very seriously because we thought that, uh, Congress never does this sort of thing.
[27:44.420 --> 27:48.380]  They don't micromanage, uh, you know, spectrum allocation policy.
[27:48.380 --> 27:50.940]  They set like really broad policy.
[27:51.460 --> 27:57.460]  And so at first we, we watched it concerned, but we didn't think it was going to go anywhere.
[27:58.280 --> 28:03.280]  And all of a sudden about, and it wasn't getting very many co-signers, a couple.
[28:03.420 --> 28:06.000]  Nobody wanted to say that they were against community radio.
[28:06.280 --> 28:08.360]  So only the worst Republicans.
[28:08.360 --> 28:13.160]  There was this one guy, Conrad Burns said, I've had about all the diversity I can stand.
[28:16.480 --> 28:17.040]  Um...
[28:17.040 --> 28:20.620]  Only a couple of the real weirdos were against it at first.
[28:20.780 --> 28:23.760]  Or were for this legislation that would stop low power radio.
[28:24.440 --> 28:25.880]  So we thought we were okay.
[28:26.540 --> 28:36.200]  But then, all of a sudden, this nasty Democrat, John Dingle from Michigan, he introduced a compromise bill.
[28:36.420 --> 28:48.060]  And the compromise bill was that the only low power radio stations that could go forward would be the ones that were in the country, in small towns, on what were called the fourth adjacent channels.
[28:48.180 --> 28:49.820]  I'm not going to go all the way into all that.
[28:49.980 --> 28:51.560]  But, uh...
[28:52.500 --> 29:03.940]  And the ones that were in the larger cities would all have to wait until there was a study to figure out whether 100 watt radio stations could interfere with 50,000 watt radio stations.
[29:05.860 --> 29:08.060]  And so we...
[29:08.060 --> 29:10.500]  We were flabbergasted.
[29:10.880 --> 29:16.820]  But this was a political idea that a lot of Democrats and a lot of Republicans could get behind.
[29:17.260 --> 29:18.920]  Because it seemed moderate.
[29:18.920 --> 29:20.660]  It seemed like it was a compromise.
[29:21.180 --> 29:23.140]  It was no compromise at all.
[29:23.340 --> 29:25.960]  It basically totally eviscerated the service.
[29:26.620 --> 29:29.660]  Leaving only radio in the smallest towns.
[29:30.960 --> 29:31.400]  But...
[29:31.900 --> 29:33.740]  So we started to fight it at that point.
[29:34.740 --> 29:36.360]  And it was losing.
[29:36.500 --> 29:39.380]  And we had a really interesting ally, which was...
[29:39.380 --> 29:40.940]  It did manage to pass the House.
[29:41.160 --> 29:44.300]  But it was totally stalled in the Senate by, of all people, John McCain.
[29:45.200 --> 29:46.080]  John McCain...
[29:46.640 --> 29:47.540]  Who knows why?
[29:47.640 --> 29:51.340]  But he decided that this time he was going to stand up to the broadcasters.
[29:51.340 --> 29:56.300]  He knew that the interference arguments and all that were bogus.
[29:56.420 --> 30:00.160]  And so he stopped the bill in committee.
[30:00.380 --> 30:03.040]  And he said, there's no way that this is going to go through.
[30:03.700 --> 30:05.740]  So again, it seemed like it was okay.
[30:06.060 --> 30:08.420]  Then we hit the election crisis of 2000.
[30:09.220 --> 30:13.380]  And the legislative session just kept on going on and on and on.
[30:13.380 --> 30:22.260]  And the other side came up with a really clever way of putting the bill that stopped low-power FM into an appropriations package.
[30:22.260 --> 30:27.900]  Which is not where you regulate spectrum policy, but it's where you decide what the government is going to spend money on.
[30:28.420 --> 30:33.580]  And they stuck it in there, pretty much in secret, in a rider to that.
[30:33.580 --> 30:36.520]  And we didn't really know about it for a while.
[30:36.700 --> 30:38.400]  And then it popped in there.
[30:40.480 --> 30:42.400]  And we campaigned against it.
[30:42.460 --> 30:44.600]  We did all sorts of things, but there was nothing we could do.
[30:44.920 --> 30:50.860]  Finally, it ended up that there was a deal between Clinton and the Republicans.
[30:51.060 --> 30:53.680]  Clinton was in favor of low-power radio.
[30:55.020 --> 31:07.180]  But there was this backroom deal where Clinton traded away low-power radio for a couple hundred million dollars extra budgeted for schools and an amnesty for illegal immigrants.
[31:07.560 --> 31:15.440]  And he said, if you do that, then I will sign the anti-low-power FM part of the bill and we'll pass the whole thing.
[31:15.440 --> 31:27.720]  And so, Low Power FM got further eviscerated into a very, very small radio service, which is what it is now.
[31:27.900 --> 31:31.240]  Now that didn't stop people from applying.
[31:31.580 --> 31:35.840]  There are about 3,200 license applications that went in.
[31:36.200 --> 31:42.560]  And there are about 400 licenses that have come out, construction permits that have come out around the country.
[31:42.560 --> 31:46.080]  And we've built a bunch of them.
[31:46.380 --> 31:53.420]  You know, there's two this year that we put on the air, one in Oroville, California, and one in Maryland.
[31:54.780 --> 32:01.960]  But they're in really small towns, not over like 20,000 to 40,000 people.
[32:03.800 --> 32:16.520]  And it taught us a lesson about organizing because we had to like sort of, we were really, we were really very oriented towards working in Minneapolis with our, with the network, with the people we already knew.
[32:16.680 --> 32:25.140]  And what we had to do is we had to do what the Christian right does, which is go out into small town America and say, look, you know, here's, you know, here's your chance to start a community radio station.
[32:25.140 --> 32:29.260]  So there are going to be low power radio stations.
[32:29.960 --> 32:37.240]  And so there's like this much of a victory in that Burlington, Vermont is going to have a kick-ass community radio station.
[32:37.440 --> 32:42.440]  And Northampton, Massachusetts is going to have, you know, probably two really kick-ass community radio stations.
[32:43.680 --> 32:46.320]  Oroville, Opelousas, Louisiana, places like that.
[32:47.480 --> 32:52.160]  But the rest of the country is sort of held hostage by this study that's going to happen.
[32:52.160 --> 32:56.180]  And it's probably starting in the next couple months and it'll probably take a year or so.
[32:57.940 --> 33:13.140]  And what, what we're going to have to do is, is once the study comes out that, that, that looks at low power radio, we're going to have to fight for it and try to get the rest of the frequencies that we already thought we'd won and get them back and get them into the people's hands.
[33:14.280 --> 33:18.560]  So that is, that's, that's where low power FM is right now.
[33:19.200 --> 33:20.700]  We are starting to build stations.
[33:20.760 --> 33:28.400]  And so while I got all these people here, I should tell you, we need all kinds of technical support.
[33:28.640 --> 33:38.940]  And one thing that we do is we do these low power radio barn raisings, which is where we get everybody that wants to learn about radio from a region, everyone that's got these permits or everyone that wants these permits.
[33:39.180 --> 33:42.460]  We pull them all together and we put a station together over the course of a weekend.
[33:44.140 --> 33:58.920]  And, and that way anyone licensed, unlicensed to ever that wants to know how, how transmitters work and how to hoist antennas and how to make programming work, how to cut a news story, gets to, you know, sort of, sort of see how it all works.
[34:00.260 --> 34:01.900]  And we do, we do a bunch of these.
[34:02.020 --> 34:04.840]  The next one's going to be in Louisiana in a, in a couple months.
[34:05.560 --> 34:24.840]  And the other main thing that, that we're doing right now is the FCC in the spring of, uh, 2003, they are going to reevaluate a whole bunch of rules about, uh, about community radio.
[34:25.070 --> 34:27.070]  Uh, not about community radio, about all media.
[34:27.070 --> 34:34.420]  They're going to reevaluate whether your vocal newspaper can be the owner of the TV station or the cable network.
[34:34.650 --> 34:43.170]  Uh, they're going to reevaluate whether the cable giants can own more than 35% of the market in the entire country.
[34:43.400 --> 34:46.000]  Uh, it's a sad thing, these cable companies.
[34:46.000 --> 34:55.840]  Right now there's this really onerous regulation that, that a single cable company can't control more than 35% of all cable subscribers in the United States.
[34:56.280 --> 34:57.300]  I weep for them.
[34:57.660 --> 34:58.260]  Nightly.
[34:58.480 --> 35:01.780]  Because it's, uh, it's an incredible limitation on their markets.
[35:02.570 --> 35:02.760]  Um...
[35:02.760 --> 35:04.740]  We should raise that to 200%.
[35:04.740 --> 35:05.260]  Yeah.
[35:09.240 --> 35:26.640]  So, what we, uh, what we're doing in order to, to try to, to fight this, is, uh, we're, we decided that we're going to go after the, one of the worst examples of what happens when you allow a single corporation to be a media monopoly.
[35:27.070 --> 35:33.800]  And, uh, the one that, that we've, uh, chosen, it, it's really worse than radio right now.
[35:33.980 --> 35:42.240]  Because in the Telecom Act of 1996, they took away all the regulations on, on how many radio stations a single organization could own.
[35:42.240 --> 35:45.570]  It used to be you couldn't own more than, uh, what was it, eight?
[35:45.960 --> 35:47.570]  Uh, then it was 20.
[35:48.050 --> 35:48.760]  Then it was 40.
[35:48.940 --> 35:50.000]  And now it's unlimited.
[35:50.300 --> 35:58.760]  And this one corporation, Clear Channel Corporation, uh, based in San Antonio, Texas, now owns 1,200 radio stations across the country.
[35:59.380 --> 36:02.120]  And, uh, well, okay, so what?
[36:02.200 --> 36:03.540]  They own 1,200 radio stations.
[36:03.800 --> 36:06.820]  They also own a third of all the billboards in the United States.
[36:06.820 --> 36:09.320]  They own 240 stations overseas.
[36:09.680 --> 36:13.800]  And they're getting into all these other markets, like outdoor advertising and, and so on.
[36:14.900 --> 36:18.860]  This corporation does not consider itself to be a media corporation.
[36:19.300 --> 36:23.320]  They consider themselves to be an advertising corporation.
[36:23.780 --> 36:28.300]  Uh, if you look at their website, they say, how many times has Clear Channel reached you today?
[36:29.540 --> 36:46.300]  And we just think that if they're telling us that there's no room for, for community radio, if there's no room for, for public owned, uh, owned media, uh, that, and, and at the same time, they say that there's room for Clear Channel to own 1,200 stations,
[36:46.480 --> 36:53.380]  or if it can get them, they could own 2,400 radio stations, there's something really, really out of balance with that system.
[36:53.380 --> 37:03.660]  And so, we're, we're targeting, uh, Clear Channel over the course of the, of the next nine months or so, to, to let the public know just what it is that happens.
[37:03.800 --> 37:04.940]  And, and what is it that happens?
[37:05.400 --> 37:10.070]  First of all, they go around busting every, every union that they can find.
[37:10.320 --> 37:13.860]  And they go around, uh, you know, firing all their DJs.
[37:14.000 --> 37:17.260]  And what they do is they replace them with, uh, with computers.
[37:17.820 --> 37:32.680]  They have a very interesting system, it's called voice tracking, where a DJ in Utah, or something like that, records, uh, records all the, all the, you know, you're listening to Stairway to Heaven.
[37:33.140 --> 37:38.220]  And, uh, and he does that for, you know, five, ten different stations around the country.
[37:38.550 --> 37:51.140]  Then they just, at the rest of the places, they, they take all the studio equipment, they take it, they throw it in the dumpster, and, and they just put a computer there, and it's just a bunch of audio files that, that get, you know, that get stuck onto the,
[37:51.280 --> 37:52.660]  onto the radio station.
[37:52.660 --> 38:02.120]  And so, they get rid of all the people in radio, and they leave it, basically, to, uh, you know, uh, a couple of marketing analysts, and, and, and a bunch of robots.
[38:02.710 --> 38:10.720]  And, so, we're ending up more and more with, with, with a radio culture that, well, first of all, it's just hell to listen to.
[38:11.620 --> 38:16.500]  And, second of all, it, it, like, misses the whole point of what you can do with radio.
[38:16.500 --> 38:25.440]  I mean, after you've listened to, you know, Clear Channel Station for a while, and it sounds sort of like voicemail, or, you know, or something like that.
[38:25.660 --> 38:28.520]  And then you listen to actual people on the airwaves.
[38:28.640 --> 38:31.960]  Well, they don't have those voices from the Columbia School of Journalism.
[38:32.160 --> 38:34.300]  They don't necessarily sound as smooth.
[38:34.440 --> 38:38.340]  They don't have, like, weird sound effects going on in the background all the time.
[38:38.460 --> 38:39.960]  But, but they're actual people.
[38:40.160 --> 38:41.840]  They're actually people that you can connect with.
[38:41.940 --> 38:43.700]  They're actually people that you can learn something from.
[38:43.700 --> 38:52.460]  And, and that you can, you know, that you can actually have, like, some sense of where you are, and, and some sense of connection.
[38:53.880 --> 39:13.260]  So, what, what we're, what we're doing is, over the course of the next bunch of time, we're, we're really gonna try to illuminate what happens when, when there are, uh, there is nothing to stop these giant corporations from, from controlling so much of our media.
[39:13.520 --> 39:17.700]  Uh, by, by having people look at the example of, of Clear Channel.
[39:18.360 --> 39:22.940]  Um, at this point, what, how am I on time?
[39:24.340 --> 39:24.720]  I don't know.
[39:27.360 --> 39:28.500]  Why don't we take questions?
[39:29.550 --> 39:30.180]  Mm-hmm.
[39:30.460 --> 39:30.540]  Mm-hmm.
[39:30.540 --> 39:31.000]  What's the,
[39:35.170 --> 39:35.630]  uh...
[39:35.630 --> 39:42.690]  Well, it's a, it, uh, how does someone, someone get started doing their own low power FM station?
[39:43.520 --> 39:46.040]  It's a ridiculously complicated process.
[39:46.420 --> 39:50.380]  It's also the most easy process there has ever been for getting a radio station.
[39:50.380 --> 39:57.820]  So, it's, uh, the FCC really bent over backwards to try to make it easy, but, uh, they, they didn't really.
[39:58.570 --> 40:15.360]  Um, and, uh, the way that they, the way that they do it is that every couple years, they're gonna open up what they call filing windows, which is a five-day period where, if you want to apply for a radio station, you gotta put in your application in that timeframe.
[40:15.900 --> 40:20.070]  And, uh, those time, that actually happened throughout the country.
[40:20.460 --> 40:25.170]  And it'll probably happen again in, oh, I don't know, two years or something like that.
[40:25.820 --> 40:29.090]  Um, where they, where they open up these windows.
[40:29.300 --> 40:30.500]  Then you put in your application.
[40:30.780 --> 40:32.090]  It's a free application.
[40:32.880 --> 40:45.070]  And, uh, you can't as an individual, but if you have any kind of a community group, like, uh, I don't know, a Rotary Club or, uh, you know, an Earth First Chapter or something, uh, you can put in your application for it.
[40:45.340 --> 40:47.630]  And, basically, if the frequency's open, you get it.
[40:48.110 --> 40:52.420]  Uh, as long as you, like, crossed all your T's right and dotted all your I's and so on.
[40:52.610 --> 40:53.880]  So an individual can't?
[40:54.730 --> 41:07.860]  An individual person can't, and they're all, uh, they're all, it has to be some kind of a non-profit organization, or a, uh, and it has to be a non-commercial station, uh, in order to, uh, in order to get it.
[41:07.860 --> 41:15.230]  Uh, but, in truth of fact, a lot of these, you know, organizations are really just, you know, three people.
[41:15.670 --> 41:18.050]  You know, because that's, that's how every radio station starts.
[41:18.230 --> 41:25.360]  It starts with, like, you know, between one and three people that, for some reason, get it in their head that they want to start a radio station.
[41:25.780 --> 41:33.020]  And they, you know, just start knocking on doors and getting people together and, you know, no one pays attention to them.
[41:33.020 --> 41:33.710]  They think they're weird.
[41:34.110 --> 41:41.940]  And, and then, uh, you know, a year later, when the license comes through, all of a sudden, hey, I want to do my, I want to do a show.
[41:42.130 --> 41:48.070]  And, and you end up with, you know, your group of, you know, 50 or 75 people that, you know, that, that run the radio station together.
[41:48.670 --> 41:50.090]  So, uh-huh.
[41:50.340 --> 41:50.980]  Is there a
[41:54.690 --> 41:58.490]  clear floor and also a list of what frequencies your operators have to kind of guess?
[41:58.490 --> 42:06.770]  Um, the way you do it, the FCC has this really weird channel finder tool where, uh, we have instructions how to do this on our website.
[42:07.210 --> 42:10.450]  Basically, you get your geographic coordinates, which you can just get off the internet.
[42:11.030 --> 42:12.910]  And you plug those coordinates in.
[42:13.510 --> 42:18.530]  And if there's a channel available, it just says, yes, you have a channel available.
[42:18.770 --> 42:19.750]  And it tells you what it is.
[42:19.770 --> 42:21.690]  Yeah, and it tells you, tells you what channel it is.
[42:21.850 --> 42:25.410]  So, one really nice thing about it is that you don't have to hire an engineer.
[42:25.410 --> 42:33.090]  So, a lot of places got construction permits for an FCC license without spending one single dime.
[42:33.350 --> 42:41.250]  Um, which we thought was really important in terms of, like, no one wants to invest $1,000 before they even know whether they're gonna get anything out of it.
[42:41.490 --> 42:46.950]  So, that's, you know, where the FCC gets things right, I, I try to mention it.
[42:47.090 --> 42:48.450]  And that's something that they did get right.
[42:49.650 --> 42:49.850]  Mm-hmm.
[42:50.210 --> 42:58.530]  Briefly, uh, who were the forces and what was the rationale behind making Congress, pass a law that made LPFM illegal?
[42:58.890 --> 43:01.910]  Um, what exactly were there, what were they afraid of?
[43:02.050 --> 43:03.850]  I've had all the diversity I can handle.
[43:04.650 --> 43:09.670]  Uh, they, basically what they said was that, uh, that it would cause interference.
[43:10.170 --> 43:13.450]  Uh, and it was an incredible argument.
[43:13.690 --> 43:15.490]  It, it really made very, very little sense.
[43:20.280 --> 43:22.220]  Oh, well, okay, there's, that's...
[43:26.750 --> 43:31.310]  Yeah, it's, it's, it's, they were concerned about pirates.
[43:33.630 --> 43:40.930]  And certainly pirates, uh, if you really, really don't know what you're doing, you, you can cause interference.
[43:41.170 --> 43:42.270]  And don't let anyone kid you about that.
[43:42.370 --> 43:44.670]  You really can cause interference as a pirate if you don't.
[43:44.990 --> 43:48.130]  Use a filter, use a compressor, use all the stuff.
[43:48.370 --> 43:53.290]  So, you know, people say you can get on the air with a pirate radio station for, you know, $100.
[43:53.290 --> 43:54.090]  They're wrong.
[43:54.350 --> 44:00.930]  You can get on the air with a decent pirate radio station that won't cause interference for about $900 or something like that.
[44:01.010 --> 44:02.530]  So, it's important.
[44:02.810 --> 44:03.270]  Hi.
[44:03.630 --> 44:19.650]  Um, I wonder, can you talk a bit about, uh, broadcasting on other frequencies that are not, say, FM, uh, but are elsewhere shortwave or possibly even creating your own and, and transmitting off of, say, 78 megahertz or, or something else that's not FM?
[44:20.690 --> 44:22.570]  Um, I don't know so much...
[44:23.910 --> 44:24.430]  Wow.
[44:25.550 --> 44:32.030]  I don't know so much about shortwave, uh, but there's going to be a panel on that, uh, at 10 on Sunday.
[44:32.950 --> 44:42.530]  And, uh, I also, AM is really hard, uh, because AM, uh, the waves are so big that the antennas are huge.
[44:42.910 --> 44:44.530]  They're like 400-foot antennas.
[44:44.530 --> 44:48.310]  FM is really nice because the, uh, the waves are about 10 feet long.
[44:48.510 --> 44:54.010]  And so, a five-eighths wave antenna is like, you know, six feet, something like that.
[44:54.310 --> 44:59.210]  So, FM is a really convenient, you know, place to broadcast.
[44:59.210 --> 45:01.410]  The other issue is where do people have receivers?
[45:02.330 --> 45:08.930]  Um, you know, there, there have been several people that have asked, you know, well, why don't we go to, like, some kind of a digital thing?
[45:09.290 --> 45:10.650]  And that's a whole nother story.
[45:10.990 --> 45:17.990]  Uh, the, one of the things that we really wanted to fight was the, the digitization of radio as it's being planned.
[45:17.990 --> 45:20.710]  There's a plan called IBOC, in band, on channel.
[45:21.610 --> 45:35.230]  And, uh, unfortunately, what, what's happening is they're using the same band, but they're using small, uh, side bands between the stations right now to carry the, the signal of the new digital transmitters.
[45:35.770 --> 45:39.630]  And, uh, and the receivers will work on the same thing.
[45:39.950 --> 45:48.090]  Now, when you go from analog to digital, you can fit five times as much signal into the same amount of bandwidth.
[45:48.390 --> 45:52.170]  And so, all these years, the FCC's been telling us, no, you can't have a radio station.
[45:52.230 --> 45:53.090]  There's not enough bandwidth.
[45:53.790 --> 45:55.070]  Then digital comes along.
[45:55.250 --> 45:57.710]  To me, that looks like five times as many radio stations.
[45:58.090 --> 46:00.030]  But that's not what it looks like to commercial radio.
[46:00.290 --> 46:05.710]  To commercial radio, that looks like, oh, well, we'll put streaming sports scores in there.
[46:05.870 --> 46:07.890]  No, well, no, we won't put streaming sports scores.
[46:08.130 --> 46:15.050]  We'll put a little, a little, uh, a little display on your radio that says, you're listening to the number seven song by Britney Spears.
[46:15.050 --> 46:17.710]  And you can buy that if you press this button now.
[46:18.110 --> 46:20.790]  Uh, so that is the future of digital radio.
[46:20.910 --> 46:24.990]  That's what, that's what all that, you know, newly available spectrum is going to be used for.
[46:25.270 --> 46:35.210]  And to my way of thinking, they want the revenue stream and they want to make sure that nobody else uses that revenue and further dilutes, you know, who owns the media.
[46:36.670 --> 46:37.110]  So...
[46:37.110 --> 46:37.550]  Mm-hmm.
[46:37.850 --> 46:40.770]  Are there any, uh, clear channel, uh, stations in New York City?
[46:40.770 --> 46:42.590]  Uh, there sure are.
[46:42.810 --> 46:48.830]  I can't remember them, but, uh, in most cities they have, uh, five to eight.
[46:49.130 --> 46:49.390]  How many?
[46:49.510 --> 46:49.650]  Eight?
[46:50.950 --> 46:51.430]  Five.
[46:51.670 --> 46:52.370]  Which ones?
[46:52.750 --> 46:53.450]  Which ones?
[47:03.280 --> 47:12.760]  Yeah, if you listen to a clear channel station, you know, you'll, you'll hear because they, they brand themselves really strongly.
[47:13.760 --> 47:14.800]  What types of materials?
[47:14.980 --> 47:17.000]  What types of materials are you allowed to broadcast?
[47:17.260 --> 47:20.520]  If you're like, very nice thing, but what seems like it'd be copyrighted?
[47:21.100 --> 47:23.720]  You know, the obscenity VOS are really, really funny.
[47:24.200 --> 47:26.180]  Um, they've, they've really changed.
[47:26.360 --> 47:30.560]  You know, the, the FCC is basically, they're not supposed to regulate content over the AR.
[47:30.760 --> 47:32.340]  They're supposed to regulate for interference.
[47:32.780 --> 47:38.320]  They have certain responsibilities about making sure the public interest is served by having people not curse or whatever.
[47:38.600 --> 47:42.080]  But all that is like really sort of gone out the window in the past couple of years.
[47:42.080 --> 47:46.240]  Every once in a while, a politician gets, you know, gets all upset about it.
[47:46.340 --> 47:48.340]  And they want to appeal to the family values crowd.
[47:48.540 --> 47:51.020]  And they, they issue like two or three fines or something.
[47:53.260 --> 47:53.620]  Yeah.
[47:54.080 --> 47:55.200]  Oh, in terms of copyright?
[47:55.600 --> 47:59.140]  Well, with low power FM, uh, it's like a blanket license that you get.
[47:59.300 --> 48:02.640]  And it's like, it's actually not all that much.
[48:02.820 --> 48:03.920]  I mean, it's kind of a lot.
[48:03.980 --> 48:05.880]  It's like 400 bucks a year or something like that.
[48:06.040 --> 48:08.820]  And that should take care of like most of your copyrighted material.
[48:08.820 --> 48:12.580]  So, it's actually much better than web radio.
[48:12.840 --> 48:15.040]  I mean, the web radio thing has been a total disaster.
[48:15.380 --> 48:21.800]  Uh, but in terms of like blanket licenses for community radio, it's, it's actually, it could be a lot worse.
[48:22.760 --> 48:23.240]  Mm-hmm.
[48:23.920 --> 48:28.400]  What are the regulations like as far as, uh, renewing licenses for commercial stations?
[48:28.560 --> 48:34.220]  Would it be possible to kind of steal them from the companies, kind of like you can do with internet domains or not?
[48:34.220 --> 48:37.880]  Um, people have really tried that in the past, especially in the 70s.
[48:37.960 --> 48:42.040]  There used to be a movement of groups that would challenge broadcast licenses.
[48:42.320 --> 48:44.620]  And it was really cool, but it didn't work.
[48:45.120 --> 48:51.540]  Uh, the broadcasters were so powerful that they created what was called an expectancy of renewal.
[48:51.860 --> 49:01.880]  And unless you have screwed up in a way that no other broadcaster has ever screwed up, uh, you're pretty much set for life with your existing broadcast license.
[49:02.520 --> 49:03.920]  Um, there have been exceptions.
[49:04.200 --> 49:17.460]  There was, there was actually one of the coolest things, which I don't know so much about, was the United Church of Christ in the 60s challenged the licenses of, uh, TV stations that refused to hire black people.
[49:17.760 --> 49:20.080]  And they were actually fairly successful in that.
[49:20.240 --> 49:23.780]  Uh, they didn't lose their licenses, but they were forced to like change their policies and so on.
[49:23.780 --> 49:28.420]  But, very, very few broadcasters have lost their license for almost anything.
[49:29.880 --> 49:31.980]  Um, I'll bet Nan has a good story.
[49:32.160 --> 49:32.960]  Yeah, I actually do.
[49:38.200 --> 49:40.400]  Financial now, she's in this RKO.
[49:41.020 --> 49:45.460]  And given the time that you have, there may be some real good financial now, there may be some real good financial now, there may be some licenses.
[49:46.120 --> 49:50.180]  That was the only way that the SSU actually really forced the nation to get their licenses.
[49:50.660 --> 49:52.420]  Almost any other people who have the
[50:15.610 --> 50:15.830]  license.
[50:16.350 --> 50:19.330]  Um, I'm asked to wrap up.
[50:19.650 --> 50:20.790]  Thanks a lot, people, for coming.
[50:20.790 --> 50:25.850]  Um, if you want to learn more about this stuff, you can go to prometheusradio.org.
[50:26.450 --> 50:27.930]  Uh, we also have a bunch of literature there.
[50:28.130 --> 50:30.450]  And if you want to, uh, sign up to get updates.
[50:30.470 --> 50:32.390]  If you want to know when the license windows are opening.
[50:32.410 --> 50:35.470]  If you want to, uh, uh, rumble with Clear Channel.
[50:35.930 --> 50:37.250]  Uh, come and tell us.
[50:37.410 --> 50:38.770]  And, you know, one more thing.
[50:39.030 --> 50:45.610]  We need computer folks so bad, uh, to, to, to help us with a bunch of our projects.
[50:45.610 --> 50:50.970]  Because one of the things that we're doing is we're trying to create, uh, some, some radio equipment.
[50:51.330 --> 50:56.650]  That can, uh, that can create a studio to transmitter link that runs over the internet.
[50:56.870 --> 51:01.030]  And so reliable streaming is a real interesting, uh, field for us.
[51:01.230 --> 51:03.890]  That, uh, that if you have some ideas about it, come talk to us.
[51:04.410 --> 51:10.490]  Um, also, uh, 802.11 based, uh, you know, 2.4 gigahertz wireless links.
[51:10.490 --> 51:17.830]  We're trying to develop those so that these new radio stations that are going on the air can get on the air without spending, you know, $50,000 to do it.
[51:18.210 --> 51:21.090]  So, uh, many, many interesting hacks coming.
[51:21.390 --> 51:25.250]  And, uh, if you want to work with us on those sorts of things, come talk to us over at the table.
[51:25.610 --> 51:26.290]  Thanks a lot.