Posted on 04/19/2014 5:37:58 AM PDT by raccoonradio
Bay State politicians are defending an unlicensed radio station that was shut down this week by the Federal Communications Commission, but prosecutors say the crackdown was necessary to prevent a “public safety hazard.”
U.S. Marshals and the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau shut down Touch 106.1 FM, an unlicensed Dorchester station, Thursday and seized radio equipment, according to U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz.
Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday said he was “incredibly disappointed” by the raid and plans to ask the U.S. Attorney’s office to back down.
“You’d like to think of them bringing more of a problem-solving approach,” he said. “Touch is a pretty important voice in the community.”
Other politicians were equally vexed with the decision to shut down the unlicensed station founded by former mayoral candidate Charles Clemons.
“That station is an institution,” said Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley. “Myself and other elected officials of color are working collaboratively to apply pressure to lobby the FCC and find out what recourse exists.”
Ortiz defended the crackdown in a statement.
“It is a public safety hazard for illegal radio stations to broadcast, potentially interfering with critical radio communications,” Ortiz said.
Clemons, who founded the station in 2007, said he has not yet retained counsel, but has “received an outpouring of support” from local attorneys “and elected officials.”
He said he was able to get an Internet feed of the station running Thursday night.
“We’re the Rosa Parks of radio right now,” he said. “It’s not right what happened, and we’re going to fight.”
When asked why Touch 106.1 FM did not get a license, Clemons said, “We couldn’t. The FCC has shut it down so no one could apply for a license for 15 years. It’s not fair.”
Ortiz said stations like Clemons’ “could have applied for low power radio licenses and operated their stations in compliance with the law.”
Exactly—what should have happened was a group of these minorities band together to buy a station and run what they want (AM or FM). As it is there are some stations who will sell time or even give it away free (I’m on a college station north of Boston that has Hispanic shows on weekends—I would much rather have them do that on a legit station than start their own pirate that could interfere with a station, etc)
The AM and FM spectrum is limited...and things have to be considered like other stations, aircraft radio, etc. But there’s lots of room on the Web to streamcast. As much as I hate “big government” the FCC is there to protect the airwaves. People can pay big bucks to put stations on. What if some pirate then decided to go on right next to them?
One would have hoped public radio could accomodate them but they’re too busy running news-talk (WGBH and WBUR Boston). Public radio is a business too—WGBH has very expensive studios and running lefty talk and news is what gets them donations, corporate tax writeoffs, etc. They don’t have time for R&B, reggae, jazz etc. Thus weaker, college stations pick up the slack...or pirates.
Friend of mine in Methuen MA loved listening to 60s music on WMBR, MIT/Cambridge. One day he found he couldn’t pick them up because of some pirate station. Complained to FCC and the pirate was shut down. This is why we need the FCC!
If you owned or listened to a station that gets interference due to pirate radio you wouldn’t be so thrilled with it. Yeah in places where there’s lots of space on the dial, maybe people can get away with it. But there are select few spots on the dial “open” in places like Boston—and the pirates go on. People with such things as XM Satellite Radio even need a spot on the dial to use so they can hear it in their car...and what if pirates take up all these spots?
I would suggest that the then Corporate Cr@p network didn't like the additional competition.
Back when Art Bell was entertaining, one of his AF hitch stories was being stationed in TX. He and another guy were running some sort of broadcast as a hobby/passion, and when their "station" started appearing in the local Arbitron logs, they were ordered to close it down on the complaints of the local radio stations.
As for the church aspect, there was some legal hole that would allow challenges to NPR frequency assignments which a number of "religious" organizations glommed onto during a re-licensing period. That may have been when she was a NY senator, though.
As for this unlicensed FM station, perhaps they should follow the example of another former operator of an unlicensed FM station (a la "Radio Caroline", as well as a number of other earlier youthful pirate endeavors), Allan Weiner, and go legit?
I didn't realize that ...thanks.
Silly, EVERYTHING is about race when you're black and the gubbmint is shutting you down.
As a licensed Amateur Radio Operator studying for his GROL, gotta say I'm not in favor of pirate radio - especially in the AM and FM bands as consumers know them. These two bands are ordered the way they are for a reason: clarity of signal and ability for consumers to receive clear signals without having to deal with a "mess" of overlapping signals.
Yes, there's the hefty license fee's also however absent order AM and FM would literally be useless.
In the Amateur Radio Bands, we already have to deal with the idiots who come up from CB illegally using amateur radio transceivers that they purchased from unscrupulous dealers, other Hams or estate sales. They make a big mess of the bands with their rude behavior and acting like children disrupting other people's conversations. These ignorant childish CB'ers are "pirates" themselves so no, I'm not in favor of "pirate radio." I worked and studied hard to achieve my licenses and did things "the right way." Idiot CB'ers in the Ham radio bands just piss me off.
But I have a hard time seeing how an FM transmitter at 106.1 could be causing problems outside of the FM broadcast band. I'd like to see the spectrum data the US Attorney should have to support her prosecution.
Thanks for linking the threads, some of us missed the earlier posting.
At the time Hillary was making a fuss about LPFM, she was first lady, and the animus towards LPFM was clearly aimed at church affiliated stations. She *HATED* Rush Limbaugh with a purple passion, and given time and power enough, would have had him taken off the air, arrested, and disemboweled.
A dirty transmitter on 106.1 can generate secondary harmonics which can be heard well above the frequency it's transmitting on and interfere well into the 220mhz band. That would mean the station in question could be interfering with everything from Ground to Air communications (airplanes) VLFR systems and more.
It's not hard to prove that interference is happening at all. Seize the equipment, put it on a bandscope and start looking for the secondary harmonics. Easy enough to do.
I've had to clean up a few radio's myself that were generating secondary harmonics (thankfully they didn't belong to me.)
Hopefully most pirate radio stations would have more than one record, A Walk Through The Black Forest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgb2hrjJXRk
Secondary harmonics are also easy to record on the air. Don't have to have physical access to the transmitter doing it either.
Last year:
http://www.enterprisenews.com/x1905499940/Pirate-radio-station-in-Brockton-flagged-for-interference
>>Firefighters driving to work at the Pleasant Street station on the edge of downtown started reporting interference on their car radios this week.
Then on Wednesday, music started playing over the speakers in the station used for dispatching fire engines and garbling emergency communications.
“In the station, those speakers are used to alert firefighter to an incident, and that’s how we get the type of call and location,” said Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Galligan. “Any interference is a serious issue.”
...They discovered a satellite dish and an FM antenna on a radio mast directly across the street from Fire Station 1 at 69 Pleasant St..
The antenna extended nearly 60 feet in the air and an unlicensed station was broadcasting on 88.9 MHz, right next to WERS in Boston, DeNapoli said.
Not sure why WERS in Boston was mentioned -- irrelevant to the story.
The unlicensed station in that case was causing secondary harmonics likely between 152 and 162 Mhz, right where the Fire Department's frequency no doubt is.
Great example of secondary harmonics.
Yes..have seen harmonics like: near antenna
for WRKO 680 Boston (site in Burlington), put on
WLYN 1360 Lynn MA and WRKO blends with it. 680 x 2.
In the absence of either measurable transmission of signals in spectrum space which are likely to cause problems, or real complaints, then spending taxpayer resources on the radio station is a waste of time and money.
Remember, this "investigation" has probably been going on for some time. It would have been nice if the federal government spent whatever money they have and are going to spend on this investigation looking into the reports from the Russian FSB regarding Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev before the two of them killed 4 people and horribly injured scores more. It has been reported that the Boston FBI office lacked the resources to do so. Apparently for the Justice Department spending our money on shutting down a minor FM unlicensed FM transmitter was and is more important than preventing a bombing.
If they have the resources to chase down and prosecute a minor violator of FM radio regulations, but they don't have the resources to check out reports of terrorists something is very wrong in their management process.
That's my point.
I don't understand why there aren't some band widths left open for local "pirate" radio with limited range. It's another case of an out-of-control government taking away one of the few freedoms that remained.
You're comparing apples to oranges here, and you're trying to say that by spending money on the FCC we're not able to "stop terrorism?" That's laughable. Do you know how miniscule the FCC's budget is compared to the FBI, CIA, etc.. ??? Obviously you don't. I'm heavily involved in Amateur Radio and see the effects of the lack of budget the FCC has on a first hand basis. There is no "band enforcement" in Amateur Radio anymore. If you're looking to complain about the FCC, a better complaint would be "why are they spending so much time trying to manage the Free Obamaphone Program and not enforcing the airwaves?"
No need to seize the equipment, just look at the radiated signal near the transmitter. As I noted before, the real issue should be "is there actually interference to other spectrum users?". That question is easy to answer, and the FCC guys should know the answer to that question. I suspect the answer is "none we could find".
I stated no need to seize the equipment further down this thread, and that the only thing the FCC needed to do was listen for secondary harmonics. You assume there weren't any. I don't assume there were, I simply stated that it was entirely possible that given the broadcast frequency of the offending station, that 106.1 could have a secondary harmonic that easily interfered with ground to air communications, VLFR and other systems related to public safety including local police or fire. That is reason enough to shut the illegal broadcast station down in addition to the fact it was an unlicensed station.
Broadcast stations require licenses FOR A REASON and there are strict operating procedures so that they do not have spurious emissions/secondary harmonics that can affect public safety. But hey, leave that unlicensed station alone until one day a fire department doesn't get the call over the air because of that unlicensed stations spurious emissions or secondary harmonics that an ambulance is needed somewhere and someone dies until we shut it down, right?
Your point is completely invalid and frankly you really don't know what you're talking about.
One last point: You do realize the FCC has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism, right? Faulting the FCC for not having the "resources to check out reports of terrorists" is a ridiculous charge. That's FBI territory.
Same subject, different article, therefore not a dupe.
Whatever money was allocated for the US Attorney's office for this kind of case could have been allocated to the FBI for terrorism prevention.
I never made any "charge" regarding the FCC, and by the way they didn't need to do anything. Touch 106.1 doesn't make any effort to hide its operations, owners, etc.
Try reading my posts again.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.