[cr-india] Ex-Radio Pirates Enjoy Win Against FCC

[George Lessard (s)]

> Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Bruce Girard" <boa at comunica.org>
> Date: Fri Sep 12, 2003  7:24:09  AM Canada/Eastern
> To: creative-radio at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [creative-radio] Ex-Radio Pirates Enjoy Win Against FCC
> Reply-To: creative-radio at yahoogroups.com

Ex-Radio Pirates Enjoy Win Against FCC
Tue Sep 9, 2:47 PM ET

> By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA - It's been five years since the Federal
Communications Commission broke down the door to Radio Mutiny's
pirate broadcast studio in West Philadelphia and hacked apart its
unlicensed antenna.

Now a group led by Radio Mutiny veteran Pete Tridish has exacted
revenge on their old nemesis. Last week, they persuaded a federal
court to temporarily block the FCC from relaxing restrictions designed 
to
prevent big media companies from monopolizing public airwaves.

The delay will give the group, the Prometheus Radio Project, time to
argue that the new regulations decrease the public's ability to get on
the air, a difficulty apparent in Philadelphia, which has no public 
access
radio or television.

The ruling also galvanized congressional opposition to the regulations,
which would allow single companies to own newspapers and broadcast
outlets in the same market, and let an individual TV company reach up
to 45 percent of the nation's viewers. The FCC says the changes are
needed to help broadcasters compete in an industry changed by cable
television and the Internet.

The court victory is being savored with some trepidation by the folks at
Prometheus, who are battling to convince regulators that there is
enough room on the nation's radio and TV dials for amateur
broadcasters.

"I'm always cautious about getting too excited about court victories,"
Tridish said. "Eventually, the weight of the system always seems to
wind up catching up with you."

A dose of pessimism is probably to be expected from activists who
named their group after a mythological character who stole fire from the
gods and gave it to man, only to be punished by eternal torture.

Tridish, 33, was born in New York as Dylan Wrynn but took a
pseudonym inspired by the petri dish, a container for culturing 
bacteria,
in 1996. That was the year he became one of the founders of Radio
Mutiny, a pirate station that broadcast from secret locations in West
Philadelphia.

Radio Mutiny didn't last long. The station had been on the air for less
than a year when there was a knock on the door.

"'FCC, open up,'" Tridish recalled the visitors saying. "The girl who 
went
to the door said, 'Yeah, right,' because there were always people
coming to the door and making jokes. But then she looked out, she saw
some guy she didn't know and a couple of cops. She told them she
wouldn't open the door unless they had a warrant, so they went away."

After a few months of political theater, and a protest in which pirate 
disk
jockeys broadcast live from Independence Mall, the FCC got a court
order, broke down the station's door and shut it down.

After that, Tridish said, he put his pirate days behind him and helped
found Prometheus, a nonprofit group run from an office beneath the
Calvary United Methodist Church that is trying to help hundreds of low-
power FM stations set up legally around the country.

In the past two years, Prometheus has had some success, mostly in
rural areas underserved by commercial broadcasters.

Last year the group helped build KOCZ 103.7 FM in Opelousas, La., a
100-watt station that plays zydeco music, does some local news and is
owned by a civil rights group. It had another successful radio "barn
raising" in Anne Arundel County, Md., where it helped found WRYR
97.5 FM. Another station start is planned this autumn in Spokane,
Wash.

Prometheus staffer Hannah Sassaman, 23, said the startups may be
unpolished, but are a relief from a fast-consolidating industry (one 
giant
player, Clear Channel, already owns 1,200 stations) in which she
believes it is difficult for people with different viewpoints to get 
their
opinions on the air.

"They need to be curtailed in how far they can spread their arms over
the countryside," Sassaman said. "It will change the way broadcasting
sounds in America if it is all centralized out of the big cities."

FCC officials said the ownership rules blocked by Prometheus' suit
would do nothing to increase the likelihood that a radio market would
become dominated by just a few big companies. FCC spokeswoman
Michelle Russo said a series of other rule changes have recently
expanded the number of licenses for lower-power FM stations.

Prometheus' claims were also rejected by the National Association of
Broadcasters.

"We don't buy into their claim that radio has somehow lost its local
flavor. The reality is that the most successful stations today are 
highly
committed to serving their local audiences," said the association's
senior vice president, Dennis Wharton.

He said close to 4,000 companies own radio stations, and, while the
industry has seen a proliferation of stations specializing in formats
unavailable a few decades ago, including Spanish-language
broadcasting and business news, it's still the most community-oriented
of any mass media.

"We're still where you turn for announcements about school closings,"
Wharton said.

___

On the Net:

Prometheus Radio Project: www.prometheusradio.org/

Federal Communications Commission: www.fcc.gov/

--
Bruce Girard        -        http://comunica.org/
Home office: +(31-15) 284.0323
Mobile: +(31-6) 2039.6958
Fax/Voicemail: +(31-84) 882.6517
Kloksteeg 17b, 2611 BL Delft, The Netherlands

> New book on radio and the Internet
The One to Watch: Radio, New ICTs and Interactivity
Information and download at http://comunica.org/1-2-watch






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