Radio Pirates Are Out for Some Adventure on the High Frequencies

They say you better listen to the voice of reason

But they don’t give you any choice ‘cause they think that it’s treason --From Elvis Costello’s “Radio, Radio”

According to popular folklore, there were two types of pirates who sailed the oceans: those who pillaged and looted simply to satiate their own lust and greed, and those who, unsanctioned by kings, struck out across the waves strictly for the adventure of it.

Those two approaches are still being taken by those who navigate the high seas of radio broadcasting. A commercial FM station in Los Angeles touts itself as “Pirate Radio.” And how does it back up this maverick credo? By referring on the air to its competitors as “weenies” yet jockeying all the while for the high ratings that would translate into juicy advertising rates to fatten the owners’ treasure chests.

Then there are the truly adventurous “radio pirates,” as the Federal Communications Commission refers to them--iconoclasts who traverse the waves of the air without any approval or license at all, because it is there and because they believe it is their right to do so.

The best-known example was the broadcasting vessel Sarah, which dropped anchor a few miles off the coast of Long Island in 1987 and for several months--until FCC agents arrested the station’s operators and seized their equipment--beamed music and comedy to New York audiences in protest of what the pirates felt was a dearth of lively, original programming from the so-called legitimate sector.

The FCC doesn’t know how many pirates exist today because most of them evade capture. On a recent weekend, according to Roy Kolly, assistant chief of the FCC’s enforcement division in Washington, the FCC’s 13 monitoring stations throughout the country reported signals from six pirate stations. Most of them stayed on the air less than 30 minutes--not much time for the government to use its triangulation equipment to get a precise fix on their locations. However, suddenly and inexplicably, Kolly says, the number of pirates has increased over the past six months. There’s even an Assn. of Clandestine Radio Enthusiasts now, a group of listeners who publish a monthly report listing who and what they’ve heard.

Until recently, Jim Keul of Anaheim was a radio pirate. Operating out of his home with a transmitter he picked up for $20 at a local swap meet, Keul was broadcasting music--including German oom-pah bands--and political commentary from a variety of perspectives on his station, which he dubbed Zodiac Radio.

In March, FCC agents tracked him down, confiscated his equipment and slapped him with the $1,000 fine standard for first offenders. Keul’s transgression: broadcasting without an FCC license.

For Keul, 34, who identifies himself as “a Republican and a Catholic,” going on the air without a government stamp of approval was no prank. “It was my way of expressing freedom of speech,” he explained in a recent interview. “The right of the government to control the airwaves is limiting my freedom of speech.”

(He stressed, however, that since the FCC seized his transmitter, he has not resumed broadcasting and has no intention of doing so. And he has no interest in applying for the two-way ham operator’s license the FCC agents encouraged him to get. “Why should I want to talk to someone in Oregon about their weather or about Aunt Betty and her broken leg?”)

In the few months he was on the air--which was up to 30 hours a week--Keul won listeners as far north as Canada and as far east as Kansas, judging from letters he received via a convoluted series of post-office box addresses set up to confound the authorities.

Keul said his transmitter was only 40 watts but that it covered nearly half the United States. If properly licensed, he said, his signal would have reached “about 15 . . . 20 feet.” Unlike FM stations, which require thousands of watts to cover a few square miles, radio pirates use one particular high-frequency band that can carry thousands of miles with a relatively low-powered transmitter.

That’s why these stations are such an issue to the FCC, Kolly said. “It’s not like someone puts up an illegal FM transmitter and can be heard in one city. Depending on their power, they can be heard across one-third to one-half of the country.”

So far, none of the pirates who have been caught--about a dozen besides Keul since the FCC stepped up its enforcement activities in January--has fought the agency on First Amendment grounds, Kolly said. “When you come and catch them, they usually say something like, ‘Oh gee, we’ve been expecting you sooner or later.’ ”

And, Kolly said, the FCC doesn’t view radio piracy as political. “This is not a freedom-of-speech issue,” Kolly said. “They just play records for the most part. We hear very little editorializing, very few political messages.” Although some such as Keul do include blatantly political diatribes attacking everything from gun control to the FCC itself.

Neither, continued Kolly, is the problem that unlicensed broadcasters are interfering with normal radio or television reception or even emergency service lines--the pirates’ favorite frequency is far removed from those.

The problem is that “the whole basis for the FCC’s existence is to regulate radio frequency spectrum, and we do this by issuing licenses,” Kolly explained. “If stations didn’t pay attention to the FCC’s licensing scheme, we would have chaos. Licenses are at the heart of the FCC’s primary purpose.”

Ah.

The specifics may be different this time, but that battle has been going on as long as governments have tried to maintain order, and individuals have yearned to exercise and test the boundaries of personal freedom.

Does “the land of the free” encompass the invisible America of the radio airwaves? That’s a question a court would have to decide if some radio pirate really wanted to test those waters. But for now, pirate radio is certainly the home of the brave.