And the Media Gods Said, Go Forth and Multiply
Lyn Gerry’s house begins near where the pavement ends on a hilltop overlooking Highland Park. The road is narrow, flanked by leafy green trees and handsome wooden houses. A worn white Honda, dotted with bumper stickers, is parked out front near a jumble of firewood, dozens of empty plastic bottles and a rain-speckled placard that reads, “Bill Clinton = War Criminal.” It’s a harsh assessment. But then again, in the eyes of the Clinton administration, Gerry is something of a criminal, too. For nearly three years, she’s been broadcasting on an unlicensed radio station, a crime she sees as being about as unlawful as pulling the tag off a pillow but one for which the U.S. government has been charging people in unprecedented numbers lately.
“If you want to talk on the radio to people because you have something to say, why shouldn’t you?” asks Gerry, echoing the sentiments of the hundreds of illegal “microradio” broadcasters nationwide. Unburdened by concerns about audience share and advertising revenue, these scofflaws broadcast for the sake of the music, or the political views, or the public-interest information they feel commercial radio has ignored.
The result, says Stephen Dunifer, founder of Free Radio Berkeley, flagship of the so-called pirate radio movement, is programming that is “a helluva lot more interesting at the very least. Some of the stuff we’ve heard [on microradio] sounds pretty stupid. Some of it’s lame, some of it’s downright brilliant. You get the whole range. Commercial radio is about commodification. It’s about squaring off the rough edges and not really presenting a true reality of people’s lives.”
Little more than a generation ago, young upstarts such as Johnny Rivers or fledgling bands such as the Beach Boys could--and did--drop homemade tapes off at local radio stations, secure in the knowledge that their music would be played. That air time not only helped launch their careers, it popularized new musical genres as well. Today’s highly programmed, market-sensitive commercial broadcasters take few such chances with air time. That’s where microradio comes in.
If commercial radio reflects popular culture, microradio helps create it. Consider England in the early 1960s, when rock ‘n’ roll was still considered the devil’s music. The button-down BBC largely ignored the new sound, so microbroadcasters paddled out to sea in small boats and, safely outside the reach of British law, beamed rock music back to the island.
Similar scenes play out across America today. In suburban Detroit, both Norman Andresen, founder of Storm Records, and coffeehouse owner Caleb Grayson favor music that lacks the mass appeal necessary to attract a major record label, which means they have virtually no chance of reaching mainstream radio. Andresen wants a low-power station to play that kind of independent music, while Grayson wants to broadcast from his cafe, home to local bands like the Eastern European folk rock group Immigrant Suns, who will never rise above the club circuit without radio air time.
The ‘90s were heady days for radio renegades, largely, they say, because commercial radio’s blatant drive for profits made programming bland. As the number of pirate radio stations increased, so did the attention they received from the commercial industry and government regulators. The Federal Communications Commission began cracking down last year because microradio signals, however weak, can interfere with the much stronger signals of licensed stations. That overlap is precisely why the government began assigning frequencies and licensing stations in the 1930s.
Recently, however, the FCC also moved in an entirely new direction. In a step fiercely opposed by the National Assn. of Broadcasters and most of its 6,600 TV and radio broadcast members, the FCC has proposed a rule change that would grant licenses to microbroadcasters, making room even in crowded markets like Los Angeles. If the change is approved, hundreds of new microradio stations would be given spots on the dial legally.
What this all means for listeners and American popular culture is a bit unsettling. If the microradio movement is stamped out by government enforcement, many artists and political and community activists will lose places to nurture their talents and beliefs. Yet if the FCC legalizes microbroadcasters, the effect could be quite the opposite--but just as extreme. The swelling numbers of microbroadcasters would fragment the market and, just as cable TV changed the face of television, would segment the audience and erode the notion of a “popular culture” based on broadly shared tastes.
Either way, radio’s enormous role in defining popular culture is about to change forever.
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The National Assn. of Broadcasters headquarters in Washington D.C. is a huge, slightly concave mausoleum that peers out over a neighbrohood of tony apartments and yuppie boutiques. Across the street stands a statue of patriot John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. Under his watchful gaze 100 pirate radio supporters stormed the courtyard in front of the headquarters recently, taking down the NAB flag and running up a Jolly Roger. The siege was short-lived yet it heightened the association’s fear that microradio broadcasters, if legalized, will cause similar chaos on the airwaves--only this time with the FCC’s blessing.
“This has energized the radio industry like no other issue in at least the last decade,” says NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton. “If our radio signals cannot get to our listening audience, that’s a big concern for our member stations. This is not about competition. It’s about protecting against interference.”
Privately, however, some broadcasters insist that competition with low-power stations is a major issue. The more choices listeners have, the more fractured the audience becomes. And as market shares decrease, so will profits.
Ever since pirate radio spread rock ‘n’ roll throughout Great Britain, the authoritative London Independent argues, microradio has been a barometer of how well the current licensing system is serving all sections of society. If that’s true, then the explosive growth of microradio in this country is nothing less than an indictment of both mainstream radio and FCC policies.
Lyn Gerry and other microradio broadcasters believe they should be celebrated, not silenced. “They are not broadcasters, they’re advertising sellers,” Gerry says of the commercial industry. “Their main concern is that everything is geared like that. There are towns where you literally cannot get a local weather report.”
If the NAB is “worried about microradio, just make better programming,” she says. Yet the answer might not be so simple. The economics of radio today require stations, which are frequently owned by national corporations, to have large audiences and a healthy stream of advertising revenue to meet their enormous overhead. Almost by definition, a big station cannot afford to offer the idiosyncratic programming that appeals to niche markets.
To serve those markets, more than 1,000 low-power FM stations have ignored a 1978 FCC ban and signed on illegally--several hundred of them doing so after the 1996 Telecommunications Act. That law eased local ownership restrictions and increased consolidation, pushing the price of some radio stations to more than $100 million and leading to more than 1,000 radio-station mergers. In the months before the act passed, the top 50 radio chain owners controlled 876 stations. One year later, the top 50 controlled nearly 1,200 stations.
As ownership became concentrated, local operators were quickly forced out of the market. Huge companies such as Chancellor, Heftel and Capstar snapped up dozens of stations, only to manage and sometimes program them from thousands of miles away. For listeners, the result was a consolidation of pop culture. A random sample of May playlists from the top-ranked pop music stations in five of the nation’s top six radio markets showed that more than half of the most commonly aired songs were the same in all five cities. Even the so-called alternative music stations were marching in lock-step, with nearly 40% of the Top 10 songs the same regardless of the market.
Los Angeles was once home to two of microradio’s best outlets. But last fall the FCC silenced KBLT and KSCR for operating without licenses. KBLT, broadcasting from a tiny Silver Lake apartment, once had more than 40 volunteer programmers playing everything from old-time country, electronic lounge music and hillbilly hits to blues, rock and ‘70s punk. KSCR, based near USC, was equally eclectic. Mark McNeill, who operated KSCR, says the station was founded specifically to respond to the homogenization of commercial radio.
Gerry’s broadcasts were heard on Radio Clandestina, a 20-watt bilingual station operated from a Highland Park community center until going silent during the FCC’s offensive. Clandestina represented the political wing of microradio, offering music and a bilingual mix of community news, commentaries and updates from the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas. It went off the air voluntarily rather than risk a confrontation with the FCC. Ten other California broadcasters weren’t so lucky, losing their equipment or drawing fines.
William Kennard, chairman of the FCC, is the man most responsible for the crackdown, which shut more than 450 microbroadcasters nationwide. Yet in January, Kennard urged the FCC to make room for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of low-power FM stations to broadcast legally over areas ranging from a few blocks to about 18 miles. Kennard’s proposal is for two classes of low-power radio service: 1,000-watt “primary service” stations and 10- to 100-watt “secondary service” operators.
The NAB warns that more stations will mean more interference, and the additional traffic on the airwaves could jeopardize the industry’s transition to digital broadcasting. “This is the most serious issue to face the radio industry in 30 years,” says NAB spokesman John Earnhartd. But then, the association--which also represents television broadcasters--once opposed low-power television, cable superstations, direct-broadcast satellite TV and satellite radio. Each passed anyway, and each helped reshape the nation’s cultural landscape.
Countering the association’s arguments are 13,000 inquiries from people who want to start low-power stations. The National Hockey League and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition have endorsed Kennard’s proposal. The pastor of a Baptist church in Cleveland envisions a Spanish-language microradio station serving the parish community, while the police chief in tiny Dover Township, N.J., wants to broadcast crime-prevention tips, school closings and directions to baseball games.
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It’s just days after free radio berkeley’s sixth anniversary broadcast and Dunifer, a 47-year-old self-proclaimed anarchist, is clearly pleased. Technically, the station has been “silent” since last June, when a federal court ordered it off the air. The truth is more complicated--as anyone who tuned in on a recent Sunday would know. “We had all kinds of things,” he says. “People pulling information off the Internet, people doing local interviews. We had alternative music. We had people reading children’s stories, Winnie-the-Pooh. All manners of different forms of expression from the community.”
Needless to say, the FCC was not happy. “The key distinction here is there is a right way and a wrong way to create opportunity,” Kennard says. “I’m only interested in the right way.” The FCC first asked Dunifer to stop broadcasting in 1993, and when he refused, it launched a five-year legal battle that turned the commercial-free, 24-hour station into a rallying point for the microradio movement.
Dunifer’s latest passion is designing new transmitters that will make it easier for microbroadcasters to get started. He’s selling complete station packages for $1,500 that he says enable anyone to go on the air with 30 watts of power, enough to cover a 3.5-mile radius. The studio equipment required fits comfortably atop a folding table--a mixer, CD player, headphones, microphones and a tape deck. The transmitter itself is about the size of a cereal box and can be connected to an antenna as simple as a copper pipe attached to a video-cable connector.
While getting a signal on the air has always been relatively easy, finding an open channel to carry that signal has become increasingly difficult. Traditionally the FCC has divided space on the FM band by requiring specified distance separations between stations on the same frequency as well as three adjacent frequencies. Distance separations have proven effective in protecting FM stations from interference, but they’ve also left gaps between assigned frequencies. It’s these unused “quiet spots” that the FCC says it could assign to microbroadcasters without causing interference. More room exists in rural areas, but even densely trafficked urban airwaves in Los Angeles and New York could absorb a dozen or so microradio stations. “The laws of physics,” Kennard says, “will govern how many of these stations are possible.”
The NAB remains unconvinced. It continues to insist that their station signals would suffer. Not only do unlicensed signals frequently disrupt commercial broadcasts, the association says, but they’ve also interfered with conversations between air traffic controllers and pilots.
“Frankly, it is not helpful to hear only rhetoric that ‘the sky is falling,’ ” Kennard told the association in a speech before its annual convention in April. “It only serves to undermine the credibility of your arguments in the end.” Kennard says later that he understands, but dismisses, the crowded-airwaves argument. “The NAB’s approach is to put as few new stations out there as possible. My approach is to put as many out there as can be accommodated without creating interference. [The airwaves] are a public resource and we ought to maximize their use.”
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A week after his speech, the NAB’s intransigence is still very much on Kennard’s mind as he sits in a tiny coffee bar near his home in Chevy Chase, Md. “I’m doing what I think is right for the public,” he says. “I really see my job as giving voice to people who haven’t had a voice. There is room on the airwaves for many different voices.” His argument is reasoned and delivered in even tones--he hardly sounds like a zealot, as one trade journal described him in “The Man Who Killed Radio.”
Kennard, a graduate of Hollywood High School, says he discovered the power of radio while at Stanford University. At the small campus station, KZSU, Kennard had a public affairs show called Black Perspectives. “My goal was to try to be a bridge between the Stanford community and the community outside, particularly the African American community in east Palo Alto. I found myself at this very elite, homogeneous university and not far away is this [poor] African American community. And I thought, well, one of the things we could do is try to bring some of the resources of the university to the community and vice versa.”
Kennard went on to earn a law degree from Yale and spent the next dozen years at a Washington law firm and the NAB fighting, he says, to create opportunities for small broadcasters. Since joining the FCC, he has campaigned to open the airwaves. “A lot of these folks who are advocates of low-power FM, if I didn’t reach out, no one would listen to them,” he says. “They wouldn’t have a voice because they haven’t had a voice there for 50 years.”
Yet not everyone has a place in Kennard’s utopian future. Pirates like Dunifer and Gerry, who have ignored the government’s broadcast regulations, will probably be denied licenses under the FCC’s “character clause.” As a result, many unlicensed broadcasters dismiss the FCC’s motives as less than genuine. The commission’s real intention, they say, is to co-opt the microradio movement by dividing it into good and bad broadcasters, rewarding the first group and creating pariahs of the second. Worse, they believe the government will turn low-power stations into tiny commercial outlets, beholden to the same financial considerations that homogenized mainstream radio.
At the NAB, many are already conceding defeat. “It’s clear that he [Kennard] is totally and 100% committed to this and will go to the wall for this one,” one insider says. “There clearly is an agenda that the chairman has,” a broadcaster adds. “The next line of defense would be either the courts--challenging the reasonableness of administrative agencies’ actions--or taking the issue to Congress,” where the NAB has strong allies.
For his part, Kennard seems to consider the vote on the rule change, expected in July, as little more than a formality. “I’d like to move ahead and [enact it] this year,” he says. “Because there are more and more licenses concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, there’s really a need for these new voices.”
