The tires on the FCC agents’ cars were slashed before they could leave, and then they received parking tickets before they could repair them. * When federal agents raided Free Radio Santa Cruz in 2004, a crowd of several hundred protesters soon gathered at the 10-year-old broadcast center – including the mayor, who was shouting through a bullhorn. This summer a new community radio station received permits to open, and they raised a 30-foot antenna. Last summer the FCC raided and shut down the 10-watt station, prompting an ongoing federal court battle. * Residents of Brattleboro, Vt., are also once again listening to Radio Free Brattleboro.

But they’re being real gentleman about it, you know what I mean? They gave us the fine and they’re letting us do our thing.” Major says he’s been wrongly painted as a pirate station and that the FCC just overlooked his license application, which he says is still pending. * The neon sign says “on air” at the storefront KNOZ station in Sacramento, Calif., even though broadcaster William Major was fined $10,000 by the FCC in June. “There are a lot more stations out there these days, thus there are a lot more stations for the FCC to find and bust,” said Anderson.ĭespite federal laws that ban unlicensed radio, efforts to shut down the stations are rarely popular and appear to be ineffectual, at least some of the time. His data show a steady increase in pirate radio enforcement dating back 10 years.

Ten miles away from Dunifer’s radio camp, at an undisclosed location in San Francisco, an FCC enforcement team is part of a nationwide campaign to thwart the pirates.Ī record 185 unlicensed broadcasters received fines, cease-and-desist letters or had been raided by early September, up from 151 enforcement actions in all of 2005 and 92 in 2004, according to John Anderson, an expert on pirate radio who tracks FCC enforcement at University of Illinois’ Institute of Communications Research. And they are a thorn in the side of the FCC, which is tasked with shutting them down. Pirates, as they call themselves, draw loyal audiences in their communities but complaints from the larger, licensed public and private radio stations that say the microbroadcasters interrupt their signals. Costs typically range from about $250 to $1,500. Some opt to broadcast on the Internet as well, opening up their audience to the entire globe.

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