Mediageek Can Never Get Enough Pirate Radio

Last night I finally watched Pirate Radio (a/k/a The Boat That Rocked) on HD pay-per-view, as it seems I can never make it into a regular movie theater these days. I quite enjoyed this romp through the short life of a fictional 1960s UK pirate radio ship, inspired by the infamous Radio Caroline. While the film exaggerates things for drama and laughs, it nevertheless does a good job at illustrating the significance of pirate rock ‘n roll radio to a nation whose mainstream government-run media was stuck in a rigid cultural torpor, utterly in denial of rock’s brewing revolution. And it does this without sanctimony or excessive sentimentality.

Just before watching Pirate Radio I realized that yesterday was also the 46th anniversary of Radio Caroline, which didn’t meet its fate quite as dramatically as the fictional movie ship. Then today I stumbled upon a very good short documentary about the contemporary London pirate radio scene. Altogether I was inspired to write my newest piece for Radio Survivor on UK Pirate Radio, Now and Then:

What many probably don’t realize is that pirate radio is still going strong in the UK, especially in big cities like London. Contemporary pirates are also inspired by the fact that the BBC still doesn’t play a lot of cutting edge popular music, which these days means electronic music and British forms of hip-hop….

Zine Weekend

This past weekend I attended the first Chicago Zine Fest, which also happened to be the first zine fest I’ve been to in almost five years. Attendance seemed quite high for the events that I went to, which was great to see.

Friday night’s zine reading at Quimby’s bookstore was standing-room-only from the stage at the back of the store up to the very front. I couldn’t really hear the readings until I was able to move to the middle of the store just in time to hear self-publishing cartoonist John Porcellino read some painfully honest pieces from his long-running King Cat zine. The always fun Anne Elizabeth Moore closed out the reading by first accepting the Quimby’s Long Arm Stapler Award on behalf of the Queer Zine Archive Project, and then reading a few short mystery stories she wrote as a grade schooler. (You can learn more about Anne and her awesome indie media projects on the May 7, 2009 mediageek radioshow + extra.)

I was glad to meet up with an old zinester friend, Greg Means, the man behind Tugboat Press and the mini-comic Clutch, who came in from Portland, OR for the fest. As the former librarian for Portland’s Independent Publishing Resource Center, Greg led a workshop on zines and libraries that I wasn’t able to attend.

I couldn’t make it to the fest’s show floor until almost 3 PM on Saturday but the place was still hopping. My wife and I bought and traded for many zines, using back issues of the mediageek zine as barter. I still haven’t had the chance to really look through them yet, so that will have to be fodder for another post.

While I’ve been reading zines for some twenty years, I’ve never been hardcore zinester. I’m lucky to know great, dedicated zinesters like Greg, Aj Michel and Shawn Granton who help keep me connected with the zine world during those times when I’m focused on other media. I really appreciate the work of the Chicago Zine Fest organizers who gave this aging zine reader an opportunity to reconnect with the zine world and become freshly inspired by the vital creativity of radically independent publishers. It’s reassuring to know that teenagers and young adults are still cutting and pasting, photocopying, letter pressing, silk screening and getting their words and art out and into the hands of other people.

For a little more inspiration check out this recently produced short documentary about the Independent Publishing Resource Center.

FCC Steps Up Pressure on Boulder Pirates

A short blog post from Monk, formerly the brains behind the first iteration of Boulder Free Radio KBFR, reports that two separate unlicensed stations in Boulder, CO were recently “shut down” by the FCC. A new KBFR with new a new crew behind it has been operating in Boulder since sometime last year. Monk has no other details on these recent shut downs.

So I set about investigating what might be going on, since Boulder has been the site of free radio innovation for quite some time. I’ve not been able to find any news reports on any bust, but a check of the FCC’s most recent enforcement actions turns up four virtually identical Notices of Unlicensed Operation (NOUO) dated May 8. Three were issued to individuals and one was issued simply to “Boulder Free Radio, Boulder, CO.” There’s no indication in the NOUOs that the FCC talked to anyone associated with the station or gained access to a transmitter. Unusually, there aren’t even any street addresses listed. Likely this means that agents didn’t mail the notices, but left them at the door.

This evening I received email confirmation from Boulder Free Radio that there was another FCC visit to a transmitter location last Friday, May 29, and that they’re off the air. They’re planning to stay off the air for the time being while they assess the situation. However, their web radio stream continues to broadcast (on the internet only, of course).

The current KBFR is operating according to a similar gameplan as the original station, using the tactic of separating the studio and transmitter using an internet audio stream as the studio-to-transmitter-link (STL). If the transmitter is visited they pack up shop there and move to a new location without the studio or the on-air talent being affected. This method ostensibly allows the station to have a sizable staff of DJs without having to divulge to them the location of the transmitter, or expose the DJs to liability for the unlicensed broadcast.

Indeed, with this method there really isn’t any need for the persons behind the web stream to even know the persons operating the transmitters. This method also has been employed during large protest actions, where a live webstream will originate from a convergence center or Independent Media Center which is then rebroadcast for the duration of the protest by anonymous, unrelated pirates.

Monk and the original KBFR were able to keep up this tactic for nearly five years of cat and mouse games with the unusually aggressive Denver FCC office. He finally called it a day in January, 2005. According to Monk, the FCC agent on their case

bordered on (and in talking to lawyers we know, actually crossed the line) illegal activity. He harassed private citizens at their work place (accusing them, to their bosses, of ‘breaking the law on company time’) and the aforementioned roommate of the original Monk from Five Years Ago. We’ve since learned that this ex-roomie of the original Monk actually had to hire a lawyer to protect himself from having just been the roommate of one of us. And HALF a DECADE ago. …

The reason we shut down is our fear of innocents getting blamed for things they didn’t do…

Who knows if the FCC will be that aggressive with the new KBFR, especially given that the FCC agent in question supposedly retired four years ago.

As for the second station Monk reports being shut down: I’ve found no other recent actions against unlicensed stations in Boulder in the FCC’s enforcement action list. However I have heard that another station, unrelated to Boulder Free Radio, was operating.

My blog hates twitter so much

Like a new too cool for school stepbrother that it just wants to punch so hard. Now the blog won’t even let me post more than 140 characters

The Irony of the Vinyl Resurgence

Back in the 1980s when the Compact Disc first hit the market there was great excitement in the high fidelity and audiophile world anticipating the arrival of crystal-clean digital sound that would be unmarred by the vagaries of analog playback long suffered by music lovers. Whether vinyl LPs’ clicks and pops or cassette tapes’ hiss, never mind the inconvenience of turning over sides (auto-reverse cassette decks were still a rich man’s luxury), CD not only promised markedly improved sound but the additional convenience of playing a full 74 minutes of uninterrupted tunes and the ability to skip tracks with the push of a button.

Yet, even as much of the audio, electronics and mainstream press swooned over the new digital audio technology, CD had its critics, too. One of the most famous early attacks came from record producer Doug Sax, published in Billboard and Stereophile magazine in 1983. Sax wrote, in part,

[W]hat I have heard on many players, and on more discs than I would ever care to listen to again, is mediocre sound, sound that is often unappealing and fatiguing. …

I have been on record, since I first heard a digital master tape, that there is an enormous price to be paid, in musical terms, for the noise-free performance of digital.

Reading these words today one should hear their echoes in much of what’s been written about the resurgence of vinyl LPs in the last few years. Of course, now music lovers aren’t just dissing CDs, but pitting LPs against the MP3, which is arguably sonically inferior to the CD it’s coming to replace.

Now a generation after the CD’s introduction we have a vinyl revival, which includes a veritable renaissance in the availability of not just new LP records but turntables and record players. I remember searching for a new turntable back in 1996 to replace my aging plastic Onkyo ‘table that I bought in 1987. Even in small hi-fi shops catering to a audiophile crowd I found it difficult to find any turntables under $1000 or so that would offer much improvement over my 80s vintage Onkyo.

The problems of noise and poor sound quality with cheap turntables in the 80s is what ostensibly drew people to CDs in the 90s. Back in the 80s a lot of people relied on inexpensive compact stereos sold at discount stores. These stereos typically had a turntable, cassette deck and radio, paired with speakers, all for one or two hundred bucks. While capable of playing music, these systems didn’t tend to have outstanding quality in any element of playback, especially vinyl. You’ll still find these stereos in thrift stores and at garage sales, and if you look you’ll find that almost universally they have very flimsy, all-plastic record players.

Even the more expensive so-called rack systems of the day often didn’t feature turntables of much higher quality, even at price points of $500 or more. Those ‘tables would usually be separate components, but still made of 75% plastic. If you were lucky the platter and tonearm might contain some metal.

Playing records is a completely physical process that is very susceptible to the basic forces of Newtonian physics. If you’ve ever stomped around a turntable playing a record then you probably know how easy it is to make it skip. But it’s not just blunt force that takes its toll. So does vibration and electrical interference from other devices, including other stereo components. The prevalent plastic turntables and stereos of the 80s and early 90s have very little in their construction to shield against these quality-killers — most of the time you were lucky if the turntable had some little rubber feet providing some modicum of insulation.

For the average record listener in the 1980s and 90s, the usual listening experience was littered with surface noise, pops, clicks, skips and jumps that was unfairly blamed on the medium of vinyl records, when much of the fault lay upon the cheap, flimsy playback apparatus. So it was a revelation when these listeners first heard the unfamiliar silence between tracks on a CD where before they’d expected hiss and scratches. Instead of having to listen through the noise for the music, CDs sounded as if the fog of analog grunge had been lifted.

Unlike the enormous difference between the typical plastic turntable and a truly high-fidelity model, by the 1990s even relatively inexpensive CD players delivered on the fundamental promises of noise and skip-free sound.

I’m sure it’s like the shift from black and white to color TV, or from AM to FM radio was for previous generations. For those of us who remember the first time we heard CDs it’s not hard to understand how they quickly took over. Most folks who didn’t spend thousands of dollars on stereo gear truly did experience a step forward in quality and convenience.

Still, Doug Sax was not alone. A minority of music lovers chose to stick to vinyl believing it to sound better than CDs. These audiophiles likely owned turntables costing more than an average person’s stereo, TV and music collection combined, which also delivered on the potential of vinyl’s fidelity. Many others stuck with records for practical reasons–like DJs did–or because they were happy enough with their records. I suspect a lot of people, like myself, stuck with records while also moving to CDs, choosing to enjoy the records we owned while buying new music on CD.

Whatever the reason, those of us who stuck with records are enjoying the vinyl renaissance because it means more turntables, more new records and, strangely enough, some degree of cred. At the same time, I also see a step backwards that isn’t so satisfying.

Now that vinyl is retro-popular again it’s ironic that people are flocking to the same sort of cheap plastic turntables that scared folks away from LPs twenty years ago. Within the last year the gadget landscape has been inundated with turntables that connect to your computer by USB, or are attached to CD burners, or which now even record your LPs as MP3s directly to a thumb drive. But almost every single one of these ‘tables is pretty much a plastic late 80s design with some extra digital electronics tacked on. All the more ironic is the fact that the supposed benefit of these new plastic wonders is their ability to let you convert your precious analog records to digital, extra clicks, hiss, pops, skips and all.

I’m not spitting in the face of utility. If you have records which are rare, out of print, irreplaceable, never released on CD or just of sentimental value then I can certainly see why easily archiving them to digital is desirable. What I don’t understand so much is why you’d want to do this archiving at such a low level of quality.

It’s not just these new digitizing turntables. There’s also been an explosion in 80s style compact turntable stereos dressed up in early 20th century retro clothes. Sure the cabinets might look like wood, but inside the record player is the same crap plastic used in that Emerson stereo someone got for Christmas in 1987. Moreover, because the speakers are in the same cabinet, introducing more vibration and interference into the game, these new retro all-in-ones arguably sound worse than the cheap 80s stereo

The funny thing about this is that it’s possible to get a pretty nice sounding turntable made out of very little plastic for less than $300. While not chump change, this is actually about the same as what a decent turntable would have cost in the 80s. Adjusted for inflation, the quality turntable in 2008 costs about $156 in 1985 dollars — less than what you’ve had paid for a flimsy plastic all-in-one stereo.

If you’re willing to invest a little more time and go used, you can pick up nice quality turntables made out of metal and wood that would have cost more than $300 in the 80s for a fraction of that price. Just add a new stylus or cartridge, maybe a new belt, and you’re good to go.

The same phenomenon is happening with cassettes too. There’s almost a double-irony with tapes, which outsold records in the late 80s, before CDs trounced them in the 90s. Besides the convenience of the walkman and car stereo, one of the reasons many people switched to tapes was because they didn’t skip and have quite as much obvious noise as records did (when played on their cheap K-Mart stereos).

Despite my semi-facetious predictions to the contrary, it doesn’t look like a full-on vinylesque revival is happening for cassettes. Nevertheless, USB-connected cassette decks have started to trickle into the marketplace offering up the ability to digitize your tape memories with relative ease. The tech and popular press reaction seems to be a bit more muted for the cassette revival, at least in part because cassettes haven’t quite faded away as much as vinyl had.

I was just a little bit heartened to read a recent CNet review of one USB cassette deck that clearly revealed the flimsy plastic under the flashy digital veneer:

Aside from the USB port on the back, the TapeLink is no better than the cassette deck you probably had in the 1980s, and lacks conveniences such as autoreverse.

More so than with records, I can understand wanting to digitize old cassettes, especially mix tapes or other custom tapes that are difficult to replace or have sentimental value. I’ll also bet that most home recorded tapes were probably created on a plastic 1980s compact stereo to begin with, so there’s likely not so much fidelity lost when digitized using a new deck of similar quality. Of course, if you happen to have a higher fidelity tape–and cassettes could be capable of fine fidelity–you’d probably want to seek out a better, probably non-USB, cassette deck.

While I’m glad to see the resurgence in vinyl and analog music playback in general, I really wish the lessons of the past better informed today’s record enthusiasts–especially those old enough to remember those tacky Emerson, Yorx and Lloyd’s discount store stereos. I fear that for many new or revived record listeners the thin fidelity of these retro-plastic wonders will cause them to tire of vinyl quickly, making LPs more of a novelty than anything else.

Folks got tired of vinyl in the 80s and 90s for a reason: cheap crap plastic turntables. Avoid them now and you’ll still be enjoying your records when you’re less well-equipped friends have tired of their new collections already.

Lubbock, TX loses an alternative radio voice

I very much regret to report the news of yet another college station leaving the air. This time the news comes by way of Jennifer at Spinning Indie:

nearly 50-year-old college radio station KTXT at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas was abruptly shut down on December 10th by the university. Apparently the school is shifting its priorities as far as student media go, and the station was seen as a financial drain, and perhaps, not “new media” enough for the school. What’s shocking is that KTXT is a prominent 35,000 watt FM station that has played an influential role in radio, airing music not otherwise heard in the area.

I think this comment Jennifer quotes from a Houston Chronicle article sums up the value of KTXT:

KXTX is the only things that made Lubbock more than a cow town. Please don’t take this away from the kids struggling to live there now. – Anthony Armendariz, Brooklyn NYC

One can only guess what Texas Tech has in store for KTXT now that it’s been yanked from the students and community. 35kw is an enormously powerful signal for a college station, though certainly useful in the prairies of west Texas.

The university also owns and operates a public station, KOHM-FM, which has a mixed line-up of NPR news/talk and music (primarily classical and jazz). My cynical side would predict that the university would like to repurpose KTXT as an all-music or all-news/talk pubcaster. KOHM has double the power of KTXT, so my guess is that KOHM would become the news/talk station, since that format is regarded as the more profitable public radio format, with KTXT becoming all music so as not to alienate the wealthy local geriatrics who donate to keep the unthreatening pop classics on the air.

In any event, this is another unfortunate reminder of the difference between a college station and a true community station. Most (but not all) community stations are run by local non-profit corporations with by-laws that ensure a level of democratic governance accountable to member donors. While not fail-safe, this sort of structure typically complicates efforts to shut down or radically alter the mission of a community station without community input. No such safety mechanism exists for a station owned and operated by a university or college, even a public one.

I don’t bring this up as an argument against college stations. Heck, I’m the adviser to one. Rather, it’s a reminder not to take these stations for granted, whether you’re a student, volunteer or listener. The temptations to sell of increasingly valuable non-commercial licenses or repurpose stations into supposedly more lucrative public radio affiliates are difficult to resist when you’re a college administrator faced with budget shortfalls.

According to the student station manager of KTXT, having on-air fund drives was “not encouraged” by the unviersity. In retrospect that only seems like an inducement to fail, given that the financial drain of maintaining the station is blamed for the shutdown. I hope that this serves as a warning to students (and advisers) at other college stations to pay attention to that bottom line and not be discouraged from finding ways to help fund the station if need be.

I really don’t want to blog about another 50-year-old student-run station leaving the dial.

mediageek 4 December 2008: Communication Rights and Freedom of Expression

On Nov. 7 the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, AMARC, celebrated its 25th anniversary with a conference held in Montreal, QC. Community radio CKUT‘s News Collective recorded the conference, making the audio available to other community radio stations to share. On this edition of the radioshow we listen to two presentations from the panel on “Communication Rights and Freedom of Expression.” We hear from Frank la Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Toby Mendel of Article 19.

Podcast/Download:

mediageek 4 December 2008 broadcast quality mp3

Listen Now:

Go get Adobe Flash Player!

New York Times Declares: Iraq War Over

Well, at least a special edition of the New York Times that I’m pretty sure was released by hoaxmeisters, the Yes Men.

According to an unsigned press release I received in my email this morning, 1.2 million copies of the “exact replica” of the New York Times with a cover date of July 4, 2009 were handed out in the city today. The Gawker blog covers some of the details.

The Times’ own City Room blog has posted a good-natured report the stunt, too:

Catherine J. Mathis, a Times spokeswoman, said: “This is obviously a fake issue of The Times. We are in the process of finding out more about it.”

Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a co-author of “The Trust,” a history of the family that controls The Times, said in a telephone interview that the paper should be flattered by the spoof.

“I would say if you’ve got one, hold on to it,” Mr. Jones, a former Times reporter, said of the fake issue. “It will probably be a collector’s item. I’m just glad someone thinks The New York Times print edition is worthy of an elaborate hoax. A Web spoof would have been infinitely easier. But creating a print newspaper and handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of effort.”

Indeed, the Yes Men are known for not doing things half-way, whether it’s appearing on the BBC as representatives of Dow Chemical apologizing for the Bhopal disaster, or speaking on behalf of the WTO at a conference in order to advocate for the “full private stewardry of labor” in Africa.

A well played hoax or prank is a great attention-getting device, and the ability to get attention for a good reason should not be underestimated. And, there is also the sheer joy of a good prank, that is all the more enhanced when it’s in service of a higher goal. While I’m guessing a lot of hard work goes into pulling off a hoax of this magnitude, it’s worth noting that not all “activism” needs to be superserious in order to be effective or make a point — the world I want includes fun.

The FCC Can Has Google for Piratez

Ever wondered how the FCC tracks down and busts pirate radio operators? Anyone familiar with the subject has heard about radio tracking equipment that helps agents triangulate a signal, but what other tools are in their arsenal?

Google is a big one. Another tool? Taking pictures of the buildings where they find signals, and photographing the license plates of cars parked in front.

That’s what we learn thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Lumberjack, the student-run newspaper of California’s Humboldt State University. The paper filed the request regard the FCC’s investigation of the Humboldt Free Radio Alliance last year which led to the station shutting down.

Amongst the notes revealed in the case file obtained by the paper are an agent’s “investigation” of a MySpace page:

“The webpage shows a number of people who are dj’s. Printed out the myspace web pages and placed them in the case folder,” FCC documents said.

The Commission apparently learned that the station had shut down from a Google search, too, which brought up a post to an Indymedia site:

“Googled ‘Humboldt Free Radio Alliance’ an (Internet publication) IndyMedia article related to our shutdown,” stated the FCC documents.

“Since information indicates station off the air and may be trying to find a new location, will close the case based on the certified mail receipt. A new location will require a new case.”

What’s interesting about this is the sheer mundaneness of it all. Aside from being able to use signal finding equipment, there’s very little cleverness about finding pirate operators. And you really don’t even need the fancy equipment in the first place. A relatively sensitive radio can help you track down a pirate signal to within a block or so. Then you can look around for an antenna, which needs to be mounted high and away from other blockages, and so is likely to be somewhat conspicuous if you know what you’re looking for.

Indeed, the way most pirates evade the FCC is through simply keeping things on the down-low and common sense. Not broadcasting 24-7, and keeping a more erratic schedule are two very simple ways of minimizing detection and making it a little more difficult for the FCC to track you down, since agents have lots of other things to do besides hunt down pirates.

It’s also good to see some confirmation of the fact that agents do use the internet. Ever since I started following the pirate radio underground on the ‘net some 14 years ago, the most common admonition you’d read–whether on usenet, listservs or bulletin boards–is not to post too much identifying information about your station and its broadcasts.

Of course, the problem with not using the internet to publicize a station is that it makes it more difficult to attract listeners who might be interested.

Although I haven’t seen the case file, my guess is that the FCC only starts its Google searches once it’s opened an investigation. That is, I doubt that the Commission spends a lot of time trolling the internet to find pirate radio websites and posting–though I also would believe that agents do peruse pirate-related sites like the Free Radio Network. The Commission after all is truly a complaint-driven bureaucracy.

More likely is that the searches start once the Commission has received complaints from listeners or other broadcasters.

So, keep that in mind if you want to publicize your unlicensed station online. Publicity comes with a price, so a little caution goes a long way.

Tim Robbins Speaks Truth to the NAB

On today’s radioshow I also played a portion of Tim Robbins’ not entirely scheduled keynote speech to the National Association of Broadcasters convention on Monday, in which he excoriated the mainstream media industry saying, ““We are at an abyss as an industry and as a country.”

Robbins’ excerpt is in the first part of the show, or you can listen to some highlights compiled by AdAge.

The keynote was supposed to be a Q&A session with TV critic David Bianculli since Robbins decided not to give the speech he had prepared (and ended up giving). Bianculli had read the speech and compared it to former FCC chairman Newton Minow’s famous 1961 speech to the NAB wherein he called television a “vast wasteland.” Bianculli’s positive review prompted audience members to urge Robbins to give the speech anyway.

Much of the speech was not broadcast ready, due to Robbins’ prodigious command of the f-word. If you’re interested in hearing that part, you can listen to a bootleg recorded by Broadcasting and Cable magazine [MP3].

Bianculli gives his account of the keynote on his blog.

It’s a great speech, and all the more of a hoot because it was delivered from the belly of best (to mix my metaphors). Kudos to Robbins for taking the NAB up on the offer to deliver the keynote and, yes, some respect must be paid the NAB for welcoming Robbins and not yanking him off stage. It hardly makes up for the existence of Bill O’Reilly or Michael Savage, who are, as Edward R Murrow would call–channeled through Tim Robbins–”nazi cocksuckers.”