Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Former radio pirates enjoy victory against FCC

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 02:27:31 -0400

Former radio pirates enjoy victory against FCC

By David B. Caruso
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wednesday, September 10, 2003

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.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/business/s_154176.html

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