$30K fine for Boston pirate operators

[raccoonradio]

http://www.radio-info.com/news/two-boston-pirate-fm-operators-are-hit-with-a-total-of-30000-in-fines

Datz Hits.

>>The FCC alleges that Lloyd Morris and Robert Brown were engaged in the operation of an unlicensed FM station at 99.7 in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Over six months ago (October 1, 2010), the Commission issued a $15,000 Notice of Apparent Liability against both men, and neither has filed a response. The next step for the FCC is to "affirm the forfeiture" with forfeiture orders.

A bit close to All Classical 99.5...any chance the feds collect?

http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2010/DA-10-1908A1.html
>>In the basement,
the agents observed radio station equipment, which included an RF
amplifier, an FM modulator with a front panel display reading 99.7
MHz, and a power supply.

Maybe they'll ask for a waiver due to inability to pay

 

[raccoonradio]

Universal Hub, Feb of 07:
>>Geoff Edgers reports that somebody's illegally broadcasting gospel and hip hop at 99.7, making it impossible for people in Ashmont to hear the classical station. Wonder if it's these guys?... Edgers adds the FCC is on the case.

http://www.universalhub.com/taxonomy/term/745

Links to:
>> http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/exhibitionist/2007/02/wcrb_pirate_rad.html

>>I look forward to the BSO broadcasts on Saturday night, but since WCRB switched to 99.5 it has been virtually impossible to listen these broadcasts. I live in the Ashmont neighborhood of Dorchester and most of the time the WCRB signal is completely overwhelmed by a gospel/hiphop station which broadcasts on 99.7. I have not heard them actually announce call letters, but they do say they are located in Boston.
>> (WCRB responds): Thanks so much for your note. You are not the first person to write us with this concern about 99.7. This is an unlicensed pirate station. We have contacted the FCC with an official complaint, and they are currently investigating this. It's our hope the interference caused by this pirate station will go away very soon.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

Maybe they'll ask for a waiver due to inability to pay

They can ask, but they'll have to first prove they can't pay.

 

[carmen]

They can ask, but they'll have to first prove they can't pay.

but they don't exist. 99.7 been off air since last friday or so

 

[raccoonradio]

We'll see if they come back or not; gone for good at least on FM? Their site prominently mentions they are at 99.7 and they are promoting a 2nd Anniversary Party for 99.7 in July at a hall in Roxbury.

 

[cd637299]

If they fined all the pirates in Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, they sure could rake in the dough.

cd

 

[WNTIRadio]

They could rake in the dough if any of it ever got COLLECTED. I wish them luck with getting this $30k.

And "Hot 97" rolls on with 5kW and nobody does a damn thing...

 

[cd637299]

They could rake in the dough if any of it ever got COLLECTED. I wish them luck with getting this $30k. </quote>

PWT. (point well taken)

cd

 

[raccoonradio]

Hot 97 may be getting by due to a loophole of sorts--it's location on 87.7, next to the onetime audio freq of TV Ch 6 (which still may be used up in Canada? Thought I was getting TV CH 6
up in Northern VT Mother's Day wknd). AFAIK no stations are licensed to 87.9 (poss. some LPFMs
or something so putting a station on _outside_ of the traditional FM broadcast band, might be a loophole where they can't be pursued.

Are they doing this? "Ch 6 audio only"
>> http://www.satelliteguys.us/digital-over-air-ota/248370-use-analog-channel-6-audio-only.html
>>nope they're not violating any law. They have to show a video pattern to comply. They get the TV station and takes advantage of the audio on 87.7...(Lubbock TX):We have a channel 6 station KFMP-LP that also broadcasts a video slate and FM audio only.

Though it's said the FCC may stop this practice eventually. Don't know if "Hot 97" does it; more likely the FCC is just letting them slide

 

[Eli Polonsky]

Hot 97 may be getting by due to a loophole of sorts--it's location on 87.7, next to the onetime audio freq of TV Ch 6 (which still may be used up in Canada? Thought I was getting TV CH 6up in Northern VT Mother's Day wknd). AFAIK no stations are licensed to 87.9 (poss. some LPFMs or something so putting a station on _outside_ of the traditional FM broadcast band, might be a loophole where they can't be pursued.

DO you mean they can legally broadcast with thousands of watts on those frequencies, slightly outside the "traditional" FM band, WITHOUT A LICENSE?

 

[raccoonradio]

I would think not but no action has been taken. Admittedly some stations have gone on with "Ch 6 audio" as I mentioned and I think they were licensed but Hot 97, well, either nobody cares to complain about them (do they interfere with WMBR?) or the FCC is just too busy to bust them...

 

[cd637299]

Question....

Does Hot 97 put out a video signal on ch 6 analog? Has anyone tuned their TV to try? Just curious; I don't live there.

cd

 

[Eli Polonsky]

I would think not but no action has been taken. Admittedly some stations have gone on with "Ch 6 audio" as I mentioned and I think they were licensed but Hot 97, well, either nobody cares to complain about them (do they interfere with WMBR?) or the FCC is just too busy to bust them...

I think WMBR has gotten a complaint or two from people listening on lesser quality (poorly selective) radios in the Boston neighborhoods about Hot "97" (87.7), and also about the overmodulating Haitian pirate at 88.5 also coming from somewhere in the inner city.

 

[aaronread]

Nobody in New England is broadcasting on "FM" legally on 87.7 or 87.9FM. There are only two FM stations in the entire country that are legally broadcasting on Channel 200 (87.9FM), a translator in Reno (K200AA) and a grandfathered Class D in the southern Bay Area in California (KSFH). Only Class D stations can transmit on 87.9 and only under very special circumstances. It used to be almost impossible because of TV6; the restrictions on 87.9 meant you couldn't have a TV6 anywhere within a few hundred miles. But the DTV migration has opened the possibilities up somewhat for 87.9FM. It's still tough, though.

There is no such thing as a FM station on 87.7...however, a clever engineer realized about a decade ago that it was legal to effectively operate an LPTV on Ch.6 as an FM station because TV6's aural carrier is centered on 87.75MHz and that's close enough for most radio tuners to get it. You have to transmit video carrier but there's no rule that the video has to match the audio. IIRC, the rules for modulation and stereo are enforced for regular TV stations (which is moot as all non-LPTV's have migrated to digital) but not for LPTV's, so an LPTV could employ FM stereo and modulations on their aural carries.

The most notorious of all these stations was probably WNYZ-LP which had 3000 watts of aural carrier right from downtown Manhattan in NYC.

However, their days are numbered. After the DTV migration, the FCC allowed existing LPTV's to remain analog but all new stations had to be in DTV, just like regular TV stations. And the day of reckoning for analog LPTV is, allegedly, fast approaching. The rumors I hear are that LPTV's will be all-digital by the end of 2012, if not sooner.

Once that happens, the era of the "Franken-FM's" (Frankenstein, not Al Franken) will come to an end, as no FM tuner can decode ATSC DTV signals.

As for "Hot 97", I seriously doubt they are bothering with a video carrier in an attempt to create some kind of ruse that they're really a legal LPTV on Channel 6. They're not. They're just a pirate who realized that 87.7 & 87.9 are relatively clear frequencies in the Boston area. That's also why they haven't been busted: to a certain degree, the FCC has a reactionary enforcement bureau; they need to hear complaints from listeners with standing before they'll conduct enforcement measures. Since there are no legal FM stations down on 87.9 or 87.9, there aren't going to be many listeners to other stations who'll complain. Undoubtedly there's a few listeners to stations on 88.1, like WMBR and perhaps WCHC, who could be getting first-adjacent interference from the pirates, but that's probably a fairly small number to begin with...and that means an even smaller number who'll recognize the interference for what it actually is, and then take the time to complain to the FCC about it.

 

[raccoonradio]

Thanks for the explanation;

>>that it was legal to effectively operate an LPTV on Ch.6 as an FM station because TV6's aural carrier is centered on 87.75MHz and that's close enough for most radio tuners to get it.

Those were the stations I meant and the LPTV was the "loophole" I meant

>>However, their days are numbered...they need to hear complaints from listeners with standing before they'll conduct enforcement measures.

Many years ago of course I would pick up the sound from TV Ch 6, usually from New Bedford but sometimes Portland, and you'd hear stuff like "The Price is Right" (from when Ch 6 New Bedford was
a CBS affiliate). In northwestern VT I thought I was picking up a Montreal TV signal on 87.7/CH 6?--
CBMT, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBMT-TV

Still analog on Ch 6 but Wiki. article says a shutdown of analog takes place in August

 

[mgpt6]

There is a ch 6 DTV full power station in Albany. Will that not allow any 87.9 in New England. Any chance that FCC will change the rule to allow Class A, B or C non-comms on 87.9. Even better would the FCC consider the plan to expand the FM band down to 76Mhz to 88 Mhz , taking over TV Channel 5 and 6 for FM for more non-comms, and to migrate AM stations to FM?

 

[cd637299]

There is a ch 6 DTV full power station in Albany. Will that not allow any 87.9 in New England. Any chance that FCC will change the rule to allow Class A, B or C non-comms on 87.9. Even better would the FCC consider the plan to expand the FM band down to 76Mhz to 88 Mhz , taking over TV Channel 5 and 6 for FM for more non-comms, and to migrate AM stations to FM?

As I understand, a few of those DTV 5's & 6's sure don't wanna be there. I read here on r-i about signal issues with KCWX in TX, and WPVI in Philly wants to move, but nowhere to go.

Albany's 6 ran analog audio on 87.9, in 2009, but I believe the FCC put the kibosh on that. (I caught it on E-skip from Florida then.)

cd

 

[aaronread]

There is a ch 6 DTV full power station in Albany. Will that not allow any 87.9 in New England. Any chance that FCC will change the rule to allow Class A, B or C non-comms on 87.9.

Not true. WRGB will preclude any Class D (which can be a translator or a grandfathered Class D like a WBRS) from being on 87.9 anywhere near Albany. But it doesn't preclude the entire New England region. However, what DOES preclude a lot of New England is the other part of that same rule that establishes a 400km exclusion zone along the Canada border. That's not all of New England, but it's damn close. Only eastern CT, Rhode Island and Cape Cod/islands are realistic potential landing zones for Class D's on 87.9FM; except there aren't too many grandfathered Class D's (or even Class D's that are translators in those areas.

Even better would the FCC consider the plan to expand the FM band down to 76Mhz to 88 Mhz , taking over TV Channel 5 and 6 for FM for more non-comms, and to migrate AM stations to FM?

It's a logical, smart and...unusual for this sort of thing...PROVEN concept (they ran the numbers for every single station in the USA and make it work) but unfortunately it has about zero chance of becoming reality. The TV side of the NAB is staunchly against it, because for all the power problems and signal propagation problems for DTV on VHF, when it comes to hills/mountains like those around Albany, VHF is still better than UHF - simply because UHF is higher in frequency and thus more "line of sight".

And yes, WRGB did try to get clever right after the DTV transition by running analog carrier cross-polarized to the DTV signal. It worked, sort of. There was, IIRC, more self-interference than WRGB would've preferred. But it was for naught, the FCC smacked them on the wrist for that pretty quickly; long before they had time to really tweak things and see if it was really workable for the long term. The rules don't explicitly forbid it, but the FCC has made it clear that they won't allow it.

 

[aaronread]

Also worth noting: the FCC has not yet re-drawn the interference curves for TV6 vs. FM either. I imagine there's no reason to until all TV stations...including LPTV's...are over to digital, but there's ample technical reason to do so once that threshold is crossed. The point of those curves is to protect the aural carrier (which was an FM broadcast) of TV6 stations. But the aural carrier doesn't exist anymore on DTV; it's all just ATSC bits. And thus its resistance to interference from analog FM is very different.

Of course, ample TECHNICAL reason matters a lot less than political reasons; radio is pretty far down the totem pole these days. And the FCC is more interested in shoving the same number of TV stations into a smaller slice of the spectrum so they can re-auction it off to Google, Microsoft and Verizon Wireless, et al. That means they'll want to maximize their flexibility with TV which, in turn, means no TV6 relief for FM. Bet on it.