The remarkable aspect of Knighten’s story is that he missed his arraignment hearing earlier this month in order to attend a panel discussion about civil rights and broadcasting at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. It’s unfortunate that Knighten was broadcasting in Florida, which is one of only three states with state laws targeting unlicensed broadcasting, and the only state which has made any arrests under statute. In most other states Knighten would only face the wrath of the FCC, which continues to have a pretty poor record in collecting fines for unlicensed broadcasting.

FCC Enforcement Actions 1997-2011

Our friend John Anderson at DIYmedia.net recently published his annual survey of anti-pirate FCC action. His findings for 2011 shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been following the subject here at Radio Survivor on or John’s site.

In fact, Commission enforcement against unlicensed broadcasters hit a 6-year low in 2011. As John reports,

From a record high of 447 enforcement actions clocked in 2009 and 2010, field agents executed just 184 in 2011, against fewer than 100 stations total. Massive drops were seen in the number of station-visits and warning letters issued.

John notes that the total amount in fines handed down by the FCC was actually the highest since 2005, $168,400. However, as this November, 2011 Radio World article would corroborate, it’s highly unlikely the agency will ever collect anything close to that dollar amount when all is said and done.

Daniel Roberts (at window) at Pirate Cat Radio in June 2010 (Photo: J. Waits)

A month ago the FCC issued a $10,000 Forfeiture Order to Pirate Cat Radio founder Daniel “Monkey Man” Roberts, for “willfully and repeatedly violating section 301 of the Communications Act of 1934…by operating an unlicensed radio broadcast station” in San Francisco.

Today, Roberts’ attorney Michael Couzens filed a Petition for Reconsideration with the FCC, claiming that there is no proof that Roberts was involved with illegal broadcasts. According to Couzens’ letter:

“Daniel K. Roberts is subject of a $10,000 Forfeiture Order issued on October 21, 2011. At the time of the alleged violation, he operated Pirate Cat Radio, a cafe, studio, and internet stream located at 2781 21st Street in San Francisco. In 2009 FCC Agents detected unlicensed transmissions, not at that location, but at 841 Corbett Avenue, San Francisco. The Order contains no factual evidence that Roberts participated in the establishing, facilitating or operating equipment for the tramisssions [sic] at Corbett in any way. His involvement is merely assumed, based on statements or activities of Roberts and Pirate Cat Radio and the generous use by the government of broad inferences. The Order makes it a violation that the stream was broadcast, without any evidence as to who broadcast it.”

The Petition goes on to argue that there is no proof that Roberts was responsible for the terrestrial broadcasts emanating from 841 Corbett Avenue and that there is no evidence “linking the actual location of the unlawful transmission with” Roberts. Roberts claims to have been simply operating an Internet radio station. Although the Petition does not deny that someone was broadcasting the station illegally over the terrestrial airwaves, it states that the FCC has presented no evidence that that someone was Roberts:

“In the present case it is clear that someone was violating Section 301 when transmitting at 841 Corbett Avenue. It should be equally clear that Roberts was not violating Section 301, merely because at the same time he was operating the board at an internet radio service, speaking into the microphone, and serving bacon lattes. The Order shows no evidence and makes no claim that the transmissions were deliberately relayed point-to-point or affirmatively controlled from the Pirate Cat Radio studio.”

Roberts’ attorney concludes his Petition for Reconsideration by stating his concern that the forfeiture order “depicts a new standard of Section 301 enforcement that is vague, amorphous, incomprehensible, over reaching, and Unconstitutional. The Government should reconsider this Order and on reconsideration should vacate the penalty.”

Pirate Cat Radio is no longer broadcasting in any form, but former Pirate Cat Radio volunteers (without Roberts) are now running the online-only Mutiny Radio from the former Pirate Cat Radio Cafe.

Jason Scott is an archivist and historian of computer and internet history behind such great projects as textfiles.com, which preserves the wonders of the pre-web internet, as well as documentaries on pre-internet BBSs (bulletin-board systems) and text adventure games. Appropriately enough, he now works at the Internet Archive, and while catching up on his blog I came upon a post about a collection of shortwave pirate radio recordings hosted at the archive.

If radio tends to be an ephemeral medium, then shortwave pirate radio is especially ephemeral, heard by a very small audience, even if it is scattered across the globe. Shortwave pirate listeners tend to be dedicated, and recording airchecks is often part of the hobby. However, it’s one thing to record a shortwave pirate broadcast, and a whole other thing to catalog and preserve it. Luckily for us an enthusiast who goes by the name Sealord did just that, and then digitized the recordings and uploaded them to share.

Radio Metallica Worldwide QSL card

The collection spans the mid-90s through to September 2011. I was pleased to find a couple of recordings from a station that called itself Radio Metallica Worldwide, which broadcast in the late 90s and mid-2000s. I remember this station well because it transmitted with a tremendous amount of power for a pirate and could be heard very clearly across most of North America. Back in 1996 and 1997, in my little apartment in Champaign, Illinois, I listened to the station many times on my Radio Shack Patrolman SW-60 radio that I’d had since I was a kid. Only with lots of effort and patience was I able to pick up any other pirate stations with that rig. But Radio Metallica Worldwide came in loud and clear (for shortwave, that is). In the October 26, 1997 recording the proprietor, Dr. Tornado, brags of using “10,000 watts of pure awesome audio power.” If true that would outclass most pirates by a factor of 100 or so. The station was so infamous that it merited an entry in Andrew Yoder’s 2001 book on Pirate Radio listening.

There’s plenty of interesting listening to be found, even if shortwave pirates tend to be unimaginative music programmers, too often falling back on tired classic and hard rock tunes that don’t fall too far afield of FM radio standards. And there have been archives of shortwave pirate recordings on the web pretty much since uploading audio to the internet became practical in the 1990s. In fact, I’m pretty sure I heard my first shortwave pirate programs on the internet (in RealAudio!), which then spurred me to try tuning in the broadcasts on the airwaves.

Listening to these recordings only makes me wish there were a similar collection of FM and AM pirates.

Pirate Cat Radio Back in June 2010 (Photo: J. Waits)

On Friday, the FCC posted a notice that a forfeiture order (PDF) for $10,000 was issued to Pirate Cat Radio founder Daniel “Monkey Man” Roberts for “willfully and repeatedly violating section 301 of the Communications Act of 1934…by operating an unlicensed radio broadcast station” in San Francisco.

The letter is a follow-up to an earlier Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture that was issued to Roberts on August 31, 2009. Roberts responded to that notice on October 23, 2009 and claimed that he wasn’t involved with the broadcast transmissions of Pirate Cat Radio and that he additionally was “financially unable” to pay the $10,000 fine.

Last week’s forfeiture letter from the FCC discounts Roberts’ arguments and reiterates the FCC’s finding that Pirate Cat Radio “operated a radio broadcast station without a license issued by the FCC on 87.9 MHz in San Francisco, California.” It goes on to describe that the station had operated from Pirate Cat Cafe and Studio in San Francisco beginning in 2008 and that “the Enforcement Bureau’s San Francisco Office issued numerous warnings and Notices of Unlicensed Operation (‘NOUOs’) to Roberts…” In late April, 2009, FCC agents located the source of the radio transmissions, identifying an antenna on a roof of a residence in San Francisco. At the same time, the agents also “observed Roberts operating and controlling the unlicensed radio station” and subsequently “recognized Roberts’ voice and identified Roberts as the voice on the unlicensed transmissions on 87.9 MHz.3.”

In Roberts’ response he argues that broadcast transmissions did not emanate from the Pirate Cat Radio studio and “alleges that the internet streamed program service from PCR is downloaded and broadcast by third parties.” The FCC refutes this and used statements from the Pirate Cat Radio website, Pirate Cat Radio press releases, and from press accounts to argue that Roberts knowingly operated a pirate radio station. The Forfeiture Order states,

“Roberts solicited funds on the PCR website stating that ‘[d]onations go towards monthly station cost of running the FM transmitter and help Pirate Cat Radio buy new radio station equipment.’ Roberts also stated on the PCR website ‘that Title 47 Section 73.3542 of the U.S. Code of federal regulations currently allows Pirate Cat Radio 87.9fm to legally broadcast with out [sic] a formal licence [sic] from the FCC.’ In addition, in August 2009, Roberts accepted a certificate from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors which recognized Pirate Cat for its ‘trailblazing efforts toward freeing the airwaves from corporate control, providing the community with training in radio broadcast skills, empowering voices ignored by traditional media outlets, and contributing to the advancement of the city’s coffee culture.’”

Requests for an interview with Roberts went unanswered, but his attorney Michael Couzens tells me that he is “surprised” by the forfeiture order. Couzens says, “We will pursue all our legal rights and remedies.  It’s my belief that freedom of association is a fundamental right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  They are using ‘guilt by association’ to tie Mr. Roberts into an extra-legal  transmission, where there’s no evidence of him doing it.  I hope that is not the law of the land.  We’ll fight.”

DIYMedia‘s John Anderson is a long-time follower of enforcement actions against pirate broadcasters. He told me that it’s hard to say if the FCC will actually collect any money from Roberts. Anderson says, “The FCC’s overall forfeiture collection rate is pretty abysmal – in 2000 it was under 25%, and that was the last time the agency officially studied the issue.” He also explained that forfeiture orders have a “five-year statute of limitations, and the FCC can’t force collection without filing a civil lawsuit for judgment against a recalcitrant pirate.”

After the FCC’s “Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture” back in 2009, Pirate Cat Radio ceased its terrestrial broadcasts. The station continued as an online-only station and by May, 2010, Roberts helped get community radio station KPDO on the air in Pescadero, California. By October, 2010, Roberts and Pirate Cat Radio were working to raise funds in order to launch additional FM radio stations. However, starting in November, 2010, questions emerged about the relationship between KPDO and Pirate Cat and by March, 2011, Roberts argued that he’d transferred Pirate Cat Radio’s web streaming service to the non-profit entity that owns KPDO. That statement was later refuted by KPDO’s founder and Roberts subsequently left his position as KPDO’s station manager. By this time, Roberts’ involvement with the day-to-day operations of Pirate Cat Radio in San Francisco had also ceased (he was apparently out of the country), leading Pirate Cat Radio DJs to re-launch the station on June 1, 2011 as Mutiny Radio.

The staff at KPDO have also moved forward without Roberts and are working to get their station back on the air terrestrially after they were forced to move their antenna and vacate their old studio several months ago. Catherine Peery, President of Pescadero Public Radio Service (which oversees KPDO), told me that KPDO is fundraising and navigating the permit process in order to get the station’s antenna relocated. They are currently broadcasting online and are retrofitting their new studio, which will be housed in a bread truck. The hope is that KPDO will be broadcasting over FM by early 2012.

The Medium is our Message at Occupy Wall Street. Photo by Dan Patterson

Today, more than 10 years on from LPFM’s inception, unlicensed broadcasting remains alive and well, although the act is not as explicitly politicized as it once was.

This could change.

Last week, the Occupy Wall Street encampment established a microradio station at 107.1 FM. The station simulcasts the 24/7 live stream which provides coverage of life inside Zuccotti Park, as well as street-level reportage of daily protest actions in New York City’s financial district. The growth of the occupation has been impressive, and the establishment of a microradio station is another step in the action’s evolution.

One idea that’s been batted around involves integrating broadcasting into the occupation’s General Assembly, which functions as its governing body. City ordinances forbid the use of amplified sound systems in the park, which has resulted in the development of a “human microphone” system – speakers talk in sentence-fragments, which are repeated by the crowd so all can hear the dialogue. While it’s a very participatory method of group communication, it’s slow going and not necessarily scalable as the Assemblies grow.

In this instance, microradio could be employed to provide a non-amplified public address system – simply plug the speaker’s mic into a transmitter. Radios are cheap, and many smartphones have built-in FM reception capability. Some involved in the NYC action are brainstorming along these lines.

As more occupations are launched around the nation, their organizers have taken notes on how Occupy Wall Street has grown. Adding microradio to the tactical media mix makes lots of sense.

Radio still remains one of the most powerful tools of mass media available; one need look no further than the right-wing bastion of talk radio which has done so much to sully political discourse in this country. Microradio is easily accessible to a large audience and relatively uncomplicated to deploy. Unlike most other tools of protest-media, the critical infrastructure that makes radio work is pretty much self-contained, which adds to its reliability.

Microradio is also extremely useful as an outreach tool. The station in Zuccotti Park broadcasts to the occupation and immediate neighbors, which can be useful in the maintenance of good community relations. Microradio stations have been deployed in similar situations, such as festivals, farmer’s markets and picket lines, to extend the reach and impact of such events beyond their physical presence. In addition, opening up access to the airwaves in such a public manner helps to demystify the act of broadcasting and introduce folks to the notion that the airwaves, too, are a public space.

This leads to the final rationale for incorporating microradio into occupations – it’s an occupation of its own kind. One of the grievances expressed by Occupy Wall Street directly addresses corporate control of the media. There is no better way to address that grievance than by becoming the media directly, and unlicensed broadcasting has a long and storied history in the United States. Nothing signifies independent media quite like a microradio station.

Microradio is no more or less civilly disobedient than taking over and transforming a public space. Considering that the airwaves are ostensibly public property, they should be no less off limits in this context than a park or public right-of-way. Provided they do not interfere with other broadcasters, the addition of new signals to a local radio dial is materially non disruptive; what’s more, the FCC does not have police powers (and they also abhor confrontation).

Occupy Wall Street’s media team has been integral to sustaining the encampment, spreading the word, and inspiring others. New and future occupations are learning much from what’s happening in New York, where they’re heavily engaged in multi-platform citizen journalism, utilizing everything from the newest of new media forms to publishing their own newspaper and, of course, the human microphone. Microradio falls comfortably within this continuum and can help bootstrap more intensive media efforts.

Radio Communications Agency Netherlands

The Netherlands has been a hotbed of unlicensed radio activity for decades. Dutch stations like the storied Radio Veronica, which broadcast off-shore from 1960 to 1974, inspired the UK pirate radio scene during the same time period. The country still has many stations on the air, many of them explicitly political and anarchist in outlook and organization, like Free Radio Patapoe in Amsterdam.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide passes on a story from the Dutch language newspaper De Telegraaf reporting that the Netherlands Radio Communications Agency intends to enact a new policy making it easier to fine and shut down unlicensed broadcasters more quickly. Similar to the US, it apparently takes a while to actually fine a pirate, though the months it takes in the Netherlands pales in comparison to the years it can take for the US FCC to levy and collect a fine. The new policy would purportedly allow the agency to act in just a half hour.

The article reports that 1600 warnings for unlicensed broadcasting have been issued this year, with 60 fines. Note that this is in a country of 16 million, two million fewer than Florida, but in only about one third the area. In response pirate broadcasters have gone mobile, ostensibly adopting the stealth and hit-and-run tactics exploited by their compatriots in the UK and, to some extent, the US.

This would not be the first increase in in that country. About a decade ago regulators made of show of cracking down on pirates, which was followed by a “100,000 Antennas” mass broadcast protest staged by unlicensed operators in June 2003.

I don’t know nearly enough about Dutch regulation and jurisprudence to know if the half-hour fine action threat is remotely realistic. If the FCC made such a promise I’d laugh out loud. It will be interesting to hear what more comes of this planned change, or if we’ll be reporting about the next big crackdown three, five or ten years from now.

I doubt NY pirates will be needing one of these.

Last week New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that makes broadcasting on the AM or FM dials a class A misdemeanor, which is punishable with up to a year in prison. Like similar laws in New Jersey and Florida, the legislation was pushed by broadcasters in the state who cheered its passage.

The original state Senate bill aimed to make an infraction a class D felony punishable with a prison term of 2 to 7 years, comparable to vehicular homicide and drunk driving. Apparently the punishment got negotiated down by the time it hit the Governor’s desk.

If the situation across the Hudson River in New Jersey is indication, the question of sentencing is largely academic. I have been unable to find a report or record of a single arrest, never mind conviction, for unlicensed broadcasting in that state since its law went into effect.

The measure is largely symbolic, aimed to frighten current and would-be unlicensed broadcasters out of taking to the air. While the law would allow police to get involved in tracking down and arresting pirate broadcasters, I’ll be surprised if law enforcement agencies are eager to dedicate much of their limited resources to such a minor crime.

For what it’s worth, the last notice of unlicensed operation (NOUO) in the state of New York was issued in November of last year. NOUOs are the best indicator of current pirate activity that the FCC is taking action against, since they signal the FCC’s first identification of and contact with a suspected unlicensed station. Several fines have been issued since November, but those represent violations first detected many months to several years prior.

I will be surprised if this law puts much of a dent in the unlicensed broadcasting happening in that state, most prominently in New York City. I’ll be all the more surprised if it spurs many arrests, never mind convictions.

Paul McLane

In his “From the Editor” column Radio World’s Paul McLane takes up Matthew’s recent calculation finding that pirate radio generates a half-billion dollars worth of jobs. Recall that my esteemed Radio Survivor colleague was riffing off a recent study sponsored by the National Association of Broadcasters that claimed $135 billion in economic output is attributable to commercial radio and television broadcasting.

McLane admits that he “chuckled” at Matthew’s “poke of NAB’s huge, speculative ‘ripple effect’ numbers.” But apparently he can’t let the joke continue to ride on his high horse as he chides Matthew’s subject of choice, writing,

“Lasar would have done better to discuss the economic value of other legal forms of radio rather than that of pirates. I do not endorse illegal radio, and neither should you.”

McLane goes on to explain that he is a supporter of eclectic college and community radio and sympathetic to “people who want to bring more diverse, nontraditional voices to the broadcast spectrum,” but only provided, “they comply with the law.” He advises that those who disagree with the current legal and regulatory regime should “work to change it, just as LPFM advocates have done.”

Even though LPFM is only a decade old, it would seem that Mr. McLane has forgotten the circumstances that led up to the FCC creating this service. Let’s consider one of LPFM’s strongest and most tireless advocates, Pete TriDish, a founder of the Prometheus Radio Project, which advocates for the service and helps LPFM stations get on the air. What did Pete do before Prometheus? Why, he was an unlicensed broadcaster with the Radio Mutiny collective in Philadelphia during the 1990s.

Radio Mutiny was not alone as unlicensed micropower stations went on the air across the US during the latter half of the 1990s. Many of these stations–especially those calling themselves “micropower” rather than “pirate” –were broadcasting as an act of civil disobedience, protesting the negative effects of the radio consolidation in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the lack of licenses available for low-power community radio.

I would argue that former FCC Chairman William Kennard was responding to dual pressures when he spearheaded the creation of LPFM. Yes, on one hand he was answering the calls made by a growing number of civic, community and religious groups for an expansion of community radio. But on the other hand, Kennard was actively battling, and arguably losing, a war against a rising tide of unlicensed broadcasters that the Commission was unprepared to defeat. Kennard and his fellow commissioners wisely recognized that creating a low-cost low-power radio service would help take the wind from the rhetorical sails of many microbroadcasters, while also making the FCC appear supportive of true community service radio. The Commission also was betting that some would-be unlicensed broadcasters would abandon their plans in favor of pursuing an actual LPFM license.

McLane observes that Radio Survivor, “professes to love radio ‘in all its forms’ and is up front about including illegal radio in that.” I don’t claim to speak for my fellow Radio Survivors, but I’ll admit to some fondness for pirate radio. However, I do not love all pirate radio, in the same way that I do not love all commercial and noncommercial radio. Like so many other underground activities, unlicensed broadcasting often exists to fill a need that is unmet by licensed or legitimized services. The most responsible pirates run technically clean operations, taking care not to cause interference with other stations. I am not a fan of pirates who broadcast dirty signals that trounce on adjoining stations and spit out interference.

We would not have LPFM if it were not for the pirates and microbroadcasters who forced the FCC’s hand. They demonstrated that there was room on the dial for low-powered community stations not through lobbying and engineering studies, but simply by showing their communities that it could be done, and without interference or harm. This could only have been done without a license, the FCC would have endorsed no exception or trial.

I’m sympathetic to the fact that the editor of Radio World can’t really come out in support of pirate radio. And, to be honest, we appreciate the nod from Mr. McLane, even if it comes with a dose of criticism. But it’s important not to lose Matthew’s original point. An underground economy is still an economy. Pirate radio has made significant contributions to broadcasting in the US, and our dials would not be the same had it never existed.

The first response comes from John Broomall of Christian Community Broadcasters. The second from broadcast technical consultant Robert H. Branch Jr.

John Broomall:

[This] is an informal analysis of the financial impact of pirate radio on American society.  It – supposedly – is based  on professional studies about the economic s of commercial FM radio.  In reality it is science / economic fiction.  If that is a indictment on the professional study as well, so be it.

False assumptions in the Pirate study:

1. That there are 450 pirate stations in the USA with all economic impact of a “half-billion.”
2. that all pirates are commercial
3. that are pirates are equally successful
4. even if jobs created are “worth” $30K a year each, that (without pirate radio) these individuals would be homeless with no economic impact on society.  (in reality, even the homeless have an economic impact).

As LPFM operators, let’s apply these assumptions to the Low Power industry.  Since there are about twice as many LPFMs as pirates with $576 million impact, that means that the 850 legal LPFMs have about a billion dollar impact, i.e. more than a million dollars impact each.  How many LPFM’s have a million dollar impact on society each year?  Any?

There is a pirate station near me.  He is automated and apparently operates from his home with a family “volunteer” staff.  Near zero financial impact.  The same is true for legal WPCG-LP, operated by me and my wife on a volunteer basic from my home.

There is a non-financial difference – WPCG has six local newscasts; the pirate airs an Internet feed most of the time.

Robert H. Branch Jr. (responding to Broomall):

There is a major difference in the kind of pirate radio you describe and the reality in places like New York City and South Florida.  These are full-on commercial radio stations that employ staff and “protection” attorneys to protect their interests. From their formats it would appear that they have sizeable incomes.  In many cases, they are minority interests who have their city ways of staying in existence, despite state and federal laws that protect them.  They are ruthless in their pursuit.  I have some first hand experience with triangulating locations and mitigating this interference caused to legitimate broadcasters.

I agree that the study may be skewed, but it is absolutely not baseless.  Also, it is much more profitable for them to be pirates than LPFM’s because they do not honor any power or height limits.  The standard FCC fines for a pirate operator are small in comparison to the revenues.  I have had personal knowledge (even photos) of pirate radio stations that operate from 500 watts to 2.5 kW in major metro’s.  Many advertisers on pirate radio stations have no idea the operations are not legitimate radio operations.  These include press packets and rate cards.  The impact is not insignificant.  However, my experience in smaller markets is as you describe.

A couple of comments and clarifications from my end. John Broomall is right to argue that my estimate of the number of unlicensed stations in the United States is speculative. A more precise jobs calculation would have to ferret the correct number out.

But I never said that all pirate stations are commercial or equally successful. Here’s what I wrote:

Many pirate stations run on volunteer power. But not a few, such as recently prosecuted Daz Hits radio, have strong roots in their communities. They run income generating community events and sometimes air commercials. Thus these stations employ paid deejays, managers, event managers, food service workers, entertainers, and engineers. Thus I estimate that on average, your pirate radio station employs eight people in full or part time positions. That’s 3,600 direct jobs.

This was an estimate of job creation on aggregate, not assuming the same individual station job creation level across the board.

But I do think that this sort of methodology can be applied to LPFM stations, and they may have more of an impact than we suspect. Another “report” coming soon . . . <bwahaha!>

credit: von holdt doodle-a-day (dollar signs added)

I have often wondered how many jobs “unlicensed” media produce, be it P2P file sharing sites or pirate radio stations. A new study commissioned by the National Association of Broadcasters inspires me to attempt a rough cut of the pirate radio question. Based on my guesstimate study, broadly modeled on its methodology, I think that pirate radio stations in the United States annually generate 19,220 jobs worth $576,600,000 to American workers. That’s more than a half a billion dollar yearly boost to the US economy.

The NAB backed report says 2.52 million jobs are “attributable” to the local commercial radio and television industry on an annual basis. The study was produced by the Woods and Poole economic research group.

Here is the gist of the study’s methodology and findings:

First, the direct impact of the industry is the result of its significant size: 1,370 commercial television stations and more than 11,700 commercial radio stations sustaining more than 300 thousand jobs and more than $49 billion in output.

Second, as with any industry in a developed economy, workers in the commercial local broadcast television and radio industry consume goods and services in all other sectors of the economy supporting more jobs and creating more income and output. This ripple effect is estimated to result in 833 thousand jobs and $135 billion in output.

Third, the output of commercial local broadcast television and radio industry stimulates economic activity by providing a forum for advertising that is free to consumers. The stimulative effect of advertising on local commercial broadcasts is very significant. An estimated $986 billion in United States output and 1.38 million jobs are attributable to the stimulative effects of advertising on local television and radio.

Ok. You get the idea. Direct jobs. Supporting jobs. Stimulative effect. Let’s apply this to the pirates.

Direct jobs

I estimate that there are 450 pirate radio stations in the United States. How do I get this? Wikipedia lists about 45 pirate stations. After years of following the unlicensed station phenomenon, my sense is that these lists should always be multiplied by a factor of ten, given the frequency with which pirate stations clandestinely launch.

Many pirate stations run on volunteer power. But not a few, such as recently prosecuted Daz Hits radio, have strong roots in their communities. They run income generating community events and sometimes air commercials. Thus these stations employ paid deejays, managers, event managers, food service workers, entertainers, and engineers. Thus I estimate that on average, your pirate radio station employs eight people in full or part time positions. That’s 3,600 direct jobs.

Indirect jobs

In addition, pirate stations buy and maintain radio station related equipment (from transmitters through computers) consume utilities such as electricity, water, and ISP/telecom access, and rent space. Volunteers must use public transportation to reach the station. They must buy some of their music to broadcast. They must hire t-shirt makers and other publicity related vendors. They must hire webmasters and network ISP people to stream.

Equipment acquisition, maintenance and repair: 3 jobs per station x 450 = 1,350 jobs
Utilities: 2 jobs per station x 450 = 900 jobs
Space rental (keeping landlords employed): 1 job per station = 450 jobs
Publicists: 2 jobs per station = 900 jobs
Commercial music sellers: 2 jobs per station = 900 jobs
Web/network related: 2 jobs per station = 900 jobs

Then there are the legal costs related to running a pirate radio station.

FCC anti-piracy enforcement bureau: 20 jobs
Commercial station engineers and consultants who monitor, complain about, and report pirate stations: 100 jobs
Attorneys who assist fined stations: 200 jobs

Stimulative jobs

These are the jobs that are stimulated by the music and public affairs activities of pirate radio stations. These include the income (aka jobs) that accrue to musicians, clubs, bookstores, community organizations, political groups, restaurants, digital and analog music sellers, and other entities as a result of the constant publicity they receive from the pirate station.

musicians: 4 jobs x 450 stations = 1800 jobs
clubs: 2 x 450 = 900 jobs
bookstores: 2 x 450 = 900 jobs
community organizations: 1 x 450 = 450 jobs
political groups: 2 x 450 = 900 jobs
restaurants: 3 x 450 = 1350 jobs
digital and analog music sellers: 3 x 450 = 1350 jobs
other individuals and entities: 5 x 450 = 2250

Some of these jobs, such as the FCC enforcement bureau jobs, engineering jobs, and legal cost related jobs, pay quite a lot. Many pay less. I estimate that the mean (average) income related to these jobs comes to $30,000 a year. Thus:

19,220 jobs x $30k income = $576,600,000

I think that this is a conservative guesstimate of the job value that pirate radio stations bring to the US economy. Feel free to correct my arithmetic. If you think that my methodology is off, fine. But this logic isn’t terribly different from that used in your typical trade association commissioned industry job estimate study. The biggest difference is that I did this one in about an hour and received no consulting fee for my work. You’re welcome.