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March 25, 1998 - Art Bell

02:34:18

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Pirate Radio - Pat Murphy, Roger Skinner

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	Outro Music To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye, from east of the Rockies, dial 1-800-825-5033.
	West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, 1-800-618-8255.
	West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
	1-800-618-8255.
	First time callers may reach out at area code 702-727-1222.
	And you may call out on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
	To reach Art from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the USA, then 800-893-0903.
	This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Nye with Art Bell.
	Good morning, everybody!
	We're talking about Pirate Radio.
	Well, let me tell you what I've got for you tonight.
	It is the FX-200 Mini FM Broadcast Station on sale one night only.
	Bob Grain has them.
	The regular price is $44.95.
	Now they're only $39.95, including shipping to all 50 states.
	What is the FX-200?
	regular price is forty four ninety five now they're only thirty nine ninety five
	including shipping to all fifty states what is the affects two hundred
	well it plugs right into the headphone jack of a cassette player
	cd player television or computer and transmits
	the audio in the fm band to any
	radio So...
	So... So you can start up your own little very short range broadcast station.
	And perhaps even your neighbors will be able to hear it.
	I'm not going to tell you commercially a lot more about it than that.
	Your imagination is the only limit for ways to use the FX-200.
	It is, I'll tell you this, a remarkably stable transmitter.
	I mean remarkably stable.
	And absolutely legal in its present configuration.
	And it will transmit just absolutely a remarkably clean... Actually, the FX-200 sounds as good as any FM station that you will hear.
	So, your imagination is all that limits you with the FX-200.
	It's a one-night only sale in honor of this broadcast.
	$39.95 includes shipping to all Fifteen states.
	If you want one, you better note down, because I will not be advertising this tomorrow, the number to call at 7.30 in the morning is 1-800-522-8863.
	1-800-522-8863.
	The Sea Grain Company.
	hundred five two two eight eight
	six one eight hundred five two two eight eight six
	the secret income well in honor of pat murphy who asked about my t-shirt i
	took a good close-up shot
	of the back of my t-shirt for pat and i've left it up there and all of you can
	see it if you wish I love wearing creative t-shirts.
	So it's up there on the studio cam right now.
	That's in honor of Pat Murphy coming on the radio and sticking his neck out a hundred miles.
	Thank you, Pat.
	We have still on the line with us Roger Skinner.
	Roger has rulemaking in front of the FCC to allow these broadcast stations To go on the air at various levels.
	And we'll go back to Roger in a second.
	There is one quick call I want to pick up.
	West of the Rockies, you are on the air.
	Good morning.
	Where are you?
	Wait a minute.
	Now you're on the air.
	I'm sorry.
	Yeah, this is Dave from rural Colorado.
	Hi, Dave.
	How are you?
	I'm doing pretty good.
	I love your program.
	I used to listen to you when you were in Union Plaza in Las Vegas.
	That's right.
	But I lived in Amarillo when you were broadcasting from the base.
	My dad worked out there.
	You heard KMEV?
	Oh yeah.
	Oh my.
	And me and my friend and my dad, we built a little transmitter.
	We were broadcasting about 60 blocks radius.
	And the kids from school used to come down and listen to our 45s and 78s that we played.
	Yeah, that's what we were playing, 45s.
	We had a ball with it.
	Um, so you also did it and you actually heard me in Amarillo?
	Oh yeah!
	No kidding?
	Yeah, I lived in Pottertown.
	We actually went about 50 miles radius from the base.
	Of course, you know, Amarillo is very flat.
	Yes, it is.
	And you wear a bowling ball.
	Yes, that's a fact.
	Alright, my friend, thank you so much.
	Can I ask you one more question, please?
	Sure, sure.
	You remember old Wolfman Jack that used to broadcast out of Del Rio at 100,000 watts?
	I did a show with Wolfman.
	You did?
	Oh yeah, I did a show at KENI in Anchorage with Wolfman Jack.
	He was really something else.
	Is he still alive?
	No.
	Wolfman has passed on.
	Oh my god, I was hoping he was.
	I loved his recordings.
	Oh, he was an incredible guy.
	Let me tell you something.
	I'm not going to sleep tonight listening to this.
	He was the same way in person as he was on the air.
	He was a character.
	Yes, he was a character.
	I was putting it mildly.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, sure.
	I did.
	I was honored to do a show with Wolfman many years ago up in Anchorage.
	He did a short little stint where he was going into syndication and Katie and I was going to pick up his syndicated show so he flew up to Alaska and we did a show together.
	It was a riot.
	Absolutely a riot.
	Wolfman did have something about as thick as a big city New York City phone book or LA phone book.
	And it had all his favorite expressions in it.
	And so when he'd enter the studio, he'd come in with this mass of stuff in these phone book sized renditions of his favorite sayings and sit down and God, that was a blast.
	All right.
	Back now to Roger.
	Are you there, Roger?
	Still here and enjoying this evening immensely.
	All right.
	Excellent.
	Anyway, listen.
	You have packaged all three of these possible things into one rulemaking.
	And there's a reason package.
	And the reason is?
	The reason is they are all tied together.
	Let me start the little scenario here, if I may, for just a moment.
	Chairman, the new FCC chairman, William Kennard, is our first minority chairman.
	He is sensitive to minority ownership in broadcasting.
	Mm-hmm.
	Which has decreased of late.
	Well, I shouldn't be surprised because they're throwing all the rules out.
	They're in the middle of doing that.
	You know how they're going to issue licenses now?
	They're going to auction.
	They auction.
	High as bitter.
	But, you know, that's a whole other story.
	Anyhow, we're looking at ways, and my proposal is trying to give them a way to bring local owners, mom-and-pops as I call them, individual entrepreneurs, Those of limited financial means, minorities, women, etc.
	Give them a voice in broadcasting.
	And to do that, we need to lower the barrier to entry.
	They can't afford to pay the millions and millions of dollars like the big corporations are going to buy up these stations.
	Well, that's an interesting tact to take.
	But actually, you're fighting the current wave, because the current wave is That to give preference to minorities, women, blah blah blah blah is in itself discrimination.
	That's the current wave.
	Well, I've created in my proposal a way that they can own a radio station for less than the price of a new car.
	They won't need minority preferences as in the past.
	that ran into some all constitutional problems so you're not proposing uh...
	returning these for the low-power arena you're proposing
	on across the board deal or proposing a new service that'll be so affordable
	that minorities women people of limited financial means of a say
	will be able to all their own radio station and i have a voice in the community where they live
	now you cannot be coming at this without quite a bit of background in piracy
	That's my way of thinking.
	I am familiar with all that's going on.
	I've researched this topic for years.
	I started out myself.
	A lot of us broadcasters did with a little pirate station in the basement.
	It launched a 35-year career for me.
	Are you in broadcasting now?
	Yes, I own a low-power television station here in Fort Lauderdale that is going to be knocked off the air because it's a secondary service, and that's another thing I'd like to bring into this discussion.
	There are many needs here that we're talking about and trying to serve with this petition.
	The so-called hobby broadcasters or Pirate radio operators that we've been talking about tonight.
	Yes.
	A lot of these have something to say.
	A lot of these are worthwhile and can serve their community and have been around.
	Even if it's nothing but a bark between records.
	That's a little, you know.
	Well, no, no.
	See, you can't really.
	I mean, if somebody wants to bark between records, I mean, fine.
	In my petition, I don't say what you have to broadcast.
	I don't say that you have to be non-commercial or that you have to be commercial.
	But what I'm saying is, Give me an example.
	I sunk my life savings into this television station here, this low-power TV station.
	It was a secondary service.
	Well, back in 1980 when I applied for the license, the only way I could get bumped would be if an existing TV station were to move from one tower to another and I became short-spaced.
	It was very unlikely and I was willing to take that risk.
	People won't understand what short-spaced is, but basically there would be an interference problem.
	Correct.
	Okay, I had no way of knowing that the FCC was going to award another channel for digital television to every single full-power TV station in the nation.
	And these channels would be taken regardless of whether there was a low-power TV operating on there or not.
	Now, you know what?
	I'm not even sure that's constitutional.
	I know they're doing it, but I don't I can't see how existing licensees are granted additional bandwidth without a public opportunity to have people compete.
	Now, that'll get me in trouble.
	That's a long story.
	It's a little bit off-topic, but the point that I'm trying to make... It isn't.
	It isn't.
	Because more people who are now not in broadcasting could be in broadcasting, and instead they're giving this to existing licensees.
	Correct.
	I filed a petition for reconsideration, as did about 200 other people.
	They were all thrown out.
	And they said, this is what we're doing.
	And I mean, you know, we could discuss that if you want.
	No, no, no, that's all right.
	That's a whole other thing.
	But secondary services, I mentioned.
	I'm proposing that the micro-broadcasters, the pirate broadcasters, the guy who wants to bark in between records, I can't expect a full power I agree with you.
	I can't see them saying, wait a minute, we can't move to our antenna because we have to protect Bark Radio or this guy that's doing this as a hobby.
	All of a sudden, BARC Radio is in the way.
	I agree with you.
	I can't see them saying, wait a minute, we can't move to our antenna because we have
	to protect BARC Radio or this guy that's doing this as a hobby.
	So I propose that as a secondary class license.
	Being very sensitive to secondary class because I'm being kicked in the rear myself, losing
	Sure.
	But in there, I also give them a method whereby within 60 days, if their channel is threatened, they can go to a more structured license and become, under more regulations, all the Part 73 regulations that apply to normal broadcast stations.
	And become an LPFM-1 fully protected channel so they would not lose their channel if they wanted to do that.
	Alright, well the FCC did quickly snap up your proposed rulemaking and they're going to, I guess, what are they, accepting comments on it now?
	They're accepting comments until April 27th at the FCC.
	I should point out that I have a website that has the entire petition if people want to read it.
	Alright.
	And I found out that your website has a link to my website.
	It does?
	It does.
	Cool.
	Under web links on your website there's one called Low Power FM and if they click on that it'll take them to my website.
	And so they can come over and see and read and even print out the full 25 page petition.
	Also on there is details on how to file formal comments at the FCC.
	You send an original letter and nine copies To the FCC, and the address is on there.
	To those people that don't have... I understand a lot of people don't have the Internet.
	I've said, you know, for a couple bucks to cover the cost of copying and postage, it's a dollar postage to send this out first class, I will go to the trouble of making a copy and mailing it to people that would like to read it that don't have it.
	Let me ask you your position on the FCC.
	A lot of people think the FCC should not even exist.
	There should be no regulation of broadcasting, and anybody who wants to broadcast should be able to broadcast.
	You know, broadcast anarchy.
	Do you... That's folly.
	That's pure folly.
	I agree.
	That's like saying, let's take away the stop signs and the red lights on the highways.
	Oh, thank you.
	That's exactly right.
	I mean, even as a pirate, I recognize that you just can't set it all loose, and that's what a lot of people want to do.
	There's a lot of pirates out there who think all regulation should be gone.
	Yeah, I've been arguing with some of them.
	They're discussing, I should say, on some of the web, their talk boards on the internet, you know.
	And, you know, coming from as a broadcaster, I understand why there has to be some rules.
	But my LPFM2 license for the so-called pirate radio types would have a minimum of regulations.
	The main thing would be an engineering study at the beginning to say, OK, this channel will not cause interference.
	And we're proposing, by the way, dropping The current restrictions on the second and third adjacent channels.
	That currently is the reason why a lot of cities, why you can't put on a new station today.
	Well, you take my little area of the Pahrump.
	I live in a place called Pahrump, and it's a valley.
	It's a big valley.
	Actually about twice the size of Las Vegas.
	And while there are FM signals in here, frankly, the FM dial is pretty empty.
	And I mean empty.
	Because there are regulations that talk about radio stations that are somewhere in California, perhaps in L.A.
	or in Las Vegas or way out there somewhere, the dial must essentially remain empty.
	And it's just like a vast wasteland.
	There's so much open space here.
	It's a pirate's dream.
	Well, this will open up probably several frequencies in each market that could be used for low-power FM.
	And I'd like to revisit that power issue we talked about for just a moment.
	A lot of people go 3 kilowatts and they cringe, you know.
	Well, only because, look, I know, and you know, how commercial broadcasters are going to react to that.
	But I hasten to add, a lot of the frequencies won't hold 3 kilowatts.
	We're proposing that purely as a maximum.
	For instance, I did a study on a channel down here in the Fort Lauderdale area that I'm interested in.
	It won't hold 3 kilowatts.
	It will hold 900 watts.
	Now that'll give me about 10 to 11 miles.
	Right, so there's no present class of license that would embrace that?
	No.
	So it remains an empty, unoccupied frequency for that distance?
	Correct.
	Now, under the current rules, you have to protect not only the channel you're on.
	Let's give an example.
	Let's say you're on 96.3, for instance.
	Okay.
	You would have to protect 96.3 And then three channels up, 96.5, 96.7, 96.9.
	Right.
	And three channels down the other way.
	Well, under my proposal, due to the fact that these rules were created 30, 40 years ago, receiver designs have improved with sawtooth filters, etc., to where the second and third adjacent channel restrictions today are superfluous.
	You're correct.
	They're not needed.
	Yes, you're right.
	And this was proven, as I point out in my petition, I took the time to do my homework, and I quoted from the short-spaced grandfathered FM station proceeding of a couple years ago, whereby one engineering firm after another stated the same thing, that these rules are superfluous.
	In fact, you've had hundreds of full-power stations operating for years, nationwide, On second and third adjacent channels that are currently taboo to a new station.
	Alright, listen, we're out of time.
	I want to ask you about something here.
	And it is the following.
	Have you considered the possibility of setting aside a certain portion of the spectrum, perhaps adjacent to the present FM band, or somewhere else in the VHF range, where you would allow people to put on broadcast stations Virtual anarchy, put on what you want, do what you want, in this spectrum only, and then begin to offer radios to people that would receive it.
	I mean, that is another possibility.
	Had you thought of that?
	That's been talked about.
	I don't give it much hope, because I think what's important here is people need to be able to hear it.
	Well, it's true, but I mean, also, People aren't going to buy radio.
	The manufacturers are going to make special radios.
	Well, they would if there was enough interest.
	They would.
	That's debatable.
	That's really debatable.
	Well, I know it's just... I think that would doom the whole idea.
	It might.
	It's not a workable solution.
	It might.
	But, on the other hand, it would get the big money interests, broadcasters, who are going to fight this tooth and nail.
	You know they are.
	Well, are we really going to put them out of business?
	Are the big 100,000 watt stations here in the Miami area going to go out of business if I put on a 900 watt station?
	I don't think so.
	Well... I've been around too long.
	I don't think so either, but do you... Have you seen the advertising?
	Well, yes, but... Okay.
	But you asked a question, and no, you're not going to put them out of business, but are they going to fight it to the nail?
	You're damn right they are.
	Well, there's a lot of people You know, I've got to fight it.
	There's a lot of people that want it.
	Chairman Kennard wants it.
	Some of the other commissioners, I understand, want it.
	Well, there may be hope, and I really, really wish you luck with your petition.
	I've got to go.
	But it's a pleasure having you on, and I hope everybody goes up to my website, clicks on yours, and gets the petition and fills it out.
	Well, I sure appreciate you having me on the chance to talk about it, and, uh, Low Power FM is coming.
	It's an idea whose time has come.
	Roger, thank you.
	Thank you.
	Good night.
	Alright.
	We're gonna, uh, go back to open lines here.
	If you want to talk about Pirate Race, fine.
	If you want to talk about something else, that's fine, too.
	But I've wanted to do this broadcast now for a long, long time.
	And now we'll see how much trouble it gets me in.
	Good morning, everybody, from the high desert.
	Where the rain has finally ended for this day.
	Damn El Nino.
	We'll be right back.
	Alright, here we go.
	Open lines.
	Anything you want to talk about?
	Want to continue with this?
	Fine.
	Want to do something else?
	Fine.
	Here we go.
	First time, call our line.
	You're on the air.
	Hello.
	How are you doing there, Art?
	I'm doing okay, sir.
	Where are you?
	Gene calling from Hawaii.
	Hawaii, yes, sir.
	I am a micro-broadcaster.
	A pirate?
	Also a broadcast engineer.
	Are you, well, you seem like, you mean you're a pirate.
	Well, I... Let's be clear here.
	Well, I am a pirate.
	I like to call it public radio service, not pirate radio service.
	Which... But, you know, in view of the fact That there are rules and regulations, and you're breaking them.
	You're a pirate.
	Well, I don't feel I'm breaking them.
	That's why I was hoping I could get in before your guests have gone away, because I have a big question.
	In view of Mr. Stephen Dunifer's success at the court level, does that give us license, us other micro-broadcasters, to continue?
	I don't think so.
	Now, I'm not sure about that, but you've got to remember, even though it was a federal District Court ruling implied, I think, only to Mr. Dunifer's case, but that's a fuzzy, fuzzy area, and I'm not sure.
	I mean, you could take your chances, but the FCC is still doing raids.
	So, while they're not raiding Dunifer, for reasons we discussed earlier, that doesn't mean you're not going to get your door bashed down, so you're taking a chance.
	Yeah, but can I say, hey, FCC, look here, here's the Constitutional United States Freedom of Speech Radio here.
	Um, if Jennifer won in court, uh, you want me to take you to court, too, and I'll win, too, because the precedent has been set.
	Mmm, probably not a national precedent.
	I mean, you can try it.
	Oh, you can try anything.
	But, um, you might still get your door bashed in.
	You might be looking through bars.
	Well, I guess I have to give it a chance.
	Well, I guess I can.
	There's a lot of people in prison right now, um, who, um, have a lot of stories to tell, you know, about how innocent they are.
	Yeah, true, true, true.
	What do you broadcast?
	Well, I broadcast beautiful music, Guy Lombardo, Russ Morgan, stuff like that.
	Elevator music?
	That's what you guys like to call it, people who have no taste in real music.
	No, most of the time, if they were to break the door down, I would give the funny cookie company the excuse that I'm running tests.
	I'm testing the Ticks Cider out here, which I did not connect with them.
	Oops, I accidentally connected the antenna or something like that.
	Well, I've always felt that the best defense is insanity.
	If you have commercial licenses, the best defense is insanity.
	Well, I went crazy.
	I didn't know what I was doing.
	I was overwhelmed with the desire to put this transmitter together.
	I couldn't help myself.
	I'm sorry.
	Have mercy on me.
	Well, I'll bring that one up, but I'm also an amateur radio operator like yourself.
	Well, see, you've got licenses to risk, you know.
	They'll yank that sucker in a second.
	That's not an amateur radio operation type thing.
	Speaking of amateur radio, quick question.
	Yes?
	Do you feel amateur radio, you know, with the loss of Keith Kitten, Is dying, or what do you think about it?
	It's still somewhat of a viable hobby.
	I know it's a kid next door.
	Came over and looked at my equipment, and I was just playing tunes, showing everything, and I said, you know, you've got to learn Stan Morse code.
	It's 13 words a minute to get a license, or five words a minute for a novice.
	Well, yeah, but there's a... Wait a minute now.
	There's a no-code license.
	Where have you been?
	Well, but he can't operate the, you know, the HF band, so he can't get up there and talk across the whole world.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	I know.
	You are raising a really, really interesting question.
	Listen on the air, and he's right.
	know what all my computer i know uh... you are raising a really really interesting
	question and all alright that i mean i have competition
	uh... that's right i'll listen on the air and uh... he's right
	the state of him radio in america in the world is uh... a little tenuous i'd
	Look, I love ham radio, and if you watch my studio camps, you can see my ham rig in the background.
	I'm on ham radio a lot.
	I'm a radio freak, total freak, right?
	So I love it.
	But he's right.
	Times are a-changin'.
	When I began with ham radio, I built my own equipment.
	I built Heath Kids, I built homebrew equipment, you know, stuff you really put together yourself.
	Those days are over and gone, and You really, with very few exceptions, cannot build the kind of equipment that is being used today.
	You've got to buy it.
	That's one.
	Two is the Internet.
	The Internet now allows you to go around the world, talk to anybody in any country, and more than talk to them, see them.
	You can have video conference calling going all over the world.
	I do it all the time.
	A competitor to Ham Radio.
	Now, where Ham Radio is going, I don't know.
	It may be that one day it will change or the FCC will finally give auction the frequencies off to somebody else or something.
	Some of that's already occurred, frankly.
	I hope not.
	There still should be a technical entry amateur level To encourage people to learn more and become technically proficient.
	And if not ham radio, then what?
	Now, I may be biased because I've been a ham all my life.
	But I hope that it doesn't happen.
	And even though I've got access to the Internet and I can go roaming around the world and talk and even see people that I'm talking to, it doesn't stop me from getting on the ham rig.
	But, you know, maybe I'm Old broken bones.
	We'll see.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Good morning.
	How you doing, Art?
	I'm doing okay.
	The original quote is, I'm a pirate, I guess, to use the word properly.
	Yeah, I mean, let's not.
	Let's not.
	I don't like to stand around.
	If you're a pirate, you're a pirate.
	Where are you?
	Roughly.
	I'm in the... I'm close to New Jersey, let's put it that way.
	Close to New... Oh, boy.
	You're in a very populated area.
	The problem that I'm having, though, is if this licensing or if anything ever becomes available, the problem that I'm going to be seeing is the frequency available in my area is, like, packed.
	I know.
	I mean, the FM dial from New York City and through New Jersey and probably Philadelphia is just, you know, one end to the other.
	There is no space.
	There's no room at all.
	And down at the 108 area, where everybody, all the pirates, when I say pirates, all the people that Put like, chips together and all that, stay down there, but there's no room.
	No, no more.
	There's nothing there.
	You mean there's so many pirates there?
	Well, there's so many pirates there, but the, uh, we have up our way, there's, um, stations that actually have remotes down this way.
	Uh, they use, uh, you know, there's some kind of link down there.
	So even that is consumed.
	Right.
	And then there's cable down here as well, too.
	What about the low end?
	A lot of pirates, uh, hang out just below the low end.
	Hmm.
	I'm not really sure on that.
	Well, check it out.
	Most radios go down there.
	I mean, that's... I'm not saying do it, mind you.
	I'm just saying.
	Right, right.
	That is... Well, we run a low-watt station down here.
	It's only 5 watts.
	But we put out pretty good.
	I would... When you have a band... I would think... Now, I'm... How many watts?
	5?
	5.
	5.
	I would think, from the FCC's point of view, They would be less inclined... I wonder if they'd be more or less inclined to go after somebody who's broadcasting just outside the FM band, say, just below it, or just above it, versus somebody in the present FM band.
	Well, see, the problem is I don't want to have a problem with a harmonic, a second harmonic, in the aircraft, you know, if I'm down that end.
	That's true.
	That'll really get you in trouble.
	I want to be talking to somebody else, but I mean one of the things I did was when I built my stuff, I put everything to specs.
	How frequently do you broadcast?
	Once a week.
	Well, I think you're a lot less likely to get caught in these 24-hour day operations.
	But I sympathize with you.
	I really do.
	I sympathize with you in an area where there is literally no more room.
	That's my main concern.
	If they ever make the license clear to everybody and they make it where you can actually go on the band, what frequency will be judged?
	That's why I was saying to my guest a little while ago, asking him about allocating a new band for a complete anarchy, which wouldn't bother the present commercial broadcasters.
	And then eventually you'd begin to sell radios that would include that because people would think it was cool.
	Sure.
	Because there'd be so much anarchy there.
	I even thought about that before, going on like a VHF frequency, but then you're asking for trouble.
	Well, you are, but if you're going to make a petition for rulemaking, why not try and carve out a little VHF or UHF area where people can do that?
	Okay.
	Just a thought.
	Alright, well thank you very much for the call, and I Sympathize with you in areas like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York.
	The band is packed.
	Where would the Pirates go?
	It's a very good question.
	East of the Rockies, you're on air.
	Good morning.
	Good morning, Art.
	Upstate New York, I'm John.
	Yes, John.
	Okay, uh, really I want to talk about Ham TV.
	Okay.
	And first I will say that I, uh, my voice is a little hoarse, I've been fighting a cold, uh, years back when I was a kid, oh, probably 1958 or so, you know, I fooled around with little AM transmitters.
	And I remember when I used crystal radios, living in an apartment, there wasn't much room to put up a
	wire or something, so I remember hooking it up to the telephone,
	to the finger stop on the phone.
	Oh, that's right. It acts as an antenna. Right, so when I built my first little,
	probably two, three watt transmitter, I got the same idea, well why not try that?
	And I found out that I could go and trace the wires underground
	for miles.
	Well, at least a mile, two miles probably.
	Something like that.
	You'd find spots you couldn't hear anything.
	And the closer you held the radio to the ground...
	You would be able to hear, you know, I was playing music and stuff like that.
	Well, that's underground lines.
	Now, it's really effective in above ground.
	Yeah, but some of those lines, no doubt, are going into people's homes also.
	Oh, absolutely.
	It was probably radiating all over.
	I never did check to see, you know, how great it was working.
	Drives the phone company nuts.
	I am assuming it did.
	You know, tonight, you're talking about Lafayette Radio.
	You're talking Heathcote.
	I worked for both of them.
	You remember the Lafayette that he was talking about?
	Yeah.
	I used to work for him as a technician.
	Did you really?
	And I worked for Heath as a technician.
	There's another case where you work for Heath as a technician.
	You had to be good.
	I think you can imagine that.
	Because you can imagine what kind of stuff would come in that wouldn't work.
	Because it was wired wrong.
	But not only would it not be... That must have been a really frustrating job.
	It was, but one thing that I learned after working... I worked for Lafayette for many years, and then I worked for Heath, and I was all stumbling on one thing, and one of the other technicians says to me, hey, don't rely on the band on the diode being on the right end.
	Well, you check it with an ohmmeter?
	Yeah.
	But you don't pay attention.
	You're just looking for funk to back.
	That's right.
	But in a brand new item that never worked, you can't assume anything.
	No.
	But some of these guys wanted to be hams, but what stopped them was the fact that they couldn't do the code.
	Well, I was lucky.
	It came very easily to me.
	Some people can play musical instruments, some people can't.
	That's right.
	But anyway, aside from that, let me tell you, ham television.
	Some people, if you live in a big city especially, you may want to look for channel 60 on your TV.
	In the cable position.
	Yup.
	In the CATV.
	Yup.
	And you're likely in a big city to pick up ham television.
	Yup.
	Now that's licensed.
	Oh yes.
	But let me tell you a story that happened that I did way back.
	I was transmitting in Long Island, in New York City, in Queens actually.
	Back, oh, probably 1965.
	Uh, something like that.
	I ran about 500 watts.
	Oh my god.
	On 439.25, which is, would be channel 60 on, you know, cable, and the handbag.
	Right.
	Now, you want to call it piracy because probably I very seldom would I identify.
	Because who's watching, you know?
	And we used to play gags, my friends and I, all of my friends, ham and non-ham.
	I had antennas up for, you know, miles around, all aimed at me.
	So I would be, you know, on the phone with them or whatever, on the radio, and they'd be watching me.
	Really?
	Now, we used to play gags with this.
	And I'll tell you, now think of this going, you've got to think of the time frame going back to 1965, when people didn't even know what VCRs were.
	They were just coming out then, you know?
	And I would, it was a girl that I was interested in.
	Yeah, I never like to ask girls out.
	I always like to sort of, you know, you don't want rejection.
	You know what I mean?
	Yes.
	So a friend of mine knew this girl.
	Hey, would you like to go for a ride by summer night?
	Yeah, sure.
	So this guy knew this girl.
	And he says, oh, she gets in the car and he's complaining he's got a toothache.
	So I make believe like I'm taking him to the dentist.
	But he didn't go to the dentist.
	He went back to my house.
	He drove around for a little while, and pulled out... I talked to him on the radio first, like I was making a phone call.
	Yeah.
	Is he ready yet?
	Because I'm coming to pick him up at the dentist.
	And as I'm doing this, she's amazed that I'm talking to him from the car, right?
	Yeah.
	I pull out a little 5-inch TV, which in those days had just come out.
	That's right.
	A little transistor TV.
	Sure.
	Put it in her lap.
	Pull up this antenna that looked like a measuring tape.
	And turn it on, and there he is.
	And my friend is working on his mouth with a pair of pliers.
	Oh my God!
	We did all kinds of stuff like this.
	Now, I took her out the next night.
	Listen, we're going to have to break this real quick.
	Before I could pick her up for the next night, I had to explain to her mother what had happened.
	She didn't believe her.
	I'm certain of it.
	I really appreciate your call, sir.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I've done some of the same sort of stuff.
	Heathkit.
	Heathkit, for those of you who don't know, is now, as far as I know, not in business.
	But in the early years, they manufactured kits for ham operators.
	And of course, frequently, very frequently, people who would buy Heathkit had never built anything electronic in their life.
	And some of the kits that were built were absolutely Beyond belief.
	I mean, just people did horrible things.
	And then, as a last ditch opportunity, the HeathKid company would allow you to send your HeathKid back to them, and they would straighten it out for you.
	And to me, it's unimaginable to have been a technician at the HeathKid company, and they would be on a daily basis laying these kits in front of you that had been built by people who had no idea what they were doing.
	And you would have to make it right.
	I can't imagine that job.
	It would be a nightmare.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air, hi.
	Hi Art, this is Hurricane Frank in San Diego, but I'm listening to you on KFRE, 50,000 watts of microphone melting power.
	From Fresno, 940 in Fresno.
	It's a very strong radio station.
	Yes, of course it is.
	I just want to talk about pirate radio going to AM.
	As you know, it's very, very powerful.
	Much more powerful than FM, especially at night.
	Yes, and it's just amazing that I'm actually picking up KFRE.
	No, it's not.
	That's 50,000 watts north of you.
	You want to talk amazing?
	Try WOAI in San Antonio.
	Try KSTB in Minneapolis-St.
	Paul.
	Try some of those.
	You'll hear them with a good antenna.
	Yeah, but even with a good Walkman, I have a little Sony Walkman that has AM stereo capability.
	So I have AMAX.
	And I don't know if that has anything to do as far as pulling in, but on the AM stereo mode, but gee, it's amazing.
	I could pull you every all the way up in Oregon.
	I can pull you in our station.
	What is it?
	K-E-X.
	K-E-X, Portland?
	Yes.
	And they're very powerful.
	I mean, it's amazing how powerful AM is, especially at night time.
	And it's a shame that FM just doesn't hit the gas, but there are advantages to FM.
	One of them, for example, is within the city of coverage, FM will go through buildings that AM doesn't begin to penetrate.
	So people who are working in buildings late at night and so forth and so on can hear the
	FM and can't hear any AM.
	So if you're out driving or if you have a good boom box or a good small radio like I
	have a little Sony Walkman and I can pick you up at night time walking down town.
	I know, but try going inside a metal concrete building in San Diego, and you're not going to hear a KFRE then.
	No, you've got a point there.
	There has to be some kind of improvement there, but there's some sort of trade-off.
	Look, AM is wonderful.
	I love it.
	There's nothing like a 50,000-watt clear just screaming out across the country and beyond.
	But then there's also a place for FM.
	They're both fun.
	Yeah, and one other thing, Art, I just want to say, I remember listening to you when I used to live up in Sacramento, Talk 650 KST.
	There was a morning talk show that you were on, that you were interviewed.
	That's right.
	That was very interesting.
	Well, I'm still on KST.
	Yes, that's cool.
	That is a really cool station up there.
	They're not as powerful as some, but they do a pretty good job because you can pick them up as a course.
	Well, I can only hope that all of my commercial broadcast affiliates, and there are many, have a good sense of humor with regard to this morning's program.
	Well, you keep up the good work, Art Bell, and we all love you.
	Take care out there.
	Yeah.
	Hope you've got a good sense of humor out there.
	All right, well, in some markets, we will continue with yet another hour of open line, unscreened, unregulated radio anarchy in the middle of the night.
	I'm Art Bell.
	this is close to close to a half all right i want to say something
	as room at tail end of this uh... part show I support, I absolutely support, and always have, and it's one of the reasons I did this program, I really support the idea of some kind of rulemaking that would allow people to broadcast.
	However, I am realistic about it.
	And number one, I don't think they can be commercial broadcast stations.
	And I'm being realistic here.
	The commercial broadcast stations will go out of their minds, and I wouldn't blame them, if every time Dick and Harry down the street is going to put something on the air and start selling commercials.
	So, I don't think that's going to wash.
	And I don't think 100 watts at 100 feet is going to wash.
	This is just my personal opinion.
	I think something probably along the lines of 10 watts or 20 watts, with an antenna at a moderate height, probably not more than about 50 feet.
	Something that cannot be licensed and sold as a commodity, that an individual and only an individual would operate.
	Something like that, I think, may be possible.
	But even then, there's a lot to work out.
	But I want to tell you that I am very much in favor of it.
	A sort of a local anarchy.
	But of course, it cannot interfere, and should not interfere, with commercial licensed broadcasting.
	So I think there's a place for it, and I will fight for it in any way I can.
	And I think that broadcasters also should be in support of it at that level.
	But I'm telling you right now, you try to do rule-making that's going to go after the broadcasters commercially, or seriously threaten their ability to get ratings, and you're going to be up against a brick wall.
	So, realistically, I think it can be done.
	But my position would be it's going to have to be done at a very local, low-power level.
	And so, you know, that I support.
	I really support that.
	I think it would be neat for the American public I think it would be good for the First Amendment.
	I think a lot of things.
	And so I support that, in case you wondered.
	Oh, what's for the Rockies?
	You're on the air.
	Hello.
	Yeah.
	Go ahead and talk to me.
	The radio's down.
	This is John in Cupertino.
	Hi, John.
	It just reminded me of one night last spring.
	We were out in the mountains gold mining, cocaine-ing and so forth.
	And we had a big gin radio with us.
	Oh, yes.
	Over probably so many miles from Sacramento, we couldn't pick up you from San Francisco or Sacramento.
	Right.
	That was when the Haley's comma was up, the best I ever saw it.
	And we finally got you on the Baygen and it was from Four Corners, I think it was 14th Street.
	Came in clear as the bell.
	You just never know.
	Yeah, that's the nature of radio.
	I mean, some nights You'll be getting one station very well, and the next night conditions are changed if you're out in boondocks and you're getting something else from a great distance.
	And there is still a place.
	Let me explain to the audience, sir.
	Thank you for that.
	Let me explain to the audience a little bit.
	The original reason that there were very high power AM stations in America, and I suppose throughout the rest of the world it is no different, probably even more of a reason to still have them, The original reason was that there were a lot of areas in America that were unserved by any local radio station.
	And so the only hope anybody had of hearing radio was once the sun went down and the ionosphere changed properties, they would be able to pick up stations at a great distance.
	And that is still true today.
	There are many areas, particularly out here in the West, Where you could drive hundreds of miles, and if there were not very powerful stations, you would hear nothing.
	So there is still a need for these large 50,000 watt virtual clear channel stations.
	Even that concept is slowly kind of disappearing, but I hope it doesn't, because unless America is concreted from one end to the other, possible someday, not in my lifetime, And there are local radio stations everywhere, then we still need the big ones.
	And I would be very sad indeed to see them disappear.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello, Arsh.
	This is Sluggo from Richmond, California.
	Sluggo?
	Yes.
	Sluggo?
	Sluggo.
	That's an interesting name.
	Yes, and I just wanted to, I don't know if you'd heard this, but I just wanted to pass on the information that I heard on KGO Radio Wednesday afternoon.
	Yes?
	That Steve Schiff had died.
	Oh, Congressman, yes, I have heard that.
	Oh, okay.
	Yes, he passed away, I'm sorry to say.
	He had a very aggressive form of cancer, and we knew that was coming.
	Yes.
	So, another sad death.
	Yes, it is.
	I knew him.
	He was a really fine man.
	He was, as was Sherry Adamek.
	Yes.
	And there's been a lot of problem in the UFO community.
	Yes, there has.
	Well, thank you.
	I just wanted to make sure that you... I'm glad you mentioned it.
	Thank you.
	Yes, I was aware of it.
	Very sad.
	And it brings up a topic that I'd rather not venture into right at the moment.
	We're actually doing a lot of interesting research in this area.
	First-time callers, area 702-727-1222.
	Thank you.
	First-time caller line, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Good morning, Art.
	Yes, sir.
	This is Ed from Oklahoma, California.
	Hi, Ed.
	I just had a couple... Okay, turn the radio off.
	Turn it off, number one.
	There we go.
	Thank you.
	I thought I had an interesting thing.
	I've been a musician for years, and I lived in Ancaster, Wyoming, for a long time.
	We were playing for a lawn party back in the early fifties, and in between a song we could hear talking, couldn't figure out where it was coming from, and all of a sudden it was coming from my amplifier.
	It was the signing of the Japanese Peace Treaty in San Francisco, and I just wonder how that happens to come over just an amplifier for an instrument.
	This was when?
	Back in the early fifties.
	Probably 51, 52, somewhere in there.
	Well, the answer is radio frequency, RF.
	If you are in its immediate field, or sometimes with odd circumstances, even if you're not in the immediate field, can be picked up and modulated.
	The old amp can be modulated into a guitar amp or, you know, whatever.
	so that's how it does happen or or
	we're really amazed we're getting callers who could tell which people's
	broadcasting and yeah you can live in your one
	uh... or you might have uh... had a length of wire between the guitar the app that was resonant on the
	frequency being broadcast to the other day
	That was it.
	Yup.
	We used to get KLMA for a long time back.
	They're two nice and strong out of Oklahoma City.
	Oklahoma City, of course, 1520.
	But then all of a sudden, later years, it sort of faded out.
	I don't know if they decreased their... Well, I can still get KLMA here just fine.
	As a matter of fact, KLMA is heard out into the Hawaiian Islands, where it used to be.
	What's happening is, I just gave a little dissertation there on $50,000 clears.
	There are not exactly clears anymore.
	There are 1As, which are pretty well protected.
	And there are, let's see, are there actually any clears left?
	There really aren't, that I know of.
	But that's how it was done.
	I mean, there was virtually nobody else on the frequency.
	And so, through the years, they've licensed local things, and it messes things up, actually.
	I just wanted to congratulate you.
	I'm sort of a new time listener, a friend of mine tuned in to you earlier this year, and I really appreciate your eclectic approach.
	It's eclectic, right.
	Thank you very much.
	What I do is really not the same thing every night.
	I'm liable to do about anything, and that keeps me from getting bored.
	Now, on any given night, you may love or hate what I'm doing.
	You might find it riveting or boring.
	And so, tune in tomorrow night.
	You know, I'll be doing something else.
	As a matter of fact, tomorrow night, David Oates is going to be here.
	Tomorrow night, we're going to do reverse speech on Kathleen Willey.
	The 60 minutes appearance of Willey.
	Dr. Malin.
	Oh, is that going to be interesting?
	Dr. Malin is the, in effect, contractor who is contracted to NASA.
	To do the Mars, the new Mars pictures, and we've got quite a bit of audio on Dr. Malin.
	And Major Ed Dames.
	A lot of you have been waiting a long time for that.
	I'm curious.
	And I have refrained from asking.
	So tomorrow night, reverse speech.
	This and more.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Morning, Mark.
	Hi.
	This is Johnny down in Ground Zero again.
	Yes, sir.
	I had a couple of things I wanted to relay to you that led into last night's guest, Daniel.
	Yes.
	And both of these things are kind of verifiable, I would say.
	Are you familiar with Edgar Mitchell?
	I've interviewed Edgar many times.
	Yeah.
	And after his flight, you know, where he had his spiritual experience, Apollo 14.
	Yeah.
	He became involved in, I think, one of the sponsors of an outfit called Institute for Noetic Sciences?
	Yes.
	In Berkeley?
	That's correct.
	And one of the, I guess the offshoots you might say, was a program that's aired on PBS.
	It's called Thinking Aloud.
	I don't know if you ever saw it or not.
	Okay, where are we going here?
	Okay, well what I wanted to get around to you was there was a guest on this show.
	And usually the people who came to the institute became guests on the show.
	This guy was an anthropologist or an archaeologist.
	And he said that, you know, they have a game that they play at the Society of Archaeology, and it's worldwide.
	And if you come up with something that doesn't go along with the program, well, you have to suppress it.
	And he said there was over 100 sites worldwide.
	That they had found, not he himself, but different people had, that had proof of civilized societies that went back 30 to 100 million years.
	Sure.
	And one of them was this tunnel they dug through the mountains when they were putting the railroad from east to west.
	Yes, sir.
	And that one was supposed to be around 30 million.
	Now he has been disqualified by this society because he didn't play the game.
	Well, look, I don't doubt that goes on for a second.
	Thank you.
	I believe firmly that there is going to be shortly evidence, finally admitted to, of prior civilizations on probably every continent on Earth.
	I am coming more and more to embrace that concept.
	Now, it's almost like Planet of the Apes.
	You remember Planet of the Apes?
	Do you remember why the apes suppressed any contemporary knowledge of what had been?
	All of you who remember that, hold your hands up.
	It's because mankind had destroyed itself.
	And the apes, of course, wanted none of the knowledge that led to that destruction to affect their civilization, which was progressing in a very different way.
	So, is it not possible that what that caller just had to say about the suppression of archaeological information that would open up a very different paradigm would be suppressed for exactly the same reason?
	Possible.
	First time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hey, Art Bell.
	This is Travis from Ohio.
	Hello there, Travis.
	You're going to have to yell at us.
	You're not real loud.
	I'm on the telephone.
	Sorry about that.
	Oh, okay.
	Go ahead, Travis.
	I was wondering if you heard on the AP News, the NASA, about how they had said that the El Nino was causing I'm sorry, I'm a little nervous.
	El Nino is causing what?
	Causing the days to be unexplainably longer.
	No, I hadn't heard that.
	I can imagine a lot of effects of El Nino, but I cannot imagine it actually lengthening the day.
	In what sense?
	You mean more sunlight?
	i guess the length of the day arm
	i'm sorry i i wish i could help you out but i don't i can't imagine not a record on the wall anything goes you
	know it'll turn out i'm somehow screwed up but
	how it only you know actually affect time
	I mean, that is what you're saying, right?
	The actual length of the day?
	We have 24 hours in a day.
	And I cannot imagine how that could occur.
	Maybe they were talking about something else.
	I'm sorry, I don't know.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Hello, Art.
	Super Dave, Anchorage, Alaska.
	Hello, Super Dave.
	How are you doing?
	Pretty good, pretty good.
	Last time I talked to you, you were up here at K99 last summer.
	That's right.
	I've got a few things I want to say.
	I, myself, have dabbled a little in micro, you know, tiny, those little FM transmitters that are so tiny they run on a 9-volt battery.
	Yes.
	And that was fun.
	But what I've been doing lately, and it's all legal and it's really neat, is public access TV.
	On cable?
	On cable, and free TV.
	Sometimes they even loan you equipment, which is pretty neat.
	And you can get your views out in a different medium.
	I know it.
	You know, let me tell you something.
	It's about damn time that cable came through on their promise.
	We haven't had cable TV in America for how long now?
	I mean, for lots and lots of years.
	The original promise of cable television was that it would become an interactive medium.
	And that there would be lots of local access and all that sort of stuff.
	And for years, they ignored it.
	They ignored it.
	I mean, why, for example, isn't cable TV carrying talk shows?
	Radio talk shows.
	You know how they have channels up where they have a billboard and they've got music behind it?
	Right.
	What the hell's the matter with those people?
	It should be talk shows.
	It should be something interactive.
	They're really missing the boat.
	We actually have a couple different channels that are like that, and they broadcast assembly meetings, you know, local city assembly meetings.
	That's great.
	Other ones that broadcast advertising.
	If you want to pay some fee, you can actually advertise.
	And it's just like a scrolling, you know, scrolling photos that keep changing.
	And we actually have real estate that you can just view right there on the cable.
	But the public access... Listen, I have a break.
	Uh, do you want to hold on?
	Sure, no problem.
	Alright, then hold on through the break.
	Uh, we'll be right back.
	This is Coast to Coast AM.
	yes about time cable came through on with their original promise
	nothing else all that thought you've given me is
	conscious I guess if I were walking in your shoes
	I wouldn't wear enough you and your friends
	were worried about me I haven't had much fun
	shouting flowers on the wall that don't bother me at all
	playing solitaire with the jackals
	it's dear what smoking cigarettes
	and watching cats alright you're back on the air again sir
	Okay, yeah, I was just talking about Public Access TV.
	I wanted to tell you a quick little story.
	You'd figure up here in Alaska, being in the vast, vast wilderness and area, you know where Girdwood is, right?
	Yes.
	Little tiny town, really not that many people know.
	It's kind of tucked in the mountains, so no radio stations really get back in there too well.
	Right.
	From Anchorage.
	These guys decided to put together a little 3 watt station, and I think they started at 1 and eventually bumped it up to 3.
	Well, I don't know what happened, but somehow the FCC decided to come in and shut them down.
	Now the funny thing is, just recently these guys have really closed their offices down and scaled it down to this really small monitoring station right here in Anchorage.
	Really hard to believe why they would just all of a sudden crack the whip on a little, you know, town.
	Well, let me tell you something.
	It depends, for example, to some degree on the attitude of the FCC field office.
	And the one in Anchorage has been traditionally very tough.
	Very tough on any sort of illicit broadcast at all.
	And so we do have a lot of aircraft up here.
	We have to really watch their band.
	So, you just answered your own question.
	Right.
	Well, I wanted to ask you real fast.
	Isn't 25 watts on AM the legal limit for broadcasts that are licensed?
	Hell no.
	No, it's 100 milliwatts.
	I get a lot of those little catalogs out of the back of the popular communications and popular electronics magazines.
	You look at a lot of those little clandestine catalogs.
	And I get a bunch of them in the mail, and they were offering a 25-watt built, ready-to-go tube station.
	Right.
	Well, you know, there's nothing illicit or illegal about having the equipment.
	It's using it.
	Right.
	That's where you get in trouble.
	Exactly.
	All right.
	Well, I wanted to, I'm going to dig up, because I have somewhere on tape where I had called you about three years ago, and I had done a little prediction, about three or four years ago, I had done a little prediction.
	And I had predicted that the jet stream was going to lower itself from coming up here in Alaska and up in Canada.
	It was going to push its way down.
	You get that tape and play it for me.
	And I'm going to try and find it for you.
	All right.
	Take care.
	I know certainly Ed Dames made that prediction, and it came true.
	Say what you will, and much is said, of course, about Ed Dames, but many of his predictions have come true.
	Some haven't.
	Some have yet to manifest, if they're going to.
	And, let's see, is there really, are there really any that... I'm not sure I could say there are any that absolutely have not occurred.
	But, uh, I know there are quite a few that have.
	And the jet stream was, uh, definitely one of them.
	Uh, mutations of frogs and fish, that was definitely one of them.
	Another one of them.
	Very seriously difficult, uh, predictions to make that came true.
	East of the Iraqis, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	This is Ken from Florida.
	Yes, sir.
	I assume that you support the Constitution of the United States, do you?
	I do.
	And you note that in the Constitution of the United States, the authority of the national government into affairs within a state is limited to the Commerce Clause.
	Yeah, 10th Amendment stuff.
	Well, it's not the 10th Amendment.
	Well, you're going to argue it using the 10th Amendment.
	The point is that the very act that the SEC is operating under only allows them to regulate interstate, not intrastate.
	I know.
	And it's time that we got our fingers out of our butts and stop the national government from doing all the illegal things.
	Just a real simple example, and I'm not arguing that we shouldn't abide by the concepts therein.
	Well, okay, let me stop you.
	Are you arguing that the Communications Act of 1934 is unconstitutional?
	Well, if it says interstate, it's not unconstitutional, but the enforcement is unconstitutional when it comes in and acts upon things that don't go beyond the borders of the state.
	Now, just to give you an example, there's a case called Dyett v. Turner, D-Y-E-T-T.
	It's 1968, I think it's 435 or 439 Pacific 2nd.
	It's out of Utah.
	It's the Supreme Court of Utah.
	In that case, they spend about 14, 15 pages going through the entire history of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and show very clearly That according to any common sense and legal perception of the facts, they were never ratified.
	But it doesn't make any difference.
	Another case says it doesn't, the Supreme Court said... Look, you live in America where if you really want to argue these fine legal points, and maybe win, who knows, you can get an attorney, find an attorney, or a team of them, and take this thing all the way up.
	How about a little support from the talk radio host, Art?
	I give you all the support.
	I mean, are you or are you not?
	That's what America's all about.
	Then let's tell the FCC to shove it back into the District of Criminals when it doesn't go beyond state borders.
	Well, if you want to, look, if you want to fight that fight, you go right ahead.
	I don't want to fight that fight because I happen to believe that without that regulation, we would, with regard to the FCC, we would Uh, live in a place where we couldn't understand anything, where commercial broadcasting is being clobbered.
	I'm not for that.
	I'm sorry, I'm not... I disagree with you.
	Why not let the states... Why not let the states license broadcasts within the state?
	Okay, fine.
	Okay, fine.
	Well, because broadcasting by its very nature goes over state lines.
	I don't want to get into this argument with you.
	You have the ability to go fight that fight.
	The point is, if you don't fight it, aren't we all going to lose?
	I mean, look, lots of people fight fights that Art Bell doesn't fight.
	Like the income tax being illegally enforced.
	I don't want to get into the specific issues.
	I simply want to get in the context of when people allow it to happen.
	Well, look, sir, you go right ahead.
	I don't share the same belief that you do.
	So, that's what America... National government, Art.
	Not a federal government.
	Okay.
	I appreciate your call.
	It's like people who call up and say, 16th was never ratified, you know, so the whole income tax thing is not legal.
	I don't want to fight that fight either.
	I want revision of our tax system.
	I'd love to see a flat tax.
	Don't think it'll happen.
	It'd take the power out of the hands of the Washington bureaucrats, and that's all they've got, really, is the power to try and modify social behavior with tax adjustment to tax regulation, let's put it that way.
	But you're welcome to go fight that fight.
	But don't tell me that I have to fight your fight, because I may not believe as you believe.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, Eric.
	Brian, I can barely hear you.
	You must have your phone on your chin.
	Oh, wait.
	I was using the computer to dial it.
	Sorry.
	Hold on.
	Yeah.
	OK, Eric.
	Sorry about that.
	I was on your web page.
	Was it in your biography?
	Yes.
	I think that I have to refrain from giving you specific instructions because I really
	don't want to get in more trouble than I am in already.
	there are lots of uh... are you you're on the internet right
	You said you had a computer?
	Go to one of the search engines, Yahoo, whatever, and just enter Pirate Radio.
	Oh yeah, I've done that before.
	I've got a couple of... Well, you don't need me to tell you what to do down there.
	Okay?
	Okay, I enjoy your show a lot.
	Your webpage is great.
	Thank you.
	It is very different, and those of you who would like, take a look.
	I think you'll enjoy it.
	www.artbell.com.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hey, Art.
	Hey, yes.
	Surprised I got through.
	Everybody is.
	Actually, I've got to talk to you about... I hear you're interested in Bigfoot and Sasquatches.
	Of course.
	Well, I've got some interesting news for you, by the way.
	My name is Eric.
	I really don't want to tell you where I'm from because of the information I'm about to give you.
	All right.
	Eric, from an undefined geographic location.
	They were setting up an expedition here about, oh, about a month ago.
	Basically, a local guy, he had a kind of a small kind of Wonders of the Universe type of store kind of going on, a museum, and he was setting up an expedition.
	What was the goal of the expedition?
	Basically, he basically said that he had proof that they existed and the expedition was going to go out and find them.
	And then do what?
	Capture or kill?
	No, neither or.
	Basically just observe.
	He didn't want anything to do with any negative aspects of killing them.
	Not even taking pictures.
	It was just an expedition to go out and see them.
	Well, it got cancelled.
	Out of the blue, it just got cancelled.
	It turns out that I ran into a friend of mine up here.
	Him and his family know of an exact spot where they, I don't know, live or whatever it may be.
	Now, I haven't seen this for myself.
	I'm kind of a skeptic myself.
	I like to have an open mind, but the stories that I've heard, and I actually went over to this guy's house, and he had about seven or ten family members out there telling stories of these experiences they had with him, and it was very interesting.
	The looks on the faces of these people and the way they were telling the story, it really made you believe that they were really telling you the truth.
	Well, and there's a great probability these creatures do exist.
	Now, why did they cancel the expedition?
	I don't understand.
	That's a good question.
	Me and my friend were actually going to sign up for it and go out and take a look because, you know, I've got a lot of family in this area.
	I didn't grow up around here, but I've got a lot of family in this area and I had never heard anybody say they'd ever seen anything like that before.
	According to this very large article in the local newspaper, that there were a lot of locals that have seen it, and there were actually hinted towards places in the local forest that they had actually seen them, and some of the local ranchers and whatnot have actually... Okay, there's only one part of what you said that doesn't make sense to me.
	I can understand that they would not, that they might, on moral grounds, not want to capture, and certainly not to kill a Bigfoot.
	Not to take photographs?
	Oh, come on.
	Well, I mean, instead of telling tall stories, you can come back and say, here, look at this.
	Yeah, I'm sure that that, but from what I've been hearing about the people who actually have that experience, by the way, I'm set up to actually go out with one of my friends who actually kind of introduced it to me and told me the stories.
	He's actually going to take me out there and show me where these supposedly are.
	Well, for God's sakes, take a camera.
	Well, you know, from what I understand, it sounds really awkward.
	For me, as an open-minded person, I kind of find it hard to believe, but they say that they actually can sense your intentions.
	No, no, no.
	I don't reject that as a possibility, but maybe one of them would allow.
	A photograph to be taken.
	I mean, look at Patterson Films.
	It's possible, but you know, when they've gone out there fishing and whatnot, they've had experiences with them and they say you can smell them from a mile away.
	That's what they say.
	I mean, they say there's no other smell like them.
	They say they actually, when they go out hunting, see, it's a good spot to go hunting out there.
	And they used to go hunting out there a lot.
	Well, every time they'd ever take a gun out there, something bad would happen.
	I find this one hard to believe.
	If you actually see one, communicate to me and I'll abide by whatever conditions are
	set up and I'll go out and look at it myself.
	Most definitely.
	Like I said, I'm going to be set up to go out here any day, go out and check this out.
	I'd love to see it myself and if I can get some proof myself, believe you me, you're
	going to be the first one I'm going to tell.
	Alright, believe you me, it'll be the first website it'll go up on too.
	And I mean, boom, like that.
	I think there's a pretty good probability that a creature exists, or continues to exist, or exists in some sort of parallel universe.
	And occasionally things get mixed up and things slide through and find portals and, and or any of the above, but that there is a reason for all these stories.
	I think that's possible.
	Call the wildcard line.
	Area 702-727-1295.
	Arizona?
	Well, now see, I had to bleep that out.
	You're not allowed to use your last name, uh, Mel, on the air.
	Um, but uh, let's start again.
	Your name is Mel and you're in Flagstaff.
	Yeah, Mesa.
	Oh, Mesa, Arizona.
	Okay.
	Are we still on?
	I can talk about any subject?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	I heard a young man just a few minutes ago, when I was looking at the radio, talking about his prediction of the jet stream moving south, I believe.
	Right.
	Just recently, I understand some winds have never been recorded that high before.
	That's right.
	Oh, listen.
	We have had winds on mountaintops.
	Yeah.
	In the Northeast, record-breaking winds that have never been recorded.
	Islands, as you point out, we've had typhoons that have reached record proportions.
	Correct.
	The weather is changing, my friend.
	Oh, no kidding.
	By the way, I want to interject right here, a little admiration particle.
	You've been an old friend for many years when I was working on Security Post at Nike, and thank God you were there.
	Well, thank you.
	I hope this young man is aware that when he says that move, that he rules in the possibility of moving down.
	This is occurring in several places, and where it cuts you down, all hell breaks loose.
	Oh, I know.
	Okay, one other thing, and then let's make room for somebody else.
	Okay?
	Okay.
	Last night I was listening to this young gentleman on your I'm going to get the book.
	being an ambassador, not an ambassador, but uh...
	That was the night before.
	Yeah, and then boy.
	And he was a copy editor for the Los Angeles Times. Correct.
	Very impressive, excellent show.
	I'm going to get the book, I couldn't get through to you, but uh...
	Gosh, the question I would like to ask him, and I guess the answer may be in the book, is that
	perhaps when you do converse with an alien, the wrong thing to ask him would be,
	where are you from I'm pretty sure that you would get a more precise answer if you asked, when are you from?
	Alright, thank you.
	Well, if you believe in Einstein's laws, then that might be a more appropriate question presently.
	If indeed the Speed of light can never be exceeded, either by trickery, as in jumping across, or in simply exceeding it and breaking a law that anything cannot be broken.
	If that law stands, then it's a pretty sad situation for us, because we're going to have to stay home.
	Now, that doesn't mean only on Earth, but frankly, for human beings, most of the planets in our system are not that You're not allowed to give your last name on the air, dear.
	What is your first name only, please?
	the lights uh... in some manner uh... through trickery or reality may be
	exceeded otherwise were were not call toll-free one eight hundred six one eight eight two
	five five how you gave your work now everybody's suddenly having
	their last name are you not allowed to give your last name on their dear
	what is your first name only please all right joy where are you
	Santa Cruz, California.
	Okay, SEO country.
	Joy, turn your radio off, if you would, please.
	That's the next rule.
	And there you go.
	What's on your mind?
	Well, I was calling to discuss one I noticed that you were having on your website, talking to Silver Ravenwolf.
	Yes.
	To ride a silver broomstick?
	Yes.
	And I wanted to compliment you for interviewing someone who is really someone who understands witchcraft and neo-paganism.
	I appreciate that.
	You know me, I'll do anything until they come and get me.
	That could be later today.
	I seriously doubt that considering I'm a neo-pagan.
	I wouldn't do that.
	I've listened to your show for a long time.
	Find your interviews very fascinating.
	And was hoping that we might hear an interview with the Druid.
	Oh, I'll see what I can do.
	I'll tell you what.
	My program is over, so my little Neopagan Joy, you're going to get to say goodnight.
	Say goodnight to everybody.
	Goodnight to everybody and across the nation, Art Bell.
	That's it.
	Good night.
	That's all from the High Desert this night.
	goodnight all pat murphy is president
	of the association of clandestine radio enthusiasts 1995 to the present time.
	Now what does that mean?
	Clandestine Radio Enthusiasts?
	That'd be a bunch of people that broadcast without License.
	Either in the AM, FM broadcast band, or on shortwave, or maybe even on television.
	It would include all of those folks.
	He has written articles for Popular Communications, Monitoring Times, and other hobby communication magazines about pirate and clandestine radio phenomena.
	Past president of the National Association of Radio Talk Show Hosts.
	Wow!
	1991 to 1992.
	Political Analyst for WAVY-TV, Channel 10, NBC in Norfolk, Virginia, 1986 to the present time.
	Director of Operations for 4M Communications.
	Operator of a chain of all news stations in Virginia, 1996 to include the present time.
	Operations Manager and Morning Talk show host for WTAR-AM, 790 Norfolk, Virginia.
	...through 1996.
	Operations manager, morning talk show host for WNIS, AM 850 Norfolk, Virginia, 86 through 93.
	Chief administrative aide for the governor of Montana.
	Wow!
	1980 through 1986.
	Owner of WYVA-FM, a 50-kilowatt Youngstown, Virginia, radio station, 76 through 80.
	Noon anchor of WTTG-TV 5 in Washington, D.C.
	and political reporter, 72 through 76.
	United States Marine Corps, 66 through 9, Vietnam Service.
	University of Hawaii, a Bachelor of Science, Political Science degree.
	University of Montana, MS in Government Administration.
	Here is our man, Pat Murphy, to talk about Clandestine or pirate, if you will, broadcasting.
	Pat, with this much commercial broadcasting in your background, even in your present bio, how can you serve as president of such an association?
	Well, the association is, by the way, thanks for having me on.
	Sure.
	After listening to my resume, I realize I can't hold a steady job.
	Nobody in broadcasting does that.
	That's right.
	The Association of Clandestine Radio Enthusiasts is a group of people who, many of us have military backgrounds in communications, but we enjoy listening to pirates and people who seize the airwaves.
	It's not that we promote pirate radio, although the FCC has at times said we promote it, but Then again, in my job as political analyst, I talk about politicians, which doesn't mean I necessarily promote crooked politicians, either.
	Is that how you answer the FCC when they... Oh, absolutely.
	I mean, the fact that the phenomena is there, and that we have a newsletter that... I'd have to tell you, we probably have at least 200 logins a month.
	Of anywhere from shortwave to FM to TV pirates who simply see the airways, many of them political in nature, who simply want to have a voice about what's going on.
	I'm doing a chancy thing here because next week is going to be, well not next week, following week, is going to be the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Las Vegas, which is just over the hill from me.
	Sure.
	And, as you know, I'm on 400 affiliates nationwide, commercial affiliates.
	And they're going to be listening, I'm sure, very carefully.
	As a matter of fact, I've had several owners of radio stations send me all kinds of faxes here about what we're going to talk about tonight.
	And here's an interesting thing, Pat.
	Most of them are sympathetic to what we're talking about.
	Each one inevitably ends their facts by saying, for God's sakes, don't use my name.
	I'm happy to be one of your affiliates, but God, don't use my name.
	It's funny, I find that the chief engineers of many radio stations are quite sympathetic to the pirates, because for the most part, I have to admit, As a youngster, I had one of those nice little Lafayette turntable amplifiers, and it was in this little aqua green case.
	I put together a little radio station when I was in high school in my basement, and we broadcast to the neighborhood until we really got interested in girls, and then it was a weekend thing.
	I think I've just had a fascination for it ever since, and it's remarkable.
	How many people there are, you can't just say, don't talk about it, and it will go away.
	Just since October 24th of last year, there have been 15 busts by the SEC.
	Yeah, I think there were some real serious ones down in Florida recently, weren't there?
	Oh, well, there was one, in fact, it was Tampa's party pirate in Tampa, where they used a SWAT team of U.S.
	Marshals to go in, which Tampa certainly is overkill.
	The guy had a 100 watt station.
	Most of these stations are 20 watts.
	That's pretty good size.
	100 watts, what, on FM?
	On FM.
	Oh, that's pretty serious.
	Oh, sure.
	100 watt FM station gets out pretty well now.
	I have an affiliate in Tampa, WFLA.
	Yeah.
	They probably are going to be real concerned about somebody doing pirate broadcasts.
	Was it like a 24 hour operation?
	Yes, it was.
	Most of these guys getting busted are doing 24 hours around the clock, but they've got a lot of people involved.
	They're doing something that the local commercial broadcasters have long ago abandoned, and that is that they get the community involved in the station.
	They're talking about local people.
	We've gotten with the consolidation in commercial broadcasting.
	And with consultants who have mediocritized everything in broadcasting, everything is at the lowest common denominator, they take chances.
	They do interesting radio, and the big chains don't do that anymore because they have one national program director who says, well, I'll do it this way, and that's the end of any creativity.
	So I think they are filling a gap in that respect.
	I'm wondering because I know that Bill Kennard of the FCC is interested in this.
	He's opened the door for the Mass Media Bureau to accept petitions.
	There's at least four petitions in front of the FCC now to open up some form of low-power broadcasting.
	I do wonder that if they do legitimize this, how many of these people that are pirates now will in fact get a license?
	It's a good question.
	The very nature of piracy suggests they are not interested in the traditional path to a license, or you might suggest that they would get a license if it was economically feasible.
	In other words, one of the reasons that some people are doing this is because right now to get a commercial broadcast license, well you could probably tell me, how much do you have to spend?
	You know, from the time you have the idea until the thing goes on the air.
	We just built a station here, a 20,000 watt station, where we started from scratch.
	We cleared the land, we built the towers, right from the ground up.
	And it's cost about $850,000.
	And, well, I haven't seen the lawyers bill for last week.
	There you are.
	So that really is one gigantic factor.
	Sure.
	But the other is adventure.
	And the third, I suppose, is doing something illegal and sort of getting away with it.
	Now, I'll tell you right up front, Pat, I have a considerable amount of piracy in my background.
	A lot that I cannot talk about because I'm sure not enough years have gone by.
	Some of which I can talk about.
	But I did a lot of piracy.
	I did a lot of it.
	Every medium that we are discussing, FM, AM, television, and shortwave, I've done it all.
	And you had fun doing it, too, didn't you?
	Oh, God, I had a blast.
	I really had a blast.
	Unfortunately, I can't talk about it all, because there are some really good stories.
	And unfortunately, I had to hang up my pirate hat.
	I've got too many FCC licenses, and I've got too much to lose now.
	I think what the pirates have found that the commercial broadcasters have lost is that they're having a lot of fun doing this.
	I think it not only spreads over to the listeners.
	I enjoy listening to it.
	There are other aspects.
	We're talking about the micro-power FM broadcasters.
	But there are literally hundreds of shortwave broadcasters who do probably some of the best production I have ever heard on radio, and they're on for 30, 40, 50 minutes, they're off the air, they're gone.
	So there's not only the FM, but there's also the shortwave group that are very, very big.
	As you point out, there's some TV pirates, but they're very small and localized, because TV signals don't get out as well as certainly shortwave or even FM.
	Well, that's... Well, there's something I can't talk about.
	It can be done, believe me.
	Sure.
	It can be done using single-channel modulators and line amplifiers.
	You're just being up on a hill someplace.
	It certainly helps.
	Oh, God, I wish I could.
	I did some television, but I really can't talk about that.
	I'm sure I can.
	I'm sure I'd get busted somehow.
	Are you generally, as president of this association, and as a commercial broadcaster, are you in support, actually in support, of people who violate the law and broadcast on FM or whatever?
	Well, no.
	I just simply enjoy listening and logging what's going on.
	It is a phenomenon that I think that the government has, and they have never in the history of this country, understood that people seek and will be drawn to freedom and freedom of speech.
	And to me, it does seem a bit Hypocritical, if you will, that the government wants to license the electromagnetic spectrum.
	It's kind of like saying you have to pay for sunlight.
	It's not something that I think the government can ultimately control.
	They can control it with threats, but on the other hand... Yeah, but yes and no.
	I mean, you said you've got a 20,000 watt station.
	That's right.
	All right.
	If somebody came along with a big signal, not 20,000 watts, but big enough to be clobbering Some of your coverage area with some sort of blasphemous pirate station, you'd really be ticked.
	Well, but I think that the proper means of dealing with that would be to deal with it as a property right and go through a local court to actually counter that.
	The FCC is serving the function that it was ever intended to do.
	I mean, they're getting into culture control.
	And I'm not a big Howard Stern fan.
	I do find him humorous at times.
	Ah, Howard's funny.
	But I don't think they should be fining him for the language he uses, because you've got a dial on there that turns the radio off.
	That's not the function of the government to tell us what we can listen to, other than maybe just to control the property rights.
	I don't think he paid the fines.
	Actually, they fined the station.
	You can't fine a licensee.
	Have they paid it?
	Well, yeah.
	Really?
	You bet.
	Oh, I thought they were fining that to the death.
	Last I heard, they had paid that fine.
	That was done with.
	Oh, no kidding.
	Has he stopped saying the words?
	Not that I know of, and nor should he.
	I just don't think it's the government's fault.
	In fact, Congress will make no law bridging the right to freedom of speech.
	If you don't like it, don't listen to it.
	Yeah, I really generally agree with that.
	I don't use that language on the air, but I choose to do so.
	But that's your free choice.
	Exactly.
	Now, if you look at the title of your organization, the Association of Clandestine Radio Enthusiasts, it would imply that it's made up of not only listeners, but doers as well.
	Well, I don't know.
	I mean, they don't tell me that they're pirates when they send in their yearly dues for our newsletter.
	Oh, they don't?
	No.
	No, they don't tell me that they're pirates, nor do I ask them if they're pirates.
	And quite frankly, I don't want to know if they're pirates.
	I see.
	Tell us about Tampa now.
	What happened in Tampa?
	You said this fellow was broadcasting what, first of all?
	He was broadcasting rock and roll.
	Rock and roll.
	He had a little rock and roll station.
	He had 100 watts.
	You could hear him probably at the most 15 miles out from Tampa.
	He had a frequency that was not interfering with anyone.
	It was in one of those frequencies in the middle of two big giant stations.
	It wasn't interfering with either one.
	All right, but let me take the broadcaster's side for a second.
	Okay.
	All right, there he is broadcasting rock and roll.
	Now 100 watts If I'm a rock and roll broadcaster in Tampa, and a commercial broadcaster, and I've got to pause every now and then to have a commercial broadcast that will finance what I'm doing, I'm going to have fits with some guy who's doing nothing but broadcasting music without commercials.
	I'm going to have fits, because how do I compete against him?
	Well, good point.
	Well, you would compete against it with better programming, but you are correct.
	I mean, it's getting down to the property rights of the spectrum, and I think that's the way it probably should be dealt with.
	You're right that he has seized control of a frequency that he has no right to, but I do think using U.S.
	Marshals and SWAT teams is a bit of an overkill.
	Overkill?
	Well, they do that like, you know, the IRS makes examples out of people.
	Yes.
	And I'm sure that's what the FCC was doing in this case.
	I do believe in that Fourth Amendment.
	It does bug me when I see the government get into the overkill.
	Let's make an example of someone.
	Instead of making an example of someone, they make them a martyr.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Now, I wonder on what basis they gain entry.
	In other words, he is not a licensed operator, therefore he has not sworn to abide by the regulation that allows the SEC with due notice to come in and inspect the premises and the equipment, right?
	Well, yes, plus the FCC, the Communications Act of 1934, talks about interstate communications, not intrastate communications.
	So then, on what basis did they knock his door down and come rushing in?
	They had more guns and more people.
	Yeah, I know, but they had to have some kind of legal paper in their hand.
	Right, and if you look at the search warrant, I did see the search warrant, which they did have.
	In my reading of the search warrant, it was more of a general search warrant, which is forbidden by the Constitution, than it was stating specifically what kind of transmitter, other than just radio operating equipment.
	Oh, any search warrant to be issued has got to be specific, does it not?
	Well, that's the way I read the Constitution.
	John Marshall said the Constitution was written for the people of this country to read, the average working person, not for the government.
	That's the way I read it.
	I read it about the same way, but it's funny.
	I feel both sides of this issue.
	And I do, too.
	I truly do.
	But on the other hand, there is a proliferation of pirates because commercial broadcasting has let the community down.
	Well, in what sense?
	I mean, you've got, you mentioned Howard Stern.
	Alright?
	Howard's pretty weird.
	I'm pretty weird.
	I really am.
	I'm as weird as a lot of pirates are, on the air here commercially.
	But then there is a lot of, um, there's a lot of very, um, cookie-cutter radio out there, both in music and talk and just about any format you can name.
	So I assume that's what you mean by I think they let them down in a local sense.
	All right.
	We'll pick up on that dangerous little topic for me in just a moment.
	From the high desert, I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AF.
	Alright.
	All right.
	Back now to my guest, Pat Murphy, a commercial broadcaster himself.
	Hey, Pat?
	Yes?
	Have you ever put a pirate station on the air?
	Yes.
	It was a long time ago.
	I'm past the statute of limitations.
	I want to ask you about the statute of limitations here, because I want to tell a story.
	Sure.
	Now, what I did in the story that I want to tell, I did 12 years ago.
	Well, I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the radio.
	Well, so advise me.
	Can I tell that story and not get in trouble?
	I think you're safe right now.
	All right, then I'll hold the story, and I'll tell it all in a while, and I'll trust you.
	And I'll send you a bill if I get in trouble.
	But first, let us cover what is probably very dangerous stuff for me, because I am part of a gigantic conglomerate, J-Corps, which owns Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Loris Schlesinger, and myself.
	And I am on 400 radio stations, and I am very mindful of the fact that There I am on 400 stations.
	That means 400 local guys don't have a job.
	That means 400 local stations are not originating programming in their town or their city, but rather running my show from satellite.
	Let me interrupt you for a second.
	I'd have to disagree with that.
	Because even in the beginning days of radio, they went to the networks.
	They went to NBC, CBS, NBC Blue.
	There was always some kind of a network entertainment that was coming in.
	True.
	The problem now is with the consolidation.
	Here in Norfolk is a good example.
	We had a fellow that had one local talk station, and it was a pretty good talk station.
	He decided to buy another station.
	In fact, he ended up buying four stations.
	He couldn't run them, and as a result he ended up putting satellite programming on all four of the stations.
	All four of the stations have dropped in ratings.
	That's where the problem is, is when an operator thinks that they're going to operate four stations at the same overhead that they operate one station.
	So I would have to disagree that you're taking jobs away from anyone, because all across America right now there are board operators sitting there who are hitting the commercial times.
	And are listening, and they have a job.
	And, well, in some cases.
	In other cases, particularly in smaller stations, it's automated.
	And you can usually tell.
	And you can usually tell, that's right, because a switch will fail to go, and there'll be 15 or 20 minutes of dead air, and they'll get another tone.
	We love computers.
	Yeah, I know.
	So, you know, I am still mindful of all that, because I've always been an all-night kind of person.
	I've done all-night radio on a lot of single markets, and those jobs are gone, basically.
	Now, again, consolidation has occurred.
	It has occurred with syndication.
	It has occurred with group ownership, and everybody's buying up everybody.
	I'm sure it's going to be a subject at NAB.
	Is the consolidation of Well, if you look at it isolated as is it a good thing or a bad thing, I think we would all have to say maybe it's not such a good thing.
	I look at it as part of the cycle.
	I think you're seeing a cycle, much like back in the 60s when the Schaefer Automation Systems came in, those ones that had the funny punch cards.
	That's right.
	Well, it didn't work as well as they thought it did, so they had to go back to local programming.
	I think you're going to see, through this cycle, where you have all these big stations, or big groups like J.Corp, Heritage, or whoever, buying, and they're not going to be able to make the profits that they had imagined they were going to be able to make.
	So then they'll have to turn around and sell off.
	Exactly, but they're going to have to sell off at a loss.
	So they're going to get burnt, and they're not going to come back and revisit that area.
	They're going to have to sell to local broadcasters again, who are going to take the initiative to offer local programming.
	In the meantime, there are these petitions, these rulemaking petitions in front of the FCC.
	The one that I think probably is the most intriguing is the Skinner petition, which is 9242, which offers three classes of low-power broadcast.
	One is the 50 to 3 kilowatt, which I don't think, I think NAB will fight that tooth and nail.
	I would.
	But, there's the 1 to 50 watt, and there's the 1 to 20 watt stations.
	These guys, if they are truly capitalist at heart, will take this and go to the small mom and pop delis.
	And, which, who can't buy the big stations?
	I mean, because with this consolidation, you're also getting this grid system of selling.
	Well, commercials cost you a hundred, two hundred dollars, even in a market the size of Norfolk, Virginia.
	Sure.
	I think they can go to the mom-and-pop delis, the gas stations, offer them a means of advertising that right now is cut off to them.
	So, I do think, plus, there's another advantage to this.
	Now, wait a minute, now you're really stepping on toes, because what you're talking about is not just the ability to broadcast information or music.
	You're talking about the ability to Absolutely.
	I think to tell these people, yes, you can broadcast, but you can't generate the revenue for overhead is nonsense.
	It truly is nonsense.
	And to tell them, well, you can do it as a non-profit, well, you know, all the PBS, and I call them the pleading broadcasting system stations, are all tied into tax dollars.
	And not to mention the fact that they have to beg every five minutes for money to keep Big Bird Otters going on there.
	And I don't think these guys with the low power want to do that.
	I do think you have to give them the ability to raise revenue, but I don't think they're going to step on their toes to the bigger stations because the mom and pops can't afford to buy those big rates as it is.
	To me, it seems like it's a win-win situation.
	I do think, however, that at some point, If they can't make money, that you're going to see them start to either disappear, or they'll go back to the pirate ways.
	Well, look, let's say that 10 watts is what they decide on.
	Even 10 watts.
	In your town of Norfolk, you get an antenna at a half-decent height, and 10 watts, and you'll cover Norfolk.
	No, I would disagree with that.
	I'd have to have it up at least 100 feet.
	How many people in this kind of a hobby type of situation, which it is at this point, are going to be able to get an antenna up 100 feet?
	I think they could cover probably 10 miles maximum with 50 watts and getting it up 50 feet, 60 feet, something like that.
	Okay, I think though that you're being unrealistic when you talk about commercial opportunities for these low-power stations.
	That's where it's going to get unrealistic, and I guarantee you When you start talking about that, the commercial broadcasters, the group, for example, that's going to gather here in Las Vegas shortly, would have a heart attack.
	Absolute heart attack.
	Oh, sure.
	Sure, but it's going to take revenue that they aren't getting now, so it's not really going to be in competition with them.
	The competition would occur at two levels.
	One level would be in the ratings.
	And I will now briefly tell my story, because that's how I got shut down.
	When I was young and foolish and in the Air Force, I started a little pirate station in my barracks.
	You know, just to play for people in the barracks.
	And it was listened to in the barracks.
	We were playing oldies.
	Love oldies.
	Still love oldies.
	And we got hauled in front of the captain.
	Our captain, the first sergeant, said, Captain, we want to...
	And he said, look, we really can't have the noise and can't have this going on in the barracks, but what you're doing is such a wonderful thing that I called Captain So-and-so, I won't use the name, over at the Mars Station, Military Amateur Radio Station, and he has agreed to provide you with two rooms in Mars Station to run your little station.
	And this was at Amarillo Air Force Base, big Air Force Base back then, it's now been, it's no longer there.
	Off we went, and I built... I was always the engineer for these things, mind you.
	So, I built a little transmitter.
	We went on the air.
	Then I built a bigger transmitter.
	I was running about 50 watts, but I had this gigantic antenna, full resonant antenna, for our frequency.
	1610 on the AM value, no way up at the top.
	Clear frequency at that time.
	And we went on the air, and we were on the air 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for one year, playing oldies.
	Everybody on Amarillo Air Force Base listened.
	Most everybody.
	Now, we were about 40 miles, 35, 40 miles, at least, from the city of Amarillo.
	The city of about, oh, I don't know, 150,000.
	Unfortunately, Uh, my efforts at building a better transmitter and antenna, which I constantly worked on, were working.
	And we had a signal in Amarillo.
	Now, Arbitron rates radio, and, uh, one terrible day, the Arbitron ratings came out for Amarillo, and our little pirate station, KMED, we called it, K-Medical Squadron KMED, showed up in the Arbitron ratings.
	Well, Just about every commercial broadcast station called the commanding general of Amarillo Air Force Base and said, what the hell are you guys doing out there?
	About 10 minutes later, we were standing in front of the general, preparing to have our heads lopped off.
	And needless to say, that day, we went off the air.
	But because we were in a federal area, I guess it didn't go any farther.
	They shut it down.
	That was it.
	But for a year, boy, did we have fun.
	We really have fun now.
	Well certainly if you sold commercials you would have drawn attention to yourself even faster, but I don't believe that a 50 watt or even a 20 watt station is going to take away revenue that the bigger broadcast stations are even going after at this point.
	But if whatever proposal is made to the FCC is something the broadcasters can live with Then I think it's got a chance.
	I am a big proponent of low-power broadcasting.
	I really, really think it's a good idea.
	I really like the idea, but it's going to have to... I'm realistic.
	It's going to have to be something the commercial broadcasters can live with, or it doesn't stand a chance, because you and I both know money rules.
	Oh, sure.
	And I don't believe that No matter what they come up with, it's going to do away with the pirates, because there's a little company up in New York called Ramsey, and they make this delightful little kit that you can make your own little FM stereo station, which is 100 milliwatts.
	I know.
	They also sell a nice little amplifier that will boost it up to about a watt and a half.
	I can better you on this as an easier way.
	You get the little driver at 100 milliwatts, go down to, go anywhere you want, and buy A cable TV app?
	Sure.
	Drives the hell out of it, and before you know it, you're up near a watt, and you can even put a couple of them in there, and I don't really want to instruct people on how to do all this, but I don't think it's going to stop the pirates, but I do think that the low power would fill a gap right now.
	The consolidation has created.
	If it doesn't threaten The commercial broadcaster.
	And I think when you start talking about ad revenue, you're threatening the commercial broadcaster.
	I'm telling you.
	Commercial broadcasters are threatened by everything.
	El Nino is a threat to commercial broadcasters at this point.
	I know.
	The sun is coming up.
	We feel threatened today.
	I know.
	Here's somebody who filed a petition for rulemaking.
	Send me a fax.
	It's RM 9242?
	Yes, that would be the Skinner proposal.
	Okay, well, I've got Skinner here.
	Terrific!
	Roger Skinner, sure enough.
	I've got his home number here, and I could go and get him on the air.
	And I may.
	So, anyway, listen.
	Ideally, if you could do the rulemaking, if you could lay down the law right now, What would it be?
	If I could do it, I think I would make it 1 to 50 watts, keep the height above average terrain to under 100 feet.
	I don't think it's realistic to expect hobbyists to get anything over 100 feet.
	Also, the Skinner proposal, which I do think is a good proposal, and not to denigrate the others, offers a special class of 1 to 20 watts for special events that would be good for 10 days.
	People wanted to go out to concerts or HamFest or to conventions like the NAB and set up a station, something like that.
	Actually, you know, the NAB last year, I can tell you, had a little low-power station set up in Las Vegas.
	Did you know that?
	So see, there's already the... But that was authorized.
	But the point is, I just don't see commercial broadcasters going for 50 to 3 kilowatts.
	That truly would be a threat.
	Next issue, first of all, I think you've gone too far.
	If you get something 100 watts at 100 feet, that's going to cover the average city, isn't it?
	The average small town.
	All right.
	The average small town, particularly, for example, in the Midwest, you get something with 100 watts at 100 feet, I guarantee you, out in the flatlands, Wichita, no problem.
	Sure.
	It's going to cover Wichita.
	Well, I'm talking about 1 to 50 watts.
	Oh, 1 to 50.
	Even 50 watts will cover a small town in the Midwest.
	Yes, sir.
	And you want to allow commercial presentation?
	This is just me speaking.
	I'm not speaking on behalf of anyone other than just my opinion about this, but I don't think you can ask someone, especially if you're going to ask them to put a license station on, they're going to have to get type accepted equipment, which I think is going to discourage a lot of people as well.
	But if you're going to ask them to put this on with overhead, where they've got to pay not only electricity, but maybe even pay for people.
	I just don't see how you can do it without raising revenue through selling commercials.
	Okay, are you going to allow this without license?
	I think in order to make it... You're asking the guy who's the president of the Association of Clintons.
	That's right, I am.
	If it was licensed, I wouldn't listen to it.
	If it was licensed, you wouldn't listen.
	Alright, so obviously your proposal would be without license.
	No, I think you have to have it licensed to make it.
	You have to have it licensed!
	You have to make the low-power work, you have to have it licensed.
	Oh!
	Well, now that brings up a whole different set of questions, because the FCC is moving away from more work, more licensing, more regulation, and so how are you going to get that one through?
	You know, the FCC manpower has been reduced drastically, right?
	They've closed down field offices all over the country.
	I don't see how they could enforce it, even if they did license it.
	The rule-making proposal is to license.
	Did you see a movie called Pump Up the Volume?
	Oh, sure.
	I think every broadcaster in America's seen it.
	All right.
	Well, look, a lot of what went on with that movie and that part of broadcasting there Would make Howard Stern look like an angel.
	Sure.
	Now, what about that kind of stuff?
	In other words, you've got some guy who puts on something that is totally filthy.
	How far does the First Amendment go?
	All the way?
	I'm a firm believer that my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins.
	If I'm not doing you any harm... Yeah, but my face might begin when my seven-year-old turns on the radio and runs into that real filth.
	Now, that might be where my nose starts to get smushed.
	We certainly have a topic for a lot of debate there, don't we?
	If you can teach your seven-year-old to turn the radio off when they hear something offensive, then I don't know if you have a case.
	If you can do that, then you're going to be a rich person, because I don't know how you do that.
	I mean, that kind of thing attracts seven-year-olds and eight-year-olds.
	They'll go, woo!
	And you'll have about as much chance.
	I mean, there's no lead chip for a radio.
	I've got two daughters.
	They're 12 and 13, and I've got to tell you that they probably hear at least that bad, if not worse, at school.
	Well, that unfortunately is true, isn't it?
	I know I do, at least a little bit.
	My memory is still somewhat... Mine is fairly vivid, actually.
	I remember, of course I do, and of course you're right, and that was at a time when that sort of thing really was not talked about, admitted to, or anything else.
	Sure.
	It just simply went on.
	Times have not really changed.
	It's just that today it's out in the open.
	Yeah.
	Can I get a plug-in from my organization?
	Well, yeah, of course.
	But, you know, there's no hurry.
	Your organization is the... Well, which one?
	I mean, you belong to so many.
	Well, the Association of Clandestine Radio Enthusiasts, if listeners will send me two first-class tabs.
	We're a non-profit, and, I mean, everything is done by volunteers.
	No one gets paid in our group.
	Pat, listen.
	We're at the top of the hour.
	Let's do this.
	We'll break for the top of the hour.
	I'll tell people, hey, go get pencil, paper, all that stuff.
	Pat, we'll have information for you when we come back.
	How's that, Pat?
	Sounds great.
	All right, stay right there.
	Pat Murphy is my guest, and we are talking about that which I'm not sure anybody has ever talked about on commercial radio.
	And that is pirate radio.
	TV, short way.
	And we're going to cover more of it, and we'll get some other people on with Pat.
	And by the way, I would like to open the lines.
	Everybody else hang up.
	All I want is pirates.
	People have done pirate radio TV or whatever.
	I want to hear from you.
	All right.
	Well, let's see if I can get myself in trouble.
	Pat, are you there?
	Yes, I am.
	All right.
	Just before... I hope everybody has their paper and pencil.
	If not, go get it now.
	We're about to give the information on the Association of Clandestine Radio Enthusiasts.
	When I was a lot younger, maybe 20 years ago, a friend of mine in the Bay Area, and myself, in the 12 to 13 megahertz area, used to talk to SAC bombers.
	The 52s.
	And you know what?
	They would talk back.
	They would talk briefly, but they would engage.
	I guess they were bored up there.
	Those were the days when B-52s would go out and fly, and they'd be up for 12 or 13 hours or more and come back.
	We talked to B-52s.
	I was a Marine on Radio Watch.
	I can tell you, it gets real boring on Radio Watch.
	When you hear something that's unusual, you tend to want to... I know.
	I know.
	We knew where they were, frequency-wise.
	You know, in those days, they all had sideband.
	Sure.
	And they'd talk to you.
	Well, you know, they're still there, pretty much on the same frequencies.
	Now I'm going to... Yeah, I know.
	It's a backup.
	Anyway, then there's one other little story I'm going to tell.
	I have lived in the Las Vegas area now for about 15 years, and this was about 13 years ago.
	I lived in a residential neighborhood in Las Vegas.
	I and a friend of mine built the cable system in Las Vegas, which at that time was Times And we build all the cable amps and the microwave shots, car's van microwave shots, and so forth and so on.
	So anyway, I had access to a lot of equipment.
	And I took a single channel 7 modulator, a channel 7 modulator, which was really designed for cable use, and took a line amplifier, a cable line amplifier, A big one.
	And opened that sucker all the way up, put a dipole up about 25 feet, and went on the air on Channel 7.
	Full color and video.
	And we played movies.
	And we played movies and played movies, and you could see that sucker two miles away.
	Quite clearly.
	This was before cable really actively came to Las Vegas, and so a lot of people found us, and they watched, and we had My friend did the, uh, in front of the camera work.
	I did the camera work and all the technical stuff.
	And he sat there with a paper bag over his head.
	And we had a computer, a little Commodore 64, at the time, generating our phone number.
	Check this out.
	Generating our phone number on the bottom of the screen.
	And we were taking requests for movies.
	And then we would play the movies.
	And we would take calls.
	And all of this went on for about three or four weeks, until one day the phone rang, and it was the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
	And they said, we understand you have this wonderful new TV station on.
	I said, what?
	Us?
	We have nothing here!
	Nothing!
	Well, we'd like to come out and take some photos and do a story!
	Oh my God!
	You know, I had licenses at that time.
	And so, needless to say, it was all down and gone the next day.
	I mean, we'd take on-the-air calls and put my home phone number up there.
	So I have pirated just about everywhere one can pirate.
	And so I have a lot of sympathy for what we're talking about right now.
	But you did it because you enjoyed it.
	I did it because it was more fun than you could possibly imagine.
	Exactly.
	You didn't have a bean counter sitting there going, you know what, that hole up there is costing us more than we get.
	It's true.
	It's true.
	All right.
	Listen, I promise to get your information out.
	So now, You're president of the Association of Clandestine Radio Enthusiasts.
	How do people get information on this association?
	Very easy.
	In fact, we publish a bulletin.
	It's about 25 pages every month that reports on pirate, clandestine, covert, and other unexplained broadcasts on all the spectrum.
	And if you'll send me two first class stamps, I'll be happy to send you a copy of the bulletin.
	In fact, just send it to the ACE.
	We call ourselves the ACE to shorten up, instead of doing the Association of Clandestine Radio.
	P.O.
	Box 12112, Norfolk, Virginia, 23541.
	That's P.O.
	PO Box 12112 Norfolk, Virginia 23541.
	That's PO Box 12112 Norfolk, Virginia 23541.
	Send me two first class stamps and I'll be happy to send you a copy of the bulletin.
	Now, what kind of stuff is in the bulletin?
	I mean, do you report on people who have SWAT teams come rushing in and pin them up against the wall, that kind of thing?
	Sure.
	Well, the very first part of our bulletin is called dialogues, and it is a logging, much like a military log, of stations that are heard, the frequency they're heard on, The strength that they're heard, the programming content.
	In this month's bulletin, for instance, we've got close to 200 simply short-wave broadcasts that were done in the past month by pirates.
	Then we have a section, pirates have a, I think maybe even a bad habit of what they call QF-selling.
	Ham's are familiar with the term.
	Where, if you hear a pirate, you can write to them through a, uh... P.O.
	Box?
	Yes!
	But it's a P.O.
	Box that's run by what they call a drop operator, who will forward that information.
	It's not illegal to run a drop box, but it's illegal to do the broadcast, so that's the way to get around that.
	And the pirate will send a Q.S.L.
	card to you.
	Confirming.
	Confirming.
	Now, everybody should know, in order to get a card like that back from a pirate, you will have to include Some identifying words that were said or time of broadcast, that kind of thing.
	Frequency, time, and then details of the broadcast.
	I've got one sitting on my wall right here that I got from a Canadian pirate that's on
	a rubber chicken.
	They're so creative you can't help but giggle.
	Well, we giggle, the FCC sends in SWAT teams.
	It's interesting, the FCC has focused on the FM micropower broadcasters in the past three years.
	Yeah, and I don't understand that, because it's probably the most innocuous of them all.
	In other words, FM is local, it's line of sight, mostly, it's low power, it's probably not nearly as bothersome as something ingressing into the AM band, or Well, you've got to think like I said, and the FM broadcasters are tied down to one location.
	There was a phenomenon I wrote about here about two years ago for one of the hobby magazines, where the pirates had come up with this little 10 watt That's really an important frequency.
	That is the current popular pirate frequency, right?
	Which is it mostly, or is it both?
	Well, it's both.
	They've come up with this tiny transmitter that will fit in the palm of your hand.
	It's 10 watts.
	You'd think 10 watts, that won't go anywhere.
	These guys are being heard in Germany, in South Africa... And listen, the sunspot cycle is beginning to improve, and as it does, 10 watts eventually could be heard worldwide on a fairly regular basis.
	When I did the article for Popular Communications on this, I went back to school pretty much and started looking into propagation and things.
	And 10 watts will bounce 300 miles on the first bounce.
	And you're right, if there's a sunspot or activity is up, it will bounce for a thousand miles.
	That's right.
	It's quite remarkable.
	No, that's absolutely true.
	And even on the higher frequencies, as the sunspot cycle continues to improve, you could very easily cover the world with 10 watts up around 18, 19, 20 megahertz, 25 megahertz.
	I'm telling you, 24 hours a day, it'll be open in the next two or three years, so piracy's going to go absolutely nuts.
	Listen, I've got someone on the line I want to bring in to the conversation.
	He is Roger Skinner, and Roger has rulemaking before the Federal Communications Commission.
	Let's see if we can get him in here.
	Roger, are you there?
	Yes, good morning, Art.
	How are you?
	Good morning.
	Where are you, Roger?
	I'm in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida area.
	And you have actually proposed rulemaking to the FCC?
	That's right.
	Like the other fellows talking tonight, I'm a former pirate.
	I have to admit, I think the statute of limitations has run out, like you said.
	John, I hope so.
	I've got to tell you a real quick funny story.
	When I was about 16 years old, a friend and I built a little pirate station.
	We were AM and FM.
	And we ended up on 24 hours a day automated with an old Roberts reel-to-reel machine with big ten and a half inch reels.
	Oh yeah.
	So we started giving out the phone number and my mother couldn't understand why the phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing.
	Were you doing music?
	We were top 40 DJ types and that's what started my career in broadcasting.
	I've been in the broadcast business 35 years now.
	But I got a call from the local police station who said, you know, this is the police department.
	And I thought, oh my God, we're going to be busted, you know?
	And all they wanted was for us to play Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley.
	Like you, we kept on each summer.
	We did it for about three summers.
	Each summer we got bigger and better and got out a little further.
	By the third summer, a friend called from a local radio station and he says, Roger, he says, you'd better shut down.
	I said, why is that?
	He said, they want to know where these call letters came from that just showed up in the rating book.
	Oh, God, you did it, too.
	Yeah.
	See, that's the danger.
	If ratings are taken away from stations, there's going to be a fight.
	If income is taken away, there's going to be a war.
	So you have rulemaking.
	What is your rulemaking proposal, Roger?
	Well, I've been studying this issue for years.
	I've been working on the rulemaking petition for about two years and finally got it on file and got very quick action.
	Within two weeks, the FCC assigned it a rulemaking number.
	Basically, my petition will answer, I hope, several questions.
	I bring the technical issues to bear.
	I have an engineering consulting firm.
	I understand the technical issues involved so that it won't cause interference.
	I've worked in radio for many years.
	I understand Business end of it, I've sold advertising, I've been on the air, you know, sort of like you had done it all.
	And what I hope to do is solve several problems.
	One is, I want to see the mom and pops, the small station owners, be brought back into the broadcast business.
	Local ownership, I'm talking about.
	And you talked earlier about the consolidation.
	Be it good or bad, I'm not saying that we change that.
	I'm not saying that they should have to sell their stations.
	Let them keep what they have.
	They've consolidated it to the nth degree.
	Look, I understand your complaint, but let's assume that you got your way and that small stations could be licensed and could even commercially broadcast.
	Okay?
	Let's assume we get there.
	I think it's essential that we have commercials.
	In other words, if someone wants to operate with volunteers who may or may not show up at a certain time and operate that type of station, That's fine.
	They can operate non-commercial.
	So you want commercials?
	We want commercials.
	We have to pay the overhead.
	Fine.
	I plan on applying for a station, and if I get it, I plan on being able to support my family with this station as my full-time job.
	That's a wonderful concept, but here comes the tough, hard-to-answer question.
	Let's say that the FCC allows such a thing and low power commercial stations begin to pop up all over the place.
	Then let's say I'm a guy with money and I come to you and a lot of other people and I start buying your stations.
	Now would there be some rule in this that would not allow you to sell the station so that The very consolidation that you're so concerned about now would not occur at your level.
	Exactly.
	If you read my petition, it's about 25 pages, in there you'll see ownership restrictions that I have proposed.
	As a starting point, I propose that anyone applying for a low-power FM station must live Within 50 miles of the station's proposed antenna site.
	I put 50 miles because I realize some people commute, you know, they live outside of town.
	They would also not be allowed to sell to anyone who also, you know, did not meet those local restrictions.
	So it would guarantee local ownership of the station and I think would serve the public interest.
	I guess my show is crazy enough that I do some pretty crazy stuff.
	A lot of pirates run me.
	I never heard of these stations, and eventually I hear from the operator and they say, oh yeah, I'm running Ardell.
	Would these stations be allowed to run syndicated programming?
	Well, I propose three classes of stations.
	If we have the time, I'll break it down real quick.
	Yeah, go.
	The first and the lowest class would be what I call an LPFM-3.
	This would be 1 to 20 watts for special events that Pat was kind enough to mention before.
	If you've got a boating regatta, you've got a tennis match in town, you want to operate for a few days, a little station, it would require that you have an engineering study just to show that you're not causing interference on the channel that you pick.
	It would be a 10-day temporary permit.
	The NAB does that at their conventions in Las Vegas.
	Now, how do you suppose they get authorized for that?
	They're the NAB.
	Well, Matt, I'm going to have to put a moat around my house.
	They're going to be out here next week.
	I've spoken to the Commission about that, and there is a real concern that there will be thousands upon thousands of requests for these special event stations, and more than likely, if this comes to pass, we'll have to set up some type of private organization to help coordinate these
	uh... to take otherwise the fcc would be buried in the house right application
	that's right so some type of industry organization a volunteer organization that would help coordinate these
	to prevent interference i think that could be done uh... the other classes station i call it l p f m
	dash two and this is my answer to the micro broadcaster
	that we've been talking about all evening right uh...
	These people a lot want to operate non-commercial.
	Some want to have commercials.
	That's fine.
	We're proposing to give them from 1 up to 50 watts.
	And we're proposing to give them an antenna height up to 150 feet above average terrain.
	Now, that would give them a coverage area of 3.6 miles to the 1 millivolt contour.
	That's the 60 DB.
	You've got to be out in even flat country.
	This is taken right from the FCC rule charts, the graphs.
	Alright.
	That are part of the FCC rules.
	Alright, that would be a Class 2 station.
	That would be a Class 2.
	Now that would be a secondary service as I proposed it.
	Alright, hold it right there and we'll pick up at that point.
	We've got a break.
	I'm Art Bell.
	We're talking about Pirate Radio.
	This is Coast to Coast AM.
	And we're going to bring on the pirates as the morning progresses.
	I've got them lined up here on the phone waiting to talk.
	the picnic will be right back who have to pay quite
	you are now that that day
	alright are back now first about murphy Pat, I want to find out how long you can hang with us.
	I know you do a morning show.
	I can hang on until about 4 o'clock if that's alright.
	4 o'clock, that's coming up in 22 minutes and back east, right?
	Yes.
	Alright.
	Let's very quickly then go back to Roger and we were with your second level of proposed operation.
	Yeah, the LPFM-2 as I call it.
	1 watt to 50 watts with 150 feet maximum height above average terrain antenna.
	This would give you a 1 millivolt contour out to 3.6 miles, and that's taken from the FCC rules, okay?
	The graphs, charts, as they call them.
	Of course, the signal will go a little bit further than that, and I think a mistake a lot of pirates make is saying, well, you know, if I've got 50 watts, it'll go more than 3.6 miles.
	And it certainly will, but it lots of times won't be a good, strong, listenable signal.
	And we know from experience that a lot of people, if they start hearing a lot of static, fading, ticket fencing, as it's called on FM, they're going to flip to another channel.
	On the other hand, if you make your programming bizarre enough, they'll listen through the static.
	To some degree, yeah.
	But there's an old sage that somebody told me once, when I first got into broadcasting, the three essential items, programming, engineering, and sales.
	And it's like a three-legged stool.
	If any one of those falls down, you've got a problem.
	It's true.
	All right.
	And your third class of license?
	The third class, and the one that the broadcasters are saying, wait a minute, like yourself, is the LPFM-1.
	This would be a primary service.
	By that, I mean it can't be bumped.
	It would have to be protected by other full-power, you know, broadcasters.
	This would be 50 watts up to 3 kilowatts.
	3,000 watts.
	And that's the old Class A FM power level.
	The antenna height would be the same as the old Class A, 328 feet, which is 100 meters.
	That would give you a maximum range of your 1 millivolt contour out to 15 miles.
	Now, I'd like to point out that this power level was the old Class A for standard FM broadcast stations.
	It was the lowest Broadcast station there was on FM.
	It wasn't 50,000 watts, nor 100,000.
	But these folks, a lot of them found that 3 kilowatts just wasn't cutting it.
	So they've gotten it raised to 6,000 watts now.
	Right.
	And so we may not get 3,000 watts.
	I'm the first to realize that.
	No, you're not.
	We may.
	Well, I mean, you always ask for more than you're going to get in a bargaining situation.
	But of the three proposals you've got, I can't take a lot more time, Roger.
	Which one do you think has the best chance of passing?
	Well, they're not separate proposals.
	They're all in one proposal.
	Uh-oh.
	They're basically saying there are three areas here that need to be addressed.
	And the primary service that I'm talking about is very important to bring the mom-and-pop broadcasters back into the business.
	These are people that may have been forced out because it's just gotten too expensive.
	People like myself, who've wanted to own their own radio station since they've been 16, I've got 35 years in the business.
	I don't want to have to move to Podunk, Idaho, where I might be able to afford a station.
	I live in South Florida.
	The FM stations here, if you could find one that you could buy that hasn't been bought up already, the going price is $50 million, which is a little more than I carry on me.
	It's just out of question.
	Even AM stations.
	Some people want to buy an AM station, Roger.
	Well, even the lowest stations in the market with signal problems and so forth are going for one and a half, two, three million dollars.
	All right, Roger.
	I might consider continuing with you because Pat has got to go and do his own morning show on a commercial station in about a minute.
	So I'm going to put you back on hold if you want to stick around.
	Sure.
	All right.
	All right.
	Pat?
	Yes?
	Are your comments on Roger's rulemaking?
	I've got to tell you, the first thought that crosses my mind, and I'm sure you're familiar with the history of broadcasting, is back in the 20s we started off with 5, 10, 20 watt radio stations.
	And by the Second World War, we've gotten up to 500 kilowatt WLW there in Cincinnati.
	Sure.
	And it progressively got bigger and bigger until the bigness has now excluded the local broadcasters.
	We're now going full cycle back to the 10, 15, 20 watt stations to reach the local people.
	I don't think that the The three kilowatt.
	Although, you know, the Class A, he does have a good point.
	If it's considered a Class A commercial, it may go through.
	It seems that from the top down at the FCC, because the new chairman, Bill Kennard, is, in fact, interested in establishing a low-power radio service so that small business, churches, and community groups can use the airways to broadcast to their communities.
	If it's from the top down, there's a good chance for it.
	Not for three kilowatts, there isn't.
	I'd lay a substantial amount of money.
	I would say that would be the sticking point.
	Yeah.
	Also, it's sort of a shame that he hasn't broken that up into separate rule-making possibilities.
	Anyway, I'll ask him about that.
	I've got several questions for you that are very relevant.
	Number one, please ask your guest, Art, how much radiated power can you generate now without a license?
	100 milliwatts.
	And the antenna?
	Antenna has to be, you can't generate, I'm trying to do this from memory, I don't think you can generate even like a half a millivolt with the antenna.
	It's not antenna height, it's how much electricity actually comes out of the antenna itself.
	I would say I'm thinking of this Ramsey kit that's 100 milliwatts.
	Right.
	The antenna would be much like you'd have on a scanner.
	It would screw into the top and would stick out of the top and would be maybe all of two feet tall.
	So it's not going to go much more than the radius of your house.
	That's right.
	It would be in your house, maybe within 100 feet of the house.
	All right.
	Here's somebody who says, all of this is ridiculous because we've got The Internet.
	And anybody now can put on, in effect, their own radio station on the Internet.
	How do you address that?
	I think that's kind of short-sighted.
	For one thing, you can't access the Internet when you're in your car.
	And you know, there's a lot of people that don't have access to the Internet.
	We're talking about, I guess what, maybe 10% of the population that actually has... By then, of that number, very few would likely be listening to a clandestine, well, it wouldn't be clandestine, it's perfectly alright, radio station on the internet.
	Which brings me to my question to you, Art.
	What does that shirt say?
	Willard's, is it?
	I'll tell you what I'll do.
	I'll take a good clear shot of it, and I'll let you and everybody see.
	You're watching me, obviously, on the studio.
	I'm watching you on the Internet, exactly.
	All right, here we go.
	Is there any law against a clandestine radio operator broadcasting off a ship just outside the territorial limits?
	They have, of course, been doing that kind of thing.
	In Europe, for some time.
	That's from David in Toronto.
	So, could you get a ship and go in the international waters?
	Excellent question.
	Theoretically, yes.
	A fellow by the name of Alan Wiener, who had been a commercial broadcaster.
	In fact, you find a lot of people who are in commercial broadcasting, like Roger, myself, this fellow Alan Wiener, owned a station up in Maine, took a ship and went off of the coast to the United States.
	In fact, he went out about 15 miles.
	And the Coast Guard and the FCC came in, busted him, took his equipment away, and shut him down.
	Now, how do they do that in international waters?
	Well, like I said before, when they used the SWAT team in Florida, they had big guns, and they're the government.
	But, you know, this sounds a little like something that could go to the U.S.
	Supreme Court to me, and it's a First Amendment kind of thing, isn't it?
	It can go to the Supreme Court if you have the money and the resources for the attorneys.
	Don't do this stuff for free!
	Alright, then let's talk about Stephen Donifer.
	You know Stephen?
	Yes.
	So do I. He's in the Bay Area.
	Stephen is one of the original pirates in the world.
	He is still, at this time, broadcasting, and has been in a grip-lock battle with the FCC now for years, and actually has won a couple of rounds, and they are not shutting Stephen down.
	How come?
	Well, because Stephen has taken an interesting tack.
	He is, by the way, getting some pro bono work from a freedom of speech group out there.
	And I read Judge Wilkins, and he did find a sympathetic judge in San Francisco to rule on the case.
	Judge Wilkins said that Dunifer is challenging the FCC, not based on free speech, but that the regulations that require him to operate at such a high power limit And pay so much money to do this is unconstitutional.
	Not that it violates his freedom of speech, but that the regulations themselves are unconstitutional.
	And Judge Wilkins has upheld this and kept the FCC in an absolute tizzy.
	Oh, they're really upset about this now.
	It's liable to go to a higher court, but the FCC so far hasn't busted Stephen because Stephen figures They're afraid to go to a higher court because they're afraid of what the ruling might be.
	Do you think there would be substance in that?
	Is that why they're leaving him alone?
	Oh, absolutely.
	Because if you look, again, at the Communications Act of 1934, it talks about interstate.
	And Donnifer clearly is not going outside of the limits of California, certainly.
	I think it's called, what is it, Radio Free Berkeley?
	Yes.
	Pre-Radio Berkeley?
	Pre-Radio Berkeley, yes.
	And so he broadcasts in Berkeley.
	Yes.
	And so he's not going outside of the state boundaries.
	How long has he been on the air?
	Oh my golly, at least three or four years now.
	Three or four years.
	And he's doing that at 100 watts.
	At 100 watts?
	Yep.
	What do you think will come of this stalemate?
	I mean, are they going to wait for Steven to die?
	I think they're going to have to, since he has found a sympathetic ear with that federal judge in San Francisco, who has upheld all of the petitions that his attorneys have filed, saying that the FCC rules are unconstitutional.
	Either the FCC will have to modify their rules so that the judge will finally say, yes, you have to shut down, or they're going to have to pass the low-power FM petitions, one of them, As I said before, I think Skinner's proposal is probably the best.
	I do think that the three kilowatts are going to be the sticking point.
	But there are at least four different proposals right now for low power.
	I think the Commission is going to have to pass something in order to deal with this and say, OK, we've addressed this problem of low power.
	Now, Mr. Dunifer, either comply or we're going to shut you down.
	All right.
	Over the years, I have sold a gazillion shortwave radios.
	uh... the sun gene line of shortwave radio signal people are portables out
	there and
	they can listen to shortwave now you mentioned a frequency earlier and i want to mention it
	again sixty six point
	nine five five exploit nine five five
	telegraph and i would say with them within ten kilohertz up and down
	That's the center frequency you'll hear the most pirates.
	You'll hear them on 6950.
	You'll hear them on 6960, but usually 6955 any weekend.
	What kind of stuff?
	Oh, mostly on the weekend.
	Mostly on the weekend, although we had a period here back around Christmas time where we went 80 days, where every single day there was some kind of a broadcast on.
	Really?
	So, people, even with their smaller radios, have a pretty good chance of hearing this, huh?
	They sure do!
	They sure do.
	What are they likely to hear?
	What's being broadcast up there?
	Well, we've got Friday Radio, which is a station that comes on only on Fridays and talks about Fridays.
	You mean that's the subject?
	That's it.
	That's the subject of it.
	There's a station called Happy Hanukkah, which talks only about Hanukkah.
	You usually only hear that in December.
	Station K-O-L-D, which is an oldies kind of a station, a big band type thing.
	There's KNBS, Cannabis Radio, which is put on by the California Cooperative of Growers, which talks about the wonders of marijuana.
	There's Radio Free Speech, which talks strictly about government and the limitation of the right of free speech.
	In fact, it was that station that took something that Rush did.
	I guess this guy has to have no life.
	Well, it had to be hours and hours of Rush programs, twice them up to say what, to have Rush say.
	So instead of Rush saying what he normally says, Rush was doing the opposite?
	Yeah.
	That must have been a howl.
	Do you have any tapes of that?
	Yeah, I'd be happy to send a tape.
	Really?
	Sure.
	I think you would chuckle beyond belief.
	I really would.
	I'm going to sit here and think.
	Could I play those for my audience and get away with it?
	Some of it you could.
	A lot of it.
	In other words, Rush was saying things that even Howard couldn't say.
	Yes.
	I see.
	There's even a Howard Stern Experience station.
	There's a station called Voice of the Asylum, which is just complete lunacy.
	There's a station that keeps coming back every year, and no one And I've been doing this for almost 20 years now, listening to pirates, called The Crooked Man.
	And it's just a stream of consciousness that just makes you go, what is this guy smoking?
	But it's just funny stuff I've ever heard.
	Really?
	Absolutely great.
	And so, in other words, you could go to this frequency, 6-9-5-5, and you might hear absolutely nothing.
	You would have to sit there kind of and monitor.
	Frequently on the weekends and holidays, especially when people are off, that kind of thing.
	And by the way, I've heard that you have a portable.
	I have a Sanji and I also have a Yacht Boy 400.
	I listen on my Kenwood R5000, which is my baby.
	And I'll tell you, it is some of the most entertaining stuff that you will ever hear on the radio.
	It reminds me of back in the 60s when there was a lot of creativity on AM radio that seems to have gone away.
	And I guess these guys all decided they'd become pirates and start doing these things on the shortwave.
	We know about the big bust in Florida.
	What happens otherwise?
	How many pirates would you estimate, AM and FM, across the country might there be?
	Oh, goodness.
	Well, we know that there's at least 200 active shortwave pirates.
	I would have to quadruple that for FM, because there's no way of knowing How many get busted?
	Just looking at the number of busts that there have been in the past couple of years for
	the AFMs, and these are the guys that operate what they call 24-7, 24 hours a day, seven
	days a week, it's got to be 800 to 1,000.
	It has to be.
	How many get busted?
	Well, I would say probably about 10% of those get busted because they have a high profile.
	A good example would be when, and both of you have pointed out, both Roger and you,
	where the newspaper came to you and said, gee, we'd like to do a story about you.
	And that, of course, is the kiss of death, because the FCC people do read the paper.
	Yeah, you know, they said, but your number was on the screen.
	I said, that wasn't my number.
	I went into complete, absolute, total denial.
	And they finally, in frustration, said, OK, thank you.
	And there were a lot of cars driving around my house for a while.
	I'll tell you another place you can listen for pirates and hear a lot right now is in what is called the Expanded Band, which is the new part of the AM band that's opening up between 1600 and 1700 kilohertz.
	Still a lot of pirates up in that area that are on the 1680 has a pirate on called Dog Radio.
	Dog Radio?
	And he's been very active.
	Wait a minute, what is dog radio?
	The guy just barks in between records.
	I listened one night for about an hour and he never really said anything.
	He just barked in between the records.
	You'll see some of the consultants, I'm sure, listen to this and probably come up with a way to format it.
	Look, our research shows only three barks between each record.
	It sure has been fun having you on the air.
	I'm sorry you have to go do your own show.
	I have to make a living to pay this mortgage for my teenage daughters.
	It's an interesting area that I think the FCC has got to deal with, and with this rulemaking.
	You know, Roger said that the FCC was very quick in accepting his rulemaking petition.
	I think that shows that they want to get this taken care of.
	In accepting, I know, but that may mean they just want to deal with it and get it the hell out of the way.
	As in, forget it.
	Well, they don't have the manpower.
	Really cut back, they don't have the manpower to deal with it.
	Alright, look, we're way out of time here, so Pat, give, one more time please, the address where people, how they get in touch with ACE, the Association of Pendestine Radio Enthusiasts.
	Just send me two first-class stamps, I'll be happy to send you a copy of our 25-page newsletter, it's PO Box 12112.
	norfolk virginia two three five four one that's p o box one two
	Yes.
	one one two norfolk virginia two three five four one
	i think you'll find it interesting hard and and and and so you keep track of who
	gets busted in the who's doing what and what the fcc is doing in
	i think that we have a we have a column written by a fellow named bud stacy
	that's nothing but microcasting a low-power fm and each one of our issues
	mhm mhm uh...
	are you gonna stay out of trouble Oh, yeah.
	I'm at the age now where I'm looking at retirement.
	Oh, I didn't mean whether you were personally going to put on a pirate station, but I mean with the newsletter, with the organization, you are probably not the favorite child of the FCC.
	Oh, no.
	In fact, we used to have a local FCC inspector here named J.J.
	Freeman, who was rather notorious for busting pirates, and I was actually friends with Jerry because he used to say, look, you're encouraging these guys.
	And as I said at the beginning of the program, I do political analysis, but that doesn't mean I encourage crooked politicians either.
	It just means that I'm watching, observing, and commenting on the phenomena.
	Very good.
	That's sort of a disclaimer.
	Have a good show this morning, Doc.
	Great, thanks.
	It was a pleasure to be with you.
	you take care and we'll be right back.
	Moody River more deadly than the Venus night.
	Moody River your muddy water took my baby's life.
	Last Saturday evening, came to the old oak tree.
	It sat beside the river where you were to meet me.

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