FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler went before the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, Tuesday, as part of an FCC oversight hearing. The only radio issue Wheeler spoke about was pirate radio enforcement. Wheeler said 300 enforcement actions have been taken against pirates since he became Chairman and the Commission remains committed to pirate radio enforcement. He did say the FCC could use a little help.
Wheeler would like Congress’ help going after landlords. “We need to ensure that there are legal consequences for the landlords who look the other way because helping pirates puts money in their pockets. Congress could make it illegal to aid or abet pirate radio operations. Doing so would put pirates on the run and help us put them out of business.”
Wheeler praised Commissioner O’Rielly for taking the lead on pirate enforcement and informed the subcommittee about a letter written to community officials. “Earlier this month, all five Commissioners signed a letter addressed to local officials as well as real estate and advertiser groups whose members may provide support to pirates, whether knowingly or unknowingly. The letter and a separate Enforcement Advisory explained the very real harms caused by pirate radio and asked those groups for their assistance in addressing the problem.”
Serving for more than 4 decades in the broadcast engineering field I can certainly agree that pirates are a problem to those licensed to use the broadcast bands. I do, however, question the recent actions of the commission in regards to their awareness campaign to make it more difficult for pirates to set up shop.
I serve as webmaster for a site that assists educational institutions and hobbyists in using legal, Part 15 compliant radio transmitters on the AM and FM broadcast bands. In recent years I’ve heard of instances where Part 15 compliant operators were unduly harassed by overzealous field agents. Wouldn’t you expect an FCC representative to know the difference between somebody operating at 100 milliwatts on the AM band versus tens or hundreds of watts on the FM band? If they can’t successfully differentiate between the two how can they advise the layperson in doing so?
I’ve posed multiple queries to Chairman Wheeler and Commissioner O’Rielly. The lack of any response regarding their personnel’s lack of distinguishing a Part 15 radio enthusiast from a blatant pirate operator is disturbing. Considering the vast difference between the two, I would expect that the commission would have made this distinction much more apparent in the recent public advisory they disseminated to community officials.
I developed a Pirate Radio Vs Part 15 Radio fact sheet that I feel provides a much better explanation to the layperson while not throwing the Part 15 radio enthusiast community under the bus. I wish those at the commission were equally as thoughtful.
Bill DeFelice
Webmaster
CampusBroadcaster.net / HobbyBroadcaster.net