Press Release – August 27, 2011

PIRATE RADIO STATION SHUTDOWN!

Free Radio Santa Cruz, 101.1 FM looks for new home

Contact: John Malkin 457-2721

Free Radio Santa Cruz 101.1 FM, a pirate radio station celebrating 16 years of unlicensed broadcasting, was recently shutdown by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The commercial-free, community station continues to air on the internet 24/7 at http://www.freakradio.org while programmers search for a new home. Please contact FRSC if you’d like to host the transmitter and antennae. (http://www.freakradio.org)

On August 12, agents from the San Francisco office of the FCC hand-delivered papers to the house which Free Radio Santa Cruz has been broadcasting from for the last year. The FCC “notice of unlicensed radio operation” stated in part; “A valid FCC radio station license for your radio transmission on 101.1 mhz was not in evidence at the time of attempted inspection…” The owner of the house chose to comply with the FCC notice and local broadcasting was stopped.

Last year, March 27, 2010 was declared “Free Radio Santa Cruz Day” by then Mayor Mike Rotkin, who stated in part, “Free Radio Santa Cruz offers alternatives to corporate-controlled media, encourages critical thinking, and is dedicated to nonviolence, ending oppression, and expanding respect through open speech media…”

FCC agents can locate transmitter locations through simple techniques and Free Radio Santa Cruz has received noncompliance notices about a dozen times. The station has only been “raided” once since 1995, the year that broadcasting began from a bedroom of a downtown Santa Cruz house. In September, 2004, sixteen heavily-armed federal marshals and half a dozen FCC agents spent a day loading mixing boards, turntables, a transmitter, computers and other broadcasting equipment into trucks with black-tinted windows while one hundred citizens protested the government action.

Free Radio Santa Cruz 101.1 FM is a collective of forty programmers who produce music, news and cultural shows. The station also broadcasts independently produced national and international shows like Democracy Now and Free Speech Radio News. It’s a completely volunteer station and donations are always needed to pay rent and maintain equipment. See http://www.freakradio.org for a program schedule, to make a donation or to offer a new home for the station’s transmitter and antennae.