Pirate Cat Radio (87.9
FM) was a low power
community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, ...
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...
that had been broadcasting since April 1996 in the
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
.
The station was one of many unlicensed radio stations operating in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Station founder Daniel Roberts, says that he started broadcasting Pirate Cat Radio out of his bedroom in
Los Gatos, California (a suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area) at the age of 15, despite receiving hundreds of "Notices of Unlicensed Radio Operation" from the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...
(FCC).
Roberts claimed on multiple occasions that the station was able to stay on the air based on a clause in FCC regulations that allows a licensing exemption in times of war. However, the FCC rewrote the wartime clause rules following a case in April 2008.
By 2005, Roberts claimed that he had been sent 160 warning letters from the FCC, and that he was not bothered by the possibility of his signal interfering with other broadcasters. He continued to ignore FCC letters, and reasoned that although his transmitting equipment could be seized, it would not be likely to be prosecuted for broadcasting illegally. Plans were made to form a pirate television station similar to Berkeley pirate radio legend
Stephen Dunifer’s low-cost experimental setup, but ultimately all that was broadcast were a catalog of
DivX .avi files on a homebrew server, though the station was actively soliciting more content at that time.
In a radio interview with Skidmark Bob on Free Radio Santa Cruz in May 2005, Roberts discusses obtaining and rebroadcasting copies of BBC’s ''
Doctor Who'' series before being available in the United States. Roberts called on listeners to "set up your own station and start playing whatever you want on TV … Now is the time, get on it." Roberts claimed that the online stream could hold up to 800 people, and planned for Pirate Cat Radio to reach 1000 watts using a directional
Yagi-Uda antenna he had built.
Pirate Cat Radio rebroadcast ''
The Howard Stern Show
''The Howard Stern Show'' is an American radio show hosted by Howard Stern that gained wide recognition when it was nationally syndicated on terrestrial radio from WXRK in New York City, between 1986 and 2005. The show has aired on Howard 100 a ...
'' in 2006 in its uncensored form from
Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio was a satellite radio (SDARS) and online radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Holdings.
Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially lau ...
in the Los Angeles area without permission, although the signal was inconsistent. Stern himself expressed frustration that his subscription-based show was being spread for free, pleading with his audience to "just pay the 42 cents a day" for the Sirius service to access his content. The FCC had previously in 2004 cited Stern’s show on Clear Channel for "repeated graphic and explicit sexual descriptions" prior to moving to Sirius. Listeners to the illegal rebroadcasts did claim to have heard profane content on 88.3 FM in Los Angeles.
A physical location and café were opened in January 2008 for DJs and live audiences in the
Mission District, San Francisco
The Mission District ( Spanish: ''Distrito de la Misión''), commonly known as The Mission ( Spanish: ''La Misión''), is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name i ...
, built out by the staff.
In March 2009,
Anthony Bourdain brought his show ''
No Reservations'' to San Francisco and visited Pirate Cat Radio to try the Bacon Maple Latte, a unique creation of baristas of the Pirate Cat Radio Cafe. An account of his visit aired on the
Travel Channel
Travel Channel (stylized as Trvl Channel since 2018) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which had previously owned the channel from 1997 to 2007. The channel is headquartered in New York, New York, United S ...
in early August 2009. That same month, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors recognized Pirate Cat Radio for the station's "...trailblazing efforts towards freeing the airwaves from corporate control, providing the community with training in radio broadcast skills, empowering voices ignored by traditional media outlets; and contributing to the advancement of the City's
coffee culture
Coffee culture is the set of traditions and social behaviors that surround the consumption of coffee, particularly as a social lubricant. The term also refers to the cultural diffusion and adoption of coffee as a widely consumed stimulant. In the ...
…".
In May 2010, some of Pirate Cat Radio's programming was edited for content and rebroadcast on licensed station
KPDO
KPDO is a community radio station licensed on 89.3 MHz at Pescadero, California. It is non-commercial and listener-sponsored.
The station provides public affairs, news, and music programming, both locally and nationally sourced.
, the FC ...
89.3.
After years of hundreds of warnings, in April 2009 Federal Communications Commission regulators discovered one of the Pirate Cat Radio transmitters on a rooftop in
Twin Peaks
''Twin Peaks'' is an American mystery serial drama television series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. It premiered on ABC on April 8, 1990, and originally ran for two seasons until its cancellation in 1991. The show returned in 2017 for ...
, broadcasting the station at a frequency higher than the legal limit. The FCC fined Roberts $10,000, forcing the station off the air and causing it to transition into an
internet-only radio station with
podcasts. The fine was issued for broadcasting without a formal license from the FCC. In an interview, Roberts was quoted as saying "You know, a fine is bad, but I don’t want to go to jail. I look very bad in orange."
[Kumeh, Titania (January 18, 2010)]
"Music Monday: Pirate Cat Radio vs. the FCC"
''MotherJones.com''
See also
*
Pirate radio in North America
*
Community radio
Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting. Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest. They broadcast content that is popula ...
*
Low-power broadcasting
*
Pirate television
A pirate television station is a broadcast television station that operates without a broadcast license. Like its counterpart pirate radio, the term pirate TV lacks a specific universal interpretation. It implies a form of broadcasting that is u ...
References
External links
Pirate Cat Radio
{{San Francisco Radio
Community radio stations in the United States
Pirate radio stations in the United States
Radio stations in the San Francisco Bay Area
Radio stations established in 1996
Defunct radio stations in the United States