An Introduction to Radio Mutiny

West Philadelphia Pirate Radio (WPPR), also known as RADIO MUTINY, is an anti-profit, all-volunteer collective. Our mission is to supply the West Philadelphia community with news, views, opinions, and music not found elsewhere on the dial. We have been on the air since October 1996, and currently have 45 djs and shows with a mix of programming which reflects the diversity and concerns of the community. We broadcast six nights and two mornings a week at 20 watts in the non-commercial FM spectrum and we do not interfere with other stations.

Although very much a community project, we are also part of a nationwide movement of microbroadcasters defying Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations. Across the country, there are perhaps a thousand pirate, stations operating at under 100 watts. There is no FCC license available for such stations. The agency dumped the low-power (Class D) license in 1978, meaning only large corporations can afford the high licensing fees and huge transmitters needed to meet current requirements. This makes legal community-based radio a financial impossibility.

Mainstream broadcast media is about selling us, the audience, to advertisers, not about providing real communication and information relevant to our daily lives. The average American is exposed to 100 advertisements before 9 am each day. In recent years, mergers and buyouts have shaped the nature of the media industry, along with astronomical profits for the top players. The two largest global media firms, Time-Warner and Disney, both doubled their revenues from 1994 to 1996.

The situation is only getting worse. With the Telecommunications Act of 1996, ownership restrictions upon the radio industry were loosened dramatically. In the past, a single corporation could legally own no more than 20% of the radio stations in a listening area. Today, when American listeners tune into radio, up to 1/3 of the stations on the dial may be owned by one company. A single corporate interest used to be able to own no more than 20 fm stations and 20 am stations across the country. Today, there is no limit and there are "McRadio" chains of hundreds of stations owned by media giants like Disney and Time Warner. In the two years since the telecommunications act was passed, 4000 of the countries 10,000 stations have changed hands, almost all going from independent, mom and pop ownership to corporate control. The Orwellian doublespeak justification claims that this was done to bolster the American media's ability to "compete in the global marketplace."

Public radio has also been transforming rapidly in the past few years. The few public radio venues rely heavily on state and government funding and are therefore subject to immense political pressure, leading them to practice a stringent form of self-censorship. Although often much better than commercial stations, they are too vulnerable to be a reliable source of information or accessibility for dissenting opinions. Community stations have become ever-scarcer, as they have been regulated to death by the Federal Communications Commission. This has served the interests of powerful commercial and government forces. Most university stations have all but abdicated their role as an educational institution or forum for debate - they shun controversy and public affairs programming, preferring the safe route of mimicking commercial formats.

Compare the role of the media during the Vietnam era (bringing the war and demonstrations to the back home to the TV sets of America) and the jingoistic, obedient coverage of the Gulf war. Mainstream media offers no place for independent thought or dissenting opinions. The cultural life of our society is becoming terrifyingly blurred with our commercial life. In our age, no tool has been used by capitalism so effectively as the media. Effective political organizing, meaningful community relations, or an authentic cultural life are becoming increasingly difficult in the face of the modern manufacture of human experience by the media industry.

In a world dependent on broadcast and electronic media, free speech has to mean more than standing on a corner with a bullhorn. The FCCs practice of reserving the precious public resource of our airwaves for rich media giants must end. Non-commercial, non-government-funded microbroadcasters are among the only truly democratic voices in the media today. Radio stations such as Radio Mutiny have been and continue to be instrumental in many struggles around the world. Radio Venceremos played a key role in the FMLNs success during the decade-long civil war in El Salvador. They were broadcasting from the underground every day for twelve years, acting as an organizing tool for guerrilla maneuvers as well as a morale booster and a protest against the ruling media misinformation and censorship. In 1986, Mbanna Kantako set up a radio station to serve the African-American community of Springfield, Illinois. The station started out as WTRA, radio of the Tenants Rights Association, broadcasting accounts of police brutality and misconduct towards the residents of the Springfield projects. Today, WTRA is known as Human Rights Radio and it continues to be a voice for the poor African-American community in a town where racism is rampant.

A turning point in the modern United States Free Radio movement was in 1993. Steven Dunifer, an electrical engineer in Berkeley, California, became disgusted with the nationalistic, pro-Pentagon reporting of the Gulf war. He took to the airwaves. After a few years of covert broadcasting, Dunifer was caught by the FCC and fined. He refused to pay the fine, and the FCC took him to court to get an injunction against him.

The National Lawyers Guild took his case, arguing that the regulations were unconstitutional on the basis of First Amendment concerns. They made powerful arguments that the United States model of telecommunications regulations allows only a wealth-based broadcasting system - that the dominance of media by corporate interests is no accident but is inherent in the design of the current regulatory framework. They made the claim that microradio is the "leaflet of the Nineties" and that to disallow it is tantamount to censorship. Radio Free Berkeley won an important Ninth Federal District Court decision in November, 1997, in which Judge Claudia Wilken prohibited the FCC from collecting $20,000 in fines from Dunifer pending review of the constitutionality of current FCC licensing practices. This case is likely to be tied up in the legal system for some time, and its outcome will have far-reaching implications for the Free Radio Movement.

Because of the nature of our project we work with many other organizations. We have offered the radio as a conduit for activists and community groups that do not have fair representation on the airwaves. Some groups have regularly scheduled programming, while others have come into the studio to talk about a timely issue, announce or report on a demonstration. ACT-UP, Books Through Bars, Food Not Bombs, Anti-Racist Action, The Leonard Peltier/Big Mountain Support Group, The Industrial Workers of the World, and Prevention Point have all been featured regularly. We carry several progressive syndicated radio shows and we participate in networking with similar stations around the country. Radio Mutiny was the only station in Pennsyvania to air the commentaries of Mumia Abu-Jamal after his statewide censorship on "public" radio.

Radio Mutiny has set out to prove that in this era of corporate dominance and political backlash, this era in which a large portion of our societys culture and consciousness is industrially produced by media conglomerates driven by fantastic profit margins, this era in which a subservience to the cult of expertise and the hegemony of professionalism makes people question their competence to make any decisions for themselves or take any action outside of their specialized niche in the labor market - in this era, we have set out to prove that volunteers with a passion for culture and with vital, direct interest in civic affairs can make better programming than the mega-corporations controlling the majority of media outlets. With simple, accessible technologies, we can create a handmade sort of radio that, with its directness, its immediacy, its lack of pretense, will reach out from neighbor to neighbor and shake the foundations of an empire.