"On July 2 agents of the Federal Communications Commission pulled up outside a funky house near the top of the hill above the Castro where Charlotte Hatch and her husband Jim live....
"'It's just like any other family house,' Charlotte Hatch said. 'Except we have a radio station in the basement.'
"The station, which they call Liberation Radio,' broadcasts at 93.7 FM and has, for 10 years, been a megaphone for progressive causes in San Francisco. Most recently they have been a voice for opponents of the war in Iraq. They also are the home of queer-oriented shows -- 'Out Loud Radio,' a program for LGBT youth, 'By the Seat of our Pants,' a music program... (etc.)
"The FCC agents, David Doon and Glenn Phillips were met at the gate by DJ Carmen La Salle. They asked to inspect the station's equipment, but La Salle wouldn't let them in. The agents, who didn't bring a search warrant or any police back-up, went away -- but they left behind a 'notice of unlicensed radio operations.' The notice says that the operators of the station could end up with a $7,000 fine for refusing to let the agents in, and a $10,000 fine for broadcasting without a license.
"The notice could mean that the station will be forced to close....
"While Liberation Radio's home-made transmitter was made in his workshop by pirate radio pioneer Steven Dunnifer, it puts out only a miniscule 100 watts, and cost next to nothing. By contrast, it would cost 'easily $250,000' to start a licensable station, including all the engineering studies and equipment the FCC requires, guessed 93.7's lawyer Peter Franck.
"But the real cost in San Francisco, he said, is in the tens of millions of dollars, because there isn't any space on the dial. 'You'd have to buy a station,' Franck said, because the Congress, under pressure from station owners and NPR, recently reduced the number of available slots by half.
"According to advocate Larry Shaw, almost all of the wattage on the FM dial in San Francisco -- a massive 95% -- is controlled by three major media companies: Clear Channel, Disney and CBS. Clear Channel has over 1,200 stations in the US, almost one-fifth of the radio stations in the nation. The next biggest competitor has about 200. 'They totally dominate the radio market,' said Franck.
"In his book The Media Monopoly, (Ben) Bagdikian said that in the US, broadcasting is a $300 billion business, profiting off what is supposed to be a public resource -- the airwaves.
"The FCC is supposed to be the traffic cop of the airwaves, preventing stations from overlapping each other. But the argument that the micro-power broadcasters make is that the FCC's processes are tilted in favor of big broadcasters and are opposed to the most fundamental of American values -- free speech.
"It stands as a protest against the corporate control of the airwaves. As long as that radio station is on the air, they don't control all of it,' said 93.7 co-founder Richard Edmonson.
"Liberation Radio first started broadcasting on May Day, 1993, from the Edmonson's Richmond district living room. Edmonson said he and co-founders Keith McHenry and Jo Swanson had been involved in the Food Not Bombs movement and were unhappy about the way the media were covering the controversy around the group. McHenry had been arrested over 100 times for giving away free food to the homeless.
"For a time in the mid-90s Edmonson broadcast from a camper which he would drive around to hilltops around San Francisco, broadcasting for a while, and then moving on to escape notice from the FCC.
"This isn't the first time they've been in trouble with the FCC. In 1993, Edmonson and his camper were in an OJ-style slow speed chase with the same agent who came to the door this month, David Doon. They weaved around the streets of San Francisco until finally surrounded by a phalanx of eight SF police cars. 'Amazingly,' Edmonson said, the police refused to go into the camper and let Edmonson and his equipment go.
"According to Edmonson, the FCC has taken, or threatened, action 16 times in the station's 10 years on the air.
"They have applied for a license twice, once in 1998 and again in 2000, and were denied both times. In their most recent application they were refused because of the new station spacing requirement and because they were an unlicensed broadcaster, which in typical 'Catch-22' fashion, said Franck, disqualifies them...
"While the FCC did not return calls seeking comment for this article, Hatch is resigned that ultimately the station will be forced to close. The application process, she said, is made for big commercial stations. 'We'd like to stay on the air as long as we can. But it's like Las Vegas,' she said. 'You know you're going to lose -- you just don't know when."