Ghost Radio in the Sky

Reader Douglas Fletcher passes along a great story about a mysterious radio station in Arizona and a reporter's efforts to track down the man behind it.

Comments

[James Merritt]

Of course, if you don't want to cover hundreds of miles, but just do the same thing as Ted Tucker for your town or neck-o-the-woods, you can put up an equivalent rig for a few hundred dollars, tops. Transmission power costs (that is, electricity to provide the signal and a transmitter that puts out a strong, quality signal); a tower costs; and music licensing costs. Otherwise, what Ted Tucker is doing is well within the capability of many a consumer, absent the gatekeepers at the FCC.

Wouldn't it be nice if people didn't have to be engineers like or (apparently) as wealthy as Ted Tucker to do what he is doing? If you're willing to settle for local coverage (5-10 mile radius instead of 50-100), it is very possible. The most challenging thing you have to do is dodge the Feds. And by far the biggest expense you'd have, would be if the Feds ever caught up with you.

I think we ought to change that situation. People ought to be able to stake a claim on the radio, work the claim, and keep the "real estate" as long as they demonstate active tenancy. If they pull up stakes (or pull the blug) and move on, then after a reasonable period the slot ought to revert to commons, for anyone else to occupy and claim. Use the courts or a rump FCC to adjudicate conflicting claims or charges of interference. (I haven't decided yet whether I like the idea of being able to sell or sublet one's right to occupy a slot, or pass it on to heirs. My current thinking is "no.")

Incidentally, we had an AM station here in Santa Cruz that went on for months a couple of years ago, playing some very interesting music from an mp3 machine or music changer. As it happened, this was a real commercial radio station in construction/test mode. When it finally went on the air and dispensed with the commercial-free eclectic music mix, it was a talk radio station for a time, then swapped formats with a sister station a few towns down the coast. It has played a satellite oldies program ever since. If you ask me, they ought to go back to the eclectic format. During that golden period, the station even earned a button on my car radio.

[Kevin Carson]

If this is analogous to occupancy and use tenure of land (of which I heartily approve), it's hard to say how one might prevent such "real estate" from being sold or transferred. Regarding occupancy-based land tenure, Tucker speculated that few would be foolish to quit a good piece of land until they had been paid for the value of their buildings and improvements; so the availability of all unoccupied land for homesteading would eliminate absentee landlord rent, but not the sale of occupied land.

I think something analogous would take place in your more or less common law system: prolonged disuse of a portion of the broadcast spectrum would revert it to "unowned" status; but in most cases, something like a transfer of seisin would take place for a sum of money.

[kevrob]

What was the "electromagnetic spectrum" worth before Maxwell, Marconi, Armstrong, etc. discovered that it existed, and could be put to use? Nothing. The claim that the spectrum is or should be a commons was unjust from the start, unless the pioneers of radiocommunication wished to donate what they discovered to the rest of us. Governments feared that only a few stations would be feasible, and wanted to reserve space for their navies and merchant marine, so nationalization of the airwaves, if not of the stations themselves, was the norm.

Tradeable rights to broadcast make at least as much sense as tradeable pollution credits. Arguably, some of us want to have some of those ionized electrons thrown our way!

Kevin

[James Merritt]

I said,"I haven't decided yet whether I like the idea of being able to sell or sublet one's right to occupy a slot, or pass it on to heirs. My current thinking is 'no.'"

Kevin Carson said, "I think something analogous would take place in your more or less common law system: prolonged disuse of a portion of the broadcast spectrum would revert it to 'unowned' status; but in most cases, something like a transfer of seisin would take place for a sum of money."

Yeah, I go back and forth on that one every couple of weeks. I'm thinking that people could make it worth your while to quit the spectrum slot you occupy, but not actually buy the right to occupy it themselves. You might pay people to provide programming in your channel, but if you forced them to pay you to use the channel, would that invalidate your own claims of tenancy?

Suppose that someone invented a way to use your channel without causing you noticeable interference? Could you win an interference suit against them in court? What if they needed to piggyback on your signal (as in current SCA authorization) but didn't otherwise interfere with it? What rent could you legitimately charge, considering that they wouldn't need your specific carrier, but could make do with ANYone's carrier on that channel?

I begin to see some analogies between standard ownership of real estate, and condominium ownership. In any case, I don't see much need for the FCC, as we have grown to know and love (?!) it, to act as gatekeeper.

[Kevin Carson]

James Merrit,

It would probably be a while before it was even necessary to buy an existing broadcast frequency, in a lot of areas. The last I remember, there's room for about twice as many broadcasters on the spectrum. So opening all that space up, without licenses, on a first-come first-served basis, would make Clear Channel and their ilk squeal like stuck pigs.

Reminds me of Nock's argument that if land had been appropriated only by Lockean standards of admixture of labor (rather than State preemption of vacant land and large-scale land-grabbing by absentee speculators), most of the population would still be settled east of the Appalachians.

[James Merritt]

Kevin Carson said, "So opening all that space up, without licenses, on a first-come first-served basis, would make Clear Channel and their ilk squeal like stuck pigs."

I say, that squealing would be music to my ears. (Literally, to judge by the example of Ted Tucker. 🙂

Voters and constituents: don't let the vested interests frame the debate over media ownership in ways that support the continuation of the current crooked game. If you really want media diversity, in programming and ownership, if you really want to foster an alternative to the ClearChannelTimeWarnerViacomDisneys of the world, you're more likely to get it from a real-estate-homesteading model, than from the FCC's command-and-control, scarce commons model that we've had since 1934. Please vote accordingly and direct your elected representatives to do the same.

[Kevin Carson]

C'mon SQUEAL! SQUEAL!

Heh heh heh.

[Malloy Mary Esther]

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DATE: 05/19/2004 01:58:21
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