Prometheus Unbound

For a guy whose pirate radio collective had been busted six times by the Federal Communications Commission and who still goes by an illegal broadcaster's nom de air, Pete Tridish looked unusually at ease at a February hearing inside the commission's Washington headquarters. He and a few dozen other activists had gathered for LPFM Day, a morning's worth of informal hearings on the state of new low-power community FM radio stations. All five commissioners--Democrat and Republican--greeted them and praised their efforts to give more Americans access to the airwaves. And just as the event got started, Senator John McCain of Arizona introduced a bill that would expand the number of low-power FM licenses.

Contrast that with the situation in the late 1990s, when the FCC made six visits to Radio Mutiny, a k a West Philadelphia Pirate Radio, or WPPR, the pirate station that Tridish and a few other activists ran out of the back room of a former squat. The chief of the commission's Compliance and Information Bureau came from Washington to lead the final raid himself. He sat down behind the mike, announced on the air that the station was closed, then seized its equipment.

That bust catalyzed Radio Mutiny's metamorphosis into the Prometheus Radio Project. Over the intervening seven years, Prometheus came to play a prominent role in the media reform movement: In the late 1990s the group lobbied for new community licenses. Once the FCC started issuing them, Prometheus helped build several of the most successful new stations and train volunteer staff. And Prometheus was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that stopped in its tracks then-FCC chairman Michael Powell's efforts to further deregulate the ownership of broadcast stations. The pirates had become players.

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