After 13 years of near continuous broadcasting, San Francisco micro radio station Pirate Cat Radio (87.9 FM), operating out of Pirate Cat Café, has been ordered off the air and fined $10,000 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

In a notice dated August 31, 2009 the FCC asserted that Monkey, the founder of Pirate Cat Radio, “willfully and repeatedly violated Section 301 of the Communications Act of 1934” and proposed to fine him $10,000 for the infraction.

By bringing to bear the full weight of the Federal government against continued broadcast operations, the FCC’s order effectively ends Pirate Cat Radio’s thirteen-year run as one of the Bay Area’s most consistent voices of protest against corporate-run media monopolies and monocultural programming.

Here’s the full statement from Pirate Cat Radio founder Monkey.

SF Gate’s “Off The Record” and SFAppeal have more on the story.

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guest post by Violet Blue

photo by Scott Beale

In a completely non-ironic and potentially exciting move, KQED and the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism have snatched $5 million in kindling to start the Bay Area News Project. The money is being fronted by the Hellman Family Foundation to create online (and sideline print) media outlets as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan publicly supported news organization.” The first post on their fledgling Twitter account (@bayareanewsproject) announces that they’ve joined forces with the New York Times and the rumor is that it’ll be basically a New York Times West. The veritable Grey Lady herself said — one day after the NYT’s involvement was announced — opines that it’ll be “the largest and most ambitious of dozens of similar local news operations that have cropped up around the country.”

The venture is set to launch next year, which is really just around the corner in old media time, and to get a good sense of what the various people involved have to say about the scope and intention of the next possible Chron/Gate/Examiner killer, there’s a lot to be gleaned in KQED’s roundtable audio interview from Friday. Forum’s recent episode with host Dave Iverson The Future of News? is worth a listen. The topic of local news coverage here in the heart of technology (and the Hollywood of tech) is nothing if not a morbid topic, and there have been many contenders for the title they’re going to be more than a few rounds in the ring for. They’re hiring for freelancers right now (email: jobs at bayareanewsproject dot org). Although on Iverson’s show, when directly asked by a caller self-identified as a journalist, they said there would be compensation but were not transparent about any pay scale. I guess we’ll have to wait until they choose a name for more details (BANP is a temporary title). But they do tell us that distribution will be through a website, mobile applications, KQED will funnel them through radio and television dissemination, and they’re “exploring” print options with the NYT.

On the show, guests (and members of BANP) include Carl Hall, former representative of the SF Chronicle’s newsroom and commercial departments; Jeff Clarke, president and CEO of KQED; Neil Henry, professor and dean of the UC Berkeley’s J-school and author of 2007’s “American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media”; Noelle Leca, chair of the board of directors of KQED; and Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. In all it looks to be a very exciting venture, and we’ve been waiting for that local news wake-up call for decades — after all, we really should be leading the world in a revolution for combining democratized reportage and cutting edge technology. But instead most of us just gnash our teeth, watch the lag, read SFist, SF Appeal and SFBG while going elsewhere for… everything else.

Bay Area News Project is nothing if not ambitious. Will they really be the shock troops for journalism’s revolution as they hope? I’m reminded of when GETV was invited as citizen journalists to the 2006 San Francisco International Film Festival in a groundbreaking step to incorporate indie media with mainstream media. Only to discover in our on-the-spot interview with Graham Leggat that while courting us — no: in fact, bloggers and web TV reporters like us were not going to be granted equal access. Bait and switch, or perhaps yet another case of misunderstanding the medium. In the KQED Forum show, they tell us that BANP wants to “engage, listen, communicate with one another… with professional heart for news gathering and dissemination.” While also bantering that unlike citizen journalism, “truth” is at the heart of professional journalism, hence their preference for pro over citizen reportage — a sentiment many of us might find dismaying, at odds with our experience, and simply old fashioned.

Well, we can take heart that KQED’s Noelle Leca can be quoted as saying (at 37:35, in case we need it later) that Bay Area News Project “is a risk taking venture.” We certainly hope so. And Lillian Hellman was a very interesting and cool woman. BANP, whatever it will be called, could be just the kick in the [body part] that is needed, not just locally but nationally or even internationally. And that would be something to finally be proud of, indeed.

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On January 24th the transmitter for FCC Free Radio, the San Francisco Bay Area’s newest micro powered, community radio station, started broadcasting at 107.3 FM. You can also listen to FCC Free Radio live online.

According to the FCC Free Radio website Title 47 Section 73.3542 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations currently allows them to legally broadcast with out a formal license from the FCC.

FCC Free Radio is run by veteran non-commercial and micro radio DJs including our good friend John Hell, who is Program Director of Talk Programming and will be on the air Monday nights with his show “Season in Hell”.

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Church of the Sub-Genius High Priest (REALLY high!) and KPFA radio personality Doug Wellman or “Puzzling Evidence” as he’s known of to cultists and the power elite, has been posting edited videos from his backlog of tens of thousands of hours of the weirdest and most ridiculous events to take place in the Bay Area and Beyond from the last 25 years.

Doug has been with Subgenius since the halcyon days of the early 80’s. Among his exploits in intensive voyeurism, surreal tourism and enigmatic conspiracies, Doug has, among other notable accomplishments, killed (allegedly) Subgenius Prophet Bob Dobbs, inspired David Byrne to write the song “Puzzling Evidence,” been accused of being a Oakland Police Intelligence officer by a crazed anarchist lawyer and survived a combat tour of Viet Nam as a naval officer.

Doug and his fellow Subgenius potentate Dr. Howlin Owl Robins have hosted the Puzzling Evidence Radio Show for twenty years. Joined by Subgenius co-founder Philo Drummond in recent years, this show is now (I believe) the longest running show on the venerable lefty station as well as being the most confusing and the least dogmatic.

Doug was at the 1st and 2nd How Berkeley Can You Be Parade “PETA (People Eatin’ Them Animals” float/performance and recorded the tense exchanges between the Meat People and protestors.

This event (staged three years in a row for the family friendly Berkeley parade) was comprised of various “meat providers” such as Steven King’s Carrie White, Texas Chainsaw Massacres Leatherface , Farmer Vincent from Motel Hell and others. Our very own anti-meat protestors the “Veget-Aryans” were there with bullhorns decrying the offense of edible flesh. Badly burned BBQ and fresh GPC cigarettes were tossed out to the throngs of aging Berkeley hippies and their tie-dye wearing progeny (“…here kid, first smokes free!”) My favorite part was when two 15 year old Berkeley High debutants poked at one of the massive pigheads and, in true bewilderment asked: “How did you make these things???”

Doug shot one of the last large group ascents of the Bay Bridge prior to Homeland Security making it almost impossible to climb bridges post 9-11.

Doug recorded some interesting moments at Burning Man during the apocalyptic 1996 event. Watch for the “official” radio call response to an unsanctioned “protest” of the burn!

Doug was there to record for posterity Dick Cheney’s final hurrah in San Francisco:

If you want to know what young officers recently graduated from their respective academies (Naval, West Point, set) were doing on the tax payers dime as the Viet Nam War wound down in the early 70’s look no further than here.

Some other winners are:

• Extra Action Marching Band at Pt. Arena’s 100th anniversary
• The band Abu Ghraib playing after the ’08 St. Stupid’s Parade
• Cyclecide at ace Auto

There’s tons of St. Stupid, Ask Dr. Hal, Extra Action and rare Subgenius edits from another time and another place…….

Check them all out on the Puzzling Evidence TV YouTube channel.

photo by Scott Beale

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That’s the video for iGeneration by MC Lars who will appear on Pirate Cat Radio this Thursday January 29 on RICK!’s show: “Baghdad By the Bay”. Lars is one of the better known Nerdcore rappers (though he calls his specific niche “post-punk laptop rap”), and he appears in the film about the genre Nerdcore Rising.

RICK!’s Baghdad by the Bay is on Pirate Cat from 8-10pm Thursdays. Pirate Cat Radio lives at 87.9 FM on the dial in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and you can also tune in online. It’ s an MC Lars sandwich this Thursday, with two San Francisco bands on the show before and after: The Music Lovers are on at 8pm, MC Lars is on starting at 8:40, then The Harbours to close out the night. More details on all the acts here.

In case you didn’t know “Baghdad by the Bay” was originally Herb Caen’s nickname for San Francisco in his early heyday as a newspaper columnist here in the 40’s (Caen also is responsible for getting beatnik and hippie into the vernacular, by the way). Caen continued to write for the San Francisco Chronicle until his death in the late 1990’s

MC Lars’ new album is called This Gigantic Robot Kills and it will “drop” on 2/24/2009. It features such stellar and multi-generational icons as Weird Al Yankovic. Here’s a little teaser about the album from Lars’ podcast:

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guest post by Todd Lappin (Telstar Logistics)

The fab folks from North Beach’s own Kitchen Sisters have produced a radio piece about the history of Rice-A-Roni, the “San Francisco Treat,” that’ll debut during NPR’s Morning Edition on Thursday, July 31.

Personally, I suspect we locals no longer eat much of the stuff now that we live under the iron-fisted regime of Queen Alice Waters of Slowfoodshire. Nevertheless, Rice-A-Roni really was invented in San Francisco, and that infectious jingle practically defines the city for tens of millions of Americans.

The Birth of Rice-A-Roni

San Francisco, 1948. The worlds of a young Canadian immigrant, an Italian pasta making family, and an old Armenian woman converge in this story of the creation of the “San Francisco Treat."

After World War II, newlyweds Lois and Tom DeDomenico moved into the San Francisco apartment of an old Armenian woman, Pailadzo Captanian. During the day, while Tom was off working at his family’s Golden Grain Macaroni factory, Lois spent long kitchen afternoons with Mrs. Captanian learning to make yogurt, baklava, and Armenian rice pilaf while listening to the old woman’s dramatic life story — of the Armenian Genocide, of her husband’s death, her separation from her two young sons and her tortutous deportation trek from Turkey to Syria along with thousands of other women and children. Years later, when Lois made rice pilaf one night for dinner, Tom’s brother Vincent looked down at his plate and said, "This would be good in a box. We’ve got rice, we’ve got macaroni." And Rice-A-Roni was born.

If you miss the broadcast, the recording should be available on the Morning Edition and Kitchen Sisters websites.

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Shouting Fire is an innovative new online radio station that began as an experiment evolving out of Burning Man Information Radio. The station officially launched today, Leap Day and is now broadcasting a live stream 24/7 featuring an eclectic mix of programming.

Friday, February 29th 2008 marks the ignition of Shouting Fire, an online radio station that will bring a mix of alternative art, culture, and thought to the internet airwaves. Spawned by the hard-working radio staff of Burning Man’s BMIR 94.5 FM, Shouting Fire aims to bring the energy and ethos of Black Rock City out of the desert and into the world at large.

Never been to Burning Man? Looking for more than just Black Rock City noise? Not a problem. Although the station will have its share of content relating to Burning Man, the programming will not be “playa-centric.” Because Shouting Fire is not just for “burners”; it’s for everyone with an open mind and open ears. Interviews, news, and audio art. Performance, politics, and perspective. And, of course, lots of eclectic music from DJs who don’t just play music–but who have a passion for explaining, exploring, and celebrating it.

On February 29th Shouting Fire begins its regular programming, with weekly shows from DJs and on-air personalities including TradeMark G. (Evolution Control Committee), Patti Schmidt (Brave New Waves), Reverend Billy, the Viking Youth, Dr. Booty, J. Kanizzle, Douglas Wolk, Eric Myers, Bobzilla, and more. We’ll be rolling out a couple hours of fresh programming each day, but you can listen to Shouting Fire 24 hrs. a day, all year long. To see the full schedule and listen to Shouting Fire, visit the website: www.ShoutingFire.com.

New programming will be added to the lineup as it evolves–and as our extended community (AKA YOU!!!) comes forward with the content. So if you know of something we should know about, or if you want to do a program yourself, email us and let us know what you’re thinking.

We hope you’ll like what you hear. And let us know what what’s on your mind: show ideas and comments (both positive and negative) are welcomed at shoutingfire@shoutingfire.com

Shouting Fire: we build the platform, but we all build the content…

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photo by Scott Beale

Xeni Jardin’s NPR report on the recent SRL show in Los Angeles is featured on today’s edition of “Day to Day”. Xeni has an excellent recap of the show on her Boing Boing post that features several of my photos, some of which are on the NPR website as well.

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