Stephen Dunifer - Pirate of the airwaves takes crusade to television Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, February 11, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/11/PNG66B7CP81.DTL Visit the TV section of a consumer electronics store, and then check out Stephen Dunifer's electronics workshop. You'll see radically different visions of what it means to live in a wired world. The store is the place to go if you want a better picture. Dunifer is the man to see if you want to control the picture. The tinkering rebel behind Free Radio Berkeley and the local godfather of the idea that broadcasting is a free-speech right instead of something the authorities give permission to do, Dunifer is offering a course this weekend on how to build your own low-power TV station. A simple station is easy to set up and costs only a few hundred dollars, said Dunifer, who is internationally known for his support of locally owned, low-power FM radio as a counterforce to corporate owners' control of the major airwaves. Because of the actions of Dunifer and others in persuading the Federal Communications Commission to open up the nation's airwaves a crack, hundreds of noncommercial, low-power FM stations have gone on the air since 2000. But few of them are under local control, most carry religious programming and hardly any operate in a big city. Much more work needs to be done before media power is broadly democratized, said Dunifer, 53. Low-power TV is the latest thrust in the campaign, which Dunifer sees as global and revolutionary. "Our whole approach to this is electronic civil disobedience on a mass level," he said. "They gave us a few crumbs off the table. I'm tired of battling for a few crumbs. I want the whole pie, or cake." Under a 1998 federal court order that shut down his Free Radio Berkeley as an unlicensed FM station, Dunifer is in no position to resume broadcasting on his own. But there's nothing to stop him from offering training and equipment to other electronics do-it-yourselfers. Free Radio Berkeley may have been silenced as a pirate station, but it's more visible than ever as a pirate flag. That pirate radio flourishes in spite of the threat of legal sanctions has much to do with the availability of low-cost, homemade and inconspicuous equipment. Dunifer's TV setup extends the strategy. The heart of it is a $140 Mitsubishi modulator that Dunifer recently discovered works for TV as well as for FM. With a $150 amplifier and a $75 antenna, both made in Dunifer's workshop in West Oakland, and a DVD player or camera, one has all the gear needed to distribute television programming. Of course, that's the easy part. Finding a frequency that doesn't bump up against other signals and make licensed broadcasters and the FCC mad remains a barrier. In urban areas where the airwaves are packed, the barrier would appear to be all but impenetrable. But one Dunifer devotee who runs a pirate TV station in San Francisco said the benefits are worth the risks. The broadcaster, a 23-year-old Web designer who gave his name as "Monkey," said he isn't bothered by the 160 warning letters he has received over the years from the FCC or by the possibility of interfering with other broadcasters. Monkey ignores the letters, reasoning that although he may have his equipment seized, it's unlikely he'd be prosecuted for broadcasting illegally. At the same time, he works hard to stay out of the way of other broadcasters by controlling his signal so it doesn't drift. Monkey said five volunteers run the TV station, which he said broadcasts from "a little island in the middle of the bay." Branching off from Pirate Cat radio, which broadcasts on 87.9 FM, the station airs talk and public affairs programming, and its signal travels as far the I-5/I-580 interchange between Tracy and Manteca. On Jan. 20, it covered the San Francisco protest against the inauguration of President Bush, airing speeches by using cell phones in place of microphones. Monkey said the pirate broadcasting movement is in its third generation, with Dunifer as the grandfather. "He's taught hundreds of people how to build transmitters," he said. Inside Dunifer's workshop recently, two young men soldered transmitters for different radio stations. One of the two, Tom Belote, 23, of San Jose, said he planned to go on the air with Radio Libre, offering a mix of music and talk. Two underground FM stations operate in the East Bay, three in San Jose and three in San Francisco, with one more under development in each area, said Jack Brink, Dunifer's chief of television development. Brink, 35, whose day job is waiting tables in San Jose, said he is working on a low-power TV station that will go on the air this month on Channel 23. It will broadcast politically oriented programming from a transmitter in the North Berkeley hills. An air of prudent mystery surrounds the venture. "Jack is not setting up and running the station," Dunifer said in an e- mail. "This will be done by other folks who wish not to be identified at this time." On the first floor of Dunifer's workshop, Brink demonstrated the new TV setup, a desktop station capable of broadcasting between channels 14 and 26 on UHF. He said he's working on a new version that will open the UHF band up to Channel 69, giving urban broadcasters the potential for more clear space in which to operate. With a 60-foot antenna and clear weather, the homemade transmitter can broadcast a perfect signal 5 miles away, said Brink, who recommended that new broadcasters first go to the FCC's Web site to make sure they aren't interfering with anyone's digital signal for online broadcasting. As for programming, the simplest approach is to hook up a 200- disc jukebox-style DVD player. There's a surplus of good material that never gets on cable or satellite, and what better way to respond to "the total propaganda environment that has been created with television media," Dunifer says in his introduction to the workshop. "The revolution," he says in his pitch, "will be televised." Because the signal goes over the air, the technology needed to receive it is primitive: any old set with rabbit ears and with cable and satellite cables unplugged. Brink is under no illusions that over-the-air TV is about to sweep the country. "It's not going to be as universally successful as FM," he said. "I think it'll be very successful in some areas outside cable TV range." Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington, said low-power TV stations are usually found in rural areas. "It's impossible to find bandwidth in a large urban area," he said. Marianne Knorzer, station manager of KRBS, a new low-power FM licensee in Oroville (Butte County), said she intends to contact Dunifer about low-power TV. "I love it, and this town would be perfect for it," she said. "We don't have a local TV station. We don't even have public access in our town." Politically, the low-power movement has gained ground since Dunifer's legal battle in the 1990s. Not only progressives but also religious broadcasters want easier access to the airwaves. The movement got a boost at the FCC in 2001 when a study found no evidence that low-power stations interfere with big broadcasters. It got a break in Congress last year with the Public Broadcast Reauthorization Act of 2004, a Senate bill that would implement FCC recommendations to lift restrictions on issuing low-power FM licenses. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., brought the bill before the Senate in December with a report highlighting concerns about radio industry consolidation and lack of access by community broadcasters. Although interference remains an open issue -- the commercial broadcast industry maintains that the study done for the FCC was flawed -- low-power proponents hope Congress will let more community broadcasters go on the air legally, including some in urban areas. Dunifer sees his vision of community broadcasting free of government's hand spreading "from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego." He recently returned from Brazil, where he met fellow media activists at the fifth World Social Forum. "One of my goals this year is to put together a group of people whose sole purpose is to help get stations off the ground," he said. Learn more Build a Low-Power TV Broadcast Transmitter, a workshop by Free Radio Berkeley, is 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Call or e-mail for directions to West Oakland site. Sliding scale, $75-$100. (510) 625-0314; www.freeradio.org. E-mail Rick DelVecchio at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Page F - 1 URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/11/PNG66B7CP81.DTL
