ABSTRACT

Berkeley and San Francisco, birthplaces of the Beat movement of the 1950s and the free speech and counterculture movements of the 1960s, became the center of the microradio revolution around 1993. Stephen Dunifer started Free Radio Berkeley as a direct challenge to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)s ban on low-power broadcasting and as a laboratory for developing and distributing a low-cost micropower transmitter that could be used by community groups and citizen activists. Between January 1995 and November 1997, hundreds of free radio stations took to the air. Free radio broadcasters also banded together, forming the Association of Micropower Broadcasters, which sponsors conferences, serves as a clearinghouse for technical and legal advice, and provides assistance to stations trying to get off the ground. The FCC responded in April 1996—noting that it had received 10,000 inquiries about microradio broadcasting—with a web page called “Low Power Broadcast Radio Stations.”.