ABSTRACT
Of the major mass media—television, newspapers, magazines, and radio—radio is the most important and influential worldwide. Even in the United States, which has the largest number of television receivers and transmitters and the largest daily newspaper circulation, radio remains an exceedingly important medium. Free radio stations are sometimes referred to as clandestine, pirate, micropower, or ghost stations, depending upon their purposes and operating frequencies. The purpose of micropower or microradio stations is to change restrictive radio licensing laws while providing alternative news and information to specific neighborhoods. Most micropower stations operate in open defiance of government licensing policies because the policies usually restrict the range of political viewpoints expressed over radio to those acceptable to government leaders. In Belgium, the government was forced to change its licensing policies in 1981, legalizing the low-power high frequency stations that appeared in the late 1970s to protest the government’s broadcasting monopoly.
