Free Radio Berkeley

Founded on April 11, 1993 as a Free Speech voice challenging the regulatory structure and power of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Free Radio Berkeley has been engaged in an ongoing legal battle with the FCC. Until it was silenced by a court injunction in June 1998, Free Radio Berkeley was broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 104.1 FM with 50 watts of power as the alternative voice for the greater Berkeley/Oakland area. The original Free Speech mission to provide community news, discussions and interviews, information, a wide range of music, and more has now been taken up by Berkeley Liberation Radio.

Free Radio Berkeley was instrumental in helping to to create an ever growing micropower broadcasting movement to liberate the airwaves and break the corporate broadcast media's stranglehold on the free flow of news, information, ideas, cultural and artistic creativity.  This movement, by creating an ungovernable situation for the FCC, forced this regulatory body to establish a very limited low power FM broadcast service (LPFM). Viewed by many within the micropower community as a form of damage control and a divide and conquer strategy, this LPFM service only allows the establishment of low power stations in rural communities due to overly stringent channel spacing requirements.  Even given the limited nature of LPFM it was immediately opposed by both the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio. As a result of intense lobbying efforts by both these organizations Congress passed a bill that severely curtailed an already limited service. The National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications responded to the initial LPFM rule making proceedings and is currently assisting with the LPFM application process.

via freeradio.org