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PAGE 8A
WEDNESDAY,OCTOBER 29,1997
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
EVENTS • ENTERTAINMENT • ISSUES • MUSIC • ART
A local radio station is out
Makin'
Story by Rachelle Detweiler
Call it airwave piracy. Call it illegal or just call it microbroadcasting.
Whatever it's named, Lawrence's community based microstation, KAW 88.9 FM, will not hold to the Federal Communications Commission without a fight from station volunteers and community supporters.
Community volunteers launched the first broadcast from Liberty Hall six months ago without FCC licensing. The station applied for licensing, but the commission only licenses broadcasts of 100 watts or more, said Rich Wenzel, station director, KAW only uses 10-
"We are not pirates causing chaos on the airwaves," said Rich Wenzel, station director. "This has more to do with political oppression and repression from large corporate broadcast. It's political chaos on the air."
director RAW only uses 10-volt transmitters
Earlier this month, the station — with a five-mile broadcast range — received its first slap on the wrist. If the station does not buy more watts, either the publicly donated broadcasting
Matthew Moore cues up a record. KAW uses a mix of compact discs, tapes and vinyl records as its music selection. Photo by Geoff Krieger/AKANS.com
able community-based broadcasting.
The meeting allowed participants to become more familiar with microstations and learn how to sidestep FCC regulations. People enjoyed meeting each other and decided to form a letter-writing campaign, said Sarah Burch, a local nurse practitioner and the host of KAW's "Health Wise."
Burch wrote three letters to senators voicing her support of the community-based station and its programming. She said that her 30-minute show, which airs on Thursdays, highlights differ-
How to listen
What: Station KAW
Wenzel said that the FCC is under a statutory mandate issued by Congress to encourage the widest possible diversity of broadcasting at the minimum amount of power.
equipment will be impounded, or the station will be fined, Wenzel said.
"Never before have we had such an unprecedented monopoly of the airwaves being allowed in this country to the detriment of the smaller independent voices," Wenzel said.
Programming: Talk shows that discuss various social issues. Music ranging from big-band style to assorted ethnic music.
On the dial: 88.9 FM
Last week a group of station supporters met at the Ecumenical Christian Ministries Center, 1204 Oread, to discuss further action. KAW cannot invest in a 100-watts station because the cost would squash the afford-
ent health programs so residents know what services are available. Because she is not supported by a specific company or health service, she said she could provide a wider range of information.
that prevents interference by locking in a stable signal.
At the end of the meeting,
Burch's letters joined a growing
stack of 150 letters.
The support is not surprising because KAWs airwaves are open to anyone, Wenzel said. More than 600 community volunteers engage.
age from 13 to 65, have broadcast their interests through the station. Shows include a hedgepodge of informational topics such as health, ecology and technology as well as music programming that ranges from big band to regional ethnic styles.
"Treally don't know what venue there would be without KAW," said Patasy Atwell, a 61-year-old big band DJ. "There really isn't anything else in the Lawrence area where people can get in and play what they enjoy."
Atwell uses her personal music collection to put together a 90-minute show. The music, combined with her sense of humor, provides a great service to the community, she said.
Coan said the show discussed the possibility of the Environmental
Matthew Noore, also known as Olde Hip-Eye, goes through the playlist on KAW radio. Noore was working the afternoon shift yesterday. Photo by Geoff Krieger/KANSAN
Protection Agency agreeing to weaken the water standards rather than improve its quality.
Four volunteers co-host the informational show "Wild Earth," an environmental program that focuses on problems in Lawrence and Kansas. The last program addressed "The Rolling Down the River Festival" that recently came through Lawrence.
"I've always been a ham," Atwell said. "Getting involved with this seems natural. I've really come to enjoy it."
Co-host Clark Coan said that during the festival, people were warned not to touch the river's water, especially if they had an open sore.
H e knows several people whose medi-related jobs were threatened because they spoke out against such policies.
B u t Coan said that at KAW he could speak the r i t h w with out the fear of losing his job.
"It's not just a bunch of ill-knowledgeable people spouting off," Wenzel said. "What we broadcast is well-researched. It comes from the heart."
Even with good intentions and community support, the broadcast still is illegal, said Gary Hawke, KJHK general manager.
"It's like saying you don't have to have a driver's license in Kansas because you're only driving a few blocks," Hawke said.
He said the Constitution did not guarantee everyone a radio station, and even if regulations are not liked, the regulations must be followed.
Before the FCC began controlling the airwaves in 1933, two stations could compete with each other by fuzzing in to each other's territory. Hawke said.
Airwaves became licensed to prevent chaos throughout the country, and through the years, the FCC periodically has adjusted licensing policies. All changes are intended to clean up the airwaves — not clean up on fines. Hawke said.
"As a licensed broadcaster and owner of a station for 22 years, I know all the hoops I had to jump through for the FCC — whether I liked them or not." Hawke said, "I resent that some people ignore those regulations."
Because the FCC is understaffed and does not have time to seek out microstations, the commission responds only to complaints. Hawke said he did not know who issued the complaint against KAW.
Even without a license, KAW does not contaminate the airwaves. Wenzel said.
Through donations, station managers purchased various pieces of equipment, including a phase lock interlope circuit, a transmitter
"A lot of people are told by the FCC th a t micro-stations are fly-by-the-night deviling s t a t i o n s. That's not the case at all." Wenzel said. "The equin
ment is state-of-the-art and performs a true and valuable key support for democracy."
Clean airwaves and all, the FCC's threat still looms above the microbroadcasters.
Wenzel said he had watched as other members of the American Association of Microbroadcasters had become tangled in governmental bureaucracy.
A federal district court case against the microstation Free Radio Berkeley has been dragging through the court system for more than a year.
Individuals have been operating microstations since the '60s, but now stations require a collective community movement for basic operation and for challenging the FCC. Dunferm line said.
"The FCC will never win in the court of opinion," said Stephen Dunlion, founder of Free Radio Berkeley. "It's pretty ludicrous. We're not asking for a lot, just depowered communication services."
The Lawrence community-based station should keep searching for more support and not focus completely on FCC threats, Dumfer said.
"People must stand up to the FCC and not cave-in," Dunifer said. "There must be community support so when the threat comes down, you can see you're part of a larger movement."
Wenzel agreed that avoiding a court case means rallying community support. The FCC has backed away from some microstations — like the Santa Cruz-based station, Excellent Radio — when community members protested FCC intervention.
"People must understand we're not alone." Wenzel said. "There are over 200 stations in the country that the public does not know about because the media feels wrongly threatened about them."
News of the WEIRD
As of early July, the Tulsa County (Okla.) prosecutor's office was down to the last five retrials of 50 ordered in 1995 by the state Court of Criminal Appeals. The trials had been ordered because of now-retired Judge Clifford Hopper's errors. Hopper had routinely instructed jurors that defendants are "presumed not guilty" instead of the correct "presumed innocent" and had failed to instruct juries that the prosecution had to prove "each element" of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. All retrials so far have resulted in convictions.
An official at a health clinic in Rimouski, Quebec, issued a warning in July that growing numbers of local teenagers were getting their highs dangerously by injecting beer directly into their veins. The practice gives a faster rush than drinking and leaves little odor.
The news service Agence France Presse reported in June that the Lebanese Shiite Muslim organization Hezbollah had begun to embrace temporary "pleasure marriages"
because poverty and a shortage of men have made regular marriage less desirable. The temporary marriage ("mutaa") is a contract for a specific time during which an unmarried woman will take on the duties of a wife in exchange for money. According to Hezbollah, the "muta" implies a religious-based right to sexual pleasure that is not permitted in many other religions.
CANT POSSIBLY BE TRUE
Franklin James, 23, was charged with aggravated assault in June in Newport, Tenn., after putting fast-drying glue on his wife's genitals as punishment for an alleged affair. His wife obtained a protection order against him, but according to an August news report, the couple was living together again and planning to move to North Carolina.
Goeran Rudolfsson, recovering from brain-tumor surgery in a hospital in July in Stockholm, Sweden, had been complaining about nasal congestion when he blew his nose and felt a nonnatural substance flapping inside his nostril. When he stopped his gentle tugging, he was holding a 31-inch-long cloth apparently left inside accidentally during the June operation.
In April, Kevin Gillison, 18, of Port Washington, Wis., was convicted of sexual assault of a child when his 15-year-old girlfriend became pregnant, although the couple had been attending parenting classes together and planned to marry. Upon conviction, Gillson was barred from being around any nonadults, including the mother of his child. And Richard A. Duke Jr., 22, was jailed for 30 days in May in St. Mary's County, Md., for having sex with the 15-year-old girl whom he had married in the interim between arrest and conviction. Nonetheless, a judge ordered Duke to stay away from the girl, even though she is his wife.
In June, a Scripps Howard News Service reporter examined Consumer Product Safety Commission records recently made public and found that 1,823 serious injuries caused by "electronic air-fresheners" had been reported to the agency. Though the records were short on details, the records included 50 cases of amputation, 46 burns, 48 scaldings, 68 poisonings, 56 "foreign-body" penetrations and 69 drownings.
COURTROOM FOLLIES
The Michigan Court of Appeals in April ruled in favor of a prison inmate who had tossed a cup of liquefied feces in the face of a guard. Alphonso Gaines, 34, already serving time for assault, could not be punished further, said the court, because the prosecutors forgot to prove that Gaines was "lawfully" incarcerated in the Ionia facility at the time he threw the feces. Prosecutor Gail Hitchcock was incensed.
"Did they think we were charging someone who had sneaked into prison?" he said.
Defense lawyer Phillip Robertson.
intending to make a dramatic point in front of the jury at his client's robbery trial in Dallas, pointed the 9 mm pistol used in the crime toward the jury box, causing two jurors to fling their arms in front of their faces and others to gasp. Though Robertson was arguing for a sentence of probation, the horrified jury gave his client 13 years in prison.
The post-injury performance was basically standing and wigging, while her pre-injury notoriety was for limberness in working around a pole. In March, the jury awarded her $182,000, three times what she requested. Six of the seven jurors were men.
A stripper who had filed a lawsuit in Fairfax County, Va., to recover for injuries she suffered in a car accident, at first objected to the defendant showing a videotape of her performing after the injury, believing the jury would think she was mallingering. However, according to her lawyer, James M. Lowe, the tape backfire in her favor.
In June, Jerrick Michael Snell looked a gift horse in the mouth in a Dothan, Ala., court, after Judge Lawson Little had given him 20 years for cocaine possession. A few minutes later, as the judge, on other business, passed by Snell in a courthouse holding pen, Snell said in explicit terms that the judge should perform oral sex on him, at which point Little ordered him back into the courtroom and changed the sentence to life in prison.
In June a judge in London ruled that two social critics had libied McDonald's restaurants in a widely distributed brochure and ordered them to pay the company about $96,000. McDonald's took offense at charges of cruelty to animals, employment discrimination, destruction of the rain forests, low wages and serving dietary dangerous products.
LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS
To clear its name, McDonald's endured 313 days of trial (the longest trial in British history) during 30 months that reportedly cost the firm about $10 million. The activist's combined annual income is about $12,000.
In February, a newspaper in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, reported that rising dowry prices during the last 30 years (to about $30,000) have driven UAE men to seek foreign, dowry-free brides. The trend has created a glut of unmarriageable local women.
■ In August, the New York Times reported that a recent surfeit of crack-addicted prostitutes in New York City has driven down the street price of oral sex from $50 to $2 or $3.
THE ONLY WAY OUT
In April, the part owner of an exclusive restaurant across the street from Augusta National Golf Club shot himself to death on the second day of the Masters because he was unable to fill the ticket orders he had taken for the tournament.