One longtime Boston pirate, Choice FM, claimed it had the call letters WCFM, which I’m sure came as news to the folks at Williams College in Williamstown, MA who have had a station with those calls for years. The website claimed they had 2,000 watts and were licensed by the FCC as a low power station (again: they claimed 2,000 watts). I believe at one time the Touch FM site said they had the call letters “WTCH-LP”.
Bovine excrement.
The Touch site now mentions the FCC raid and there’s a loop announcement saying their programming continues as a streamcast, etc. There is a change.org petition out there to get the station back on. Hey, raise a bunch of money in the community and buy a station and go on legally, that would be fine by me. They chose to go on without permission.
>>Many of those were in response to complaints of interference from legitimate stations.
Some go right next to legit stations. One in Boston picked 93.5 FM—right next to sports/Red Sox flagship WEEI-FM 93.7.
>> I would bet, as other have suggested, that race preference kept them alive, but something happened recently that trumped that race card. A personal vendetta by a disgruntled staffer?
It has been said that the FCC waits for complaints from legit broadcasters. Greater Media has WROR 105.7. They also have WBQT 96.9, a hip hop station who probably lost some listeners to “Touch”. It was said Boston mayor Tom Menino had asked Greater not to complain. Well, the new mayor of Boston is Marty Walsh. Maybe now that someone else is in power...
Charles Clemons ran for mayor of Boston last year. He didn’t make the cut in the primary and had two finalist candidates, one of whom he could endorse. There was Walsh and there was John Connolly.
He backed the wrong horse. Connolly.
Last year:
http://www.enterprisenews.com/x1905499940/Pirate-radio-station-in-Brockton-flagged-for-interference
>>Firefighters driving to work at the Pleasant Street station on the edge of downtown started reporting interference on their car radios this week.
Then on Wednesday, music started playing over the speakers in the station used for dispatching fire engines and garbling emergency communications.
“In the station, those speakers are used to alert firefighter to an incident, and that’s how we get the type of call and location,” said Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Galligan. “Any interference is a serious issue.”
...They discovered a satellite dish and an FM antenna on a radio mast directly across the street from Fire Station 1 at 69 Pleasant St..
The antenna extended nearly 60 feet in the air and an unlicensed station was broadcasting on 88.9 MHz, right next to WERS in Boston, DeNapoli said.