How did WMFO get away with that??

[Eli Polonsky]

> > From: "A. Joseph Ross" <joe@attorneyross.com>
> To: "Boston Radio" <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org>,
> 	"Hakim Madjid" <hmadjid@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 01:33:29 -0500
> Subject: Re: How did WMFO get away with that??
> 
> On 16 Dec 2006 at 1:24, Hakim Madjid wrote:
> 
> > Tuned in WMFO in the wee hours of Saturday morning, 12/16/06
> > approximately 1am. As sign off music they played Steve Earle's
> > song F**k the FCC. 'MFO did *NOT* bleep out the 'F' - word.
> > 
> > How did they get away with that, in this era of Congressional and
> > FCC crackdowns on this sort of thing?

We don't know if they "got away with it", if they played it only a half
an hour ago from when you typed that message. If they have been
monitored, or if someone reports them, they may not get away with
it, and they might get a minimum $325k fine, which I would think 
could possibly be steep enough to shut them down. But, it's not like 
FCC agents are going to come roaring up to Curtis Hall at Tufts on 
Saturday at 1 AM and padlock the place.

By the way, I heard their sign-on Friday morning at 7 AM. After a 
legal enough recorded sign-on message, they went right into John 
Lennon's "Working Class Hero", with all the "F"-words uncensored. 

This station was fined a much smaller amount few years ago for
various technical and Public File violations. You would think they'd
learn, and get their act togther in all respects that could put them 
at risk. However, one problem with student-run college stations is 
that student managements turn over every year or so, and there
is often very little "memory" passed along with the changing of the 
guards. The same issues that may have been resolved one year 
suddenly become unresolved again the next year (and sometimes 
students don't care to hear the opinions of community volunteers
who have seen it all before and could offer some experience). 

It's a shame, because there are still some people doing some 
good programming on WMFO (in the contexts of both student 
radio as well as community radio), and a few jerks are putting
the whole station at risk for everybody else. This attitude has
often resulted in the station receiving far from ideal perception
from both the college and the FCC.

I found it was easy enough to make a couple of quick Pro-Tools 
edits to "Working Class Hero" to make it perfectly legal to air on 
my WMBR show. WUMB also created an identical edited version
for their Saturday morning 60's/70's folk-rock show.

EP