E-Mail This Article to a Friend Left off the dial (continued)

WDOA 89.3-FM, Worcester, 1996-’97

In the 1990 film Pump Up the Volume, when the FCC comes after high-school student/pirate-radio DJ Hard Harry, who’s morphed his mother’s Jeep into a roving radio station, a chopper swoops in, agents chase him, and he ends up in cuffs. The confrontation wasn’t quite so dramatic in 1997, when the FCC descended on WDOA 89.3-FM, a Worcester-based punk-rock pirate station that had been on the air for 18 months. It was more like a nerdy pair of college RAs breaking up a dorm party than like a criminal apprehension.

Broadcasting seven days a week from his Worcester home, former Assumption College DJ Mike Malone had used a stable of about a dozen DJs, including a Shrewsbury truck driver who swore a lot and went by the alias John Q. Public. But WDOA wasn’t really meant to be a free-speech campaign; nor was it ever promoted as a pirate station on the air. Malone and his pals were simply fed up with the mainstream music on other local stations.

But the FCC came calling anyway. "They didn’t immediately say who they were. They were kind of engineer-looking types," Malone recalls. "They said, ‘You Mike Malone?’ I’m kinda like, ‘Who wants to know?’ They said, ‘Well, where’s the radio station?’ " At the time, Malone was in the middle of relocating the studio from his apartment’s upstairs to its basement. "They pointed to the upstairs room, and I very truthfully said, ‘There’s no radio station up there.’ They pulled out badges and said, ‘We’re the FCC.’ "

When Malone couldn’t produce a license, the agents informed him that their visit was part of a national crackdown and let him return to the airwaves briefly so he could explain why he wouldn’t be back. The last two songs he played were Elvis Costello’s "Radio, Radio" and the Replacements’ "Left of the Dial." And that was it.

When the LPFM-application period began three years later, Malone couldn’t apply because Worcester’s radio band was already too crowded — and because the FCC forbids anybody previously involved in unlicensed radio activity from sitting on the board of directors at an LPFM (though in reality, plenty of former pirates are active in micro-broadcasting). Today, WDOA continues online, with regularly updated shows streamed on demand.

Malone, who by day works in operations in the math department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, doesn’t see himself returning to the radio dial anytime soon — and definitely not as a pirate. "I still physically have the transmitter, so people have said, ‘Why don’t you go back on the air?’ " he says. "Well, my wife is a not US citizen — she’s from Germany — so the last thing we need in this day and age is for [US Citizenship and Immigration Services] to have another reason to hassle us." He adds, "I think we’ll just stay on the Web."

WRFB 88.1-FM, Brattleboro, Vermont, 1998-present

On Thursdays from 3 to 5 p.m., Deacon Doug mans the microphone for Vermont’s Radio Free Brattleboro 88.1-FM. Last week, Doug alternated between playing Christian music and reading from various religious texts. During his two hours at the low-power pulpit, the Deacon said things like, "God, he gets the fattest paycheck of all" and "When is the last time you did a foot-washing in your church?" One of the most intriguing moments of his show came when Deacon Doug played a fictional discussion between Satan and one of his minions about their ongoing malevolent projects. "Is there a problem with my abortion clinics?" growled Satan. "Is there a disturbance to my false idols?" Nope, the minion informed him: abortions were up, New Age was on the rise, and Satan’s "specialty" — drunk driving — was claiming lots of lives. Suddenly, there was a great rumbling from above, caused by the prayer power of 50 million Christians, and a gleeful chorus drowned Satan out, singing, "Revival!"

Perhaps more jarring, the Deacon’s Bible-banging sermon was followed directly by Pacifica Network’s progressive news show Democracy Now.

Radio Free Brattleboro is an LPFM archetype. In a single week, there are shows featuring hip-hop, roots, big band, indie rock, jazz, swing, classic rock, industrial, metal, folk, techno, easy listening, sports talk, Latin, dark wave, funk, disco, and more. "You name it, we’ve had it," says unofficial RFB spokesman Larry Bloch, who hosts a psychedelic, jam-band-themed show, From Ear to There. "Independent, noncommercial, non-corporate, diverse, all-access community radio — that’s what we are. We are the community of the Brattleboro area."

The idea for RFB sprouted in 1997, when community members started musing about how an LPFM station could serve the 12,000-person town. They were "a motley group of what must’ve been more than 30 people from Brattleboro that came together to discuss what a community radio station would look like," says Bloch. There were no licenses available for smaller, community-oriented broadcasters, but they moved forward, broadcasting at about a third of a watt — which didn’t even reach half the town — because organizers believed in the station’s mission. "[We’re] totally accessible to any person who has an interest in expressing his- [sic] or herself, whether that’s through a music show or a talk show," explains Bloch. "There is just an incredible variety of DJs that range from nine and 10 years old all the way up to their 70s and early 80s." In the last seven years, RFB has hosted about 350 different DJs.