FCC shuts UW-Parkside radio station for rocking without license...
The college radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside rocked so hard this month that federal agents shut it down.
School officials and the student group that runs WIPZ 88.5 FM are trying to adjust their broadcast equipment so that they can get back on the air without running afoul of the Federal Communications Commission.
The talk shows, educational programming and music on the station were silenced last week when those agents warned school officials that the station's broadcast signal was too strong for a station that does not have a license.
After receiving a tip, agents from the FCC office in Chicago drove to UW-Parkside to monitor signals from the station on March 17 and March 23.
"Somewhere they were misinformed by people who told them that operating a station by low power would be OK" without a license, said James M. Roop, district director of the FCC's Chicago office.
People can typically broadcast extremely low-powered broadcasts without a license, signals powerful enough to be heard a couple of hundred feet from the antenna. The signal from WIPZ was powerful enough to be picked up from miles away, Roop said.
The station started using the more powerful signal in the fall, when WIPZ moved from a studio in a modified classroom to a larger space in a newly renovated student center, said Stephanie Sirovatka-Marshall, the student center's interim director.
She said the station has had other fits and starts this school year. Students shut down the station for a bit while moving to the new facilities. Students also have had some trouble this year recruiting enough DJs to fill all of the station's air time.
WIPZ started broadcasting in the early 1990s, Sirovatka-Marshall said. The challenges of running the station change as the students and the programming do. "Some years, you have a lot of heavy metal. Some years, you have more diversity," she said.
Right in my neck of the woods. Yikes. Well they were running with 5 miles of coverage and have been running for a very long time with a huge listening base so it's a no brainer why they got caught. Too bad I didn't have a chance to stumble upon them on the dial before they went quiet. Oh well.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~