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mew5175_TheSecond t1_jdcvvff wrote

Reply to comment by Based_nobody in FCC Fines 15 Year-Old Pirate Radio Station in NYC $2 Million by blankblank

Trust me I can go back and forth with you all day on the decline of radio and the reasons for it. I agree with everything you're saying about the state of the industry. Our only hope at this point is for the behemoths like iHeart and whatnot to no longer deal with the billions in debt they have and sell off their assets to various local owners who make radio what it should be. But that's a tall ask and an extremely unlikely future.

But at this point if you can't get an AM or FM license, you gotta go online. And fact of the matter is, most people are only listening to radio in their cars, and you can still listen to internet radio via your phone + bluetooth or aux cable in a car.

An AM/FM signal perhaps makes you seem more legitimate which is the only reason I can think of as to why these brothers continued to pirate the airwaves, but I assume all the advertising they are doing for themselves is online anyway. They promoted their programs on Instagram and whatnot so they could still do that for an internet-only station. When they got their first ever letter/warning from the FCC, they should have used their final moments on FM to say we are shutting down and used the opportunity to promote their new internet-only radio station. They opted not to do that and now they have to pay the price for it.

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attackplango t1_jddgljd wrote

I don’t think a lot of people in NYC are listening to internet radio in their cars. I would wonder how many people in the audience know that internet radio is a thing. Also, there’s the hurdle of being able to afford monthly internet, and having something that can access it.

Yes, there’s licensing, and yes we don’t want unexpected interference. But also, the spectrum is a publicly owned thing, and if no more licenses are available because corporations have bought all of a very limited stock, what is the solution there? Internet is not accessible in the same way radio is.

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familygamereview t1_jddcf47 wrote

But for the audience, the internet costs money they might not have. Maybe theyre serving a community stuck with heart radio because they lack income and cant afford to go over their data plan if they even have a data plan let alone a subscription. Radio is free. Its kind of weird to assume theyre pirating radio for the prestige.

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