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Bipartisan support for a proposal to raise the maximum fine for pirate radio to as much as $2 million emerged in the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology on Thursday. During a discussion into the proposed Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement or “PIRATE” Act, which is being circulated among members, lawmakers agreed the current fines have come up short in the effort to go after pirate radio operators. “It’s high time we pay more attention to the harm being done to consumers and broadcasters alike,” Subcommittee chair Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said.

Federal law presently allows the Federal Communications Commission to impose a maximum fine of $19,246 per day for each violation or each day up to a statutory maximum of $144,344. The proposal would boost that to as much $100,000 per day, per violation with a maximum fine allowed by law of $2 million.

The impact of pirate stations may be well known to anyone in radio, but
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Radio and broadcast equipment manufacturer GatesAir has developed a solution designed to cure the occasional hiccups that consumers experience as HD Radio signals lose their digital imprint and switch back to analog. This can create dropouts and temporarily interrupt an HD station’s seamless audio due to buffering.

“As the digital signal transitions to analog and back, the lack of proper time alignment prevents program linearity for the listener due to an eight-second delay between the analog and digital broadcast,” GatesAir explains. “Diversity Delay is a critical component of the HD Radio listening experience.”

Its solution: the fourth-generation Flexiva Importer/Exporter, combined with the company’s new FMXi 4g. Together, GatesAir says they have come up with “the industry’s first HD Radio Importer/Exporter solution to provide dynamic time and audio correction.” The GatesAir-exclusive algorithm inside the FMXi 4g “ensures proper t
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Christian broadcaster Education Media Foundation continues its recent buying spree with the purchase of WSHA Raleigh-Durham, NC (88.9) from Shaw University for an undisclosed price.

The sale of the station from Shaw, known as the oldest historically black college in the South, has been met with criticism from alumni, with one group saying their offer to buy the station was met with silence.

When news of the intended sale of the radio station surfaced last December, a petition was formed on change.org, which collected nearly 2,000 signatures, the News & Observer reported. A group called “Friends of Shaw” was formed and claims to have made an offer to purchase the station from the University.

“Once we learned of their intent to sell WSHA, a group of alumni actually offered to purchase the station,” 1995 graduate Kesha Monk told the paper. “However, our efforts were blatantly ignored.” Since graduation, Monk went on to a professional career in the r
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