Radio News: Chicago pirate radio station keeps traditions alive

Apr 11, 2022 11:33 pm

WBEZ reports that a Chicago man who ran an AM pirate station while in high school in Milwaukee during the Vietnam War, now is running an FM pirate radio station in Chicago playing audio noir radio dramas from the 1940s. "Bill," last name only to avoid the wrath of the Federal Communications Commission, has a 50-watt transmitter in his upstairs apartment with an antenna on the roof. “People on the lakefront up in the high rises can hear it,” said Bill. “And they used to listen at Lane Tech somewhere on an upper floor. So it gets out a little ways, but not that far.” The clandestine DJ plays old audio dramas not because of his love for old-time radio, but because he suffers from insomnia, and the old radio plays help put him to sleep. In 2006 he started an internet station, audionoir.com, and now the former audio engineer simulcasts on 87.9-FM. “I already had equipment,” said Bill, 68. “And I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got nothing else to do with this stuff— I’ll transmit this.' I guess I do enjoy [being] the bad-boy nerd, broadcasting illegally." His high school AM station get a visit from Federal Communications Commission officials to his parents’ home. Later, in college in Wisconsin, "Bill" helped found WORT. That background has him currently broadcasting on a frequency that is not being used in that part of Chicago. "Bill" says he will stop his FM transmissions if the FCC shuts him down, but he would not mind more pirate broadcasters in Chicago. “I think it would be exciting….You would have a lot of different content, from religious to political to old time radio to music,” he said. Read more about this story at WBEZ.