Radio Ink - Radio's Premier Management & Marketing Magazine

November 2, 2009: The FCC in August issued a $10,000 notice of apparent liability to Daniel Roberts, a.k.a. Monkey, founder of San Francisco pirate broadcaster Pirate Cat Radio, and PCR has now left the airwaves. The station website says the NAL "effectively ends Pirate Cat Radio's thirteen-year run as one of the Bay Area's most consistent voices of protest against corporate-run media monopolies and monocultural programming."

The PCR statement continues, "It is hard to understand how fining the founder of Pirate Cat Radio, an entirely volunteer-run community station, and effectively taking them off the air after 13 years, is an appropriate action and in the public's interest. There have never been any complaints over PCR's content. Pirate Cat Radio provides an important community service, one that has been recognized by the [San Francisco] Board of Supervisors in a certificate of honor." That certificate was issued by the board in September.

Pirate Cat Radio will continue as an Internet-only station and says that the majority of its listeners were already tuning in online or via podcasts.

Roberts said, "Obviously, this is a major disappointment. But we made a collective decision that Pirate Cat Radio must come off the public airwaves, until some method is found to change the law or get it authorized under existing law."