FCC Going After Pirate Radio Station Operating From Portland Church

In an age where seemingly everyone has a podcast and some cars don’t even support AM radio anymore, pirate radio isn’t always a topic that comes up.

But the Federal Communications Commission, thanks to fresh enforcement capabilities it received from Congress a few years ago, is going after any pirate radio station it can—and that, in some cases, includes churches.

Last month, the commission issued at least two separate complaints regarding pirate radio stations in Oregon, including one at a Portland-area church. That complaint accuses the owner of the property, the Eastside Free Methodist Church, of operating a radio station at illegal output levels.

The situation is interesting, as churches generally are allowed to operate radio stations under the Low Power FM regulation, allowing for noncommercial use within a service range of about 3.5 miles. But the FCC’s letter implies that the station does not meet these standards.

“While the FCC’s rules create exceptions for certain extremely low-powered devices, our agents have determined that those exceptions do not apply to the transmissions they observed originating from the Property,” the letter, from the commission’s enforcement bureau, states.

While the Eastside Free Methodist Church is listed on the complaint, the church is no longer operational. An official at a church that operates a weekly service in the same building, when reached for comment, said that the church building supports religious services for multiple churches who rent out the space. The official, who would not give his name, said that another church was operating the radio station, but the landlord had spoken to the offending church and had gotten them to stop.

Elsewhere in the state, meanwhile, a man who actively promotes his pirate radio efforts online could soon face a significant fine. Thomas Eugene Barnes, someone who has been active in the pirate radio space since the early 1990s, is facing a potential $80,000 fine for broadcasting at 100.5 MHz in La Grande, Oregon, on the eastern side of the state.

In 2018, Barnes first received notice about violating FCC rules with his station, Pirate Radio Eastern Oregon, but ignored multiple complaints regarding his conduct. Last March, the FCC Enforcement Bureau removed two transmitters from Barnes’ property; Barnes then posted to Facebook a few days later, stating that he had moved to another spot on the dial.

Barnes’ continuing disregard of the FCC’s complaints is seen as a major factor in the large proposed fine.

“Barnes had been warned multiple times since 2018 that his conduct was illegal, but he nonetheless chose to continue to operate without authorization,” the FCC’s notice, filed last month, states.

The FCC’s efforts to fight pirate radio stations have picked up in recent years as a result of the 2020 passage of the Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement (PIRATE) Act, which gives the commission the ability to levy fines of up to $2 million against pirate broadcasters, while giving the commission the ability to go after property owners and landlords as a part of its enforcement efforts.