Ah yes, reality—the slightly tilted card table in the back room of WLBOTT HQ, where a half-eaten jelly donut serves as the official seal, and someone’s misplaced egg salad sandwich keeps turning up in the diplomatic pouch.
Free?
What Exactly is Radio Free WLBOTT Free Of?
Well, it is free if you own a radio
Dairy, gluten, sodium, soy, egg, nuts
“W-LBOTT: Putting the ‘What?’ in ‘Whatever Happened to Common Sense?’”
Not Without Precedent: Pirate Radio
Pirate radio is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license, whether an invalid license or no license at all. In some cases, radio stations are considered legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are received—especially when the signals cross a national boundary.
In other cases, a broadcast may be considered “pirate” due to the nature of its content, its transmission format (especially a failure to transmit a station identification according to regulations), or the transmit power (wattage) of the station, even if the transmission is not technically illegal (such as an amateur radio transmission).
REM Island was a platform off the Dutch coast used as a pirate radio station in 1964 before being dismantled by the Netherlands Marine Corps.
In 1926 WJAZ in Chicago, Illinois, challenged the U.S. government’s authority to specify operating frequencies and was charged with being a “wave pirate”. The station responded with this February 1926 publicity photograph of its engineering staff dressed as “wave pirates”.
[WLBOTT Wonders: did these guys reincarnate as WLBOTT elders?]
When Wilson declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, he also issued an executive order closing most radio stations not needed by the US government. The Navy took it a step further and declared it was illegal to listen to radio or possess a receiver or transmitter in the US, but there were doubts they had the authority to issue such an order even in war time. The ban on radio was lifted in the US in late 1919.
While Mexico issued radio station XERF with a license to broadcast, the power of its 250 kW transmitter was far greater than the maximum of 50 kW authorized for commercial use by the government of the United States of America. Consequently, XERF and many other radio stations in Mexico, which sold their broadcasting time to sponsors of English-language commercial and religious programs, were labelled as “border blasters”, but not “pirate radio stations”, even though the content of many of their programs could not have been aired by a US-regulated broadcaster. Predecessors to XERF, for instance, had originally broadcast in Kansas, advocating “goat-gland surgery” for improved masculinity, but moved to Mexico to evade US laws about advertising medical treatments, particularly unproven ones.
There’s an interesting first-person account by Larry Melton of the infamous Dr. John Romulus Brinkley and the 100,000 watt Mexican radio station XERF. As the title suggests, there are a lot of semi-sequiturs to this story.
Goat Glands, Border Blasters, and the Carter Family
Larry Melton July 30, 2022 Blowing Off The Dust
Young Larry Melton in front of the family radio.
As I briefly researched the background, I found Dr. Brinkley was, in fact, no medical doctor at all. However, lack of credentials didn’t stop him from establishing a hospital in Milford, Kansas, to perform his pre-Viagra procedure.
There he performed surgery to enhance a gentleman’s youthful manliness that somehow involved goat glands and male reproductive anatomy. To promote his procedure, Brinkley built a radio station with a strong signal in Milford in 1928.
[…] [Brinkley] moved his entire operation to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, in order to avoid American licensing. His 50,000-watt transmitter (later increased to 500,000 and then a million watts) was on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande and the offices and studio of station XER were in Del Rio, Texas, with a broadcast quality telephone linking the two locations. This was one of the first “Border Blaster” stations that could reach most of the continental United States 24/7.
XERF: Gun Fights, Wolfman Jack, and the Nation of Islam
In earlier times, XERF was operated under the laws of Mexico by Ramón D. Bósquez and Arturo González, transmitting 250,000 watts as a border blaster, featuring famed disc jockey Wolfman Jack. XERF received its concession on November 26, 1947, and commenced operations, using the old facilities of John R. Brinkley’s XERA, which ceased broadcasting in 1939.
In April 1963, XERF returned to the headlines when armed men seized the station. Mexican authorities intervened, stationing federal troops to guard the station. In testimony, employees said they were chased, and that one armed man threatened Kallinger with a .45 pistol. After a legal dispute, a judge found in favor of Saúl Montes, the station’s administrator, who put the station back on the air.[9] In January 1964, a gun battle at the station left a 50-year-old man dead; his body was found on an adjoining ranch. Station personnel broadcast panicked pleas for help, prompting local residents to notify the authorities.
After the second gun battle, Bob Smith decided to leave for XERB, a border blaster in Tijuana and listenable in Los Angeles, California. It was this station that George Lucas featured in the 1973 movie American Graffiti.
Meanwhile, XERF reverted to selling time according to the old format devised by Dr. Brinkley. It featured paid programming, most of it from American fringe evangelists, right-wing political groups and Black Nationalist messages from the Nation of Islam. In 1969, a pastor sued the station for removing him from its air, alleging that the contract he had signed was for the duration of its broadcast concession. In the early 1970s, the station faced another lawsuit over contracts for airtime on XERF.
In early 1976, station employees who had been seeking back wages for 13 years, since the 1963 gunfight, won a victory in Mexican court, and Montes was appointed the sole administrator of XERF.
